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Revered as the first openly gay photojournalist to be published in the US, Kay Lahusen, who has died aged 91, was one of the most prominent and influential gay rights activists campaigning in America throughout the second half of the 20th century. Coming of age during the 1950s, she recorded the early picketing in both Washington DC and Philadelphia as well as at the Pentagon and the White House. While her extensive output has been widely shared for decades, her images have also remained an invaluable guide to the characters, events and movements in LGBT+ history. She may not have looked like a revolutionary, but there can be little doubt that she was.

The only daughter of a Cincinnati car mechanic, Katherine Lahusen, universally known as Kay, spent much of her childhood in the care of her grandparents, George and Katherine. Brought up in a somewhat intellectual household with strict Christian Science values, she also relished life in the great outdoors – American football, horse riding, shooting, archery – and at summer camp she enjoyed success in the boxing ring. Her interest in photography began after she received a tiny box camera as a gift. Educated initially at a private girls’ school, she graduated from Withrow High School in 1948. She had intended to become an architect, but instead read English at Ohio State University.

It was there that she began her first serious relationship, which lasted for six years. When her partner left her to get married, a devastated Lahusen then moved to Boston, becoming a reference librarian for The Christian Science Monitor. While looking to explore her sexuality, she came across a book, Voyage from Lesbos, written by Robert Robertiello, in which he claimed to have “cured” three lesbians. Lahusen sought him out and told him that she did not want to be cured but to find more like-minded women. Robertiello guided her to the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian activist group in the US, who published The Ladder, America’s first nationally distributed lesbian magazine.

After attending the group’s meetings for a while, it was in 1961, at a DOB picnic in Rhode Island, that Lahusen first met Barbara Gittings. Born in Vienna in 1932, the daughter of a US foreign service diplomat, Gittings is regarded by many as the mother of the gay rights movement. The pair subsequently became a couple, remaining together for 46 years until Gittings’s death in 2007. Both became major contributors to The Ladder, Gittings as editor and Lahusen as art editor. They persistently sought to change the magazine’s title to A Lesbian Review, but the board of the DOB would only approve its use as a subtitle. In response, they kept making the font larger.

Although women in loving relationships with other women have been producing art for centuries, the transition to an increased openness was expedited by Lahusen’s numerous contributions to the magazine. She was instrumental in reducing its dependence on simple line drawings, replacing them with her own photographs. Initially shot from behind, in shadow, or behind sunglasses to protect people’s identities, all this changed after 1966, when Lilli Vincenz, a prominent lesbian activist, posed for the magazine’s cover with her face in full view. By the end of Lahusen’s time with the publication, there was a waiting list of women eager and willing to follow Vincenz’s example.

Lahusen contributed articles at The Ladder and elsewhere under the pseudonym Kay Tobin, which was a name she reportedly found in the phone book and thought would be far easier for people to remember than her own. Both her writings and photographs acted as a cornerstone of the New York-based Gay News Weekly. In 1972, alongside fellow activist Randy Wicker, Lahusen profiled many of the movement’s early leaders in a volume titled The Gay Crusaders. A further collaborative project, this time with Tracy Baim, was a book paying tribute to her former partner, Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer. Her work also featured in the recent book Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era.

From 1965 until 1969, Lahusen organised and led the “Annual Reminder” protests, held every year on 4 July in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Going on to co-found the Gay Activists Alliance in 1970, she is said to have pounded on the roof of the limousine of the former Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg, then running for New York governor, after he told her that he had more important things to do than talk about gay rights. He eventually released a more conciliatory statement. Two years later, she played a pivotal role in persuading the American Psychiatric Association to strike homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Latterly, having dealt in real estate, Lahusen moved into an assisted living facility, where she regularly hosted “the gay table” in the dining room. This she greatly missed when the Covid-19 pandemic forced everyone to eat alone in their rooms. Her ashes will now be interred alongside those of her former partner in a bench designed to express their love for one another. It bears the words, “Gay Is Good.”

Kay Lahusen, photographer and activist, born 5 January 1930, died 26 May 2021

It’s coming up on a week since video went viral of a Black woman being dragged and forcibly thrown out by security at a popular LGBTQ bar in Washington, D.C.

While the bar — Nellie’s Sports Bar in Shaw, within the district’s northwest section — has since issued an apology and fired the security team responsible, this is the latest instance of what locals claim is an anti-Black culture fostered at the bar.

Related: Trans woman viciously stabbed & beaten by mob at DC laundromat

Nellie’s was crowded on Saturday, June 12, during D.C.’s Pride festivities right as most COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in the city. A video was posted online from that night, which appeared to show a woman being dragged down a flight of stairs by a security guard at one of the most popular bars in the city.

Several people grab the security guard to pull him away from the woman, and she is later seen on the floor. Punches are thrown as the situation becomes chaotic, and someone appears to punch a Nellie’s employee who is not a security guard.

Towards the end, other security guards are pushing people out the door. Security continues to push until the woman and others are outside the front door.

An initial protest formed outside Nellie’s at around 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. Keisha Young, 22, identified herself as the woman in the video.

“It was an altercation in there,” she told NBC 4 Washington. “They were trying to get some other people out because somebody else brought a bottle in there. Somehow I got mixed up in an altercation because I look like somebody else and I got hit and dragged down the steps.”

She said that she was sore from the attack but has not suffered major injuries, but she wants the bar to be held accountable for the violence.

“I want them [Nellie’s] gone,” Young said.

Young is not alone in wanting Nellie’s to cease existing. Preston Mitchum, an attorney and activist that is co-chair for the board of the Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), also believes that it’s time for Nellie’s to be replaced in the community.

“Since 2017 — at least — there has been a consistent erasure of Black queer patrons at Nellie’s,” Mitchum said to LGBTQ Nation. “When violence ensues, and that is often, the staff at Nellie’s has treated Black patrons differently than non-Black patrons.”

Even when violence isn’t happening, Mitchum has found that “anti-Black racism is clearly prevalent” at Nellie’s. “I noticed through a lot of observations that when it was white gay men fighting each other or white men harassing Black men, the response is different,” he said.

He has tried for years to bring Nellie’s to the table over their issues with alleged discrimination and anti-Black treatment. He has personally spoken to the bar’s owner, Douglas Schantz, in the past.

“Doug does not want to be held accountable,” Mitchum said. “The only answer for them was to close.”

After news of this weekend’s incident came to him, Mitchum sprung into action to support protests. He wants to make sure there’s not “more band-aids covering an overarching wound” caused by Nellie’s treatment of patrons.

Makia Green, the co-conductor of Harriet’s Wildest Dream, an abolitionist “defense hub” has led the rapid response to the incident. They confirmed to LGBTQ Nation that Young has not gotten all of her belongings back nor has she received an apology.

“Her mother was connected to our organization asking for help because we do rapid response support when it comes to violence against Black girls and families,” they said, “so we connected with Keisha and just tried to make sure she went to the doctor that she was OK.”

Green and their co-conductor went to Nellie’s, asking for Young’s belongings and for Schantz to come and personally apologize to her. They only returned some of the personal items Young recounted losing during the saga, including “her glasses, her shoes, her phone.”

Then, regarding an apology from Schantz, “The manager called him and he declined,” they said.

That led Harriet’s Wildest Dream to organize protests and call for a complete boycott of Nellie’s. Tonight starting at 7:00 pm, they are leading a “block party” protest at Nellie’s along with speakers or support from the non-profit HIPS, the Palm Collective, DC Ward Mutual Aid, local DJs and street vendors.

“People that serve the community are co-sponsors,” they said. “It’s actually everyone’s responsibility on this Juneteenth and Pride season to support this boycott, support Keisha and support Harriet’s Wildest Dreams.”

Green and their fellow organizers are calling for four demands, the first one being that Nellie’s release the full surveillance tape. “Anyone who has questions about what happened should be calling for that,” Green said.

They’re also calling for Nellie’s to continue paying Black staff throughout the boycott, management and ownership to attend community-led listening sessions, and reparations for Young and “all of the survivors that are actually joining us tonight to speak out about the violence they’ve experienced at Nelly’s and the discrimination they’ve experienced.”

“We were incredibly upset and disturbed to see the unfortunate event that took place at Nellie’s last night,” the bar said first on Instagram. “We are undergoing a full investigation of the situation. At Nellie’s we foster an inclusive and safe environment, so events like this are completely unacceptable to us.”

Nellie’s announced they were closing for a week after the incident happened, apologizing “to all who witnessed the horrific events,” but not to Young. They noted that they are paying non-security staff their normal wages throughout, and later shared that they had fired the vendor they employed to provide security staff at the bar.

“The public didn’t really get dragged down the stairs. I did. The public doesn’t have bruises. I do,” Young said to DCist.

Mitchum stressed that simply closing and not answering to the community, that if they were truly apologetic, they would at least apologize to the patron they mistreated. “[Young] has not gotten her stuff and they have not apologized to her yet, to the actual person who they directly harmed,” Mitchum told LGBTQ Nation.

“This has happened repeatedly. People are missing that.” Mitchum said, “there are moments here that are clear that Nellie’s will not change.”

Nellie’s drew attention in 2018 when the bar flew the “thin blue line” flag. They said they intended to honor police officers who were killed in the line of duty and later apologized for flying the flag that is associated with police brutality against people of color.

“We messed up,” the bar said in a social media post at the time.

Mitchum said that itself was the last straw for many people. “It is not acceptable for queer bars to treat us like we’re the outsiders,” he stressed.

Green echoed Mitchum in calling out the bar’s persistent record of “mess ups.”

“It is a known thing to black and brown people that Nellie’s is not the safe place,” they said, noting the same “thin blue line” flag incident, but also their record of underpaying Black staff and DJs to play at the venue, the bar’s “clear discriminatory practices when deescalating conflict,” and, according to Green, their ban on hip-hop music “as a means to decrease the violence.

“Which, was obviously a microaggression — really, macro to many of us — connecting blackness and black culture to violence. So it’s very apparent that they, the owner and the environment in their lives is hostile and aggressive towards black people,” Green said.

Mitchum was clear that this was “an overarching issue about how queer bars treat Black patrons” in the Capital region. But, he notes, “A few years ago when we called out those other bars [such as Number Nine, JR’s Bar and Grill, and Pitchers], they listened… the same can’t be said for Nellie’s.”

Today, Mitchum doesn’t believe they can be redeemed. “Truth of the matter is, Nellie’s is not a queer-friendly bar,” he remarked.

Not only is he asking D.C. residents not to return to Nellie’s, he’s calling for a full boycott, using the hashtag #NoPride4Nellies online. He’s organizing a list of other businesses that will take a stand and declare their space actually safe for Black and LGBTQ people.

He also promised to contact city councilmembers if there is not action taken.

For Young, her attorney has announced that she intends to press for charges against Nellie’s and their security.

“She does want justice,” attorney Brandon Burrell said to WUSA9. “So we’re going to at least do our part to file the report and see what the prosecutors make of that.”

As of publication, Young’s GoFundMe has raised nearly $16,000 for her legal fees, therapy and medical recovery.

“She went through a really traumatic experience by being dragged down the stairs by someone twice her size,” Green told LGBTQ Nation, “and so I would say she is resilient and she’s handling it the best that she can.” Green noted after attending the initial protest the day after, she became understandably “overwhelmed and sick.” Green did not speak for Young, but gave the sense that despite the support, the incident is still weighing on her.

Focusing on Nellie’s, both Mitchum and Green want Nellie’s to close — for good.

“Absolutely shut down,” Mitchum said.

“Reparations means cessation,” Green made clear.

Mitchum will support those who “Continue to organize, continue to protest, use social media and hold spaces” advocating for Black and LGBTQ people. Mitchum is also calling for other people to support them as many claimed they would last year, especially other Black queer people.

“For Black queer men that will continue to go, and believe that their fun is more important,” he said, “all I can do is feel bad that you can see this and not be moved to act. I feel so bad that you don’t care about Black women that much.

“Black queer people must stand up for each other,” he stressed.

Green implored something similar. “What happens to one of us happens to all of us,” they said.

They added that Nellie’s can either “bend to our demands or rely on their relationship with the police” to survive the boycott. Green added, “I think the rest of the community nationwide will see truly where the people are and where Nelly stands.”

Nellie’s has not respond to LGBTQ Nation‘s request for comment, and this story will be updated if and when they do.

Welcome to So Mini Ways, Yahoo Life’s parenting series on the joys and challenges of childrearing.

Karamo Brown is best known for his role as the cultural guru on the Netflix hit Queer Eye, where he’s often diving into deep conversations, breaking down people’s walls and giving life advice that it seems only a true expert could provide. But the 40-year-old Texas-native says that despite the authority that he seems to have on television, he’s learned throughout his own personal experiences that being comfortable to admit what he doesn’t know is the best approach to his many roles — including that of parenthood.

“I think what people need to understand is that it’s OK to be honest and vulnerable about what you don’t know and be willing to learn and get support,” Brown tells Yahoo Life. “And I think that’s true for every part of your life.”

The father to two boys — Jason, who Brown discovered he shared with an ex-girlfriend when the boy was 10 years old, and Christian, Jason’s younger step-brother who Brown adopted in 2011 — explains that a lot of what he applies to parenting now comes from what he experienced in his own childhood. 

Here, the reality star, who recently partnered up with Aimovig for its Know Your Migraine campaign, talks about social media, his son coming out as pansexual, Tan France’s fatherhood journey and more. 

How would you explain your approach to parenting?

When it comes to my kids or when it comes to talking to other parents, I’m like, you’ve got to allow people to tell you what they’re experiencing. Create the stage for people to let people in and to allow them to, say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m feeling.’ And then the second thing is to believe them. 

Why is believing kids such an important message to share right now?

I talk to the youth all the time through my social media or on the streets and right now, the kids are going through so much. The pressures, anxiety, the feelings they must be experiencing because you’re grieving the loss of so much normalcy, you’re grieving all the things. I think about my junior and senior year and I think back about joy. I can’t imagine being told everything socially is being stripped away, now we’re gonna put on this mental health toll that’s going to come along with it. Then you’re gonna have to be self-sufficient before you even actually had an opportunity on top of now, maybe not support your family in a new way. There’s so much pressure that happened. 

Story continues

Your eldest son, Jason, came out as pansexual back in 2019. What did that moment teach you about communication and support as a parent?

When he called me and he told me, I thought he was joking. And then I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, you’re tripping right now.’ I hung up the phone and I called him back within a minute and a half and was like, ‘Hold on. I just realized that because of my ignorance, my lack of education, I didn’t understand what your experiences was as someone who was pan.’ I don’t even think I truly understood that word at that moment.

We always talk about the experience of being lesbian, gay and now recently that of trans people. But now we’re starting to open up by talking more about the bi experience, the pan experience. And at that time, I didn’t know. And I think what people need to understand is that it’s OK to be honest and vulnerable about what you don’t know and be willing to learn and get support. And I think that’s true for every part of your life. Go educate yourself, go learn more, see how you can help people. 

And I think that what I’ve learned as a parent is that what I’m going to always be truthful about is that no one gave me a manual. And even if they did, it was going to change all the time. But what I can do is continuously learn.

Do you feel that there’s a specific pressure placed on you as a single gay father raising two boys?

I think the first thing I would say is that any expectations that are put on me as a man are literally nothing compared to what I see when I look at the expectations or pressures that are put on all of my girlfriends. I always sit back and I’m always like, ‘I bow down.’ This pressure, I can handle and let me support you. Because real talk, yes, being a single parent and yes, the expectations of being in the public eye are real. But the thing for me is that I’m human. 

I’m sure your sons have learned so much from you. What’s something you’ve learned from them?

Never stop dreaming. I think as adults we get to a place in our career and we think, ‘OK, this is it.’ I remember when I was 20, I didn’t mind quitting a job and going to the next one. I just did not care. It was like, ‘Oh, I’m not happy here. I’m going to the next one.’ And it wasn’t that I was irresponsible. I just didn’t settle and I allowed myself to dream. And then as we get older, we have more responsibilities. We start to say, I guess I got to deal with it because I have these bills, I guess I got to deal with this because I’ve already put in this amount of time. 

With my kids, I look at things differently now where I’m like, it doesn’t matter how much time I’ve put in. Is it fulfilling me? Am I happy? Am I dreaming bigger? Am I thinking bigger for my life? Because I look at kids and they dream. They dream every night of what they could be. They’re a fireman one day and then an astronaut the next day. And why can’t I allow myself to dream? It’s part of the reason why I’ve been doing a lot of the things I want to do because I’m just allowing myself to constantly dream and not be stagnant.

Your co-star Tan France announced in April that he and his husband are expecting a baby via surrogacy. Have you given him any parenting advice?

I haven’t given Tan any advice yet because I’m a big believer that even though professionally we give advice, I believe someone needs to ask me for advice. Sometimes you can’t be unsolicited. So, we’ve talked many times about Tan’s baby and all the things he’s going through, which is such an amazing process of learning what it is for surrogacy because even though my kids are older, I do want more kids. And now that I’m single, I’m thinking maybe I’ll have one by myself.

I think the advice that I would give Tan would be comparison is the thief of joy. I say this all the time. And I say this really to parents because you end up seeing what other parents are doing or how their child behaves and you start saying, ‘well, what am I doing wrong?’ You start to compare yourself as a parent, you start to compare your children and then you stop focusing on how beautiful the experience and growth of your own family is. And so don’t look at what anyone else is doing, whatever anyone else has, don’t look at how their kid is acting or what programs their kids do or what school their kids get into and yours don’t. Focus on what your child is doing and focus on what you are doing as the parent and know it’s enough and just be comfortable in that because it’s very easy, especially in our world we get caught up. And that would be the advice that I would give him.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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