Boston

Transgender State Representative

b. October 7, 1940

“It pays not to quit when you want something. You have to keep working until you get it.”

Althea Garrison was the first elected transgender state legislator in the United States. She served one term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995.

The youngest of seven children, Garrison was born male in the tiny town of Hahira, Georgia. At 19 she moved to Boston, planning to attend beauty school. Garrison instead attended Newbury Junior College, then received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Suffolk University. She went on to earn a master’s degree in management from Lesley College and a certificate in special studies in administration and management from Harvard University. Garrison transitioned in Boston. She became Althea Garrison in 1976, legally changing both her first and last names.

In 1982 Garrison ran for the Massachusetts state legislature as a Democrat. It was her first bid for public office. Throughout the next decade, she ran and lost elections for a variety of seats, gradually moving from a Democrat to an Independent to a Republican.

In 1992 Garrison ran as a Republican for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Although her transgender identity was an open secret among local politicians, it was unknown to her constituents. Days after winning the election, she was outed by a reporter who found her birth certificate and made her original name and sex public.

While in office, Garrison served as a member of the Housing Committee and the Election Law Committee. She sponsored and passed legislation to introduce mail-in voter registration and strongly supported workers’ rights. Despite endorsements from eight local unions and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, she lost reelection.

Garrison spent the next 34 years working as a human resources clerk in the Massachusetts State Comptroller’s Office and continually running for office. She often devoted her vacation to campaigning. Although her political affiliation has been fluid, she has identified as an independent conservative since 2012.

In 2017 Garrison finished as the first runner-up in the Boston City Council election. The following year, Boston Councilmember Ayanna Pressley won a congressional bid and had to vacate her seat. Garrison was appointed to fill Pressley’s remaining term. In 2019 Garrison became the most conservative member of the otherwise Democratic Boston City Council.

“I never quit,” 78-year-old Garrison explained. “I’m constantly running, and I knew it would pay off.” Despite advocating for affordable housing measures, including rent control and eviction protections, Garrison lost reelection to a Democratic challenger in 2020.

Garrison lives in Boston. She has appeared on the city’s ballot more than 25 times.

Novelist

b. September 11, 1948

“No one of us should feel we can leave someone behind in the struggle for liberation.”

Jewelle Gomez is an author and activist whose writing centers on the experiences of LGBTQ women of color. Her books include the double Lambda Award-winning novel “The Gilda Stories.” Gomez was a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Gomez was raised by her great-grandmother, a woman of African and Native American descent. Gomez attended Northeastern University on a full scholarship. As one of the university’s few black students, she began her lifetime of activism participating in protests over campus inequality. She received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study at Columbia University School of Journalism and worked as a production assistant on “Say Brother,” one of the first black weekly television shows in the United States.

Gomez’s feminist and intersectional activism shapes her creative voice. After several of her poetry collections were published, the first of her many novels, “The Gilda Stories,” was released in 1991. The story, which spans 200 years in the life of Gilda, a vampire who escapes slavery, reframes traditional vampire mythology from a black lesbian feminist perspective. After winning the Lambda Award, Gomez adapted the book into a theatrical production, “Bone and Ash,” which was performed in 13 U.S. cities. More than a hundred anthologies include Gomez’s fiction and poetry, and numerous publications, such as The New York Times, The Village Voice and Essence Magazine, have published her work.

On behalf of LGBTQ rights, Gomez’s activism is “grounded in the history of race and gender in America.” She wrote, “No one of us should feel we can leave someone behind in the struggle for liberation.” From 1985 to 1987, she served as a founding member of GLAAD. She has since served on the boards of numerous women’s and LGBTQ philanthropic and cultural organizations and as a commencement speaker for multiple educational institutions. She and her partner were among the litigants who sued the state of California for the right to legal same-sex marriage, and several of her articles were quoted extensively during the case.

Gomez received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two fellowships from the California Arts Council. She has served on literature panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council and the California Arts Council.

She lives in San Francisco with her partner, Dr. Diane Sabin.

Poet and Playwright

b.  February 27, 1880, Boston, Massachusetts

d.  June 10, 1958, New York, New York

“I oft have dreamed the bliss
Of the nectar in one kiss.”

Angelina Weld Grimké was a poet, teacher and playwright who helped pave the way for the Harlem Renaissance. Grimké was one of the nation’s first celebrated female African-American authors.

Grimké was born to a prominent biracial couple who divorced soon after her birth. Her mother left when Grimké was a toddler and committed suicide several years later. Grimké had a strained relationship with her father, whose lineage of notable abolitionists set high expectations for his daughter.

Grimké excelled academically, publishing her first poem at age 13. She earned a degree in physical education from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. She moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught while writing poetry in her spare time.

Although Grimké was called to write, she felt pressure to please her father by not publishing anything that could tarnish the family name. What Grimké did publish was highly successful, including her three-act drama, “Rachel,” the first play by a black woman to be staged in a public theater.

Little is known of Grimké’s personal relationships, but her work often alludes to suppressed emotions, and several of her unpublished poems feature explicitly lesbian content. Her diary includes entries about her female lovers.

Although her work was well received, Grimké retreated to solitude for most of her life. After her father’s death in 1930, she never published again.

Lawyer

b. June 8, 1961

“It’s not about me, it’s about the people in the lawsuits, the plaintiffs and their stories.”

For more than two decades, Mary Bonauto has served as the civil rights project director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Regarded by The Advocate as “the country’s most powerful lawyer in the marriage equality fight,” Bonauto was lead counsel in legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and in the fight to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Born into a strict Catholic family in Newburgh, New York, Bonauto graduated from Hamilton College and the Northeastern University School of Law. In 1987, when she joined a small firm in Maine, Bonauto was only one of three openly gay lawyers in private practice in the state.

In 1989, she went to work for GLAD. She helped enforce Massachusetts’s new law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. Bonauto was involved in litigation, lobbying and public education throughout New England.

She served as co-counsel in Baker v. Vermont, which challenged the state’s prohibition of same-sex marriage. The landmark 1999 ruling mandated in Vermont the country’s first civil unions with legal benefits similar to marriage.

Bonauto was lead counsel in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the litigation for marriage equality in Massachusetts. In 2003, the state’s highest court became the first in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.

Bonauto led GLAD’s successful challenge to overturn DOMA in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management. In a 3-0 decision, the lower court ruling was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals, laying the groundwork for review by the United States Supreme Court.

In 2011, Boston Magazine named Bonauto one of the city’s “50 Most Powerful Women.” She was awarded Yale University’s Brudner prize for her contributions to the LGBT community. She has served as co-chair of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee of the American Bar Association.

Bonauto lives in Portland, Maine, with her partner of 23 years and their twin daughters.

Scientist

b. May 19, 1966

"Hopefully people can look at me and realize that it's okay to be open in their lives and be themselves and do great work and make contributions to the world as scientist." 
    
Carolyn Bertozzi is the youngest scientist to receive the MacArthur "genius" award. A Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at Berkeley, she oversees a cutting edge research lab. She has a reputation as an outstanding professor and mentor.

The daughter of a physics professor, Bertozzi worked summer jobs at MIT. Her early interests included sports and music.

Bertozzi found her niche in organic chemistry during her sophomore year at Harvard University. She graduated summa cum laude and received an award for best senior thesis. She completed her graduate studies at University of California, Berkeley, receiving her Ph.D. in 1993.

In 1996, Bertozzi joined the UC Berkeley faculty. Her research focuses on the glycobiology underlying diseases such as cancer and inflammatory disorders. Believing she can link sugar molecules' structures with the presence or absence of disease, Bertozzi developed a unique system to track cell development.

Her research team has published over 98 articles. Nature and Angewandte Chemie, an influential chemistry journal, has praised Bertozzi's work.
She co-edited "Glycochemistry: Principles, Synthesis, and Applications" and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

In 2001, UC Berkeley honored Bertozzi with its prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award.

Gay Pioneer

b. May 21, 1925
d. October 11, 2011

“The momentum is there, and that’s not going to be stopped. It’s moved from hopes of a grassroots movement to the actuality of a grassroots movement.”

Frank Kameny was the chief strategist and father of the LGBT civil rights movement. The nonviolence of black civil rights organizers Bayard Rustin and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. influenced his methods.

A World War II veteran with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Kameny worked as an astronomer for the Army Map Service. In 1957 he was fired for being gay. By executive order of President Eisenhower in 1953, gays and lesbians were prohibited from serving as federal employees.

Kameny’s termination fueled a lifetime of activism. He fought his dismissal in the federal courts, and in 1961 he filed the first gay rights appeal to the US Supreme Court. The same year, Kameny cofounded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., with Jack Nichols. The Mattachine Societies of New York and Washington became the first gay civil liberties organizations in the United States. Later Kameny helped start organizations that would become the National LGBTQ Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign.

Kameny, along with Craig Rodwell, took the lead in organizing the Annual Reminders—the first public demonstrations for gay equality. Held each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall (which then housed the Liberty Bell), the protests paved the way for the Stonewall riot in 1969. Kameny and fellow Gay Pioneer Barbara Gittings enlisted activists from New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to participate. At the first Annual Reminder, 40 brave gay and lesbian picketers carried signs demanding equality. By 1969 their numbers had more than tripled. Inspired by Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Is Beautiful,” Kameny coined the movement’s slogan, “Gay Is Good,” during this period.

After 1969, Kameny, Gittings and others suspended the Annual Reminders to marshal support for a 1970 march commemorating the first anniversary of Stonewall. Proceeding from Greenwich Village to Central Park, it is remembered as the first New York City Pride Parade.

With Gittings, Kameny waged a multi-year campaign against the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for its classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1970 Kameny led members of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance in a demonstration at the annual meeting of the APA. The next year, Kameny, Gittings and fellow agitators stormed the meeting and Kameny seized the microphone, demanding to be heard. For the APA’s annual meeting in 1972, Kameny and Gittings organized a panel on homosexuality. When no gay psychiatrist would openly serve on it for fear of professional repercussions, Gittings recruited Dr. H. Anonymous (John E. Fryer, M.D.), who appeared masked and using a voice modulator. The three of them asserted that the disease was not homosexuality, but toxic homophobia. Consequently, the APA formed a committee to determine whether there was scientific evidence to support its conclusion.

In 1973, with Kameny and Gittings present by invitation, the APA announced the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Kameny described it as the day “we were cured en masse by the psychiatrists.” At the time, the “cures” for homosexuality included electric shock therapy, institutionalization and lobotomy. With the APA's decision, the gay rights movement was no longer encumbered by the label of mental illness and its consequences.

In 1975 the US Civil Service Commission lifted its ban on gay employees, a victory Kameny pursued relentlessly for nearly two decades. Two years later, he became the first openly gay candidate to run for Congress.

Kameny appeared in “Gay Pioneers,” a documentary co-produced by WHYY/PBS and Equality Forum about the Annual Reminders.  In 2006 the APA presented Kameny (and Gittings) with the organization's first annual civil rights award, named in memory of Dr. John Fryer. In 2007 the Washington City Council honored Kameny as a “true freedom fighter,” and in 2009 he received a formal apology for his dismissal from the Army Map Service.

Kameny was invited to witness the signing of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act, and President Obama lauded him for his seminal efforts. As far back as the 1970s, Kameny was chipping away at the ban on gays in the military. He counseled countless potential gay inductees, closeted service members, and gay military facing discharge for their sexual orientation, and assisted scores of gays encountering problems getting or keeping security clearances.

The Library of Congress has incorporated more than 70,000 letters, documents and memorabilia from Frank Kameny’s vast personal archives into its permanent collection. A dozen of his handmade picket signs reside in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. Kameny’s Washington, D.C., home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny” (2015), edited by Michael G. Long, showcases a selection of Kameny’s searing missives, which took to task politicians, pundits, journalists and other high-profile figures.

Frank Kameny was celebrated during LGBT History Month 2014.

Read the tribute to Frank Kameny delivered at the National LGBT 50th Anniversary Ceremony, July 4, 2015.

Theologian

b. May 22, 1942

"There can be no light without the darkness out of which it shines."

Peter Gomes offers a look at religion from a distinctive perspective. Gomes, a Reverend and Professor at Harvard University, argues that the Bible is neither anti-Semitic, anti-feminist nor anti-gay.

Born in Plymouth, MA, Gomes took an early interest in puritan history and religion.  He spent hours at the local library researching the Mayflower and prominent leaders of the time, such as William Bradford.
 
In 1991, Peninsula, a conservative Harvard magazine, published a 56-page issue largely critical of homosexuality. Gomes denounced the magazine and came out publicly at Harvard's Memorial Church. A small group called Concerned Christians at Harvard immediately called for his resignation, but Gomes received support from the Harvard administration.

Renowned for both his teaching and his preaching, Reverend Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and the Pusey Minister at Harvard's Memorial Church. A graduate of Bates College in 1965 and Harvard Divinity School in 1968, he also studied at the University of Cambridge, where he is an Honorary Fellow and where the Gomes Lectureship was established in his honor.

Gomes holds thirty-three honorary degrees. Religion and American Life named him Clergy of the Year in 1998, and he won the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award from Harvard in 2001. Gomes offered prayers at the inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Gomes is a widely published author. Of the ten volumes of sermons and numerous articles and papers he has written, two of his works - "The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart" (1996) and Sermons: "Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living" (1998) - were New York Times and national bestsellers.

Composer