Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings was born in Vienna in 1932. Her parents were American, and she grew up in the United States. Searching libraries for an explanation of her attraction to women, she found accounts dominated by sickness and sin, an experience that helped direct her later activism.

In 1958 she founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis. She edited its magazine, “The Ladder”, from 1963 to 1966. Beginning in 1965 she joined public pickets for gay rights, including protests at the White House and the Annual Reminders outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Gittings and Frank Kameny challenged psychiatry’s treatment of homosexuality as a disorder. At a 1972 American Psychiatric Association panel, psychiatrist John Fryer spoke in disguise as “Dr. H. Anonymous” to protect his career. The association removed homosexuality as a diagnosis in 1973, following pressure from activists and debate within the profession.

Through the American Library Association, Gittings also worked for better access to gay and lesbian books. Her partner, photographer Kay Lahusen, documented the movement and shared much of this work. They were together for 46 years, until Gittings’s death in 2007.