National Gay Task Force Is Formed

The National Gay Task Force was the first major national organization dedicated to lesbian and gay civil rights. In addition to successfully pressuring the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove “homosexuality” from its list of mental disorders, the group’s work includes helping to repeal antisodomy laws, and, reflecting its mission to be politically active at the grassroots level, it established the first national gay crisis hotline and conducted the first national survey of homophobic violence.

Date 1973

Also known as: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Locale New York, New York

Key Figures

• Bruce Voeller (1934-1994), NGTF cofounder and first director
• Virginia Apuzzo (b. 1941), former NGTF director
• Jeffrey Levi first NGTF lobbyist and former director
• Urvashi Vaid (b. 1958), former NGLTF director
• Kerry Lobel former NGLTF director
• Matt Foreman NGLTF director beginning in 2003

Summary of Event

The National Gay Task Force (NGTF) was the first national gay and lesbian civil rights advocacy organization. NGTF was founded in 1973 by a group of activists including former New York City health commissioner Howard Brown, Ron Gold, Nath Rockhill, and Bruce Voeller, the latter three of whom were involved in the Gay Activists Alliance.

NGTF has played an important role in many of the GLBT movement’s key struggles. In its first year, the organization successfully pressured the American Psychiatric Association to stop classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder and lobbied the American Bar Association to support the repeal of sodomy laws. In 1975, the NGTF pressured the federal government to rescind its ban on employment of gays and lesbians and worked with Representative Bella Abzug (Democrat, New York) to introduce the first national gay rights legislation. The following year, NGTF worked to influence the policies of the Democratic Party, and in 1977, codirectors Voeller and Jean O’Leary were among the first GLBT leaders to discuss gay issues at the White House. The NGTF also supported local efforts, including the unsuccessful effort to defeat Dade County, Florida’s, antigay ordinance led by singer and entertainer Anita Bryant.

After a period of decline in the late 1970’s, NGTF, under director Virginia Apuzzo, turned its attention to antigay violence and then, in the early 1980’s, to AIDS. In 1982, the organization initiated its Anti-Violence Project and went on to establish the first national gay crisis hotline and to conduct the first national survey of homophobic violence. In 1983, NGTF helped start two national advocacy coalitions, AIDS Action and National Organizations Responding to AIDS, and in 1984 it secured the first federal funding for community-based AIDS groups. At the same time, the NGTF supported more militant activism, such as the 1988 “die-in” staged by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) outside the Food and Drug Administration building.

In keeping with the organization’s increasing focus on federal-level work, in 1985 NGTF moved its headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C. That same year, emphasizing its commitment to lesbian issues, the group changed its name to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). Under Jeffrey Levi’s direction, the NGLTF renewed its efforts to repeal state sodomy laws following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bowers v. Hardwick ruling (1986). NGLTF helped organize the October, 1987, March on Washington, and members of its staff were among the seven hundred GLBT leaders arrested in a massive act of civil disobedience outside the Supreme Court. The NGLTF launched its Military Freedom Project in 1988, followed by the Families Project in 1989.

In the early 1990’s, under director Urvashi Vaid, the NGLTF increasingly devoted itself to grassroots organizing—a shift that began in 1988 with the first annual Creating Change Conference, dedicated to training new movement leaders and promoting networking among activists. In 1992, NGLTF launched its Fight the Right Project, and staff members traveled widely to support local GLBT groups fighting antigay state and municipal legislation and ballot initiatives.

In the mid-1990’s, NGLTF went through a period of internal struggle. Three directors (Torie Osborn, Peri Rude Radecic, and Melinda Paras) came and went in quick succession, and the organization’s staff and budget decreased by half. Nevertheless, in 1995, NGLTF launched its Policy Institute, envisioned as a think tank for the GLBT movement.

NGLTF experienced a resurgence in the latter half of the decade. Under the direction of Kerry Lobel, the organization rekindled its emphasis on local organizing, spearheading in March of 1999 Equality Begins at Home, a series of 350 coordinated public forums, demonstrations, and lobbying events in all fifty states. True to her politics of inclusion, Lobel oversaw the adoption of a new vision statement in 1997 that explicitly included bisexuals and transgender people.

In 2000, NGLTF appointed a controversial new director, Elizabeth Toledo, who had just divorced her husband and come out of the closet the year before. Toledo was succeeded in 2001 by Lorri Jean, who stabilized the organization’s finances and, according to some, took the NGLTF in a more conservative direction. In April, 2003, NGLTF appointed Matt Foreman as its director, and Jean returned in 2003 to Los Angeles as the executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.

Significance

Along with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), NGLTF remains one of the two primary national GLBT advocacy organizations. While HRC emphasizes Washington, D.C., politics and national legislation, NGLTF focuses on grassroots activism and coalition building. This emphasis has put NGLTF at the center of various controversies concerning the nature of the GLBT movement as a whole, controversies such as the relative value of moderate “insider” politics versus radical “outsider” activism. A recurring debate revolves around whether the GLBT movement should focus on gay-specific identity politics or on broader, multi-issue social justice activism. The latest round of the debate took place in the fall of 2002, as left-leaning progressives successfully pressured NGLTF to take a stance against the then-impending invasion of Iraq, while more conservative individuals urged the organization to stick to GLBT issues. NGLTF also supports racial and economic justice, reproductive freedom, and abolition of the death penalty.

Over the years, NGLTF has periodically shifted its focus back and forth from national advocacy to local grassroots organizing—and from “insider” to “outsider” politics—and at times has tried with varying degrees of success to maintain a balance between the two. NGLTF now is widely regarded as the national organization representing the progressive wing of the GLBT movement. The NGLTF’s current vision statement, adopted in 1997, unequivocally positions the organization as “part of a broader social justice movement for freedom, justice and equality.”

Bibliography

D’Emilio, John. “Organizational Tales: Interpreting the NGLTF Story.” In The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002.

D’Emilio, John, William Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, eds. Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Task Force History.” http://www.thetaskforce.org/aboutus/history.cfm.

Vaid, Urvashi. Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.