Barbara Gittings, pioneer LGBT activist

n.July 31, 1932
d. February 18, 2007

A prominent American activist for gay equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries.

Her friend and fellow gay rights activist Jack Nichols once heralded Barbara as “the Grand Mother of Lesbian and Gay Liberation.” That’s not much of exaggeration when one considers what she had accomplished for the LGBT community. Her quest for equality and dignity began when she flunked out of her freshman year at Northwestern University because she spent too much time in the library trying to understand what it meant to be a lesbian. Ever since then, her mission was to tear down what she called “the shroud of invisibility” that facilitated the ongoing criminal persecution of homosexuality as well as its being regarded as a mental illness. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Billitis in 1958, and she gained a national platform within the gay and lesbian community as the editor of the pioneering lesbian journal The Ladder in the mid-1960s."

Box Turtle Bulletin

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Aug 19th: Frank Kameny : The Start of the Fight for Gays in the US: Military

 "Frank Kameny Throws Down The Gauntlet: 1969. Benning Wentworth was an electronics technician for a private research contractor for the U.S. Air Force. In the spring of 1966, he was accused of homosexuality, and his eleven-year security clearance was revoked. Frank Kameny, who himself had been fired by the Army Map Service in 1957 because of his homosexuality, worked as Wentworth’s counsel in an appeal before the Industrial Security Clearance Review Office in the Department of Defense. The Pentagon justified its blanket denial of security clearances to gay people by claiming gays were subject to blackmail. Kameny pointed out the obvious flaw in that logic: Wentworth was out — he even appeared in a press conference about his hearing — and it’s impossible to blackmail someone over their homosexuality if the whole world knows about it. In his opening remarks, Kameny described a different unnamed person, known only as OSD 66-44, who was allowed to keep his clearance as long as he spent the rest of his life in the closet and pretended to be straight. But for Wentworth and others, that was no longer an option. "

Box Turtle Bulletin:

'via Blog this'

First Gay Rights Protest at the Pentagon: 1965. That year marked several important milestones in the history of organized gay protest. In April, gay rights advocates held the first ever pickets in front of the White House demanding equal treatment in federal employment and other areas of discrimination. During the year, those pickets would expand to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, and, on this date in history, the Pentagon. Participants in that picket line included gay rights pioneers Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings (whose birthday is also today; see below), Jack Nichols and eight others. Another 46 years would pass before the military ban on gays serving openly would finally be out the door. The ban officially ends this year on September 20. The New York Public Library has a small online digital gallery of that first Pentagon protest.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya , Author/AIDS Activist

"I really believe that activism is therapeutic."

b. May 9, 1943
d. May 10, 2000

Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a Gay Pioneer and an early HIV/AIDS expert.

May 9: Kiyoshi Kuromiya , Author/AIDS Activist

"I really believe that activism is therapeutic."

b. May 9, 1943
d. May 10, 2000

Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a Gay Pioneer and an early HIV/AIDS expert.