Phyllis Lyon (b. November 10, 1924), left, and Del Martin (May 5, 1921 - August 27, 2008), right, Ne
Phyllis Lyon (b. November 10, 1924), left, and Del Martin (May 5, 1921 - August 27, 2008), right, New York City, 1988. Photo © The Lesbian Herstory Archives. Phyllis Lyon, who turns ninety-two today, and Del Martin were lifelong partners and the parents of America’s lesbian rights movement. In 1955, Lyon and Martin founded the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first American organization dedicated to the social, political, and legal equality of lesbians, and both served as editor of The Ladder, the DOB’s magazine. In 1967, Lyon and Martin joined the National Organization for Women (NOW), and Martin was the first open lesbian elected to a leadership position in the organization; the couple worked to combat homophobia in NOW and helped secure the passage of a 1971 resolution declaring lesbian issues to be feminist issues. In 1989, the pair joined Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, and both were named to the 1995 White House Conference on Aging. The couple later had the distinction of being the first same-sex couple to marry in San Francisco on two separate occasions. Lyon and Martin first married on February 12, 2004, after then-Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the City Clerk to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples; that marriage, along with approximately four thousand others, was voided by the California Supreme Court in August 2004. On June 16, 2008, the couple again became the first to wed in San Francisco after the state Supreme Court’s decision in In re Marriage Cases brought marriage equality briefly to California (same-sex marriage was suspended between November 2008 and June 2013, due to Proposition 8). Del Martin died on August 27, 2008; she was eighty-seven. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #HavePrideInHistory #PhyllisLyon (at New York, New York) -- source link
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