by Evelyn Bailey
March is Women’s History Month. We begin with a couple of local Rochestarians, and move on to those who are recognized nationally for their contribution to the gay rights movement.
Dr. Karen Hagberg is a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front at the University of Rochester (UR), precursor to the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley (GAGV). Karen helped organize the first LGBT Dance at the UR and participated in the first public action for gay rights in Rochester.
Karen holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music and is one of only twelve Americans to have graduated from the Piano Department of the Talent Education Institute in Japan, where she studied for four years with Dr. Shinichi Suzuki and Dr. Haruko Kataoka, the founder of Suzuki Piano Basics. Dr. Hagberg is the author of many articles on piano pedagogy, and has been active as a consultant and presenter on the topic of stage presence for performing musicians, teachers, and students.
Dr. Rosanne M. Leipzig is also a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front of the UR, precursor to the GAGV. Today Rosanne is Vice-Chair for Education and the Gerald and May Ellen Ritter Professor of Geriatrics in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In 2008 she received the Dennis W. Jahnigen Memorial Award of the American Geriatrics Society for a nationally recognized, distinguished career in geriatrics education.
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon founded Dauhgters of Bilitis in San Francisco in 1955. They also wrote a book called Lesbian/Woman in 1972 that chronicled the early lesbian rights movement. Martin and Lyon were together for over 50 years until Martin died recently. They were the first couple married in San Francisco when the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
Elaine Noble is an American former politician. She served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for two terms starting in January 1975. She was the first openly lesbian or gay candidate elected to a state legislature. She served two terms as representative for the Fenway-Kenmore/Back Bay neighborhoods of Boston.
Jean O'Leary (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005), was an American gay and lesbian rights activist, politician, and former nun. In 1972, she left the male-dominated GAA and founded Lesbian Feminist Liberation, one of the first lesbian activist groups in the women's movement. Two years later, she joined the National Gay Task Force, negotiating gender parity in its executive with director Bruce Voeller and joining as co-executive director. In 1977 she organized the first meeting of gay rights activists in the White House, and was the first openly gay person appointed to a presidential commission, the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, by Jimmy Carter.
Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) was a prominent American gay rights activist. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, forming the first gay caucus in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality that associated it with crime and mental illness.
Margaret Cammermeyer (born March 24, 1942) is a former colonel in the Washington National Guard and a gay rights activist. Born in Oslo, Norway, she became a United States citizen in 1960. In 1961 she joined the Army Student Nurse Program. She received a B.S. in Nursing in 1963 from the University of Maryland. In 1989, in response to a question during a routine security clearance interview, she disclosed that she is a lesbian. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was not yet in effect at the time, and the National Guard began military discharge proceedings against her.
On June 11, 1992, she was honorably discharged from the military. Cammermeyer filed a lawsuit against the decision in civil court. In June 1994, Judge Thomas Zilly of the federal district court in Seattle ruled her discharge, and the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military, unconstitutional. She returned to the National Guard and served as one of the few officially accepted openly gay or lesbian people in the military until her retirement in 1997.