The predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Churches will present its biennial Human Rights Award to pioneer gay-rights activist
Barbara Gittings at its World Jubilee and General Conference in Dallas, July 6.
An activist for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights for more than 40 years, Gittings returns to Dallas to receive her
award, the site where she picketed and set up an historic 'Hug-A-Homosexual' booth run by the Task Force on Gay Liberation in
1971.
Gittings has been an activist since 1958, a time when she says 'there were scarcely 200 of us in the whole United States. It was
like a club—we all knew each other.' In 1958 she established the first East Coast Chapter of the first known lesbian organization in
the United States, The Daughters of Bilitis, founded in 1955 in San Francisco.
She marched in the first gay-rights picket lines in the mid-'60s at the White House and The Pentagon, and Independence Hall in
Philadelphia.
'It was risky and we were scared,' she said. 'Picketing was not a popular tactic at the time, and our cause seemed outlandish
even to most gay people.' She was a charter member of the Boards of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
(founded 1973) and the Gay Rights National Lobby (founded 1976).
More than 1,200 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Christians are expected to gather in Dallas for the week-long
conference sponsored by Metropolitan Community Churches.
See www.MCCchurch.org .