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National gay rights pioneer Barbara Gittings, formerly of Wilmington, died Sunday after a long fight with breast cancer.
Gittings, 75, an activist since the 1950s, died at an assisted living center in Kennett Square, Pa., said friend Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. Her partner of 46 years, Kay Lahusen, was at her side. The couple, who also lived in Philadelphia, moved to assisted living from their longtime home on Harrison Street in Wilmington. In the late 1950s, Gittings helped start the first East Coast chapter of a pioneer lesbian rights group, Daughters of Bilitis. Elected the New York City group's first president, Gittings edited The Ladder, a lesbian publication, and went on to fight the federal government's policy of firing homosexuals, author Jonathan Katz said in his book "Gay American History." In the New York group, she met Lahusen and, together, they "played important roles in the gay liberation movement emerging in the 1950s," according to the Cornell University Library, which has a collection of materials about them. In early gay activism, Gittings said, "there were scarcely 200 of us in the whole United States. It was like a club -- we all knew each other." In 1965, she got global attention in gay rights protests at the White House and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. "These were the first such demonstrations in American history and began an era of gays coming out of the closet," Segal said. She led the American Library Association's Gay Task Force and helped lead an effort that got the American Psychiatric Association to quit calling homosexuals mentally ill. She also helped Lahusen on her book "The Gay Crusaders." In 2005, they saw the unveiling of the nation's first official historical marker on gay rights. The marker near Independence Hall honors early efforts by Gittings and others, saying "these peaceful protests and New York's Stonewall riots in 1969 & Pride Parade in 1970 transformed a small national campaign into a civil rights movement." Gittings served on the National Gay Task Force and Gay Rights National Lobby, forerunner of the Human Rights Campaign. She was honored last fall by the American Psychiatric Association. Born in Vienna with a diplomat father, she studied in Canada before they returned to the U.S. as World War II began. In addition to Lahusen, she is survived by a sister, Eleanor Gittings Taylor of San Diego. Source: delawareonline.com |
