Gay Pioneer

Gay Pioneer

b. October 17, 1917
d. May 11, 2000

“I was one of the founders of the first homosexual organizations in U.S. history. …Our basic argument was that changes in sex laws would not benefit us alone but everyone.”

William Dale Jennings was a gay pioneer who cofounded two early gay organizations and one of the first gay magazines in America. He was dubbed the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement when he successfully challenged his arrest on homosexuality charges.

Jennings grew up in Denver, Colorado, where he studied piano and dance. He was performing by the age of 12 and traveled with the Lester Horton Dance Group. He moved to Los Angeles in his early 20s, after training in theater direction. Jennings established his own theater company and wrote and produced more than 50 short plays. 

Jennings served in World War II and received several military honors, including a Victory Medal. After an honorable discharge in 1946, he studied cinema for two years at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 

In 1950 the U.S. Senate declared homosexuals a national threat. That year, Harry Hay, Jennings and four other gay activists cofounded the Mattachine Society—an underground gay community network and one of the first gay civil liberties organizations in the United States. 

During this time, vice detectives posing as homosexuals commonly entrapped gay men and charged them with solicitation. Most men pled guilty for fear of public exposure. When Jennings was arrested for soliciting in 1950, he fought back. He was the first openly gay man known to have done so. During his 10-day trial in 1952, Jennings disclosed his homosexuality but denied the charge. The jury deadlocked one vote shy of acquittal, and the judge dismissed the case. Publicity surrounding the trial exposed the issue of entrapment and made Jennings an gay hero.

Later the same year, with a group Mattachine members, Jennings cofounded ONE, Inc., to develop a publication specifically for homosexuals. With Jennings as its editor, the first issue of ONE Magazine was published in 1953. It became the first widely distributed gay magazine in the United States. 

In 1954 the Los Angeles postmaster cited the publication for obscenity and refused to deliver it. A legal battle ensued, and after several lower court rulings in favor of the post office, the United States Supreme Court ruled for the magazine. A first-of-its-kind victory, the decision in ONE vs. Olesen is celebrated as a legal landmark, making the mail circulation of gay periodicals possible.

In addition to ONE Magazine, Jennings wrote for other publications and published three novels. His California gold-rush-era coming-of-age story, “The Cowboys,” was made into a movie, starring the Academy Award-winning actor John Wayne. Jennings co-wrote the screenplay. 

Jennings died in Los Angeles at the age of 82. The New York Times published his obituary.

Gay Pioneer

b. April 26, 1939

“Growing up in the Bronx and on the streets of the Bronx … you hear everything. And then you can get your first word of faggot and queer. It scared the hell out of me.”

Joyce Hunter is a gay pioneer who helped organize the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and cofounded the first public high school for LGBTQ students.

Hunter survived a difficult early life, growing up in the Bronx, New York. The child of an unwed Orthodox Jewish mother and an African-American father, she spent much of her childhood in an orphanage. She married and became a mother in her 20s. By her 30s she had established herself as a trailblazing LGBT activist. 

In the 1970s, based on the black civil rights movement, activists sought to create a national march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights. In the summer of 1978, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk assumed leadership of that vision. After his assassination in November 1978, approximately 300 activists, Hunter included, convened the Philadelphia Conference to fulfill Milk’s dream of a march on the National Mall. Plans proceeded under the joint leadership of Hunter and Steve Ault.

On October 12, 1979, more than 100,000 activists attended the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The demonstration helped define a national civil rights movement. 

Also In 1979, Hunter became a founding member of the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York, created chiefly to serve at-risk LGBT youth. As the Institute’s director and clinical supervisor of social work, she helped create a counseling program, a drop-in center and an outreach project.

In 1985 with the Hetrick-Martin Institute and Steve Ashkinazy of the Stonewall Democratic Club, Hunter cofounded the nation’s first LGBTQ high school, the Harvey Milk High School, in New York City’s East Village. The same year, as a co-leader of the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Hunter helped successfully lobby New York City Council for a gay and lesbian nondiscrimination ordinance—one of the first municipal ordinances of its kind in the nation.

Hunter has served as Human Rights Commissioner of New York City and on the New York State Governor's Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Concerns. She founded the Women’s Caucus of the International AIDS Society. 

Hunter earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in her 40s and her doctorate in social work in her late 50s. She is an assistant clinical professor of sociomedical sciences in psychiatry and psychiatric social work and a research scientist at the HIV Center at Columbia University. She conducts HIV behavioral research and is the principal investigator of a community-based HIV prevention project for LGBT students. 

Hunter donated her collection of LGBT civil rights papers to the archives of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of New York City. The “Making Gay History” podcast series featured her story. 

Now a great-grandmother, Hunter resides in Queens, New York.

Taiwanese Gay Pioneer

b. October 12, 1958

“This should certainly offer some encouragement to different societies to consider following in Taiwan’s footsteps and giving gays and lesbians the right to marry.”

Chi Chia-wei is a pioneering Taiwanese gay rights activist and marriage equality champion. He helped make Taiwan the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. 

Chi was raised by open-minded parents who were supportive of his homosexuality. He came out in high school and his classmates were overwhelmingly accepting. 

Chi began his LGBT activism in his 20s, when there were virtually no other visible gay rights activists. Today, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese support or have joined the LGBT rights movement. 

For some time, Chi was Taiwan’s only AIDS activist. He operated a halfway house for HIV/AIDS patients and created awareness campaigns to promote safe sex among the country’s LGBT citizens. 

In 1986 the 28-year-old Chi organized an international press conference to announce his sexual orientation and bring attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. In doing so, he became the first person in Taiwan to come out on national television. Media outlets such as the Associated Press and Reuters covered the event. 

Chi’s quest to bring same-sex unions to Taiwan also began in 1986, when he applied for a marriage license. His request was denied by the Taipei District Court Notary Office as well as the Legislative Appeals Court. Later that year, he was detained by police and served a 162-day sentence. Such imprisonment was common during Taiwan’s White Terror, a period of oppression during which the government imprisoned political dissidents. 

Chi unsuccessfully applied for a same-sex marriage license again in 1994, 1998 and 2000. In 2013, when he applied and was denied once more, Chi appealed the decision to the Taipei city government’s Department of Civil Affairs, who referred the issue to the Constitutional Court. 

Chi and the Taipei city government petitioned the court to examine the constitutionality of the same-sex marriage prohibition. On May 24, 2017, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court struck down the previous classification of marriage and ruled that same-sex couples could marry, beginning in May 2019. A celebration erupted outside the court and Chi announced, “Today’s victory is for everybody!” The decision marked the culmination of Chi’s 30 years of activism. 

In October 2016, Queermosa, a leading Taiwanese LGBT organization, presented Chi with its first Queer Pioneer Award. Chi has a longtime romantic partner whose identity he keeps private.

Gay Pioneer

b. June 21, 1945
d. March 6, 1987

“I know what it means to be called a nigger. I know what it means to be called a faggot. And I can sum up the difference in one word: none.”

Melvin “Mel” Boozer was a university professor, an activist for gay and African-American rights and the first openly gay candidate for vice president of the United States.

Boozer grew up in Washington, D.C. His mother was a domestic worker and his stepfather was a janitor. Boozer’s childhood homes lacked electricity.

Boozer graduated salutatorian of his high school class and earned a scholarship to Dartmouth College where he studied sociology. He spent three years in the Peace Corps in Brazil before completing his graduate studies. He earned a Ph.D. from Yale University and became a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.

In 1979 Boozer became the first African-American elected president of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) of Washington, D.C. Under his leadership and in collaboration with Frank Kameny, the GAA secured passage of the D.C. Sexual Assault Reform Act, which decriminalized sodomy and struck down other anti-gay laws. The GAA also sued the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and won the right to display Metrobus posters announcing, “Someone in Your Life is Gay.”

In 1980 the Socialist Party nominated Mel Boozer for vice president of the United States. The Democratic Party followed suit and nominated Boozer by petition. Though he was not elected, Boozer became the first-ever openly gay U.S. vice presidential candidate. In his primetime televised speech at the Democratic National Convention, Boozer called attention to discrimination against LGBT and black Americans.

In 1981 the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force hired Boozer as a district director. The following year, he cofounded and led the Langston Hughes-Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, which advocated for black gays and lesbians in Washington, D.C. In 1984 he ran the D.C. gay-voter outreach effort for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. He also served on the national board of Americans for Democratic Action, a political advocacy organization for progressive causes and social justice.

Later in life, Boozer became an AIDS activist. He died of an AIDS-related illness at the age of 41. The New York Times published his obituary.

Gay Pioneer

b. January 5, 1930
d. May 26, 2021

“Whatever the Founding Fathers envisioned as the rights and privileges of our citizens, we wanted for ourselves.”

Kay Lahusen, also known as Kay Tobin Lahusen and Kay Tobin, is the first openly lesbian photojournalist in America. She was among the first women to chronicle and participate in the early gay rights movement. Her photographs appeared on the covers of some of the first LGBT publications in the nation, including The Ladder and Gay Newsweekly. 

In 1961 Lahusen joined the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization in the United States. Shortly thereafter, she met Barbara Gittings, an activist who started the East Coast Chapter of the DOB and who is regarded as the mother of the LGBT civil rights movement. The pair began a lifelong relationship and became one of the most influential, pioneering lesbian couples in America.

Lahusen initially garnered national attention in 1965, when she photographed and also protested in the first of what became a series of seminal public demonstrations for gay and lesbian equality. Spearheaded by Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny, these first organized pickets were held in Philadelphia each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall. Known as Annual Reminders, the demonstrations paved the way for the Stonewall riot in 1969.

In addition to her work as a photojournalist, Lahusen worked at one of the first gay bookshops in the country, the Oscar Wilde Bookstore in New York City, and with Gittings for the gay caucus of the American Library Association. Lahusen cofounded the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and later the Gay Women’s Alternative in New York City. 

Lahusen collaborated with many Gay Pioneers, including Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols, to publicize LGBT issues and present accurate, positive depictions of gays and lesbians. In 1972 she co-authored “The Gay Crusaders,” the first collection of short biographies of gay activists. 

During her lifetime, Lahusen photographed thousands of events and activists of the gay rights movement. Her collection of writings and photos, along with Gittings’s writings and papers, is archived at the New York Public Library.

Lahusen and Gittings remained together for 46 years. Shortly before Gittings’s death in 2007, the couple moved to the Philadelphia suburb of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Lahusen will be buried alongside Gittings at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. The New York Times published her obituary.

Updated May 26, 2021.

Indian Gay Pioneer and Journalist

b. June 1, 1947

“Coming out was a natural defense mechanism.”

Ashok Row Kavi is an Indian LGBT rights activist and journalist. The first gay man to ever talk publicly about his sexuality in a country where homosexuality is still illegal, he is considered one of the most influential gay men in India. The Pink Pages lists him among the most influential LGBT people in the world.

“When you come out in India, gay identity becomes your primary identity,” Kavi said. “If you come out as an openly homosexual man and refuse to get married to a woman, then your homosexual identity becomes a form of rebellion and attracts a great deal of attention. All the other identities—being a good journalist, for instance—become backups.”

Born in Mumbai, Kavi was educated at India’s most elite schools, eventually graduating with honors in chemistry from the University of Bombay. As a young man, he had trouble coming to terms with his sexuality and trained as a Hindu monk. After a senior monk encouraged him to explore his sexuality, he went on to study at the International School of Journalism in Berlin. He became well known for his work for Malayala Manorama, India’s largest newspaper.

In 1971 Kavi started Debonair, an Indian men’s magazine modeled after Playboy, and in 1990 he founded Bombay Dost, India’s first and only gay magazine. 

Kavi’s reporting for leading publications led him to cover the AIDS crisis. He became a representative at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam and also served as chairman of the Second International Congress on AIDS. In 1994 he founded Humsafar Trust, an LGBT service organization and drop-in center in Mumbai that specializes in outreach and educates people about HIV/AIDS and political issues. It also provides a rare place for LGBT people to meet and socialize.  

In 1998 Kavi designed questionnaires for the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California at San Francisco that have been used to help track the disease and to educate young gay men about risk. 

After retiring from journalism, Kavi organized the first Indian conference about gay men and the first LGBT conference in Mumbai. 

Kavi is an active member of Gay Bombay, the Mumbai District AIDS Control Society and the National AIDS Control Organization. He is also a visiting faculty member of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the International Institute of Population Studies.

Israeli Gay Pioneer and Scientist

b. October 18, 1940

“You no longer have to be ashamed. You can even be elected.”

A pioneering advocate for LGBT rights in Israel, Uzi Even became the first openly gay member of the country’s parliament, the Knesset, in 2002. He is a professor emeritus of physical chemistry at Tel Aviv University, from which he earned a Ph.D. in physics and molecular chemistry. 

Even worked for the Israeli army at the Nuclear Research Center. When the Israel Defense Forces discovered he was gay, Even was stripped of his security clearance and his rank as a lieutenant colonel. His testimony about the matter led Yitzhak Rabin’s government to change the law in 1993, thus allowing open homosexuals to serve in any position in the armed forces. The same year, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Department of Defense issued "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which remained official military policy until 2011.

Even first ran for a seat in the Knesset in 1999. He lost, but in 2002 was appointed to a vacant seat. During his tenure in parliament, he helped to advance LGBT rights and brought attention to important social issues related to the gay movement. 

Even also helped to advance same-sex spousal protection on the university level, advocating for health care coverage for his partner. He brought same-sex adoption into the spotlight when he and his partner became the first gay couple in Israel to legally adopt (by then) their 30-year-old foster son—a young man who had been kicked out of his home at 16 for being gay. “We opened a door, … a window for others,” said Even’s son, Yossi Even-Kama, “an opening of hope for the couples that will follow.”

In 2006 Even joined the Labor Party in hopes of further advancing LGBT rights. “As a community, it is important that we be involved in a major party,” he said. 

Six years later, Even set another legal precedent when he divorced his partner, whom he married in Canada in 2004. Because the Rabbinical Court does not recognize same-sex marriage, the divorce was granted in Family Court, paving the way for both straight and gay couples to bypass religious law in marriage matters. 

Even hopes his coming out and public advocacy on behalf of LGBT people will inspire others to do the same. “It’s a symbolic act,” he said. “I’m the one breaking the glass ceiling.” 

LGBT rights in Israel are the most advanced in the Middle East. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to recognize same-sex marriage.

Psychiatrist and Dr. H. Anonymous

b. November 7, 1937
d. February 21, 2003

“I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.”

John E. Fryer, M.D., challenged the designation of homosexuality as a mental illness at the 1972 convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Seated on a panel and disguised as Dr. H. Anonymous, he announced his homosexuality at a time when a medical license could be revoked on that basis. Fryer declared himself a proud member of the APA and explained that homosexuality was not the illness, but rather the toxic effects of homophobia.

Since 1952 the APA had listed homosexuality as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Fryer’s actions were pivotal in the declassification of homosexuality as a disease.

The DSM classification was first attacked in the 1960s by Gay Pioneer Frank Kameny, a Harvard-educated Ph.D. astronomer. Kameny and fellow activist Barbara Gittings waged a multi-year campaign against the APA. In 1971 after storming the APA’s annual meeting, they were permitted to organize a panel discussion on homosexuality for the 1972 convention. 

When no other gay psychiatrist would participate, Gittings recruited Dr. John Fryer. Concealing his identity with a mask and a voice modulator, he declared, “I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.” He described the hardships homophobia imposed on homosexual psychiatrists and patients. “This is the greatest loss, our honest humanity,” he said, “and that loss leads all those around us to lose that little bit of their humanity as well.” The conventioneers were transfixed. Subsequently, the APA formed a panel to evaluate the basis for the DSM classification. In 1973 homosexuality was delisted as a mental illness.

Fryer earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt University and began his psychiatric residency at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, but grew depressed from hiding his sexual orientation. He relocated to pursue his residency at the University of Pennsylvania, but was forced to leave for being gay. He completed his residency at nearby Norristown State Hospital. 

In 1967 Fryer joined the medical faculty at Temple University where he became a professor of psychiatry and family and community medicine. He was employed at Temple at the time of his panel appearance. Having been forced from residency and at least one job for being gay, he took a considerable risk, even disguised. “It had to be said,” he wrote in 1985, “But I couldn't do it as me. I was not yet full time on the faculty.” 

Fryer lived in Philadelphia until his death. In 2006 the APA named an annual civil rights award after him. Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny were its first recipients.

Gay Pioneer

b. March 16, 1938
d. May 2, 2005

“Every person I work with knows something better than me. My job is to listen long enough to find it and use it.” 

In 1961, along with Frank Kameny, Jack Nichols cofounded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., the the first gay civil rights organization in the nation’s capital. Four years later, Nichols and other members of the organization conducted the first gay rights protest at the White House. 

Nichols also participated in the Annual Reminders—pickets held in front of Independence Hall each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969. The Annual Reminders helped galvanize the organized LGBT civil rights movement, paving the way for the Stonewall Riots in 1969. 

Nichols joined Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings and other activists in a multi-year battle with the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. The APA eventually conceded, after failing to produce scientific evidence to support the classification.

In 1967 Nichols became one of the first Americans to speak openly about being gay in the documentary “CBS Reports: The Homosexuals.” Though he appeared on screen, he said he was forced to use a pseudonym after his father, an FBI agent, threatened him, fearing the U.S. government might discover his son was gay. 

Nichols, along with his partner Lige Clarke, wrote the first LGBT interest column, “The Homosexual Citizen,” in a mainstream publication in 1969. The famous couple would later launch GAY, the first weekly gay newspaper in New York City. The publication flourished until Clarke was murdered in Mexico in 1975. Nichols later became an editor for the San Francisco Sentinel and GayToday.com.

LGBT Activist

b. September 28, 1948, Columbus, Ohio

“One of the things that the United States has never been able to tolerate for long has been injustice and bigotry.”

Before Darlene Garner helped found the National Coalition of Black Gays (NCBG)—later known as the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays—“gay” was largely synonymous with “white.” Garner and other early black LGBT leaders were determined to make their voices heard and their unique experiences as LGBT people of color known. “What we were doing had the capacity to change the face of history,” Garner stated. “Our youth and naiveté helped us do it with a boldness. If we had been seasoned activists, we might not have taken it on. We know that if it was not us, there might be no one.” The NCBG became the first non-white LGBT organization in the country.

Following her involvement with the NCBG, Garner entered a seminary to serve the spiritual needs of the LGBT community. As an ordained minister of the Metropolitan Community Church, Garner devoted herself to religious, racial and LGBT advocacy.

In 2009 when the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act passed in Washington, D.C., Garner and her partner, Candy, were among the first same-sex couples to marry.

Garner helped demonstrate that LGBT issues are not white-only and that LGBT people exist in a rainbow of skin tones.