As we tweeted yesterday (see Twitter Updates list on the right), lesbian icon Del Martin died yesterday in San Francisco at the age of 87. Del and her wife Phyllis Lyon founded the pioneering lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis in the 1950s, the organization that published the nation’s first lesbian magazine, The Ladder.
Del and Phyllis have been icons in our community for decades and they have been covered regularly in LGBT media for years. The pair was the first LGBT couple to be married by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004 and were married again this year after the California Supreme Court ruling (in the process becoming the first same-sex couple legally wed in the state of California). Their weddings received mainstream coverage, opening up a window into the history of our community through the eyes of a committed couple together for more than 50 years. But even with that coverage, many people likely are not familiar with Del and Phyllis’ lives. That might change with the broad-based coverage of Del’s death. I have been struck by the wide variety of “mainstream” online outlets (including cnn.com) that reported on Del’s death with fairly substantive background about her life and contributions to history.
As we’ve blogged before, understanding our history is important to understanding who we are and what matters to our lives. And that, in turn, is necessary to understanding how to reach us. I hope that media coverage of Del’s death – along with the wonderful, and deserved, eulogies from LGBT organizations across the country – will contribute to an even greater understanding of the realities of our lives.
To learn more about Del and Phyllis, check out the October broadcast of the public television program “In the Life” or visit the or NCLR Web site.
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