Saturday August 5 will be an exciting day in Rehoboth for folks who care about our gay history, gay activism and the work yet to be done against discrimination of all kinds.

The Delaware Stonewall Democrats will be hosting an event, 5-7 p.m., at the home of Dr. James D’Orta at 123 Silver Lake Drive in Rehoboth to honor several people who have shown incredible courage and a commitment to building a safer and more inclusive America for all.

One of the honorees will be Barbara Gittings, a pioneering GLBT activist with a lifelong commitment to the gay and lesbian liberation movement.

In 1958 Gittings established the first East Coast chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization in the United States, edited its national magazine The Ladder from 1963-1966 and participated in the first marches held to protest rights denied to GLBT people. She was a charter board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Gay Rights National Lobby. In the 1970s, as a panelist, she challenged the anti-gay views of the American Psychiatric Association, and she campaigned in the American Library Association to get gay books into libraries. She continues to this day to fight for full equality for the GLBT Community.

In anticipation of the August 5 event, our Feature Editor Fay Jacobs had the opportunity to ask Barbara some questions about her incredible record of activism and pioneering work for GLBT rights—and she made time to share her answers with Letters.

FJ: Back in the 1950s, did you ever think you’d see a U.S. state permitting gay marriage?

BG: No. Marriage rarely, if ever turned up on "Homosexual Bill of Rights" or "We Demand" lists we drew up, even into the 1980s. Still, it was an issue early on. The first attempts to get legal, publicly-recognized same-sex marriage were in the spring of 1970, in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky. That same year, the Equal Rights Amendment was in progress—it was passed by Congress but failed to get enough states to ratify. The ERA said that "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

A Republican lawyer in President Nixon’s administration, Rita Hauser, believed that if the ERA became law, it would probably permit same-sex marriage. She wasn’t the only lawyer who thought so, but when she said it publicly, in a speech at an American Bar Association meeting, Nixon was forced to declare that the White House did not favor gay marriage!

FJ: We think of you as one of the founding heroes of the gay rights movement. Did you think you would be paving the way when you marched on the White House in 1965?

BG: No, I didn’t go out thinking "I’m going to be a hero today." I just concentrated on doing my part in our group actions. In the early years, when everything we did was being tried for the first time, we could only guess what might happen.

FJ: I know this question has been asked many times, but can you recall the discussion about dress code for that march, and how the dresses and ties and jackets came about? Today, it looks so formal.

BG: The dress code was adopted willingly at first because we were messengers for an unpopular cause. We wanted people to gawk, not at us, but at the message on our signs and leaflets. The pickets were seen not as an occasion for personal self-expression or individual rebellion, rather a team effort to get across what was then an unacceptable notion—that homosexuals deserve equal rights, equal treatment.

We took a cue from the civil rights movement whose participants did not attract attention to themselves as individuals but forced their audience to focus on serious issues. The last of five annual July 4th pickets at Independence Hall, in 1969, happened just a week after the Stonewall riots had erupted in New York. Then the conservative dress and conduct code broke down; a sedate picket line did not fit the new mood of rebellion.

FJ: You are credited, along with Frank Kameny, with assisting in the most astounding change—the removing of homosexuality from the list of psychiatric disorders of the American Psychiatric Association. Tell us how you first decided to get involved with that, and a little about how it came about.

BG: Getting homosexuality off the official list of mental disorders is a l-o-n-g story. The best single account is Ronald Bayer’s 1981 book Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. Frank Kameny was actually involved in the APA discussions considering the change; he was also a panelist at two APA conventions, and the two of us zapped a homophobic APA speaker and an exhibitor of anti-gay "aversion therapy" materials.

My main contributions to pushing change in APA were a) organizing and running gay exhibits at three annual APA conventions; b) recruiting "Dr. H. Anonymous," the masked gay psychiatrist who rocked a 1972 APA audience telling them, from behind the disguise, why he couldn’t be open in his own profession. Dozens of other gay activists also deserve credit for working to change psychiatrists’ attitudes, including Ron Gold, Ginny Vida, Chuck Silverstein, Lilli Vincenz. All these efforts took place throughout the 1970s.

FJ: Who had the biggest affect on you, in developing your gay pride?

BG: Not so much a who as a what— being with My People and working to change our situation. Even the setbacks have boosted my pride in the effort and the learning and the fellowship with other activists.

FJ: I attended an HRC event here in Rehoboth about a decade ago, which you attended. You were thrilled to see how many lesbians crowded into the private home to have a conversation with you. What do you think has changed most in the past decade?

BG: The marriage issue bubbling up, especially as a grassroots action by thousands of individuals who may not think of themselves as gay activists. Suddenly it hits home: They’re taking away my rights, restricting my freedom, and I won’t let that happen!

FJ: I know that books and libraries have played a giant role in your life. What do you think of the explosion in lesbian fiction and lesbian publishing houses?

BG: Great! I wish gay (not just lesbian) books and publishers had been around when I was a youth coping with being gay and there was almost nothing to read. With all the riches pouring out now, I’ll never catch up with good gay reads!

To your readers I recommend: A) Buy your gay/lesbian books and other stuff from gay or gay-friendly independent bookstores. If we let the behemoths shut down the independent booksellers, we’ll be "served" only if it makes money for the biggies—we’ll have little leverage to get what we want. B) Borrow gay books and audiovisuals from your public library. Your tax-supported library wants to serve your needs; help it in its mission by keeping its gay materials in circulation.

FJ: We cannot talk about publishing without mentioning The Ladder—the first real lesbian national magazine brought to us by the Daughters of Bilitis. Becoming its editor was a brave move. How did you find writers?

BG: When I became editor of The Ladder in early 1963, along with my partner Kay, I inherited some writers who were already contributors to the magazine. Kay and I reached out to many people we knew, including a couple who wrote for The New York Times, and we asked friends to recommend someone who knew someone.... Also we tapped other magazines for permission to reprint articles and reviews by such well-known writers as Iris Murdoch and Brigid Brophy.

We’re especially proud of the turnaround we effected in The Ladder’s covers. From the line drawings I had to start out with, Kay and I moved to photo covers and eventually to persuading live lesbians to appear full face—a victory over pervasive gay invisibility in the early 1960s.

FJ: What other advice do you have for our readers?

BG: Keep your eyes looking ahead and your feet moving on the ground. Don’t be discouraged; for every setback we’ve made four or five giant strides forward. Do use your sense of humor; a light touch can go a long way to get our message across, and we can have fun while doing good work!