one of the mattachine society's founders, a man named frank kameny, he is a worker with the postal servicee house. >> i understand that we're being picketed by a group of homosexuals. the policy of the department is that we do not employee homosexuals knowingly, and if we discover homosexuals in our department we discharge them. >> every american citizen has the right to be considered by his government on the basis of his own personal merit as an individual. >> frank kameny is a pioneer. he's standing there, doesn't care what people think. he's saying, i am just as normal as you are. it's a polite reform movement. >> homosexuality is, in fact, a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions. >> the american psychiatric association deems homosexuality to be a mental disorder. >> this involves showing the gay man pictures of nude males and shocking him with a strong electric current over a short period of time. hopefully, he will be unable to get sexually aroused. >> it's very hard to achieve civil rights for a group where the medical world is describing this group as mentally