Digging Up a Painful Past
This chapter talks about the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, an organization that takes its name from the pioneering gay rights organization of the pre-Stonewall era. It looks at Charles Francis, the president of the Mattachine Society and a leading figure among American gay rights activists, who was a former Republican public relations consultant from Texas with close personal ties to the Bush family. It also discusses Francis’s activism aimed at securing an acknowledgment and apology from the US Congress for discriminatory actions taken by the federal government against LGBT Americans. This chapter analyses the Mattachine Society’s briefing paper “America’s Promise of Reconciliation and Redemption: The Need for an Official Acknowledgment and Apology for the Historic Government Assault on LGBT Federal Employees and Military Personnel,” and it emphasizes the mission of the new Mattachine Society on adjusting the legal struggle to secure an apology from the US government.