Thursday, August 28, 2008
R.I.P. Del Martin
Del Martin, a pioneer in the LGBT rights movement, died yesterday. If you think the nomination of Barack Obama was a historic moment, and it certainly was, whatever you (or I) think of him, consider the life of Del Martin. A woman who started in the deeply closeted days of the The Well of Loneliness (a book I once took out of the deep archives in a Harvard library because it hadn't been in print for decades) and who ended (with her lifelong partner Phyllis Lyon) as the first legally married gay or lesbian couple in California. Truly a remarkable life and journey.
In her honor, a rendition of Malvina Reynold's "We Don't Need the Men":
