In November 1942, when Kameny was a sophomore in college, Congress lowered the draft age to 18 in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor the previous December.

To join this program, Kameny enlisted in the United States Army on May 18, 1943, completed basic training, and then was sent to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study mechanical engineering.

His doctoral thesis was titled A Photoelectric Study of Some RV Tauri and Yellow Semiregular Variables[13] and was written under the supervision of professor Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

[14] Two police officers were waiting behind a ventilation grille in the terminal men's bathroom, and witnessed Kameny and another man engaging in a sexual encounter.

[15] Relocating to Washington, D.C., Kameny taught for a year in the Astronomy Department of Georgetown University and was hired in July 1957 by the U.S. Army Map Service.

When they learned of his San Francisco arrest, Kameny's superiors questioned him, but he refused to provide information regarding his sexual orientation.

They encountered Frank Kameny along with twenty-seven other men engaging in "homosexual activity," and arrested them, cited for participating in a "disorderly house."

[20] In late 1961, Frank Kameny co-founded the Washington D.C. branch of the national gay rights organization, Mattachine Society.

In the year following the group's founding, Kameny led an initiative to declare the existence of the Mattachine Society of Washington publicly.

[22] The content of the letters included harsh criticism of the government's treatment of homosexuals and asserted that there were over three hundred members of the group.

The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had made advancements to ban the Washington branch and had been threatened with the prospect of a march on behalf of the organization.

[23] Although supportive of the idea, Kameny restrained from taking part in a march due to the threat of damaging his public image.

[24] In 1963, Kameny and Mattachine launched a campaign to overturn D.C. sodomy laws; he personally drafted a bill that finally passed in 1993.

Frank Kameny also contributed to homosexual activism by serving as an amateur attorney, defending government employees who had their security clearances revoked or suspended, due to allegations of "perversion" or "immoral acts.

I do not see any great interest on the part of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League on the possibility of solving problems of anti-semitism by converting Jews to Christians .

[33] In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay candidate for the United States Congress[34] when he ran in the District of Columbia's first election for a non-voting Congressional delegate.

[35] In 1972, Kameny and Barbara Gittings convinced the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to hold a debate, "Psychiatry: Friend or Foe to the Homosexual?

Kameny had approached numerous gay psychiatrists, but Fryer was the only one who agreed to testify, and even he would only do so in disguise for fear of losing his position at Temple University, where he did not have tenure.

"In 1975, his search for a gay service member with an impeccable record to initiate a challenge to the military's ban on homosexuals culminated in protégé Leonard Matlovich, a Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force with 11 years of unblemished service and a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, purposely outing himself to his commanding officer on March 6, 1975.

Convinced the Air Force would create another excuse to discharge him again, Matlovich accepted a financial settlement instead, and continued his gay activism work until his death from AIDS complications in June 1988.

: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today, over the total lack of mention of gay and lesbian rights activism during the 1960s and upbraiding Brokaw for having "'de-gayed' an entire generation".

[44] The letter was co-signed by former Washington Post editor Howard Kurtz, Harry Rubinstein (curator, National Museum of American History), John Earl Haynes, Dudley Clendinen and Stephen Bottum.

Brokaw appeared on Kurtz's CNN show Reliable Sources to defend the exclusion, saying that "the gay rights movement came slightly later.

"[45] Kameny suffered from heart disease in his last years, but maintained a full schedule of public appearances, his last being a speech to an LGBT group in Washington, D.C., on September 30, 2011.

[55] On June 29, 2009, John Berry (Director of the Office of Personnel Management) formally apologized to Kameny on behalf of the United States government.

[58] At a luncheon on December 10, 2010, in the Caucus room of the Cannon House Office Building, Kameny was honored with the 2010 Cornelius R. "Neil" Alexander Humanitarian Award.

[62][63] In January 2012, during its national meeting, the American Astronomical Society held a public ceremony to present a posthumous certificate of appreciation to Kameny,[64] recognizing "his exemplary lifelong commitment to promoting equal rights for homosexual men and women" and how his "activism removed discriminatory barriers that had cut short many careers."

On July 3, 2012, asteroid (40463) Frankkameny was named in Kameny's honor by the International Astronomical Union and the Minor Planet Center.

[65][66][67][68][69][70] In 2013, Kameny was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago which celebrates LGBT history and people.

[74][75] The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history,[76] and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.