Abstract
On January 4, 1966, Jewish gay-rights activist Frank Kameny fired off a letter to popular advice columnist Ann Landers, arguing forcefully against conversion therapy. Landers had published a column encouraging a gay man to seek counseling in order to "accept himself." While Landers did not explicitly recommend conversion therapy, Kameny was suspicious of her and of a profession that often-treated homosexuality as an illness. As the co-founder of the Washington, DC, branch of the Mattachine Society, a homophile group advocating for gay rights, Kameny had insisted that the Society argue "from a position of health. We cannot declare our equality and ask for acceptance … from a position of sickness."1 In this vein, Kameny told Landers, "Suggesting the cure for their unhappiness, fright and loneliness might be change to heterosexuality is like suggesting the cure for the misfortunes that beset the Negro and the Jew, as a result of segregation, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism would best be cured by bleaching the Negro and converting the Jew to Christianity."
