Gay rights activist since the 1950s dead at 75

Barbara Gittings died after a lengthy fight with breast cancer on Sunday, February 18. Gittings was born on July 31, 1932, in Vienna, Austria, where her father was a diplomat. She returned to the U.S. with her family in the 1940s. Gittings helped organize the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian rights organization, in the 1950s and edited the group's publication from 1963 to 1966. Gittings met Kay Lahusen at a 1961 Daughters of Bilitis picnic and they soon became partners for life. In 1965, she helped organize gay-rights demonstrations at the White House, the Pentagon, and Independence Hall. Gittings was a major force in the campaign that led the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to drop homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. She was a charter member of the Boards of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, founded in 1973, and the Gay Rights National Lobby, a forerunner of the Human Rights Campaign founded in 1976. During her life, Gittings has also served as head of the American Library Association's Gay Task Force until 1986, and in 2003 received a lifetime membership, the organization's highest honor. Gittings was 75.

Sources: glbtq.com, Associated Press, queertheory.com