A mom to gays everywhere

We had a January thaw around here yesterday and today. These are common enough so I can't tell how much out of the ordinary this one was, if at all. Today it was warm and dry enough (55 degrees) that I was on my bicycle for 80 minutes this afternoon. Rain tonight, perhaps snow tomorrow with a high of 35.

On to today's story.

Jeanne Manford died last Tuesday at the age of 92. I heard a bit about it then, but it is only now that I'm able to share a couple tributes to her.

Who is Jeanne Manford? I confess that until this week I didn't know anything about her. Turns out she is a key part of our movement towards acceptance.

Back in 1972 her gay son Morty had already been involved in several protests and had been arrested. When that year's Pride Parade (which had only started a couple years before) Jeanne marched with her son, just the two of them. She carried a sign she made, "Parents of gays unite in support for our children." It's what mothers do. The reaction astonished her. Her phone was soon constantly ringing with requests she talk to other parents of gay kids. In 1973 she founded PFLAG: Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. It now has 350 chapters nationwide and 200K members.

Dan Savage put it this way:

What Jeanne Manford did was she put it in people's heads that gay and lesbian people had parents, that we were somebody's children, and that was the first real big step in the movement toward full acceptance of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.

NPR's All Things Considered had a remembrance on today's show, 5 1/2 minutes long. Rachel Maddow did a wonderful 9 minutes, which featured lots of parents of gays at Pride Parades, an interview of Jeanne from 1978, and Prez. Obama talking about her at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in 2009.

Thank you, sweet lady.