Del Martin, a strident and eloquent voice in the early gay and lesbian civil rights movement in America, died Wednesday in San Francisco not long after enjoying perhaps the hardest-won prize of her lifelong cause — legal marriage to Phyllis Lyon, her longtime partner. Martin was 87.
August 28, 2008...8:17 am
Del Martin, Eloquent Voice of Gay and Lesbian Movement, 87
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August 28, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Thank you Jae (maize magazine) for sending me this…val
Forwarded message:
IN THE LIFE Remembers Pioneer Del Martin Dear Viewers,
It’s with sadness that I write to you with news that longtime LGBT civil rights acitivist and pioneer Del Martin died this morning. Our hearts go out to Phyllis Lyon, to whom, in life and love, Del was inextricably linked.
As a teenager, reading “Lesbian/Woman” between the stacks in the local library, to one of millions touched by their journey to marriage, I have long admired these formidable champions in the fight for equality. It is a profound honor for In The Life Media to conclude our October season premiere episode with their recent wedding. That episode now becomes a joyous tribute to her life, her relationship with Phyllis, her witness, and struggle for LGBT equality. We are braver and stronger for having had her in our midst.
The 17th Season Premiere episode of IN THE LIFE, “Civil Rites & Civil Rights”, takes an in-depth look at the battle for marriage equality in America’s most populous state, California. As part of it, we’re privileged to be airing never-before-seen footage of Del and her partner of 55 years, Phyllis, becoming the first same-sex couple to wed in California after the state Supreme Court mandated equal marriage rights for gay men and lesbians.
We hope you will join us in remembering these vanguards of the movement.
Warmest wishes,
Michelle Kristel
Executive Director
August 28, 2008 at 2:16 pm
This also came today from Maize…
Dorothy L. (Del) Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008)
Died on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at UCSF Hospice, San Francisco,
California. Survived by spouse Phyllis Lyon, daughter Kendra Mon,
son-in-law Eugene Lane, granddaughter Lorraine Mon, grandson Kevin Mon,
sister-in-law Patricia Lyon and a vast, loving and grateful lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender family.
An eloquent organizer for civil rights, civil liberties, and human
dignity, Del Martin created and helped shape the modern lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and feminist movements. She was a woman of
extraordinary courage, persistence, intelligence, humor, and fundamental
decency, who refused to be silenced by fear and never stopped fighting for
equality. Her last public political act, on June 16, 2008, was to marry
Phyllis Lyon, her partner of 55 years. They were the first couple to wed
in San Francisco after the California Supreme Court recognized that
marriage for same-sex couples is a fundamental right in a case brought by
plaintiffs including Martin and Lyon.
Born in San Francisco on May 5, 1921, Dorothy L. Taliaferro, or Del as she
would come to be known, was salutatorian of the first graduating class of
George Washington High School and went on to study journalism at the
University of California at Berkeley. At 19, after transferring to San
Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University), she married
James Martin and two years later gave birth to their daughter Kendra. The
marriage ended in divorce.
Del Martin met the love of her life, Phyllis Lyon, in Seattle in 1950 when
they worked for the same publication company. They became lovers in 1952
and formalized their partnership on Valentine’s Day in 1953 when they
moved in together in San Francisco. In 1955, they bought the small home
that has been theirs ever since.
In what would prove to be an act that would change history, Martin, Lyon,
and six other lesbians co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) in San
Francisco in 1955. DOB, which was named after an obscure book of lesbian
love poetry, initially was organized to provide secret mutual support and
social activities. It became the first public and political lesbian rights
organization in the United States, laying a foundation for the women’s and
lesbian and gay liberation movements that flowered in the early 1970s and
continue today.
Del Martin used her writing and speaking talents to challenge
misconceptions about gender and sexuality. “We were fighting the church,
the couch, and the courts,” she often remembered years later, naming the
array of social and cultural forces early activists confronted when
homosexuals were treated as immoral, mentally ill, and illegal. As the
first President of DOB, she penned stirring calls to arms. “Nothing was
ever accomplished by hiding in a dark corner. Why not discard the
hermitage for the heritage that awaits any red-blooded American woman who
dares to claim it?” She was the second editor (after Phyllis Lyon) of
DOB’s groundbreaking monthly magazine, The Ladder, from 1960 to 1962 and
ushered in a new decade of political engagement and media visibility for
the nascent gay rights movement. The Ladder grew from a mimeographed
newsletter in 1956 to an internationally recognized magazine with
thousands of subscribers by 1970, and thousands more readers who copied
its contents or circulated it among friends and coworkers. Martin’s many
contributions to The Ladder ranged from short stories to editorials to
missives: one of the most famous is “If That’s All There Is,” a searing
condemnation of sexism in the gay rights movement written in 1970. Due to
Martin’s influence, The Ladder provided one of the few media outlets
confronting misogyny in the decade before the rebirth of women’s
liberation.
In 1964, Del Martin was part of a group that founded the Council on
Religion and the Homosexual in order to lobby city lawmakers more
effectively to reduce police harassment and modify the sex laws that
criminalized homosexual behavior. In later years, Martin was also a
founding member of the Lesbian Mother’s Union, the San Francisco Women’s
Centers, and the Bay Area Women’s Coalition, among other organizations.
As an early member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Del
Martin worked to counter homophobia within the women’s movement – fear of
the so-called “lavender menace.” She and Lyon were the first lesbians to
insist on joining with a “couples’ membership rate” and Martin was the
first out lesbian on NOW’s Board of Directors. Their efforts helped to
insure the inclusion of lesbian rights on NOW’s agenda in the early
1970’s.
Lesbian/Woman, the book they co-authored in 1972, is one of Martin and
Lyon’s landmark accomplishments. The book described lesbian lives in a
positive, knowledgeable way almost unknown at the time. In 1992,
Publishers Weekly chose it as one of the 20 most influential women’s books
of the last 20 years.
For many years, Del Martin was a leader in the campaign to persuade the
American Psychiatric Association to declare that homosexuality was not a
mental illness. This goal was finally achieved in 1973.
Del Martin’s publication of Battered Wives in 1976 was a major catalyst
for the movement against domestic violence. Martin became a nationally
known advocate for battered women, and was a co-founder of the Coalition
for Justice for Battered Women (1975), La Casa de las Madres (a shelter
for battered women) founded in 1976, and the California Coalition against
Domestic Violence (1977). She lectured at colleges and universities around
the country. Martin received her doctorate from the Institute for Advanced
Study of Human Sexuality in 1987.
Martin’s keen political instincts and interests extended her influence
into the mainstream Democratic Party. She and Lyon were co-founders, in
1972, of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, the first gay political club
in the United States. Martin was appointed Chair of the San Francisco
Commission on the Status of Women in 1976 and served on the committee
until 1979. She worked as a member of many other councils and boards
including the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. Throughout
the years, many politicians recognized their stature as community leaders
and sought advice and endorsement from Martin and Lyon.
It is difficult to separate Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and write about
only one of them. Their lives and their work have intertwined and their
enduring dedication to social justice has been recognized many times. In
1979, local health care providers established a clinic to give lesbians in
the San Francisco Bay area access to nonjudgmental, affordable health care
and named it Lyon-Martin Health Services in their honor. In 1990, the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California awarded the
couple with its highest honor, the Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award. In
1995, Senator Dianne Feinstein named Martin, and Congresswoman Nancy
Pelosi named Lyon, as delegates to the White House Conference on Aging,
where they made headlines by using their moment at the podium to remind
the 125,000 attendees that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people
grow old, too, and must be included explicitly in aging policies. The
Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality gave Martin and Lyon their
Outstanding Public Service Award in 1996. They are among the most beloved
figures in the LGBT community and have served as Grand Marshals at Pride
marches across the nation and been honored by every major LGBT
organization in the country.
Del Martin identified her own legacy in 1984 when she said that her most
important contribution was “being able to help make changes in the way
lesbians and gay men view themselves and how the larger society views
lesbians and gay men.” She had the courage to be true to herself when the
world offered only condemnation for lesbians. Martin showed all of us how
to have what she called “self-acceptance and a good sense of my own
self-worth.” Del Martin never backed down from her insistence on full
equality for all people and, even at 87 years old, she kept moving all of
us closer to her ideal.
Gifts in lieu of flowers can be made to honor Del’s life and commitment
and to defeat the California marriage ban through NCLR’s No On 8 PAC at
http://www.nclrights.org/NoOn8.
A public memorial and tribute celebrating the life of Del Martin will be
planned in the next several weeks.