Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings (1932–2007) was an American gay rights activist who organized early homophile groups and campaigns for public acceptance, including efforts to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders.

Frank Kameny: An American astronomer and gay rights activist who challenged federal discrimination and helped organize the Mattachine Society of Washington. Gittings and Kameny worked together on national campaigns, including the 1970 APA protest.
Annual Reminder: A series of annual Philadelphia demonstrations for gay rights held from 1965 through 1969. Gittings helped organize these restrained public protests, among the earliest recurring demonstrations for gay rights.
Homosexuality and the DSM: The history of homosexuality’s classification and removal from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Gittings’s organizing contributed to pressure surrounding the APA’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality as a disorder.
Homophile movement: A mid-twentieth-century movement that organized gay people around social acceptance, rights, and community institutions. Gittings’s first campaigns belonged to this movement, which favored public respectability and gradual change.
Kay Lahusen: An American photographer and activist whose images documented the early gay rights movement. Lahusen was Gittings’s partner and photographed activists and demonstrations she helped organize.
1970 APA protest: A gay liberation protest at the American Psychiatric Association’s 1970 convention in San Francisco. Gittings joined activists who confronted psychiatrists and demanded an end to homosexuality’s classification as illness.
American Psychiatric Association: The professional organization representing psychiatrists in the United States and publishing psychiatric diagnostic standards. Its convention and diagnostic policy became targets of the activism Gittings helped coordinate.
Mattachine Society: An early American gay rights organization founded in Los Angeles in 1950. Gittings joined its New York chapter and participated in the organizing networks that shaped her activism.
Evelyn Hooker: An American psychologist whose research found no inherent psychological pathology in gay men. Her research supplied influential evidence for the campaign against classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Daughters of Bilitis: A lesbian organization founded in San Francisco in 1955 that built social networks and advocated for acceptance. Gittings led its New York chapter and edited its magazine during the organization’s early years.

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