Professor

Poet

b. February 21, 1907
d. September 29, 1973

“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”

Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden was a Pulitzer Prize-winning British-born poet who became an American citizen at age 39. Inspired by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot, he is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Auden spent his childhood in Birmingham, England. His mother was a devout Anglican. His father was a renowned physician and academic. Auden’s poetry reflects both his mother’s Christian ideals and his father’s interest in folklore and mythology.

After receiving a scholarship to Oxford University, Auden studied science and engineering before switching to English. He developed a close friendship with Christopher Isherwood, a childhood acquaintance and fellow Oxford student. Auden later moved to Berlin with Isherwood, where they frequented a local gay bar and experienced the city’s “decadent homosexual subculture.”

In 1930 Faber & Faber published “Poems,” Auden’s first collection. He spent the next five years teaching English in private schools.

In 1935 Auden married Erika Mann, a lesbian writer and actress and the daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann. A marriage of convenience, the union helped Mann, who was a German Jew, obtain a British passport to escape the Nazis. The couple fled to Britain, where Auden worked as a freelance writer. He began traveling the world and writing about his experiences in Germany, Iceland and China.

Auden quickly earned recognition for his exceptional wit, fluency in virtually all forms of verse, and unique commentary on morals, love and politics. In 1937, motivated by leftist ideology, he traveled to Spain and participated the Spanish Civil War. He published his activist poem, “Spain 1937,” to raise money for Spanish medical aid.

In 1939 Auden and Isherwood moved to New York, where Auden met his lifelong love, Chester Kallman, and they began a relationship. Auden wanted monogamy with the aspiring young poet, but Kallman would not commit. Heartbroken, Auden eventually accepted it, telling Kallman, “We’re a funny pair, you and I.”

From 1942 to 1945, Auden taught at Swarthmore College. In 1946 he acquired U.S. citizenship. He and Kallman spent their summers together in Europe. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for “The Age of Anxiety” in 1948. He received the National Book Award for Poetry for “The Shield of Achilles” in 1956 and began lecturing at Oxford University as a professor of poetry.

Auden died unexpectedly in Vienna, Austria, in 1973. The attacks of 9/11 revived his poem, “September 1, 1939,” about the outbreak of World War II. It became one of Auden’s best-known works, even though he had grown to despise it during his lifetime.

Pulitzer-Winning Poet

b. September 10, 1935
d. January 17, 2019

"I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."

Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet who wrote with reverence and poignancy about the natural world. She published 15 collections of poetry during her more than 50-year career.

Oliver was born and raised in Maple Heights, Ohio, outside of Cleveland. She was sexually abused as a small child. In her early teens, she wrote her first poems in the neighboring woods, where she sought refuge from a difficult homelife.

Oliver attended Ohio State University and Vassar College, but never completed her degree. Profoundly inspired by the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, she lived for a time during the 1950s in Millay’s home, helping the poet’s sister organize papers after Millay’s death. There, Oliver met her life partner, Molly Malone Cook, a photographer.

In the 1960s Oliver moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to be with Cook, where the couple remained for more than 40 years. Though Oliver was open about her sexuality, she fiercely protected her privacy.

In 1963 Oliver published her first collection, “No Voyage and Other Poems.” Known for the accessibility of her writing, she intentionally avoided “fancy” words. Her blank verse is rich with earthy themes stemming from her observations of nature and the excesses of modern civilization. Many of her poems are based on memories of Ohio and Provincetown.

Oliver earned prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her list of honors includes an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize. In 1984 Oliver won a Pulitzer Prize for “American Primitive,” her fifth collection of poetry. In 1990 her collection “House of Light” won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. In 1992 her “New and Selected Poems” won the National Book Award.

Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. She was a Poet in Residence at Bucknell University and the Margaret Banister Writer in Residence at Sweet Briar College. In 2003 Harvard University made her an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa. Dartmouth conferred her with an honorary doctorate in 2007.

Oliver died in Florida of lymphoma. She was 83. The New York Times published her obituary.

First Out Federal Judge

b. April 13, 1947
d. February 3, 2020

“I'm a mother, I’m an African American. I’m a lesbian.”

Deborah Batts was the first openly gay federal judge. She presided over prominent cases involving political corruption, terrorism and criminal justice. A trailblazer for women, African Americans and LGBTQ people, she is remembered as a devoted jurist whose humanity inspired generations of lawyers.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Batts graduated from Harvard Law School in 1972. She worked in private practice before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division of the Southern District of New York. In 1984 she joined Fordham University as a law professor.

In 1994, President Clinton nominated Batts for a federal judgeship. Her sexual orientation, about which she was open, was not an issue. The Senate unanimously confirmed her. Batts, who addressed her sexual orientation publicly, did not want to be known for that single aspect of her identity. “I’m a mother, I’m an African American, I’m a lesbian, I’m a former professor,” she said.

Batts presided over many high-profile cases, including the decade-long civil litigation brought by the Central Park Five, a group of minority youth who were wrongly convicted of the widely publicized assault and rape of a female jogger in 1989. In 2007 Batts denied the motion to dismiss the case against the City of New York, which lead to $41 million settlement. She presided over the civil lawsuit in which New York residents accused the former EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, of making misleading statements about the air quality at the World Trade Center site after the attacks of September 11.

A lifelong advocate for equality and justice, Batts worked closely with a mentoring program that sought to increase diversity among lawyers appointed for indigent defenders. She also worked with RISE, a program aimed at reducing recidivism among at-risk offenders.

Batts’s presence on the bench served as an inspiration for the openly gay federal judges who followed. According to Judge Pamela Chen, Batts “literally broke down the closet door and allowed the rest of us to walk through it.”

Batts died at age 72. She is survived by her wife, Dr. Gwen Zornberg, and her children, Alexandra and James McCown.

LGBT Historian

b. July 18, 1940

“My writing has been my activism.”

Commonly known as the mother of LGBT history, Lillian Faderman is an internationally recognized pioneering lesbian scholar and historian. Her award-winning books have been translated into numerous languages.

Faderman was born in New York during World War II and raised by her mother and aunt, Latvian Jewish immigrants who worked in the garment industry. The remainder of her family died in Europe during the Holocaust.
 
After moving with her mother and aunt to Los Angeles in her teens, Faderman began acting and modeling and discovered the underground gay bar scene. She bravely came out as a lesbian in 1956 during the Lavender Scare, a challenging period for gay Americans that was closely tied to McCarthyism.

Faderman went on to study at UC Berkeley, where she paid for her education working as a stripper. She then attended UCLA. She became an English professor at California State University Fresno, where she sought to address long-ignored populations. Toward that end, she co-edited her first published work, an anthology of multi-ethnic literature for the college classroom. Released in 1969, it was one of the first anthologies of its kind.

Although Faderman longed to write about sexual minorities, homophobia in the 1960s made such work difficult. In the 1970s, however, as feminism entered serious academic discourse, Faderman became one of the first academics to publish books about female same-sex relationships.
 
A pioneering authority on LGBT history and literature, Faderman has written 11 books. Among other recognition, she has received six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards and several prestigious lifetime achievement awards for her scholarship, including the James Brudner Award from Yale University. The New York Times honored her books “Surpassing the Love of Men” (1981),“Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” (1991) and “The Gay Revolution” (2015) on its list of Notable Books of the Year. The Guardian named “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers,” about lesbian life in the 20th century, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History and “The Gay Revolution” one of the Six Top Books of LGBT Life. “Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death,” her book about the slain gay San Francisco politician, was named Most Valuable Biography of 2018 by The Nation. In addition to her scholarly work, Faderman has published creative nonfiction, including her own memoir and a reconstructed memoir of her mother’s life.

Faderman retired in 2007 and serves as historian in residence for the Lambda Archives of San Diego. She has a son, Avrom, and lives with her partner of more than 45 years, Phyllis Irwin.

Filmmaker

b. May 13, 1966

“… There are other people with stories to tell.”

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-born American lesbian filmmaker, actor and educator. Her films highlight social and cultural issues surrounding African-Americans and the LGBT community, most notably, black lesbians.
 
Dunye grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Temple University and her Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. In 1992 Art Matters Inc. awarded her a fellowship. The following year, her work appeared in the Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Dunye has made more than 15 films whose themes explore the intersection of race, sexuality and personal identity. Emerging as part of the Queer New Cinema movement of the 1990s, she began her career producing short film narratives. A compilation of her work from 1990 to 1994, “Early Works of Cheryl Dunye,” is available on DVD.

In 1996 Dunye wrote, directed, edited and starred in the romantic comedy-drama “The Watermelon Woman,” her first feature film and the first full-length narrative made by and about a black lesbian. It won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Feature at L.A. Outfest. Her next project, “Stranger Inside” (2001), an HBO drama about black lesbian prison inmates, earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best director.

Dunye’s other films include “My Baby’s Daddy (2004),” a comedy that grossed $18.5 million against a $12 million budget; “The Owls” (2010); “Mommy is Coming” (2012); and “Black is Blue” (2014), a sci-fi film set in a futuristic Oakland, California, that explores black queer transgender love.

Dunye cites American film directors Woody Allen and Spike Lee as her artistic influences and Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” (1978) as a significant source of inspiration. Her distinctive style often breaks the fourth wall: characters directly address the camera, blurring the line between the actors and the audience. Industry insiders have labeled her creative mix of fact and fiction “Dunyementary.”

In addition to filmmaking, Dunye is a professor at San Francisco State University School of Cinema. She has taught at universities from coast to coast, including UCLA and Temple University. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Among other honors, Dunye received the Community Vision Award from the National Center for Lesbian Rights in 2004 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.

She lives in Oakland, California, with her two children.

Distinguished Historian

b. July 28, 1954

“Marriage equality was neither inevitable nor, until recently, even conceivable.”

George Chauncey is a celebrated American historian and author whose groundbreaking scholarship helped establish the field of U.S. LGBT history and the basis of his work as an expert witness in numerous court cases.  He serves as the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University and the director of the Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities.

The son of a Presbyterian minister who was active in the civil rights movement, Chauncey was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, and raised in the South. He attended Yale College, graduating with his doctorate in 1989. He attained a full professorship at the University of Chicago, where he taught history 15 years.

In 1994 he published “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.” The groundbreaking work won five major awards, including the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Award in social history and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history. It remains the most widely taught book about LGBT history.

In 2000 Chauncey secured major grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations to support a conference at the University of Chicago billed as “the largest-ever” on lesbian, gay and queer history. The following year, Equality Illinois presented him with its Freedom Award.

In 2004 Chauncey published “Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality.” He joined the faculty of Yale in 2006, where he chaired the history department and the committee for LGBT studies. In 2012 Yale presented him with its prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities. He joined the Columbia University faculty in 2017.

Chauncey has served as a historical consultant on major public projects, including exhibitions at the New York Public Library and the Chicago History Museum. He has provided expert witness testimony on the history of antigay discrimination in more than 30 court cases. Five reached the U.S. Supreme Court, including  Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned the nation’s remaining sodomy laws; United States v. Windsor (2013), which struck down the core of the Defense of Marriage Act and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Chauncey earned fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Humanities Center. He was elected a member of the Society of American Historians in 2005 and has served on its executive board.

In 2014 Chauncey married Ronald Gregg, a professor of film and media studies at Columbia. They live in New York.

Philosopher & Author

b. May 8, 1954

“Having an identity doesn’t, by itself, authorize you to speak on behalf of everyone of that identity.”

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ph.D., is a distinguished philosopher, author and professor who specializes in the philosophy of mind and language and the intellectual history of Africa and African-Americans.

Born in London, England, Appiah grew up in Ghana. His father, a native Ghanaian, was a well-known lawyer and politician. His mother, the daughter of a British statesmen, was an author and scholar. Their widely publicized marriage was one of the first interracial “society weddings” in Britain. It is thought to have inspired the 1967 film, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

Appiah received much of his education in England. He completed his bachelor’s degree in philosophy 1975 from Cambridge University. After teaching at the University of Ghana, he returned to Cambridge for his doctorate, graduating in 1982. He speaks five languages.

Appiah writes about ethics for The New York Times. He has published three novels, short fiction and numerous academic books. He is acclaimed for his groundbreaking scholarship, particularly on the philosophy and politics of personal identity. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages.

His early book “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture” (1992), received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a  Herskovits Award  for “the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English.” His book “Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race” (1996), coauthored by Amy Gutman, presents his critique of the concept of biological race and how individuals frequently overemphasize it as part of their identity. In the “The Ethics of Identity” (2004), he explains how ideas around “group identities,” such as race and gender, can add to or detract from notions of individual freedom.

Appiah has lectured worldwide and taught at leading universities, including Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard. As an openly gay scholar, he served for 13 years on the editorial board of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, published by Duke University Press.

In 2002 Appiah joined the faculty of Princeton University, where he held appointments in the Philosophy Department and the University Center for Human Values, before becoming a professor emeritus. In 2014 he went on to New York University, where he teaches law and philosophy.

Transgender Secretary of Health
(2018 LGBT History Month Icon)

b. October 28, 1957

“We need to do a better job educating medical students about LGBT issues and transgender medicine.”

Rachel Levine, M.D., is the Secretary of Health for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. She is the first transgender cabinet officer in Pennsylvania history and one of the highest-ranking transgender public officials in the United States. 

Born male and named Richard, Levine attended an all-boys private school outside of Boston. “All I knew is I wanted to be a girl, or I was a girl,” she says. Levine describes carrying this “secret” from an early age and struggling to fit in, even playing linebacker on the high school football team. 

Levine graduated from Harvard College in 1979 and earned an M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine in 1983. She completed her medical training in pediatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, followed by a fellowship in adolescent medicine. She practiced at Mount Sinai until 1993. 

In 1996 Levine moved on to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, where she founded the Eating Disorders Program for adolescents and adults. She has served as chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders and as vice chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Pediatrics. She is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine and has worked as the faculty adviser for the university’s LGBT student group. She is also the LGBT affairs liaison at the Penn State Hershey Office of Diversity. In 2010 she completed her transition from male to female.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced Levine’s appointment to Physician General in 2015. She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. In March 2018 she became Secretary of Health. 

As the state's top doctor, Levine shapes policy on issues ranging from HIV to childhood lead testing, and she has made significant strides in tackling Pennsylvania’s opioid crisis. She also uses her platform to address LGBT issues, including transgender care. She spearheaded an LGBT workgroup for the governor’s office that creates programs to ensure fairness and inclusivity in health care, insurance and other areas. She serves on the board of Equality Pennsylvania, an LGBT organization that lobbies for equal rights.

In 2015 Levine served as Grand Marshal of the Philadelphia Pride Parade. Two years later, she was named to NBC Out’s national #Pride30 list, which recognizes individuals making an impact on the LGBTQ community. In 2018 Equality Forum presented her with the Frank Kameny Award. 

Immediately after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden named Levine Assistant Secretary of Health. She will be the first transgender person confirmed by the U.S. Senate ever to hold a position in the federal government.

As Richard, Levine married and had a family before divorcing many years later. She remains close with her ex-wife and two children. Levine is in a committed long-term relationship.

NOTE: On March 24, 2021, Dr. Levine became assistant secretary of health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is the first openly transgender official to be confirmed by the Senate.

On October 19, 2021, Dr. Levine was sworn in as a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, making her the first openly transgender and first female four-star U.S. officer. She is only the sixth four-star admiral in the history of the 6,000-person corps, founded in 1889.

CEO of the APA

b.  September 5, 1957 

“It is our firm stance that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, a position we have maintained since 1973, when homosexuality was rightly removed from the DSM.”

Saul Levin is the first openly gay CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). He also serves as board chair the APA Foundation and as a clinical professor at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

A native of South Africa, Levin received his medical degree in 1982 from the University Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He completed his residency in psychiatry at the UC Davis Medical Center and worked as a coordinator for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Levin joined the APA in 1987 and served on several committees. 

In 1994 Levin earned a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He  founded a health care consulting firm, Access Consulting International, which he led for 10 years.

Levin has served as the president and CEO of medical education for South African Blacks, a U.S-based charity that grants scholarships to black South African students pursuing health care degrees. He has served as vice president for science, medicine, and public health for the American Medical Association and has held numerous other leadership positions in the medical and social equity fields. 

In 2012 Mayor Vincent Gray of Washington, D.C., named Levin interim director of the District of Columbia Department of Health. By this time, Levin was widely known to be openly gay. 

In 2013 Levin was hired as the CEO and medical director of the APA, the world’s leading psychiatric association. His position as the organization's top medical executive marks an LGBT milestone. Until 1973 homosexuality was listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders. Treatments for the “disease” included lobotomy, electric shock treatment, chemical castration and other catastrophic therapies. 

In 2018 Levin addressed the audience after a performance of “217 Boxes of Dr. Henry Anonymous,” an Off-Broadway play about APA member John E. Fryer, M.D., and his role in the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Levin praised Dr. Fryer and spoke about the APA’s commitment to LGBT inclusion and equality.

Marriage Equality Lawyer

b. September 29, 1966 

“No other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given, or exclude those rights, the way gay people have." 

Roberta A. “Robbie” Kaplan is an attorney who represented Edie Windsor in the Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor, a landmark victory for marriage equality.

Kaplan grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1991. She clerked for judges in Massachusetts and New York.

From 1996 until 2017, Kaplan was an attorney at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. She became a litigation partner in 1999 and successfully represented clients ranging from Citibank to Airbnb. The American Bar Association (ABA) Journal lauded her as “a specialist in emerging law.” 

In 2009 Kaplan agreed to represent Edie Windsor free of charge after hearing her story. Windsor and her lifelong partner, Thea Spyer, both U.S. citizens, married legally in Canada. When Spyer died a few years later, Windsor’s inheritance was subject to estate tax, as their marriage was not recognized under U.S. federal law. The estate tax would not have applied to the surviving spouse in a heterosexual marriage. 

In the 2013 Windsor decision, the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which held that marriage is solely between a man and a woman. The case laid the groundwork for the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. During an exchange with Chief Justice John Roberts, Kaplan stated, “No other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given, or exclude those rights, the way gay people have.” 

Former President Clinton said, “… Windsor was a landmark ruling and the case's architect, Roberta Kaplan, emerged as a true American hero.” Kaplan wrote about the experience in her book “Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA.” 

In 2013 The American Lawyer magazine named Kaplan Litigator of the Year, and Stanford University honored her with a National Public Service Award. In 2015 the New York Law Journal presented her with a Lifetime Achievement Award. 

In 2017 Kaplan founded her own law firm. She is an adjunct law professor at Columbia Law School. 

Kaplan is married to Rachel Lavine. They live in New York City with their son.