National LGBTQ Wall of Honor

In February 2019, the National LGBTQ Task Force, in conjunction with the Imperial Court System, announced their plans for the Wall of Honor.[8] The monument committee accepted nominations to honor “the lives of LGBTQ trailblazers, pioneers and s/heroes who have passed,” and have had a positive impact on LGBTQ civil rights.[5]

The nominations are administered by a Board of Governors, consisting of eighteen LGBTQ leaders including transgender activist Marsha Botzer,[9] Black LGBTQ activist Mandy Carter, LGBTQ youth advocate Wilson Cruz, LGBTQ human rights activist Stuart Milk, and founder of the Metropolitan Community Church Troy Perry.[5]

The first fifty honorees were announced in June 2019:[4][lower-alpha 1][10] In June 2020, the first additional five were announced: Lorena Borjas, Larry Kramer, Phyllis Lyon, Sean Sasser, and Aimee Stephens.[11]

L

Audre Lorde (left) with writers Meridel Le Sueur (middle) and Adrienne Rich (right) at a writing workshop in Austin, Texas, 1980

• Crystal LaBeija was a Black gay Manhattan drag queen who founded the House of LaBeija in 1977 to counter systemic racism in the drag pageant system. The house is known internationally and is often credited as having started "house" ball culture for drag queen families countering heteronormativity.
• Christopher Lee was a Chinese and Polish-American transgender activist, and award-winning filmmaker who co-founded Tranny Fest in 1997, later renamed the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, the first transgender film and arts festival in the world. In 2002 he became the first openly trans man grand marshal of San Francisco Pride. His death certificate misgendering him led to the 2014 California “Respect After Death Act”.
• Audre Lorde was a lesbian feminist writer, librarian, and civil rights activist whose work was influential in the formation of womanism and the early versions of identity politics. As a poet, she is known for both technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustice. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, and the exploration of black female identity.
• Phyllis Lyon, was a lesbian feminist and LGBTQ rights activist who, along with her wife Del Martin founded the Daughters of Bilitis (D.O.B.) in 1955. D.O.B. was the first social and political organization for lesbians in the U.S. and the couple acted as president and editor of the organization's magazine, The Ladder. The couple joined the National Organization for Women (NOW) together, the first openly lesbian couple to do so. They were the first couple married in the historic San Francisco 2004 same-sex weddings. As these weddings were ruled legally invalid, they were the first couple married again in June 2008, after the California Supreme Court's decision In re Marriage Cases. She was added to the wall in 2020.[11]

R

Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at a news briefing in Washington, D.C., on August 27, 1963

• Chuck Renslow was an openly gay photographer, activist and businessperson, known for pioneering modern homoerotic photography, and establishing landmarks of gay male culture, including significant contributions to the leather subculture. His accomplishments included opening the Gold Coast bar in 1958. It was the world's first gay leather bar, and hosted a leather contest that grew into the International Mr. Leather competition. His lover of 43 years was Dom Orejudos, aka the artist "Etienne" and “Stephen”. Renslow also formed the Leather Archives and Museum with Tony DeBlase in Chicago in 1991.[23][24]
• Adrienne Rich was a lesbian feminist poet and essayist, called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse." Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum"; a female continuum of solidarity and creativity which has impacted and filled women's lives. She famously declined the National Medal of Arts, protesting then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s attempt to end the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Sylvia Rivera variously self-identified as a gay transvestite, drag queen, and in gender fluid terms. Active in the fight for gay liberation, Rivera was among the earliest transgender rights activists, pushing for inclusion of protections for trans people in legislation at a time when other gay activists said these provisions would doom gay rights bills to failure. Rivera brought a background in Latina civil rights and anti-war activism to groups like the Gay Liberation Front NYC, of which she was a member of the drag queen caucus. Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young gay kids, street kids, drag queens, and trans women.
• Craig Rodwell was a gay activist known for founding the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors (Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in November 1967), and as the prime mover for the creation of New York City Pride. Rodwell is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the homophile movement of the early 1960s.
• Eric Rofes was a gay activist, educator, and author. He was a director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in the 1980s. In 1989, he became executive director of the Shanti Project, a nonprofit AIDS service organization. He was a professor of Education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, and served on the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He wrote or edited twelve books. One of his last projects was co-creating "Gay Men's Health Leadership Academies" to combat what he saw as a "pathology-focused understanding of gay men" in safe-sex education.
• Vito Russo was a gay LGBT activist, film historian and author best known for The Celluloid Closet (1981, revised edition 1987), described in The New York Times as "an essential reference book" on homosexuality in the US film industry.[25] It was later turned into a documentary film. In 1985 he co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a watchdog organization that strives to end anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and advocates for LGBTQ inclusion in popular media.
• Bayard Rustin was a gay, African-American leader, who played a key role in the movements for civil rights in the 1940s through the 1980s. He co-organized the 1941 March on Washington Movement to end racial discrimination in housing and employment. He later organized Freedom Rides in the American south and was instrumental in organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr., teaching King about nonviolent direct action. Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was a turning point in the movement for civil and economic rights for Black Americans, and an inspiration to those working for social justice, worldwide. Due to the homophobia directed at him, he usually had to organize behind the scenes, uplifting civil-rights leaders who were not openly gay. In the 1980s, he was able to become a more public advocate on behalf of gay causes. In November 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Rustin's partner, Walter Naegle, accepted on his behalf.

W

Edith "Edie" Windsor in the D.C. Pride Parade

• Patricia Nell Warren (also known by her pen name, Patricia Kilina) was a lesbian novelist, poet, editor, and journalist. Her second novel, The Front Runner (1974), was the first work of contemporary gay fiction to make the New York Times Best Seller list. Her third novel, The Fancy Dancer (1976) was the first bestseller to both portray a gay priest and to explore gay life in a small town.
• Janet Weinberg was a lesbian advocate for people with disabilities, and a fund-raiser and executive for social service organizations including Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), Educational Alliance, and the [[Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center in New York.[29] In the 1980s, an illness disabled her to the point that she required a wheelchair.[30]
• Edith "Edie" Windsor was a lesbian LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM. She was the lead plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor (2013). The case overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which was a major victory in the struggle for same-sex marriage in the U.S. The decision led federal agencies in the Obama Administration to extend rights, benefits, and privileges to same-sex married couples.
• Soni Wolf was a self-described dyke, motorcycle enthusiast, former U.S. Air Force Vietnam-era veteran, and “tenacious” queer activist.[31] She co-founded the Dykes on Bikes (DOB) at the 1976 San Francisco Pride parade and rode with them each year until her death in 2018.[31] The group was a highly visible symbol of empowerment and LGBT pride.[31] DOB did “philanthropic work for LGBT causes and organizations around the world”.[31] Wolf continued to nurture DOB chapters worldwide and fought for their right to use the reclaimed term dyke;[31] the DOB won a lawsuit against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office so they could trademark their name.[32]

• Shilts, Randy. The mayor of Castro Street : the life & times of Harvey Milk (First ed.). New York. ISBN 0312523300. OCLC 7948538.

• National LGBTQ Wall of Honor unveiled at historic Stonewall Inn