Forward March!

As a sure sign of its continual forward evolution, Pride marches have become as quintessentially part of the American summer landscape as baseball, beach trips, and Fourth of July barbecues. In a Simpsons episode in 2002, when approached by gay men at a Pride March exclaiming, " We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!" Lisa Simpson observed, "You do this every year, we ARE used to it."

Though that statement may resonate with many urban dwellers, the original Pride Marches were anything but mainstream. The story of Pride marches are almost as old as the Stonewall Rebellion itself, and it's a great example of our community's ingenuity, pluck, and gumption.

Immediately after the Stonewall Rebellion (June 27-29, 1969), gay (LGBT) activists, many of whom had already been activists working within the Civil Rights, Women's, and Anti-War movements, seized the opportunity and formed the Gay Liberation Front (GLF).

The GLF was a radical and militant organization that believed that sexual liberation for everyone could only come about when all heterosexist institutions were overthrown. These activists were very much a part of the various socio-political movements of the '60s, and to the end they aligned themselves with the Black Panthers, Anti-War movements, and Students for a Democratic Society.

Though the group's attempt to include the goals/philosophies of all those movements was commendable, by trying to address every one's needs it ended up serving no one. Right from the beginning the group was plagued by internal conflict: gay men ridiculing their effeminate brothers; lesbians accusing femmes and drag queens as perpetrating oppressive gender stereotypes; and everyone charging butch men and women as holding on to heterosexist privilege.

Even as infighting would lead to the group's quick dismantling, , the GLF is important because of two things: 1) it is from which our concept that coming out is one of the most important political acts an LGBTQ person could do originated, and 2) the GLF's use of disorder-inducing, headline-grabbing direct-action ZAPs (congregating en mass to raise public awareness) would be a strategy replicated by successive LGBTQ organizations like GAA, Lavender Hill Mob, and ACT-UP.


Within six months of GLF's coming together, several members broke off to form the Gay Activists' Alliance (GAA). Unlike the GLF, the GAA focused solely on gay Civil Rights. The GAA proved to be incredibly effective at taking on the community's political enemies. Amongst it's numerous achievements are the GAA's starting of the gay employment non-discrimination movement, the creation of arguably the first LGBT community center at its Soho Victorian firehouse, and helping Dr. Frank Kameny in becoming the first openly-gay person to run for Congress.

The GAA also organized the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, which planned the first march to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, named appropriately the Christopher Street Liberation Day March. The march was meant to commemorate the events of Stonewall as well as to highlight the ongoing struggle for LGBT rights.

Over time the Christopher Street Liberation Day became simply Gay Liberation Day, celebrated on the east coast in cities like New York and Atlanta, while cities in the west like San Francisco and Los Angeles opted for the term Gay Freedom Day. Eventually the community would settle on the name Gay Pride and later on, LGBT Pride. The Christopher Street Liberation Day March Committee in NYC became the full-fledged non-for-profit Heritage of Pride (HOP). Though the GAA would be dissolved by the late 70s, its members went on to found groups like the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), organizations still at the forefront of the struggle today.

Presently the visibility of corporate floats at the LGBT Pride March have led many to question whether or not the march should now be called a parade. In response HOP maintains they have not forgotten the March's revolutionary principles. A march points to political grievances and HOP states that until LGBT people can live their lives without violence, harassment, and discrimination, they will continue to call it a march.

Despite its humble, radical beginnings, LGBT Pride Marches/parades are celebrated not only across the country, but all over the world. And as the message of the march adjusts to appeal to the masses, we must remember the hard work and courage of those early activists without whom none of this would be possible.


To learn more, here are some must-reads:

http://www.queerty.com/new-york/the-gay-pride-issue-20070618/

http://www.nycpride.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_parade

The Real L Word: Litigation (Impact)

In the July issue of Lesbian News Magazine, there's a brief but terrific piece on the history of one of our most prominent organizations: NCLR, or the National Center for Lesbian Rights. As one of our oldest civil rights organizations (they turn 30 this year), NCLR has been at the forefront of many court cases that have set precedents leading to a change for the better in the lives of LGBTQ people and their families.

Started in San Francisco as the Lesbian Rights Project of the feminist law firm Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), NCLR won important victories for the LGBTQ community including child custody for lesbian mothers, joint-adoptions by a same-sex couple, as well as the parental rights of a gay man with AIDS for custody of his son.

The NCLR is widely recognized as an authority on family law and is often called upon as experts representing the LGBTQ community. In 1997, Executive Director Kate Kendell debated Rev. Jerry Falwell on the topic of LGBT issues within the national discussion of family values. Later on in 2001 NCLR helped Sharon Smith become the first same-sex (or unmarried) partner to win the right to sue for wrongful death, in the now infamous case of the dog mauling of Diane Whipple.

Always evolving forward, NCLR has recently expanded to include transgender rights law. NCLR also counts famed transgender attorney Shannon Minter amongst its staff, who not only retained his position after transitioning from female to male, but also as Legal Director helped win Sharon Smith's groundbreaking wrongful death suit.

In our topsy-turvy world today where the erosion of LGBT rights continues albeit subtly, it's encouraging to know there are still hardcore groups like NCLR holding down the fort for us. Happy 30th NCLR!



To learn more and to support, please visit:

NCLR

Diane Whipple

Shannon Minter

The Lesbian News Magazine

Afterellen.com at NCLR 30th Anniversary Celebration

82 Club in NYC

Boys and the Band

Most people believe that gay life pre-Stonewall was hidden and full of shame. Thankfully an upcoming event by Drag historian and NYU professor Joe E. Jeffreys will shed a light on the joy and exuberance some gay men were able to find during the 1950s. Starting in that decade through to the 70s the East Village nightspot, the 82 Club, offered lavish drag shows three times a night. Later the 82 became a rock and roll club where bands like the New York Dolls and the Mumps played. The club also served as a gay male cruising ground.

Professor Jeffreys, who recently screened a mockumentary about the history of drag queens in NYC, will host this multi-media talk incoporating hundreds of photographs that span the history of the space, as well as rare audio and video clips of this legendary club.

For more on this interesting phenomenon, and to see some wonderful photos from that forgotten era, please visit the link at the bottom of this post. More on this club to come...

A NIGHT AT THE 82 CLUB
Monday, August 6th, 2007
6pm @ The Bijou, formerly the 82 Club
82 E. Fourth St. at Second Ave.
8pm @ Dixon Place
258 Bowery @ Stanton St.
212-219-0736
www.dixonplace.org
$12/$10 for students/seniors


82 Club
http://www.queermusicheritage.us/fem-cl82a.html
http://streetsyoucrossed.blogspot.com/2005/09/what-drag-too-many-snags.html
http://www.vickirene.net/intterry.htm
http://www.sohoblues.com/Clubs&Discos/index.htm
http://gridskipper.com/travel/new-york/top-picks-historic-gay-east-village-272791.php
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/16899/

Gay New York
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

Marc Rubin

From our archives:

Date: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:37 pm
Subject: Marc Rubin

They say that things happen in 3's. It pains me to say that at least in the case of the passing of Stonewall-Era gay activists, this has been the case these weeks. Last month saw the passing of Marc Rubin as well as a very generous anonymous donor who helped fund the early Gay Movement, in addition to pioneer Barbara Gittings.

Marc Rubin was an early activist who was a leader in the Gay Activists' Alliance (GAA) in the 1970s as well as a member of the Lavender Hill Mob. In 1974 he helped found the Gay Teachers Association, and was involved in the early planning for the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth, the original incarnation of the present Hetrick-Martin Institute. In 1994, Mr. Rubin was one of the primary organizers of the Stonewall 25 celebration and insisted that both the GAA and GLF (Gay Liberation Front) be given special places of honor. This was in response to what he felt was the erasure of the role the GAA and GLF played in the early stages of the movement by gay historians.

To give just a bare bones version of their history and significance, the GLF was the organization that came directly out of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969. Members of GLF were often divided on which direction to move in, and as a result of their fractured direction, led to the group's disbanding after about 2 years. Despite being so short-lived GLF is important, amongst other reasons, for putting forth the notion that the act of coming out was itself a political one.

GLF members who wanted to focus solely on gay issues broke off to form their own organization, the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). The GAA were known for their work both politically and socially. They frequently organized ZAPS, which were public confrontations with elected officials regarding various issues relating to the gay and lesbian community. In a short time they managed to get passed several laws protecting gays and lesbians in NYC. The GAA headquarters also became a community center of sorts, organizing fundraisers and dances, which helped fund the GAA.

Unfortunately in an arson that remains unsolved to this day, the headquarters burned down, which along with other factors led to the group's dismantling in 1981. GAA members went on to found the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and the LGBT Community Center in NYC. Another offspring organization, the Lavender Hill Mob, eventually would go on to join forces with ACT-UP to protest discriminatory practices regarding HIV/AIDS issues.

I'll write more in-depth about the GLF, GAA, Lavender Hill Mob, and HMI in future posts, but for now, to learn more, go to:

Marc Rubin
MarcRubin1
MarcRubin2

GAA
GAA1 (please excuse the top photos!)
GAA2
GAA3
GAA4

GLF
GLF1
GLF2
GLF3
GLF4
GLF5


Lavender Hill Mob
LavenderHillMob1
LavenderHillMob2

LavenderHillMob3

LavenderHillMob4

Hetrick-Martin Institute
HMI1
HMI2

********************************************************


http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18055302&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568862&rfi=6


Marc Rubin, Early Activist, Teachers' Organizer, Dead at 74
By: PAUL SCHINDLER
03/08/2007
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GAA activists (l. to r.) Vito Russo, Jim Owles, Marc Rubin, and Pete Fisher get a summons from police for staging a dance at the group�s famed Firehouse headquarters in Soho.

Marc Rubin, a pioneering activist who was a leader in New York's Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) of the early 1970s, helped found the Gay Teachers Association in 1974, and was part of the Lavender Hill Mob, a direct-action precursor to ACT UP, died on February 28 at the age of 74.


Rubin's death was announced by his partner of more than 35 years, author and activist Pete Fisher.


Contemporaries of Rubin recall his "commanding presence" at public demonstrations in Manhattan that were often met with law enforcement hostility and the scorn of passersby.


Recalling Rubin and Fisher as "a legendary couple" in GAA, Joe Kennedy, author of "Summer of '77: Last Hurrah of the Gay Activists Alliance," said, "They were very courageous. Others might be intimidated by hostile crowds. They would go places others would not." Kennedy described the couple attending Fisher's high school reunion in Westchester in the early '70s dressed "in full leather regalia."

Kennedy said that Rubin's size and "booming voice" gave him a memorable role in the many activist debates of the era, but emphasized that he was influential because he was "very persuasive," not domineering.

"He was a natural leader," Kennedy said.


Steve Ashkinazy, a social worker, also knew Rubin during this period and worked with him briefly on the early planning for the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth, now the Hetrick-Martin Institute. Commenting on Rubin's death, Ashkinazy said he had just days before watched a video of the two of them speaking at a high school during the early 1970s. A public school teacher who worked with delinquent boys, Rubin with Fisher wrote a novel based on his experiences, "Special Teachers/ Special Boys," published by St. Martin's in 1978.

In 1974, Rubin, one of the first out gay teachers in the city's school system, and Merill Friedman placed a notice in the Village Voice to organize the Gay Teachers Association. Roughly 40 people turned out to form the group now known as the Lesbian and Gay Teachers Association. It was from the ranks of that group that Lambda Legal in 1987 drew the plaintiffs for a lawsuit to win domestic partner benefits for lesbian and gay public school teachers. The suit dragged on for six years, and was settled in negotiations with Mayor David Dinkins giving such benefits to all city employees just days before he lost to Rudy Giuliani in 1993.


In a 1999 remembrance published by Gay Today at badpuppy.com on the occasion of Stonewall's 30th anniversary, Rubin recalled the spirit of his activism in the early days, and lamented the "erasure" of GAA from queer history, even in the gay press.


"To distort history is to redefine reality, to bend it towards serving selective and exclusiona y agendas," he wrote. Then contrasting GAA with the group it grew up in reaction to, Rubin wrote, "GLF, Gay Liberation Front, was conceived as being part of the entire Liberation movement, one segment of a worldwide struggle against oppression. It was anarchic and strongly allied to, albeit rather unwelcome in, all leftist movements. The Gay Activists Alliance stood for writing the revolution into law... [T]he organization's single issue focus enabled it direct all of its energies toward working intensively in, on, with, and against 'The Establishment' on issues affecting lesbians and gay men."


He then went on to recall a dozen demonstrations, pickets, sit-ins, and zaps aimed at unfriendly or uncooperative institutions from the City Council to St. Patrick's Cathedral to the Taxi and Limousine Commission (for requiring psychological testing of gay taxi drivers) to "The Dick Cavett Show" (because of the host's "relentless anti-gay spiels"). It was that ethic of on-the-spot activism that Rubin and others, most notably Marty Robinson, brought to the Lavender Hill Mob's AIDS protest activities in the mid-'80s.


"I really adored him," said poet, novelist, and activist Perry Brass in admiration of Rubin's dedicated activism. Seeing Rubin for the first time in several years at an ACT UP meeting in the late '80s, Kennedy recalled him saying, "I will never be as young and energetic as I once was, but I will always be an activist."

Indeed, Rubin was one of the primary organizers of the city's massive Stonewall 25 celebration in 1994, at which he insisted GAA and GLF be given special places of honor.

Two years ago, Rubin, suffering from symptoms that included memory loss, underwent brain surgery, from which he recovered well. Kennedy, however, said that on Pride Sunday last year he received a call from Rubin saying that for the first time ever he was too sick to join the annual celebration and was instead spending the day calling his "old activist comrades."
Plans for a memorial service for Marc Rubin have not yet been completed.



©GayCityNews 2007

Anonymous Donor to Early LGBT Movement

From our archives:

Date: Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:58 pm
Subject: Anonymous Donor to Early LGBT Movement

A wonderful article on the life, contributions, and recent passing of an anonymous donor who helped fund a great deal of some of the movement's earliest endeavors. Choosing to remain anonymous to inspire others to give in the same way, the donor funded the co-founder of the National Gay Task Force, Bruce Voeller, allowing him to successfully lobby key American Psychiatric Association members in removing homosexuality from its index of mental disorders in 1973. The donor was also involved in funding the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (the precursor to the Hetrick-Martin Institute) in the 80s, as well as SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment), and the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project-sponsored ads in the New York Times after the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. Strongly concerned about homeless LGBT youth, this donor gave huge sums to MCC (Manhattan Community Church) to fund shelters like Sylvia's Place and Marsha P. Johnson Drop-In Center.

I think this donor's life and work is an inspiration to young people of gays helping our own. To be able to step out of one's own financially comfortable experience to understand that for others less fortunate things could be a lot more difficult is certainly a trait more of us could stand to display.


http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18055247&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6

********************************************************

Anonymous Generosity, In Life and In Death
03/08/2007


A New York gay man who donated millions of dollars to LGBT causes going back to the early 1970s died February 22 at age 85.


He insisted on remaining anonymous in life and in death not out of a desire to be closeted, but rather to inspire others to give in the same way. This reporter knew him for 20 years and served as an intermediary between him and several organizations he supported over the last decade.

The donor, whose fortune was made as a Manhattan art dealer, was also an expert on sexually transmitted infections, for years running a foundation that disseminated prevention pamphlets he authored. An intimate of Margaret Sanger, he was also active in the defense of reproductive rights.

In the early 1970s, the donor funded Bruce Voeller - who co-founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 - to lobby members of the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality from its index of mental disorders. Washington's Franklin Kameny and the recently deceased Barbara Gittings of Philadelphia played the central public roles in that campaign, but the funding Voeller received allowed him to privately lobby key association members. The APA voted to make the change in 1973.

Voeller's initial salary at the Task Force was $250 a week, not enough to support his children from a previous marriage. The donor stepped in and more than doubled his compensation. A biologist, Voeller went on to establish the Mariposa Foundation for research on sexuality and STDs. The group pioneered the use of the spermicide nonoxynol-9 as an HIV-preventative during sex. Voeller died of AIDS in 1994.

Perhaps the most famous story about the anonymous donor is how he provided the seed money for the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth - now the Hetrick-Martin Institute- to offer social services beginning in 1983. Founded in 1979 by the late Drs. Emery Hetrick and Damien Martin, it had been a volunteer advocacy and research group.

As a board member of Dignity, the gay Catholic group, in the early 1980s, I remember Hetrick and Martin making a lengthy presentation just to secure a $100 donation for the Institute (an indelible memory about the state of gay philanthropy in those days). The donor heard about the Institute's work, met Hetrick and Martin in their Murray Hill apartment, pulled $25,000 in cash out of his boot, and told them that he had another $25,000 for them but that it did not fit in the boot.

"Without this donor, it never would have gotten started," said Dr. Joyce Hunter, a founding member, who was vice president of the Institute's board at the time and went on become its first director of social work. She said the city matched the donor's contribution soon afterward.

Over the next decade, the donor pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars more into the Institute.

One of his primary causes over the last decade was SAGE, the New York agency providing services and advocacy for LGBT elders, to which he contributed nearly a million dollars. He sponsored full-page ads for SAGE in the New York Times promoting the slogan, "Who loves you when you're old and gay? SAGE does!" featuring a big photo of exuberant SAGE members singing around a piano.
The donor also paid for ads sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project on the op-ed page of the Times after the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, saying that the killers "acted in an atmosphere poisoned by the anti-gay rhetoric of religious and political extremists" and calling for education of young people in schools and at home on "tolerance, understanding, kindness, and concern for all."

One of the anonymous donor's lifelong concerns was homeless people, especially LGBT youth on the streets. Though he was not a religious man, he became a major donor to the Metropolitan Community Church of New York and its many programs for these young people. At his death, he was providing major funding for MCC's Sylvia's Place shelter for homeless LGBT youth - named for the late transgender leader Sylvia Rivera - on church premises at 446 West 36th Street and the new Marsha P. Johnson Drop-In Center, named for another noted transgender activist who is deceased, set to open in Harlem soon.

On the Sunday following his death, Reverend Pat Bumgardner, senior pastor of MCC, told her congregation that the donor was "as an imitator of God's generosity and kindness and that he strove by his example to make God's will for housing the homeless and feeding the hungry a reality."

While gay philanthropists have stepped forward since with more money and more varied causes, this donor will be remembered - though not by name - as providing critical sums when no one else would to populations in the community that almost no other big contributors cared about.



©GayCityNews 2007

Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation

From the archives:

Date: Mon Jul 17, 2006 10:00 pm
Subject: Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation

There is an organization called the Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation and its website is http://www.gvshp.org/. Recently there was an article in Gay City News about the organization:

http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_525/preservingwestvillage.html


Volume 5, Number 25 | June 22 - 28, 2006

COMMUNITY



GVSHP executive director Andrew Berman stands in front of 129 McDougal Street—which historian George Chauncey found was the Eve Addams Tearoom from 1925 to 1926, run by Polish Jewish lesbian émigré Eva Kotchever and fronted with a sign that read "Men are admitted but not welcome"—was preserved in 2004. Kotchever's tearoom was raided by police, and she was convicted of "obscenity. GVSHP seeks a district-wide historic designation for the South Village. 2 Weehawken Street/394 West Street was the home of the Ramrod, a gay denim/leather bar from 1976 until 1980, when a former transit officer fired into it, killing two men and wounding six others. The city historic designation for Weehawken cites the role the west end of Christopher Street and adjoining blocks played in the gay bar scene's growth in the early 1970s.

Preserving West Village Gay History

Christopher Street's west end at Weehawken has won protection from the city

BY JAMES WITHERS

The past is always with us. Sure there are times when it is conveniently put away, or purposefully forgotten, but what happened before always stays around patiently waiting to be remembered or acknowledged. The history of gay New York is slowly becoming part of the official record the city keeps when it honors the past.

Last month city officials announced a new historic area in Greenwich Village. Called the Weehawken Street Historic District, the report the city wrote describing the designation is, as described by Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, "chock full of references to the area's gay history."

The district ranges from the corner of Christopher and Weehawken Streets and ends slightly beyond West 10th Street. According to Berman, this stretch of the Village was critical to gay life after the Stonewall Rebellion.

"Weehawken Street is an important part of gay history because in the 1970s through the 1990s, there was a very significant concentration of gay establishments, and it was a clear nexus of gay life in New York," said Berman. Although Stonewall ushered in an era of political activism, gay life as recently as 25 or 30 years ago remained essentially underground, minus the bright lights of public visibility.

The very layout of Weehawken permitted a gay cultural life to flourish outside the view of prying eyes.

"The fact that it was this tiny street tucked away, that one would likely never know about unless one was looking for it, allowed for the creation of a kind of private world which allowed something still somewhat furtive like gay life to flourish," said Berman. "It was also this separateness and hidden quality which probably also contributed to the anachronistic architecture being preserved as well. While this `hidden world' quality also led to some unsavory activity, by its very nature it also allowed a subculture to flourish here that had few other places to flourish."

Six of the 14 buildings in the district were the homes of various gay bars. Some are still open for business—such as the Dugout—while others like Peter Rabbit, Sneakers, West Beach Bar & Grill, and Badlands have closed their doors. The Ramrod was shut down at the end of 1980, right after an infamous November shooting in which a homophobic attacker killed two men with a semi-automatic.

Making sure the city remembers the diversity of its past is one of missions of the GVSHP. Berman notes the organization, which was involved in the Stonewall National Register designation in 1999 preserving the famed bar on Christopher near Gay Street, is currently preparing to submit another application for the South Village.

"The South Village is the area south of Washington Square Park and West 4th Street between 7th Avenue and LaGuardia Place," said Berman. "In this case, the gay history goes back to the 1920s and earlier, and thus it will be part of the `historic' information we submit and the argument we will make for the area's significance and worthiness of landmark protections."

Historic designations serve an significant purpose, not only for specific neighborhoods, but also for the city on a whole.

"Historic district and landmark designations are so important because in our ever- changing city, they are amongst the only ways to ensure that significant parts of our city's history are preserved, and that things about our city that we think are significant are recognized and documented," said Berman. "Many aspects of our city's history have never been really given the due it deserves."

According to Berman, one segment of New York history that has been overlooked has been the impact of immigrant neighborhoods, a rather shocking fact considering the importance of newcomers from other nations in the building of this the city. GVSHP's hope is this oversight will change with the South Village proposal.

"Believe it or not, no neighborhood in New York City has ever been designated a historic district based upon its immigrant history, and we hope the South Village will be the first," Berman said.

The city currently has 85 historic districts—including the African Burial Ground near City Hall and the Gansevoort Market in Manhattan; Park Slope and the Heights in Brooklyn; Riverdale and Mott Haven in the Bronx; Jackson Heights and Fort Totten in Queens; and St. George in Staten Island.

Once a neighborhood is given the designation, buildings are protected from demolition and the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission must approve any exterior alterations.


For more information on the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, visit www.gvshp.org.

Barbara Gittings

From the archives:

Date: Thu Mar 8, 2007 8:47 pm
Subject: Barbara Gittings


Hi everyone,

As you might have heard, the legendary, iconic, gay activist Barabara Gittings died late last month on February 18th at the age of 75, after a lengthy fight with breast cancer.

Widely regarded as the mother of the modern Gay Rights Movement, Barbara Gittings was one of the early pioneers of Gay Rights in the 1950s, helped found the NYC chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, and edited an early lesbian publication called "The Ladder," from 1963 to 1966. In 1965, 3 years before the milestone event of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, Gittings helped organize one of the first gay rights protests in modern memory in demonstrations at the White House in Washington DC and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Along with another Gay Rights pioneer Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings was instrumental in the campaign that led to the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Ms. Gittings was instrumental in securing the appearance and testimony of that famous, pro-gay masked psychiatrist.

When I heard about her passing I had to jot down my reaction so I've
included it here below at the end of this post.

*****************

The wonderful podcast, Gay USA, hosted by veteran LGBTQ rights
activists Andy Humm and Ann Northrop, dedicated an episode to Barbara Gittings and you can listen to it here:
http://web.mac.com/depeche7/iWeb/Site/Podcast/D874F98A-9418-4D75-805A-0E3D037D54\
62.html

*****************

The following is a partial listing of coverage of her passing by media sources:
http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17884544&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=5\
68864&rfi=8
http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108&ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=1829\
3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/19/AR2007021900921.\
html
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/phila\
delphia_county/philadelphia/16736722.htm
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-passings20.2feb20,1,29\
04550.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aR_HOK8TU.E0&refer=muse
http://www.generationq.net/articles/Gay-Pioneer-dies-at-75-00001.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--obit-gittings0218feb18,\
0,5155742.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

*****************

The following are some articles on Ms. Gittings:
http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/gittings_b.html
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/042299/feat.20q.shtml
http://www.glbthistorymonth.com/glbthistorymonth/bio.cfm?LeaderID=14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Gittings

*****************

Barbara Gittings has been featured in many documentaries on gay
history. Here is a partial listing:
Before Stonewall http://imdb.com/title/tt0088782/
After Stonewall http://imdb.com/title/tt0244955/
Out of the Past http://www.pbs.org/outofthepast/

*****************

A partial listing of statements released by our community leaders
mourning the passing of Barabara Gittings:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/Update/2007/07_07_0221/index.htm
http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/2039.html
http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Press_Room&CONTENTID=35521&TEMPLATE=/Con\
tentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
http://www.glaad.org/media/release_detail.php?id=3977&

*****************

I don't know what this is, but I was immediately devastated. I was very angry and then I felt sad, then nauseated I did not know her and have never met her. What I do know is that she is definitely one of our founding mothers for everyone who is LGBTQ in America. Her work laid the groundwork for our movement and we would not have the freedoms today if it weren't for her efforts.

I guess i am upset because it is as if my parent has died. I know this is so contrived and silly to say and to feel but somehow i feel connected to her and am touched by her story. Somehow I always felt that as an activist i might some day be able to meet her and to tell her how much her work has meant to me. That in our times today where so many of our LGBTQ youth do not know anything about their history that someone like me feels so grateful for her and her work. I am incredibly sad that I will never get a chance to tell her this.

Another part of me feels with her passing, we as a community becomes that much more removed from those times of the initial fire that fueled our movement. i guess what i am afraid of is that oftentimes when we protest and fight for justice, we do it not so we ourselves can enjoy the fruits of our labor because we often cant, but in order so that those that come after us can enjoy a level of freedom that we ourselves cannot and did not. But then because the previous generation was so successful, the next often experiences a situation that's so vastly liberating that they mistakenly believe that the freedoms that they have had always been there.

That is why I hope that Stonewall Youth can become a place where the importance of our history and struggle is being passed onto the next generation.