The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America
I’ll be honest, I was not expecting much when I started reading The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America. I knew a little bit about the Lavender Scare—a period of time when gay people were purged from government jobs—and while I was interested in knowing more, I didn’t think it’d be the most thrilling history for me. For one, I don’t know much about DC and don’t find the concept of government work to be all that thrilling to read about. And yet this turned out to be a lovely, invigorating, fun romp of a book.
Although the book is nominally about the Lavender Scare, it is much more the story of early gay rights generally and Frank Kameny. By focusing on Kameny, a tenacious organizer who also managed to annoy a great number of people, the book is able to showcase and get into a significant chunk of pre-Stonewall gay rights work. It’s nice to read something that shows how much pushing a boulder up a hill has to happen before something like Stonewall can even be considered.
It’s also nice to read books that are honest about how queer history is messy. There was never a perfectly united moment in the past and the narcissism of small differences has always plagues us. People fought and got annoyed and really disliked each other and yet, ultimately, we still had to find a way to work together for change and progress. I find those narratives far more inspiring than things that try to gloss over the past.
The major flaw of this book is that, like much of early gay history, it’s primarily focused on white men. The author does discuss the involvement (and lack thereof) of women and highlights many early Daughters of Bilitis activists. It’s impossible to fit everything into a single text and the effort is appreciated, but it is a stark reminder of who’s history we’re able to remember—or given how much of this book is based on the letters Kameny was writing, whose history we’re able to preserve or existed to preserve.
There’s also a few dropped asides, including Warren Scarberry, an activist turned FBI informant who was arrested for a murder and then subsequently advocated for gay rights behind bars. The book tracks his informant history, as well as giving a brief description of what happened before he was arrested before…just dropping it. It felt like the author rightfully recognized how compelling this narrative would be without really being able to follow through and do it justice, which is a real shame. Hopefully other historians will be able to pick up these kind of threads.
Despite these issues, I do highly recommend this book for anyone more interested in pre-Stonewall activism, the different branches of the Mattachine Society, and the ways in which respectability politics were deployed (and challenged!) within early gay rights groups.