Barbara Gittings 1932to –2007
American activist, and influential figure in the pre-Stonewall gay rights movement. She knew she was gay from a young age, although she didn’t know the word “homosexual” until she was rejected from her high school’s National Honor Society for that reason. A studious child, she turned to the library to learn more about her sexual orientation, and was disappointed with the clinical, negative, and unrelateable snippets that she found. Seeking out gay literature became an obsession, and at college, she skipped so many classes to go to the library that she failed out. She moved to Philadelphia at 18, and began hitchhiking to gay bars in New York City wearing men’s clothes because it was the only way she knew to meet other lesbians. But she didn’t connect with the women she met in the bars, or their strict butch/femme protocols. When she heard about some of the early “homophile” organizations forming in California, she immediately got on a plane and showed up at their doorsteps. In 1958, Gittings started the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian organization, although she was often at odds with the more conservative members. For example, it was common for doctors to be invited to their meetings to talk about the “illness” of homosexuality. But Gittings’s perspective shifted dramatically when she heard Frank Kameny assert that being gay was equal to being straight, and perfectly healthy until proven otherwise. At a 1961 picnic, she met the photographer Kay Tobin Lahusen, her partner for the next 46 years. When Gittings became editor of the DOB’s publication, The Ladder, from 1963 to 1966, she replaced the cover’s vague line drawings with Lahusen’s photographs of actual queer women, and even put the word “lesbian” on the cover. In 1965, she picketed in the first ever gay and lesbian demonstration in front of the White House, signs from which are currently housed at the Smithsonian. One of her greatest achievements came in 1972, when she and Kameny participated in a debate for the American Psychiatric Association called “Psychiatry: Friend or Foe to the Homosexual?” Lahusen pointed out that the debate lacked a gay psychiatrist, so Gittings found someone she could convince to testify behind a disguise. As a direct result, homosexuality was removed from the list of psychiatric mental disorders in 1973. In 1970, Gittings returned to her earlier passion for books, and joined a gay caucus that had formed within the American Library Association, the first of its kind. At the 1970 ALA convention, she made headlines by organizing a gay kissing booth. She worked with librarians throughout the 70s and 80s to increase the number of positive gay resources in libraries. Even in their old age, Gittings and Lahusen continued to fight, demanding a couple’s membership to the AARP, and coming out in their assisted living facility’s newsletter. Today, a number of awards and collections are named after Gittings in memory of her lifelong activism.