Category: Lesbian/Gay Liberation

ON PRIDE & SHAME

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This is an opinion piece submitted by two lesbian members of FIST and does not necessarily reflect the position of FIST as an organization.

We used to look forward to participating in Pride parades. In the days when they were called Lesbian/Gay Pride, they were political events with a feminist message. In 1977, 5,000 women marched at the head of the Pride March in San Francisco, right behind Dykes on Bikes. Lesbian-feminists spoke and sang from the podium. We needed Pride because our same sex love had been shrouded in shame – the silence and invisibility of the closet, something never demanded of heterosexuals. We were losing jobs, housing, and custody of our kids because we were openly gay or lesbian or because the sex of our partners had been discovered.

But Pride has changed. And we don’t mean the drag. Gender non-conformity including cross-dressing was always extremely common among lesbians and gay men, and was, from the beginning, pervasive at our Pride events. There were always drag queens on elaborate floats in attendance, and women in full butch regalia. But, until quite recently, the idea that cross-dressing and other behaviors that do not conform to sex stereotypes meant your sexed body was “wrong” and in need of medicalization, was exceedingly rare among gay men and almost non-existent among lesbians.

In addition, overt sexual displays such as BDSM did not exist at Pride events to any significant extent until the 1990’s. Lesbian, gays, bisexuals, and our straight supporters always brought their kids to Pride without hesitation. These were not X- rated events. Now they are.

To be blunt, Pride is no longer the event we remember. It has become thoroughly corporatized, pornified, and coopted, a shadow of its former self that was forged in the struggle for lesbian and gay rights.  The extent of the merger that has occurred between Pride and corporate America is a bit shocking.  For example, the list of sponsors of San Diego Pride is a virtual Who’s Who of corporate America. Sponsors include Bank of America, Starbucks, Northrup Gruman, Charles Schwab, Jack-in- the-Box, Coca-Cola, Greystar, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Chevrolet.  There are also sponsors from the medical industrial complex, including Blue California, Kaiser Permanente, Genentech, and notably, Rady’s Children’s Hospital which works in the highly lucrative field of gender medicine, operating the Center for Gender Affirming Care for “children, adolescence and young adults.” 

The community, too, has changed. The growing amalgam of lettered identities introduced heterosexuals into our community and has increasingly marginalized lesbians and gay men. Lesbians especially have been almost completely squeezed out of the community now dominated by the “TQ”. Women’s spaces and cultural events that nurtured and supported lesbians such as the Michigan Women’s Music Festival were labelled “trans-exclusionary” and are now gone; female-only lesbian groups and a lesbian same-sex sexual orientation itself have been redefined as “transphobic bigotry.” A misogynistic and homophobic sex-denying ideology has become dominant and is encouraging the medical transition and sterilization of mostly female teens – tomboys and future lesbians – into facsimiles of the other sex, at great cost to their long-term health.

Pride has also been torn from its roots. Our lesbian and gay history is being rewritten so that we have forgotten that in 1969 drag queens were gay men, rather than “trans”; that it was not transgender identified males but an African-American butch lesbian, Storme DeLarvarie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm%C3%A9_DeLarverie who kicked off Stonewall; and that gays and lesbians, not trans identified individuals, organized the first Pride March. Please listen to the words of Fred Sargeant, who was there. https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_C9A3B5DB7A6848F7B5F9858C106C6854

So, has Pride outlived its usefulness? Despite the progress we have made since Stonewall, anti-lesbian/gay prejudice continues to run deep within the population. Witness that homophobia – both external and internalized – is one of the main forces propelling medical transition in both children and adults.

In the U.S., lesbians and gay men are still at risk. It was only in 2003 that the Supreme Court in a 6 to 3 decision invalidated sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/558/while such laws criminalizing homosexuality between consenting adults remain on the books in Texas and 11 other states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States#:~:text=As%20of%20May%202023%2C%2012,result%20of%20Lawrence%20v.%20Texas.

We are still not protected by federal laws explicitly prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination. Instead, we have one Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf that protects against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation under sex discrimination; and another, Obergefell v. Hodges, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556 that recognizes the right to marry a same sex partner. But we have seen how Supreme Court decisions can be quickly reversed as happened regarding the issue of abortion. Justice Thomas has recently called for revisiting both Lawrence and Obergefell. It would be foolish to let our guard down now.  

Large sections of the world present an even more dangerous picture. Places like Iran and Uganda continue to criminalize same sex love, subjecting lesbians, and gay men to the death penalty.

Yes, we still need Pride, as a movement for lesbian/gay rights, not as a market share.  Our liberation from anti-gay prejudice and compulsory heterosexuality has not yet been achieved.

One of the most persistent myths used against us is that we lesbians and gay men are “perverts” who “groom” and molest children to “recruit” to our “lifestyle”. Yes, as in all sectors of society, there are gay people, especially gay men, who think “love” between grown adults and minors is just fine. Pornography has permeated our community just as it has straight society. But the vast majority of our community, both men and women, have long ago and wholeheartedly rejected pedophilia and continues to do so, in part due to having been influenced by a feminist understanding of power and abuse. Moreover, the Catholic Church was far more of a hotbed of sexual abuse of children then the lesbian and gay community is or has ever been.

This reality did not prevent anti-gay right wing Christian fundamentalist forces from campaigning against lesbian/gay rights in the early years based on the risk lesbians and gay men supposedly pose to children. Witness in the late 1970’s the “Save Our Children” campaign of Anita Bryant to overturn local gay rights protections in Florida; and the California Briggs Initiative, one year later, ultimately defeated, that proposed to exclude gay teachers and anyone else in the schools that openly supported lesbian/gay rights.

These arguments seem to be resurfacing once again, from right wing anti-gay politicians like DeSantis who write overly broad bills and policies; and even from members of the our own community who, in fighting against child medical transition and indoctrination of children into gender identity ideology in schools, appear to agree that (open) gays and lesbians are a threat to children and should be kept away from them until they are 18 to avoid the adults being “groomers.” For example, Rainbow Rebellion and Gays Against Groomers are organizing a Pride counter-protest in St. Louis which proclaims, “LGBTQ+ Stay away from the kids.” https://www.trevoices.org/

But lesbian/gay parents and teachers do not threaten children’s safety nor do they “recruit.” Moreover, it should be o.k. to “say gay” in schools, to discuss and read books about same sex families and relationships or learn about lesbian/gay history. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens dating and exploring their same sex sexuality with their peers also deserve our support. The teaching of age-appropriate sex education in schools, including that related to homosexuality, is fine. Even being exposed to cross-dressing or drag is not in itself a risk to kids. Rather, pornified displays by adults whether by drag queens or by Beyonce, Lady Gaga or other similarly hyper-sexualized “straight” performers, are inappropriate for young children.

It is not gays and lesbians, nor, for that matter, individual adults that identify as transgender, that pose a risk to kids. We do not need to stay away from children. Rather, it is the teaching of gender identity ideology to children, whoever does the teaching – that a child may have been born in the “wrong” body which the doctor can “fix” for you, that “feminine” men and boys, and “masculine” women and girls are not really members of their sex, and that biological sex either doesn’t exist, or can be changed. chosen, or overridden by an amorphous feeling called “gender identity” that everyone is supposed to have- which causes children profound confusion and can unleash untold physical harm.

Lesbians and gays are not responsible for how our community has been hijacked. Let’s reject the shame and take-back Pride from our corporate masters. We can fight against child transition while remaining vigilant in defense of lesbian and gay rights and not giving an inch to homophobia. WE WILL NOT GO BACK.

Minority Statement on Missouri Senate bill Banning Child Transition

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Members of FIST voted to support the Missouri Senate bill banning so-called trans “affirming” care for minor children, as posted on this blog March 31.  However, that vote was quite close and those of us in the minority would like to put forward our arguments in the spirit of furthering the feminist debate on this important issue.

The Missouri bill does not “stand-alone” but is one of a tsunami of bills released recently sponsored by the Right, as part of a concerted build-up for the next presidential election—basically to get a far-right person elected president in 2024 (DeSantis or Trump).  The fact that some feminist groups joined the Right in promoting these bills has no influence on the Right’s culture war strategy.  Other rightwing bills that are part of this strategy include: the plethora of abortion bans in 13 states (including the recent attack on medication abortion); the erasure of actual US history from K-12 curricula, in the name of “protecting children” from knowing the truth about slavery (and civil rights and women’s rights); the attacks on affirmative action, Social Security and voting rights. We cannot separate all of these right wing attacks (even the one that we might agree with) from the general attack on everything progressive that is unfolding before our eyes—and we do not think FIST should play a part in what will play into that build-up by the Right despite our best efforts to separate ourselves as Leftists, lesbians, etc. .

A major argument in the fight for abortion has always been: “politicians should not be legislating healthcare—this is the province of medicine, not politics.”  “Bans off my body”  should be upheld for all adults, but minor children are often treated with additional care.  Any legislation on specific medical procedures can be used to strengthen the hand of politicians to adjudicate and police abortion care.

If state power is used to enforce “healthcare” bans at a time when there is so much sentimentalized propaganda FOR “gender affirming treatment”, it will make the parents seeking these procedures for their children into MARTYRS and will simply strengthen public sympathy FOR “gender affirming care.”

Even when the Right seems to be in agreement with us on transgender ideology, the way they see women and gender is very different  from a feminist perspective.  They want to preserve gender norms while feminists have always argued that the stereotypes associated with sex are confining and oppressive and should be eliminated.

A better strategy for us might be to put our energy into pressuring medical organizations (AMA, etc) or mounting a public service campaign to increase public understanding of the dangers of these “treatments.” Really putting on the pressure as to how their junk science is mutilating children, making them sterile, some unable to ever enjoy orgasm while simultaneously turning children into lifelong medical patients consuming the exact same powerful steroid hormones that the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s worked so hard to warn us about. We could be spreading the word about the reasons Sweden, Finland and the UK have closed “gender clinics” and publicize the fact that even the US FDA has been forced to add the word “experimental” to its definition of sex hormones in “gender affirming treatment.”

The 2019 U. S. Women’s Soccer Team is Remarkable for Both its Wins and its Radical Feminism

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Members of the U.S. women’s soccer team, this year’s World Cup champions, are using their public platform to speak out about economic and racial issues, in addition to their demands for equal treatment relative to the men’s U.S. soccer team. Indeed, they sound like the radical feminists of the1960s joining all these issues together. Making clear the idea that none of us is free as long as one woman is unfree.

Amy Goodman, host of the news program Democracy Now interviewed two women about the feminist politics expressed by members of the U.S. women’s soccer team. The guests were Shireen Ahmed a writer, public speaker, award-winning sports activist focusing on Muslim women in sports and Dr. Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State. Both women are involved in creating the weekly Burn It All Down sports podcast.

In discussion of the lawsuit the team has filed against the U.S. Soccer Federation Shireen Ahmend said, “So, effectively, the players of the U.S. women’s national team are unhappy, and setting an incredible precedent for women around the world to say, ‘We want equal pay. We want fairness. We want to talk about rights, maternity leave. We want to talk about healthcare. We want to talk about anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-oppression.’ That’s what they’re doing. So it’s a really important case.”

At one point in the interview Amira Rose Davis commented on the whiteness of the team. Goodman asked her to say more about that, to talk about “how the team is constituted, and [about] the women’s activism around the issue” of whiteness. Dr. Davis responded, “in the United States the access issue to soccer is vast. It takes a lot of money, very early on, in youth sports. And one of the consequences of that is that we don’t see a large amount of diversity and lower-income players represented on the team. … But this team has been very vocal about all of their intersecting identities. When asked to put names on the back of their jerseys to honor various women, for instance, Rapinoe chose Audre Lorde and said, ‘She’s an intersectional feminist, and that’s what I want my politics to be.’ Christen Press, one of the women of color on the team, said, ‘This is about pay equity. It’s about gender equality. But we also are talking about racial equity here. We’re also talking about what’s going on in terms of why Rapinoe chose to kneel.’” Davis goes on to say about Rapinoe that she’s “clear about being an ally, in saying, you know, ‘Yes, these are my fights, and I’m bringing a lot of clear visibility, and I’m talking a lot about pay equity, but I also am acknowledging the fact that I’m not policed in the same way, and I’m not dealing with relatives being shot dead in the street.’ And even when asked how she felt about patriotism, she’s like, ‘I feel deeply American, but we have to reckon with the fact that this country was founded on slavery.’”

The whole interview can be watched and/or heard here: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/8/seg_1

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Reportback from the Boston Dyke March

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by An Anonymous Dyke

Friday, June 7th, 2019. The Boston Dyke March. Before it began, an anonymous group of lesbians dispersed stickers throughout the Boston Common and surrounding area, site of the Boston Dyke March.

DOWNLOAD AND PRINT YOUR OWN STICKERS here at https://feministstruggle.org/2019/05/18/dont-disappear-the-l-campaign/

Going to the Dyke March again since I went for the first time a number of years ago, all the memories of the experience of lesbian erasure flooded back. It is obvious (to me, at least, as a lesbian who is indigenous to this continent) that the playbook of colonialism is being used on lesbians. I won’t say it’s 100% the same, but I can’t unsee the parallels. I saw a sign that said “all white people are immigrants”, which was a relief to see and is true: all europeans are colonizers, invaders — “immigrants” is only a euphemism, if only they were immigrants it would be so much easier. But the invaders run the show. They tell indigenous people south of the colonial border that they’re the outsiders. That the europeans are the true “natives”. This is a settler colonial state that tells indigenous people that we are foreigners on our own land, and works hard to erase indigenous people through many different means that I won’t get into here. The irony of having anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, pro-brown and pro-black signs, while promoting the colonization of lesbians by heteropatriarchy, is lost on the organizers of the Boston Dyke March. Do they think that black, brown, and indigenous lesbians don’t know what sexual dimorphism is, what female biology is? Do they want to tell us that the dinosaurs aren’t real and humanity is only 2,000 years old, too? Do they not realize that they (like many others) drive a wedge into the communities of the most marginalized lesbians? The colonization of a people (lesbians) who have existed here for thousands of years and since the beginning of time, by separating the youth from their elders and indoctrinating the youth with self-hating beliefs that promote our own eradication, encouragement of the appropriation of our cultural space and customs by straight people, enabling the rape of lesbians through compulsory heterosexuality with males “identifying” as lesbians, turning our selves against our selves, and losing touch with our selves. Gay conversion therapy in colonial form — tools of the patriarchy. Because if the patriarchy can’t convince us to stop loving women, then patriarchy does everything they can to keep us from saying no to men even if we say yes to women.

This is plainly visible when taking in my surroundings of what is supposed to be Lesbian Cultural Space. All the straights are taking over. Straight men are appropriating in the most blatant and offensive ways, but straight women are doing it too. Actual lesbians don’t feel welcome at Dyke Marches and other Pride related events. Having signs at an anti-corporate “grassroots” march that is supposed to be for you while people carry signs like “gender =/= genitals” and “terfs are lame” etc, is DEEPLY troubling for lesbians who should otherwise expect to be welcomed into that space. In reality, the word “lesbian” is rarely mentioned if at all (IT WAS NOT the first time I went!). Young lesbians coming to terms with themselves find this erasure re-traumatizing, on top of the emotional process of coming out, as this so-called “Dyke March” stigmatizes the core of what makes us lesbians: our exclusive same-sex attraction, our exclusive desire for females. I know that simply being there brought back a lot of anger and pain for me. This is supposed to be a LESBIAN march!

The Boston Dyke March reacted quickly to Boston FIST members stickering up the Boston Common and surrounding area. Calling it “graffiti”, they claimed that FIST is a “known transphobic group”, and well, I’ll let them speak for themselves:

“Hey Friends! We’re already setting up for our 24th March! As we’re getting ready for all of you on the Common, some TERF graffiti has been popping up. We are doing our best to remove any stickers and signs from FIST, a known transphobic group. If you find anything while attending The March, please inform one of our volunteers. We unequivocally believe that trans women are women. If any TERF harassment happens at the March, find a volunteer immediately and we will deal with it with the ferocity of a thousand burning suns.”

FIST — Feminists in Struggle — is a group that has lesbians as some of its primary organizers. It was lesbians who planned this intervention of our own march. We had no plans to “harass” anyone. Contrary to the Boston Dyke March’s accusations, it’s worth noting that at no point have Boston FIST members (who proudly claim responsibility for this action and hope that more new members will join us) EVER mentioned anything about trans people, at any point! Our stickers simply said: “Don’t Disappear the L! Lesbians are XX-female-symbol who love XX-female-symbol”! Two things:

  1. Our principles of unity clearly state that we want human rights for all people, including trans and gender nonconforming people! Everyone deserves basic human rights. But we want to say that lesbians matter. Do they think that we don’t love gender nonconforming lesbians, all lesbians, for existing? Do they not realize that many lesbians are gender nonconforming, aside from the fact that simply existing as a lesbian is inherently at odds with gender roles?
  2. We were talking about LESBIANS. A lesbian is a female human being with exclusive same sex attraction (to other female human beings). THIS is what the so-called “Dyke March” of Boston has claimed is “transphobia”. They want us to think it’s wrong to be a lesbian. They’re also afraid to admit this fact, and have their followers see that they took down these shamelessly pro-lesbian stickers, which is why they never specified what was on the stickers nor did they include photographs. They had to deceive their followers into thinking that what they took down was “anti-trans” instead of pro-lesbian. Their response only confirms what we already know, which is that Boston Dyke March is a HOMOPHOBIC, LESBIAN-HATING astroturf group that needs to cut out the bullshit and let real lesbians exist. Maybe even fucking celebrate our own existence, for once? Hence the need for intervention — and maybe the start of some accountability within the lesbian community. We need lesbians who are brave enough to live and love as out lesbians, in the full meaning of that word.

Where is your warrior spirit, lesbians? Are we going to let straight people take our march? Or will you join us and co-create? You can start by downloading and printing these stickers to distribute and place everywhere.

Remembering the Lesbians in Lesbian/Gay Liberation

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Remembering the Lesbians in Lesbian/Gay Liberation
By Ann Menasche 

Under patriarchy, lesbians are not supposed to exist. Women – “normal” women at least – are supposed to need men to be complete, for love, for sex, for economic survival, for family, for legitimacy. In such a world, there is no place for lesbians; if a few manage to exist, they are seen as freaks or pariahs. Not surprising that we rarely appear in history or when we are named at all, we are portrayed as lonely spinsters pining after some man. (Remember the lies told about 19th century poet Emily Dickenson, who had a lifelong passionate relationship with her sister-in-law.)

In the mid-to-late 20th century, ideas of traditional womanhood began to be challenged as women as a sex gained increased independence. By the height of the Second Wave of feminism in the late 60s and 70s, lesbians had begun to emerge from the shadows and establish themselves among the leadership of the newly emerged Feminist and Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements. And as the synergy of Lesbian/Gay Liberation and Radical Feminism freed more women to be able to pursue a lesbian life, a vibrant culture of Lesbian Feminism emerged.  That culture produced socially conscious music, poetry, books, publishing houses, newspapers, feminist theatre, coffee houses, and festivals run by and for women that inspired and sustained us and helped fuel the political activism of the time. And in this environment we began to rediscover the lesbians that came before us. We no longer felt so alone.

But times have changed again and lesbians are being rendered invisible once more. Even the contributions lesbians made to the Movement for Lesbian and Gay Liberation are being forgotten. Many factors have contributed to this disappearing of lesbians from history, from our public consciousness, and often from ourselves and each other. While lesbians have won some mainstream acceptance through marriage equality, the accumulated losses have begun to be greater than the gains. Hard economic times, a conservative political climate, the growth and increased power of the Christian fundamentalist Right and a growing backlash against feminism have conspired to make lesbian existence harder once more. Independent lesbian culture has been destroyed. Even the lesbian bars that, despite their flaws, provided a place to meet and find community with other lesbians are now gone. In their place is a sense of utter isolation and despair among many lesbians. And there is often no place to turn for support except perhaps online forums.

Moreover, though the illusion that we’ve already won our rights is widespread, the reality is quite different. Lesbians in the United States can still lose their jobs, be disowned by their parents, lose custody of their children, and be raped or murdered for loving other women. Anti-lesbian prejudice is everywhere.

One of the most destructive influences on lesbians, which is erasing us from history and undermining the possibility of lesbian existence in the present, is gender identity ideology. As this ideology has become increasingly predominant, overwhelming our lesbian/gay communities and incorporating itself into law and culture, lesbians have felt ourselves surrounded on all sides. We are being pressured and guilt-tripped on the one hand to accept men calling themselves women into our communities and our bedrooms. At the same time, rebellious young girls with same-sex feelings, and lesbian adults are being convinced in growing numbers they are really “men” and are being coerced or swayed into “transitioning.”  As women’s liberation no longer appears to be a realistic goal, some of this vulnerability to the forces of transgenderism and extreme body modification may be summed up by the phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them.”  How else escape the violent heavy hand of misogyny on our bodies and lives but to pass as male?

Without question, Lesbians have become extremely marginalized within the modern LGBTQ+ “alphabet soup” – the corporatized stepchild of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movement. LGBT centers in the name of trans-inclusion, refuse to provide space for lesbians to even meet together outside of the presence of males. We are not welcome at Pride and even the Dyke March has been taken from us by “lesbians” with male genitalia and their supporters. And as lesbians have been virtually disappeared, so has the role we played in the struggles that came before us been disappeared as well.

Our lesbian foremothers are once again gone from the history books, or are posthumously “transitioned,” described as “queer,” or treated merely as a footnote. But lesbians fueled the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movement from its start.  It would not have happened without us. And it is time to give credit where credit is due.

The Stonewall Rebellion on June 28, 1969 was not led by individuals identifying as transgender. Transgenderism barely existed at that time even as a concept. What existed was large numbers of lesbians and gay men, some of whom cross dressed or dressed in drag, but did not thereby deny either their sex or their homosexuality. Drag queens and butch lesbians were among those who found community at the Stonewall Inn in New York, a bar owned and operated by the mafia but one of the few places that same sex couples could dance together. Police raids were commonplace but that historic night as police dragged patrons out of the bar and beat them, one butch lesbian, Storme DeLaverie, decided she had had enough. When a police officer shoved her and called her a “faggot”, she punched him in the face. Four officers assaulted her and one hit her on the head with a billy club.  Bleeding from the head, and dragged toward the police van, she yelled “Why don’t you guys do something?”  The rebellion was on and lasted six nights. Lesbian and Gay Liberation was born.

Martha Shelley, a lesbian with strong left-wing politics, had passed by the Stonewall on the fateful night but thought she was seeing an anti-war protest. She had no idea that the people throwing rocks at the cops were gay. When she realized what she had missed, she contacted the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattichine Society and made a proposal for them to jointly sponsor a protest march. On July 27, 1969, 200 lesbians and gays marched in Greenwich Village, in what was to become the world’s first Gay Pride Parade.  The organizing committee formed itself into the Gay Liberation Front, a revolutionary group that demanded not assimilation but a complete overhaul of the patriarchal, racist, imperialist system. A new movement was launched, initiated by a lesbian.

Almost a decade later in 1978 in San Francisco another lesbian was the central leader in the successful movement to defend Lesbian and Gay Rights then under attack. This was the struggle against the attempt by Christian fundamentalists to pass the Briggs Initiative, a proposition that would have banned gay teachers and all supporters of Lesbian/Gay Rights in the schools. Though everyone knows about Harvey Milk, many giving him credit for the defeat of the Briggs Initiative, it was actually Nancy Elnor, a lesbian-feminist and socialist, someone virtually no one has heard of, who was far more responsible for that victory. I knew Nancy personally and worked together with her in the Bay Area Coalition against the Briggs Initiative.  We were on and off again lovers, our personal interaction often stormy, but my admiration for her never waned.

Nancy worked long hours, doing amazing grassroots organizing work always accompanied by her German Shepherd “Bianca” and put together a mass movement that brought out tens of thousands into the streets against Briggs. She brought in organized labor and every progressive organization in San Francisco to join the cause, and chaired packed meetings of activists.  The Coalition under her leadership, organized a televised debate between Milk and Sally Gearhart on the one side and Briggs and one of his cohorts on the other.  A thousand people watched the debate on a big screen in a local high school auditorium. Nancy’s in-the-streets movement building done through distributing thousands of flyers, making hundreds of phone calls, and attending dozens of meetings (there was no Internet) set an example for the whole state, helped change the political climate, and put us on the path to victory. Nancy died young but I’ll never forget her.

As many lesbians celebrate Pride with varying degrees of ambivalence or else consciously ignore the festivities as no longer speaking to us, it is important to remember and celebrate the heroic leadership of our lesbian foremothers who changed history. If we did it once, we can do it again.