Barbara Gittings, early gay rights activist, dies at 75

[Doondoo]

Barbara Gittings, a gay rights activist since the late 1950s, died Sunday. She was 75. Gittings died after a lengthy fight with breast cancer, said Mark Segal, a friend and the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News.

Gittings helped organize the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian rights organization, in the 1950s. During her work with that group, she met her life partner, Kay Lahausen. Gittings edited the group's publication, The Ladder, from 1963 to 1966, and worked with Lahausen on her 1973 book, "The Gay Crusaders."

She first became well known to the public in 1965, when she helped organize gay-rights demonstrations at the White House and Independence Hall. In 2005, Gittings and Lahausen attended the unveiling of a state historic marker noting those demonstrations across the street from Independence Hall.

Gittings had served as head of the American Library Association's Gay Task Force; in 2003, the association presented her its highest honor, a lifetime membership.

Gittings was also active in the campaign that led to the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to drop homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DE_OBIT_GITTINGS_MDOL-?SITE=VARIT&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-02-18-21-13-48

[xchrom]

1. more on the daughters of bilitis

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

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/ency/blwh_dob_daughters_bilitis.htm
Daughters of Bilitis
Encyclopedia of Women's History - from Jone Johnson Lewis
The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was founded in 1955 in San Francisco as an organization for lesbians to meet other lesbians in a respectable setting (i.e. not bars).  The Daughters of Bilitis worked for acceptance of lesbians as respectable citizens of society.

The organization was named for a book of poetry by Pierre Louys, Songs of Bilitis, which included poems about love between women.

Publication: The Ladder
Links:

* Profile: Del Martin
* Quotations: Del Martin
* Daughters of Bilitis
* Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin - among the founders of DOB

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/daughters_bilitis.html
Daughters of Bilitis  

more on our dear departed barbara gittings
http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/gittings_b.html
Activist Barbara Gittings, a pioneer of the American gay rights movement, compiled an impressive list of accomplishments. In addition to being instrumental in having homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders, she founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis and edited its magazine, The Ladder. She also worked tirelessly within the American Library Association to make materials with glbtq content more accessible to the reading public.

Gittings was born on July 31, 1932 in Vienna, Austria, where her father held a post with the American diplomatic service. The family returned to the United States in the 1940s, eventually settling in Delaware.
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http://www.yffn.org/admin/pride/gittings.html
Who is Barbara Gittings?
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 Barbara Gittings, (1932- ) has been a gay activist since 1958, "when there were scarcely two hundred of us  (gay activists) in the whole United States.  It was like a club--we all knew each other."  In 1958 she established the first East Coast chapter of the first lesbian organization in the United States,the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), founded in 1955 in San Francisco.  From 1963 to 1966 she edited THE LADDER,  DOB's pioneer national magazine.  She subtitled it A LESBIAN REVIEW and introduced photo covers of gay women, a victory over the pervasive gay invisibility of the time.

    She marched in the first gay rights picket lines in the mid-60s at the White House and the Pentagon and at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.  "It was risky and we were scared.  Our protests seemed  outlandish even to most gay people."  She was a charter member of the boards of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (founded  1973) and the Gay Rights National Lobby (founded 1976), which was the  forerunner of the Human Rights Campaign.

we love you barbara!!

we will miss you -- may the universe rock you in eternal light!










Founded in 1955 in San Francisco, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the first national lesbian political and social organization in the United States. As part of the "homophile movement"--as the pre-Stonewall gay rights movement was termed--DOB set a precedent for countless other organizations for lesbians and bisexual women.

The Daughters of Bilitis began when lesbian couple Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin started meeting with several other female couples to discuss lesbian issues. Their group's name came from "Songs of Bilitis," a lesbian-themed song cycle by French poet Pierre Louÿs, which described Bilitis as a resident of the Isle of Lesbos alongside Sappho.

[NMMNG]

2. R.I.P. Barbara

:cry: