Phyllis Lyon (right) and her wife, Del Martin, at their first wedding in 2004.
Phyllis Lyon, the pioneering activist who cofounded the first lesbian rights organization in the United States with her partner and future wife, Del Martin, passed away on April 9, 2020, at the age of 95, according to the Bay Area Reporter.
Born on November 10, 1924 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Lyon was raised in Sacramento, California. After graduating from U.C. Berkeley in 1946 with a degree in journalism, she worked as a reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record before moving to Seattle to join the editorial staff of two newspapers.
She met the love of her life, Del Martin, in Seattle in 1952, and the two relocated the following year to San Francisco. They moved to a flat on the 600 block of Castro Street in 1953, a decade before the first gay bar opened in the Castro.
Among their many accomplishments:
- They cofounded the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian social and political organization in the United States, in 1955.
- As part of the DOB, they began publishing The Ladder, the first lesbian publication in the U.S.
- They were the first open lesbians to join the National Organization for Women.
- They helped cofound the Council on Religion and the Homosexual in 1964 to encourage churches to change their policies on homosexuality.
- They helped cofound the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, the first LGBTQ Democratic organization in the country, in 1971.
- On February 12, 2004, they became the first couple married by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. Their marriage was later voided by the California Supreme Court.
- When marriage equality was finally reinstated in California in 2008, they again became the first same-sex couple in the state to marry, just weeks before Del Martin passed away. (Though voters passed a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages a few months later, the California Supreme Court ruled that existing marriages would remain in effect, and the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned all same-sex marriage bans.)
The Bay Area Reporter has a lovely tribute to this legendary activist and pioneer.
