Seven decades ago, the first lesbian rights organization in the United States was founded. It was called the Daughter of Double Flame and endured in the 1970s. The group may not have been going on for a long time, but it has had an impact. Here are some important facts you need to know about your organization:
Keep up with the latest LGBTQ+News and politics. Sign up for our supporters email newsletter.
The beginning
In 1955, eight women gathered at the San Francisco home of Rosalie “Rose” Bamberger and her partner Rosemary Threepen. According to others exist Library of CongressMarcia Foster and her partner, June. Noni Frey and her partner, Mary. and the most famous couples associated with the group: Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Their organization was named after a lesbian character in a 1894 poetry book. Double flame song, By Frenchman Pierre Loose. Side note: Ruthan claimed that the poem was a work by Sappo’s lover, Bicitis, and that he discovered and translated them, but that Double Fire was in fact a character he invented. Nevertheless, the book has become a lesbian erotica classic.
The founder represents class and ethnic diversity. Bamberger, who came up with the idea of the Double Flame Daughters, was a Filipino, and both she and the white woman, Sleepen, were factory workers. Mary, whose last name was lost to history, was Chikana, and both her and Frey were working class. The other couple were white women with white-collar jobs. Lyon and Martin, for example, were journalists.
Martin was the group’s first president, Frey was the vice president, Lyon was the secretary, and Sliepen was the treasurer. Foster was the trustee.
But soon there was tension. Bamberger saw the club as a private social group, but some of the other women wanted it to be public and political. The working-class woman left within six months of its establishment. “The goal of defending lesbian and gay rights was clearly admirable. LGBTQ The movement owes much to early activists like Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, but more middle-class women seemed unaware of the additional pressures on blue-collar workers and women of color.Last night at the Telegraph Club)) I wrote this in my 2021 blog post. “While cisgender lesbians, who are white and middle class, certainly faced a lot of bias in the 1950s, non-white, working class, and gender inconsistency faced an additional hurdle,” Lo said.
Working class women formed two other private groups, Quatrefoil and Hale Aikane. However, according to the Library of Congress, Bamberger and Sleepen remained on the Martin and Lyon mailing lists in the 1970s.
Ladder
As the group went on, they established the first nationally distributed publication of lesbians. Ladder. The first issue was published in October 1956. Lyon was an editor and originally used the pseudonym Anferguson. The first issue detailed the daughters of their daughters’ missions, invited members and stated that heterosexuals were welcomed if they understood the issues facing sexual minorities. The message from Martin as president said other groups of gay and lesbians at the Mattatchin Association, one and the National Association for Sexual Studies, “although mostly male, there are several hardworking women in their ranks.”
“Dual Flame Daughters are women’s organizations that have decided to add female voices and perspectives to mutual problems,” Martin continued. “Women may not be that difficult for law enforcement, but their problems are not the other reality: families, sometimes children, employment, social acceptance,” Martin pointed to the progress women made at age 20.th They encouraged Century and lesbians to unite and become what they now call “out and pride.”
The debut issue also provided a calendar of events, a positive review of the play Tea and sympathy, And a briefer for the film adaptation of Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel but similar positive reviews A well of solitude. The film is clearly lost now. The issue further reported on his efforts to compile the bibliography of lesbian books, and asked readers to send one of the books that simply collect dust. Additionally, staff want to hear from readers who may want to participate in the research.
It concluded with a tribute to Alfred Kinsey, a sex specialist who passed away in August 1956 after doing much to expand his understanding of sexuality and its variations. Ladder A letter to the editor has been reproduced San Francisco Examiner, Kinsey “is an outstanding scientist and advocate for human freedom and happiness.”
The first issue is posted on a website called Alexander Street. Several other sites have also digitized some issues. Find them in the Library of Congress post.
In the early days, LadderThe cover featured illustrations, but as more lesbians were happy to go out, the cover had pictures. That’s what the first black woman on the cover was. Ernes Ecksteindepicted at the forefront of the June 1966 issue, she was interviewed. “No matter what movement, you need a certain number of courageous people. You don’t avoid that.” She said at the time.
Ladder In 1972, “Following the secret acquisition of the magazine by editor Barbara Greer and the DOB’s National President in 1970, Rita Laporte supported a stronger lesbian feminist attitude than the DOB commonly advocated.” Encyclopedia Britannica. It reflects tensions within the organization about whether to work with groups that include men or take a separatist approach.
Expansions and new chapters
By 1960, he had daughters in Rhode Island, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Legendary activist Barbara Gittings formed the New York chapter in 1958, two years after meeting Lyon and Martin. GittingEdit Ladder It was behind the movement between 1960 and 1963, when cover illustrations were replaced with photographs.
Gitting also pushed the organization and the gay and lesbian rights movement in the direction of more activists. “In 1965, she joined the pioneer who took part in the first wave of public gay pickets in the White House, Pentagon and independent halls in the Philadelphia, writing in a 2015 book. Barbara Gitting, gay pioneer. Eckstein, the vice president of the New York chapter, also joined the White House protests. She was the only black woman in the photo at Rafsen’s famous demonstration. Eckstein is also active in the Black feminist movement, and took part in the “Reminder Day” march, which took place for several years on the “Reminder Day” march on July 4th.
Gittings and Lahusen were later involved in a successful effort by the APA to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders they made in 1973. Gitting passed away in 2007.
The end and after death
The daughters’ daughters stopped being a national organization in the 1970s, but some chapters continued for several more years. The leader moved to another group. In 1973, Gittings was a founding member of the National Gay Task Force (now the LGBTQ Task Force). Martin and Lyon were active in the Alice B. Tokras Democratic Club in San Francisco. This persuaded Diane Feinstein when she was the city’s mayor and sponsored legislation that prohibits employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. They were also the first lesbian couple to fight for the decriminalization of homosexuality in California and participate in a national agency for women. In 2004, when then-San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom declared equal marriage in the city, they were the first same-sex couples to receive a license. The court later said that the city had stopped same-sex marriage and invalidated the union.
Martin and Lyon were among the couples who sued equal marriage rights in a lawsuit that led the California Supreme Court to break the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2008. They became one of two same-sex couples legally married in California. The wedding took place in June, and Martin passed away in August at the age of 87. Proposition 8 was passed by voters in November of that year, temporarily revoking marriage equality in Golden State, but Lyon won it in 2013 and lived long enough to see the US Supreme Court in 2015 to control marriage equality nationwide.
Martin and Lyon were the first lesbians to join the National Women’s Organization. In the early days, I was nervous about the inclusion of lesbians that the couple proposed. In 1995 they were appointed representatives of the White House Conference on Aging.
Lyon’s other achievements include co-founding the National Sex Forum, where she was director for 19 years, and working as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Research in Human Sexuality. She and Martin also collaborated in the 1972 book. Lesbian/Female. Lyon passed away in 2020 at the age of 95.
The daughters of Bilisity “fostered one of the first opportunities for lesbians to meet and share their everyday struggles” and “started a long quest to achieve lesbian awareness and acceptance and place lesbian rights on the civil rights agenda,” Britannica’s entry concludes.
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
