Phyllis Lyon and Dorothy “Del” Martin spent decades advancing civil rights and equality as leaders and pioneers of the LGBTQ+ and women’s rights movements.
Lyon and Martin met in Seattle and fell in love while working together as journalists in the early 1950s. They moved to San Francisco in 1953, where they launched the country’s first nationwide lesbian organization, Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), from their home in 1955. The next year they founded The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication, editing it from their kitchen table until 1962.
In the early 1960s, the couple became leaders in the fight to decriminalize homosexuality. With supporters in the religious community, they formed the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Lyon founded the National Sex and Drug Forum with Glide Urban Center’s pastor and was one of the founding faculty members of The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.
When Lyon and Martin joined the National Organization for Women (NOW), they insisted on the couple’s rate, then only offered to heterosexuals. Throughout their involvement with NOW, they fought for lesbian recognition, and Martin became the first out lesbian woman elected to NOW’s board of directors. In the 1970s, they participated in the campaign that led the American Psychiatric Association to declare that homosexuality was not a mental illness. Continue reading from California Museum
Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon (California Museum)
The Incredible Story of Del and Phyllis (Smithsonian)
Lesbian Pioneers Pave the Way for LGBTQ+ Rights Years Before Stonewall Riots (ABC)
LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archives: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (Making Gay History Podcast)
Primary Source Set: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (GLBT Historical Society)
The Daughters of Bilitis (Library of Congress)
2004: Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon tie the knot at San Francisco Civil Ceremony (NBC)
