Photojournalist, gay rights pioneer Kay Lahusen dies at 91

[left-of-center2012]

Kay Lahusen, a pioneering gay rights activist who chronicled the movement’s earliest days through her photography and writing, has died. She was 91. Known as the first openly gay U.S. photojournalist, Lahusen died Wednesday at Chester County Hospital outside Philadelphia, following a brief illness.

Together with her partner, the late activist Barbara Gittings, Lahusen advocated for gay civil rights years before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York helped launch the modern LGBTQ era. She captured widely published images of some of the nation’s first protests.

Lahusen “was the first photojournalist in our community,” said Mark Segal, a friend of more than 50 years and founder and publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. “Practically every photo we have of that time is from Kay.” Lahusen photographed a series of gay rights demonstrations held in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall each July 4 from 1965 to 1969 — and was a marcher herself, carrying signs that said “First Class Citizenship for Homosexuals” and “End Official Persecution of Homosexuals.” She documented gay rights protests at the White House and the Pentagon.

Lahusen also was a founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance and photographed that group’s protests, called “zaps.” She was there for Philadelphia’s first gay pride march in 1972. Under the pseudonym Kay Tobin, she co-authored a 1972 book, “The Gay Crusaders,” which profiled the movement’s early leaders. Lahusen and Gittings also took part in the campaign that led to the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to drop homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

Lahusen and Gittings were a couple for 46 years.

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/photojournalist-gay-rights-pioneer-kay-lahusen-dies-at-91/

Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen
(Photo: John Cunningham)

[Behind the Aegis]

1. Here's a personal account (not mine)

Legendary gay rights pioneer Kay Lahusen passes at 91

“Hellooo, Michael! It’s Kay!” For the last six years, that telephone greeting from gay rights pioneer Kay Lahusen has brought me joy at least once every couple of weeks; sometimes twice in one day; for she has been one of my heroes from the moment I became an activist nearly half a century ago. For many years, she used the name Kay Tobin because people had trouble pronouncing Lahusen. With her death this week at 91, I can think of only one other approaching her stature still with us. In my heart I kneel down.

Kay 1969 Annual Reminder Nancy M. Tucker, Courtesy ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.
We were introduced remotely by her friend David Carter, author of the definitive book on the Stonewall riots, after he spoke at the 2015 LGBT Veterans Day Observance next to the grave of my friend Leonard Matlovich in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., that I organized. The event included the dedication of a Veterans Administration cenotaph in memory of Leonard’s mentor, Kay’s longtime friend and comrade-in-arms, WWII veteran and, as David put it, the father of the modern gay rights movement Frank Kameny. Frank and I became friends after I moved to D.C. in 1977 and became one of Leonard’s roommates. She wanted to thank me for organizing the celebration, and we immediately bonded over our mutual love of the history of the fight for gay rights.

She was impressed by how much I knew of the contributions to the movement by her and her late partner of 46 years, Barbara Gittings, including that she had played a much larger role than Barbara’s more public image led people to believe. And that I am so afraid of something happening to my copy of her very rare 1972 paperback, The Gay Crusaders, that I take it with me whenever I travel. It was the first collection of interviews and biographies of the “men and women who are shaping America’s newest sexual revolution.”

Among the 15 profiled, partners Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin remain best known for cofounding America’s first lesbian group, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), in San Francisco in 1955. However, it was DOB’s magazine, The Ladder, that propelled the group’s positive message to lesbians around the world, particularly after Barbara and Kay took over producing the magazine in 1963. Kay wanted to change the name to A Lesbian Review but DOB’s board would only approve adding that as a subtitle so Barbara and Kay kept making the font larger.

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Rest well, Kay. Thank you for providing shoulders in which I and so many others could later stand upon to move closer to our goals! She is GLBT history!