This month, PPI celebrates Pride. Pride is about people embracing who they are and coming together to show how far gay rights have come. Although awareness and support for the community continue to grow, members still face discrimination and mental health struggles. During June, we want to educate and encourage you to learn more about how you can be a better ally to the LGBTQ community and support this celebration of acceptance and love.
Second to be highlighted is Barbara Gittings, a gay rights activist and widely regarded as the mother of the LGBT civil rights movement. Gittings was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1932.
In 1958, while commuting from Philadelphia, she started the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). This was the nation’s first lesbian civil rights organization in the United States.
Gittings enlisted activists from New York, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia for the first public demonstrations for gay and lesbian equality. From 1965 to 1969, in front of Independence Hall every July 4th, protests known as Annual Reminders paved the way for the Stonewall riot in 1969.
In 1970, a march commemorated the first anniversary of the Stonewall – from Greenwich Village to Central Park. It was remembered as the first New York City Pride Parade.
Gittings edited the Ladder, a lesbian periodical published by the DOB. In the 1964 issue, her editorial blasted a medical report that described homosexuality as a disease, that treated lesbians more like “curious specimens” than as humans. She went on to stop the American Psychiatric Association from classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Barbara Gittings Credit: TIME Magazine
In 1973, the APA announced its removal of the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder. With their retraction, the gay rights movement was no longer burdened by the label and its consequences.
From then on, she promoted gay literature and eliminated gay discrimination in the nation’s libraries. She worked closely with the Gay Task Force of the American Library Association and edited their bibliography about gay men and lesbians. In 2001, The Free Library of Philadelphia named the “Gittings Collection” of gay and lesbian materials at its Independence Branch.
In 2012, Philadelphia City Council approved a designated block in the heart of the city’s gayborhood “Barbara Gittings Way.”
Barbara died of breast cancer at age 74. Her numerous awards and recognition carried on her legacy of monumental changes in the gay rights movement.
Sources:
https://lgbt50.org/barbara-gittings
https://time.com/5793614/barbara-gittings-100-women-of-the-year/
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/obituaries/15gittings.html