Tributes Paid to Legendary Lesbian Activist

Tributes have been pouring in for one of the most important lesbian activists of the twentieth century, Kay Lahusen, also known as Kay Tobin, who has passed on at the age of ninety one. She was a photojournalist and writer who used her talents to help document the emerging LGBTQ rights movements and also contributed to the success of many legal reforms and cultural changes. In 1961, Kay met Barbara Gittings, who was an activist with the Daughters of Bilitis, one of the earliest lesbian social and political groups in the United States. From 1962, Ms Tobin was appointed head of artwork for the group's groundbreaking magazine, The Ladder. As the sixties turned to the seventies, and a newer, more radical LGBTQ movement took over from the moderate organisations of an earlier era, Kay volunteered at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York, and contributed photoessays to a variety of newer, more activist centred gay magazines and newspapers. Kay helped found the Gay Activists Alliance in 1970 - a group which pursued militant but single issue politics related to LGBTQ freedom during the early seventies. In later life, Ms Tobin remained in touch with the gay movement, and helped publish the papers of Barbara Gittings, with whom she had shared life for forty six years. This week Kevin Jennings, head of  gay legal network Lambda Legal, said, "It is impossible to overstate Kay’s importance in the struggle for LGBT rights and dignity. That's the life of Kay Tobin, lesbian pioneer and journalist. She will be interred with Baraba Gittings inside a stone bench in Washington DC with the motto of the early movement - “Gay is Good”.