Women’s Early Role in Gay Movement

Re “Sharing the Political Platform” (Nov. 15): Women have figured conspicuously and in great numbers in the homosexual movement practically since its inception.

To name a few: Ann Carll Reid and Eve Elloree edited ONE magazine here in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. ONE was the precursor of the homosexual press in this country. In San Francisco, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon pioneered the lesbian rights movement (and indirectly the feminist spinoff) when they founded the Daughters of Bilitis in September, 1955.

Barbara Gittings, as head of the American Library Assn. Task Force on Gay Liberation, successfully maneuvered homosexual material into libraries at a time when most librarians were reluctant. And Barbara Grier has been hard at work preparing and publishing biographies of lesbians and bibliographies of homosexual literature since the middle 1950s--not to mention the numerous women authors and others who have played continuous, prominent roles throughout the movement.

True, none of these women could be considered professional homosexuals. They were not paid for their services. They didn’t expect to be.

URSULA ENTERS COPELY

Universal City