IGF CultureWatch

An important but unacknowledged figure in gay rights just passed from the scene.  In 1976, Adele Starr founded the LA chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.  Five years later, she became PFLAG’s first national president.  Karen Ocamb has a nice overview of Adele’s public life, summed up in this wonderful quote:  “We did it out of love and anger and a sense of injustice, and because we had to tell the world the truth about our children.”

Lesbians and gay men weren’t the only ones who needed to learn to come out of the closet; so did our parents and families, who were often even more embarrassed about homosexuality than we were.  But honesty and unconditional parental love were part of Adele’s nature, and she had an unparalleled ability to talk to other parents who felt their worlds had been turned upside-down.

It is ultimately arithmetic that secures her place in our history books.  We are not just a minority, we are an extremely small minority, no matter how you slice and dice the numbers.  It took us generations to begin to assert our own self-respect, but that is not nearly enough to change the history of misunderstanding that nearly all cultures have built up around homosexuality.  We also needed the support of our families and friends.

That was the bulk of the task we faced back in the post-Stonewall 70s, and Adele Starr stepped up to the plate, not only for her son, Phillip, but for all of us.  At LA’s gay rights parades of the time, PFLAG was always greeted with the biggest and most heartfelt cheers.  Their presence with us was simply joyous.  The gay rights history books will not be complete without a full accounting of PFLAG.

I know how inspiring Adele was to me in LA as we were working on the early ordinance on domestic partnership in the mid-80s, but I am sure there were people like here in cities across the nation.  Parents like her were as much the pioneers in their world as we were in ours, and maybe a little bit more so.  We had our own mountains of prejudice to fight against, but try to imagine what it must take for a parent to reject their own child.  That was what PFLAG was fighting.

Adele Starr isn’t with us any more, but her work isn’t anywhere near done.  There are still parents who find their own sons and daughters repugnant because of the child’s sexual orientation.  Adele and PFLAG showed by example that love can dominate that unnatural and destructive set of feelings.  We shouldn’t, for a second, forget how important that is to us.