The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) was founded in New York City in 1973 as the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) and quickly became a central force in lesbian and gay movement politics. At a time with vibrant grassroots gay liberation and lesbian feminist activism, the Task Force sought to introduce a vehicle for organizing at the national level. Founding members included Howard Brown, Martin Duberman, Barbara Gittings, Ron Gold, Franklin Kameny, Nathalie Rockhill, and Bruce Voeller. In 1977, the Task Force arranged with President Jimmy Carter's assistant Midge Costanza for an historic first White House meeting with representatives of several gay organizations. From its beginnings, the Task Force defined as its primary goal the creation of a society in which lesbians and gay men could live openly and free from violence, bigotry, and discrimination. Over the last quarter century, NGLTF has lobbied, organized, educated, and demonstrated for full gay and lesbian civil rights and equality, taking on anti-gay and anti-lesbian forces among medical specialists, employers, the military, and the media. The areas in which the NGLTF concentrated its wide-ranging efforts included the following:
In the early 1970s, the NGLTF staffed educational booths at American Psychiatric Association conventions and took an active role in lobbying the APA to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 1978, it urged the U.S. Public Health Service to stop certifying gay immigrants as "psychopathic personalities." Ron Gold played a key role.
In an effort led by board member Frank Kameny to end employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men, the NGTF successfully pushed in 1975 for the U.S. Civil Service Commission to rule that gay people can serve as federal employees. In the late seventies, NGTF staff conducted a survey of corporate hiring policies (called Project Open Employment) to determine whether U.S. employers explicitly barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This survey was followed a few years later by another of municipal police departments. These efforts were complemented by a 1985 victory in the U.S. Supreme Court decision of NGTF v. Oklahoma, which overturned a law prohibiting gay teachers from discussing gay rights. In 1988, the NGLTF started the Military Freedom Project to end discrimination against lesbian and gay male members of the U.S. Armed Forces, and it protested the 1993 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
In the 1970s, the NGTF also began to monitor local, state, and federal battles over gay and lesbian civil rights, developing large clippings files that focused on key issues and individuals. These files include clippings on such adversaries as Anita Bryant, who led the campaign against a pro-gay and lesbian rights bill in Dade County, Florida, as well as then-California governor Ronald Reagan, who had proposed an anti-gay amendment to California's state constitution. These records further recount, among other matters, the Task Force's introduction in 1975 of the first federal lesbian and gay civil rights bill, its 1981 campaign to defeat the anti-gay Family Protection Act, its efforts starting in 1986 with the formation of the Privacy Project to repeal anti-gay sodomy laws, and its support in 1992 of local opposition to anti-gay referenda in Oregon and Colorado.
NGTF women played a critical role in winning support from the mainstream women's movement for lesbian and gay rights. They campaigned successfully for a lesbian rights resolution at the 1975 national convention of the National Organization for Women. In 1977, co-Executive Director Jean O'Leary and women board members obtained endorsement of lesbian and gay rights from the U.S.-sponsored conference for International Women's Year in Houston, Texas. O'Leary was the only openly lesbian delegate on Carter's International Women's Year Commission. At the conference, 130 openly lesbian delegates attended. In 1993, NGLTF enlarged its work on lesbian concerns by coordinating the first congressional briefing on lesbian health issues.
Recognizing the benign neglect, if not outright threat to gays and lesbians from how they were represented in the arts, the NGTF closely monitored the images of gay men and lesbians within the world of television, stage, and screen. This resulted in the creation of the Gay Media Task Force, which took on as one of its primary missions the lobbying of major television networks to improve their coverage of lesbian and gay issues. In the world of the arts, the Task Force actively opposed the anti-gay restrictions on grants from National Endowment for the Arts proposed in 1990.
The Task Force has concentrated on preventing and bringing attention to anti-gay violence over the years. In 1982, it began its Anti-Violence Project, directed by Kevin Thomas Berrill from the project's beginnings until 1994. In its most focused data-gathering effort to date, the NGLTF set up a telephone crisis line designed to provide assistance to people who had been harassed or assaulted, as well as lay the groundwork for a comprehensive study of violence against lesbians and gay men. NGLTF's Anti-Violence Project produced reports that were regularly cited as authoritative on the subject of homophobic violence. In 1987, the Task Force helped secure passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, the first federal law to address sexual orientation, which was signed into law in 1990.
The onset of the AIDS epidemic led to an unforeseen array of political struggles in the early and mid-1980s. NGTF responded early in the developing crisis, pushing for a statement on national blood policy in 1983 and obtaining the first federal funding for community-based AIDS education in 1984. NGTF was instrumental in negotiating FDA approval of the first HTLV-III antibody test. It also ensured that the test was to be licensed only to professional physicians and that it was always to be accompanied by an explanation of the limits of its accuracy and usefulness. This push for quality medical care also brought the benefit of doctor-patient privilege, which proved an enormous boon in light of the sudden explosion in AIDS-related discrimination. NGLTF's files on AIDS-related discrimination -- home evictions, school expulsions, and job terminations -- grew with alarming speed in the early years of the epidemic. This wave of discrimination was met by an uncoordinated and seemingly reluctant response to the epidemic at the federal level. In 1985, NGLTF executive director Virginia Apuzzo would testify before a U.S. Congressional hearing on the abysmal failure of the federal response to AIDS. In 1991, NGLTF staff briefed the Congressional Black Caucus on the issue of AIDS and people of color.
Although the politics of the epidemic absorbed uncounted days and hours of energy at NGTF, the organization continued to grow and change. In 1985, NGTF officially became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a move that marked both the specificity of lesbian life and politics and the coalition between lesbians and gay men. Although the name change cost NGLTF some gay male members, it sought to rectify matters by publicly stating the hope that gay men and lesbians could work in tandem as independent but related activists. One year later, NGLTF officially moved its offices from New York to Washington, DC, setting itself up more squarely in the midst of a specifically national lesbian and gay politics.
The development of a genuinely national purview at NGLTF involved more than mere relocation. By the mid-1980s it had become normal for NGLTF staff members-especially its executive directors-to spend entire weeks traveling to local lesbian and gay events, lending moral support and the promise of political backing to struggles across the United States. The Task Force helped organize the 1987 and 1993 Marches on Washington to demand lesbian and gay men's rights and worked to increase the visibility and participation of lesbians and gay men in the presidential elections at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. In 1988, NGLTF held the first Creating Change conference to bring together gay and lesbian activists from around the country. In 1989, NGLTF started publishing campus organizing newsletters and initiated a Lesbian and Gay Families Project to advocate for family diversity and acceptance. In the 1990s, NGLTF continued to offer new networking and training opportunities to strengthen local lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered activism in each state.
In 1995, NGLTF evolved further and formed the NGLTF Policy Institute, a separate, non-profit organization to serve as a national information clearinghouse and resource center dedicated to educating and organizing around lesbian and gay men's issues. In 1997, NGLTF changed its mission statement to include bisexual and transgendered people and launched the Federation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Statewide Political Organizations.
Correspondence, phone logs, financial reports, Task Force publications, and staff reports providing summaries of staff work for the Executive Board; files from Executive Directors Bruce Voeller, Jeff Levi, Lucia Valeska, C. F. Brydon, Virginia Apuzzo, Urvashi Vaid, Melinda Paras and Kerry Lobel; correspondence with Virginia Apuzzo, and many subject files pertaining to legal questions, family issues, the media, anti-gay discrimination, violence against gay men and lesbians, and other topics. Key projects and principal subjects include the Anti-Violence Project (directed in the mid 1980s by Kevin Berrill), the campus project, AIDS, and state and national politics. Also, videotapes of eleven workshops on sodomy legislation organized by Sue Hyde, director of the NGLTF Privacy Project, and includes several presentations by the ACLU's Nan Hunter and Arthur C. Warner. Includes records of the associated organization, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Gay and Lesbian Policy Institute, formed in 1991, as a non-profit organization to conduct educational and organizing programs. Also, support documentation for a formal presentation to the United States Civil Rights Commission on discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Also, conference programs for "6th Creating Change Conference" Durham, NC, Nov 12-14 1993.
Includes staff reports (1989-1991) of Vaid and Levi; strategic plan, July 1991; 122 audiotapes from NGLTF Policy Institute 5th Annual National Conference for Gay and Lesbian Organizing and Skillbuilding, Nov. 13-15 1992 in Los Angeles; file of Peri Jude Radecic, Executive Director, pertaining chiefly to 1988 Lobby Effort, the Civil Rights Act of 1990, and other legislative activities; phone logs of Ivy Young; organizational charts, 1993-1994; files on civil rights organizing, including organizations supporting lesbian/gay/bisexual civil rights; annual reports; and software backup diskettes. Also includes a series of photographs of staff members and persons involved with projects and committees of the Task Force.
175 printed items concerning AIDS, the legislation, its prevention, treatment and all social aspects of the disease, both in the United States and the world. Covering the period from 1981 to 2000.
Material received after, and not included in, the microfilming project includes 66 boxes transferred when the office moved in September 2002. Most are additions to existing files: budget/finance, publicity and press releases, Anti-Violence Project, Campus Project, Field files, Fight the Right Project, Lesbian Health Information Project, Media files, and additional videos. In addition, there are files on the Out and Equal Workplace Conference, the President Clinton transition and political parties and elections, and public information files.
Boxes 207-261, 266, and subsequent boxes contain material not included in the microfilm project.
2,645 of the anonymous surveys returned for NGLTF's nationwide Black Pride Survey in 2000. This represented the first attempt to collect such a wide range of data on Black people in the U.S. who have same-sex sexual relationships, whether they identify as bisexual, lesbian, gay, or transgender or not. It resulted in the 2002 publication "Say It Loud: I'm Black and I'm Proud."
Also, programs and planning documents for NGLTF's Creating Change Conferences, starting with its first in 1988. Current files go through 2005.
298 negatives of the Primary Source Microfilm set; 106 positives and 106 negatives of materials in the collection at the time but not included in the PSM product, mostly clippings.
Box 198 contains restricted materials from boxes 5, 8, and 33.
Box 199 contains
restricted materials from boxes 35, 39, 40, and 41.
Box 200 contains restricted
materials from boxes 46, 55, 57, 58, 60, 71, 77, 78, 79,85, 92, 95, 97, 100, 105,
116, and 124.
Box 201 contains restricted materials from boxes 128, 133, 135,
136, 157, and 191.
Selected folders containing personnel, individuals' financial, or other sensitive
information are restricted, usually for 50 years. In addition to the folders that
have been moved to boxes 198-201, described above, the following material is
restricted for 50 years from the date of creation:
Box 4 is restricted until
2027-2045.
Boxes 28, 29, and 30 are restricted until 2039.
Box 31, folders
1-43, are restricted until 2024-2031. Folder 44 is not restricted.
Box 32 is
restricted until 2033-2036.
Negatives of the Primary Source Microfilm edition and 106 additional reels of material not included in their commerical product are housed in Rare and Manuscript Collections as a master/preservation copy, and are not for researcher use. These are reels 1-298 in Boxes 202-206 and reels 299-405 in Boxes 264-265.
The Task Force and Policy Institute retain copyright on their own publications in the collection.
For a period of fifty years after the assumed creation of any document, people using the collection may not publish the last name of any private individual mentioned therein, unless they receive permission from that individual. Researchers are asked to sign a form agreeing to abide by this rule before using the collection.
Microfilm edition: "The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force records, 1973-2000
[microform] : from the holdings of the Human Sexuality Collection, Division of Rare
and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York.," Primary
Source Microfilm, 2001. Film 8256. Olin Library. Available through ILL. Guide available here:
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force records, #7301. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
Charles F. Brydon's papers are at the Washington State Historical Society.
Boxes 1-45, 187-188, 207-209, 258, 266, 291-295
The first series contains administrative files internal to NGLTF, including founding documents, staff reports, Board minutes, press releases, membership and fundraising files, and financial records. These administrative files include correspondence from ten executive directors: Bruce Voeller, Lucia Valeska, C.F. Brydon, Virginia M. Apuzzo, Jeff Levi, Urvashi Vaid, Tori Osborn, Peri Jude Radecic, Melinda Paras, and Kerry Lobel. There are no discrete files on Jean O'Leary, the earliest director. The correspondence files of Bruce Voeller, Virginia Apuzzo, Jeff Levi, Urvashi Vaid, and Kerry Lobel are the most complete; the correspondence files of other Executive Directors do not appear to be comprehensive. Melinda Paras' and Kerry Lobel's extensive "Travel Files" provide a good sense of how much work executive directors conducted outside of the NGLTF offices.
Also included in this series are materials related to the Fund for Human Dignity, a functional adjunct to NGLTF established in 1974 to educate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual community and the general public about "the role of homosexual men and women in our society." The Fund became the first gay organization to receive tax-exempt status. Files from the Fund for Human Dignity that came from the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation Archive are cataloged separately.
Boxes 46-133, 188-194, 209-230, 258, 287-290, 295, 305
The second series features documentation from NGLTF "field" projects. Until about 1995, NGLTF worked on topically focused projects, with state, local, and federal work coordinated by and within these projects. Projects focused primarily on areas outside of Washington, DC. The most comprehensive set of materials come from the Anti-Violence and AIDS Projects, directed by Kevin Berrill and Belinda Rochelle respectively.
The Anti-Violence files include staff reports, strategic planning documents, press releases, notes on congressional hearings and lobbying efforts, information on various antiviolence projects, extensive correspondence, documentation of cases of harassment and violence, and working files from 1977-1993 that provide a clear view of the range of NGLTF's activity in this area. One whole box (54) contains materials related to the Hate Crimes Statistics Act.
The AIDS Project files include subject files on HIV/HTLV-III blood testing, government funding for AIDS research, and the state and episodes of AIDS discrimination. The correspondence documents NGLTF's role in AIDS activism in the early 1980s. Also included are extensive files on the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic with testimonies and notes. Several files on NGLTF's organizing around World AIDS Day 1989 are also contained in this series. Three boxes contain publications relating to Health and AIDS.
Series two also includes files from Project Open Employment as well as videotapes of a series of workshops on antisodomy legislation organized by Sue Hyde, director of NGLTF's Privacy Project. These tapes include several presentations by ACLU's Nan Hunter and Arthur C. Warner, Director of the American Association for Personal Privacy. Files documenting the work of the Gays in the Military Project, directed by Tori Osborn; the Families/Domestic Partnership Project, directed by Ivy Young; the Capacity Building Project, directed by Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz; and NGLTF's national organizing conference, Creating Change, are also included in series two.
Information on specific projects is also located in the files of Sharon Kennedy, Peri Jude Radecic, and Urvashi Vaid. Kennedy was involved primarily in work against censorship, especially in the early 1990s. Radecic's files document her work as a lobbyist from 1986 to 1993. Vaid's files cover various administrative matters and legal cases through the 1980s and 1990s. This series also includes background material on civil rights groups and hate groups as well as geographic files organized by state and subject files on public policy issues. Major subjects covered include the arts and censorship, the National Day of Mourning for victims of AIDS, and various antigay ballot initiatives. There are also files on U.S. presidential candidates, antipornography legislation, abortion, the birth control drug Depo Provera, gay and lesbian parents, gay and lesbian journalists, and the gay-baiting of politicians.
Families/Domestic Partnership
Project
National Youth Advocacy Coalition
Peri Jude Radecic's Lobbying Files
Project Open Employment/Survey of Police Forces
Boxes 134-138, 178, 230-232, 259-261, 266-269, 295
The third series contains files from the NGLTF Policy Institute, self-advertised as "a proactive hub of research, policy analysis, tactical thinking, and strategic initiatives." This series includes files from the directorships of John D'Emilio,Urvashi Vaid, and Sean Cahill. It also includes subject files as well as files concerning some of the Policy Institute's projects and publications, including the Black Pride Survey, National Religious Leadership Roundtables, and Census, Elections, and Public Opinion projects.
Director's Files: John D'Emilio,
1995-1997
Director's Files: Urvashi Vaid,
1996-2000
Director's Files: Sean Cahill,
2001-present
Sean Cahill: Reports and
Publications
Badgett, Lee and GLBT
Economics
National Religious Leadership
Roundtable
Yang, Alan: Public Opinion
Project: From Wrongs to Rights
Boxes 139-179,195-197,232-256
The fourth series, which is the largest, comprises all the subject files from the Task Force, dating back to its beginning.
These 19 boxes (139-157) are from the years 1972-1984, with a few files up to 1993, and provide a good window into the issues, people and organizations, elections, litigation and legislation NGTF monitored during this time.
Members of Congress
Correspondence
This subseries contains correspondence from 1987 to 1993.
This subseries primarily consists of correspondence with regional lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups across the U.S. from 1971 to 1986.
Here are files on political parties and presidential elections, 1980 to 1992, including results from NGLTF conducted surveys of presidential candidates, campaign mailings, and related clippings. Also contains state campaign files, NYC campaigns, and general campaign files from the 2000s.
Correspondence with editors and publishers of magazines, newspapers and newsletters.
These have come in various groupings: general clippings arranged chronologically, 1974-2002; NGLTF clippings arranged chronologically, mostly from 1981-1989; clippings arranged by subject, dating from 1973-1990; and large clippings placed in special oversize boxes, dating from 1983-2000. Included are 175 printed items concerning AIDS, related legislation, its prevention, treatment and all social aspects of the disease, both in the United States and the world.
Additional subject files,
1986-2003.
After 2000, NGLTF sent to the archives 25 boxes of additional subject files from 1986-1999, which include media and public information files, files on federal government issues, and 1992 files on the Pres. Bill Clinton transition policy. Additional boxes from 1993-2003 were sent in 2013.
Box 180-185
The fifth series is photographs. These are very useful to researchers seeking images of early lesbian and gay rights leaders, parades, and actions. We have organized the photos into two sub-series. The first, "People," includes photos of former staff, board members, volunteers, individuals who were part of an NGLTF advertising campaign, and people NGLTF had labeled "Famous Gays" and "Famous Hets." The second, "History and Events," includes photos that NGLTF staff and others took at events including the press conference announcing the American Psychiatric Association's changed position on homosexuality in 1973, the International Women's Year convention in 1977, a meeting at the White House in 1977, pride marches in New York City and Washington, DC, and various NGLTF gala events and trips for volunteers. These photos have been indexed to the item level, making the series quite accessible and easy to use.
Oversized materials, a few objects, some publications by NGLTF and others. Many of the publications and audio-visual materials are the products of NGLTF staff's work on antigay violence and AIDS activism.
Clothing: T-shirts and hat from Kerry Lobel, 1990-2001
Boxes 202-206, 262-265
Primary Source Microfilm's
product
Microfilm of material in the collection in 2000, at the time of the Primary Source Microfilm project, but not included in their commercial product.
not microfilmed
Mark Sexton, Hope Wine, Elizabeth Birch, Lynne Brown, Clarence Bagby Glenn Carlson, Christopher Carlson, Christopher Collins, Catherine Gund, Frances Hanckel, Rand Hoch, Nancy Koch
Laurie Liss, Arturo Nava, Julia Pell, Olive Watson, Michele Zavos, Moonhawk River Stone, R. Peter Wharton, Paula Redd Zeman, Alan Acosta John M Allen, Maragert Burt, David Cornell, Sarah Fletcher, Will Forrest
Jody Laine, Mary Morten, Andrew Ogilvie, Loren Ostrow, Nicole Murray Ramirez, Ken Ranftle, Charles Renslow, Lee Rubin, Stephen Macais, Alan Horowitz, Ernest Hopkins, Cuc Vu, Kevin Williams, Mary Prados, Mario Guerrero, Marsha Botzer
Stephen Aurand and Mathias Dadou, Jane Anderson and Tess Ayers, Susan Anderson, Jeff Adler, Mika Albright, John Allen and Stephen Orlando, Michael Aller, Ralph Alpert, Michael Aller, Ralph Alpert, Eleanor Acheson, Roberta Achtenberg, Alan Acosta
Bruce Bastian, Alvin Baum, Frank Benedict and Thomas Trowbridge, Nicholas Benton, Bruce Berger, RD Bermudes, C.David Bedford, Mark Beers and Stephen Urice, Alan Behmoiras, Robert Bacigalupi and Dacid Schwing, Alan Bernstein, David Bjork, Thomas Blount, David Bohnett, Marsha Botzer and Kim Harms, Gary Boston
James Brodsky and Phil McCarthy, Mark Bromley, Gregory Brown, David Bryan, Ron Buckmire, Richard Bullock, Margaret Burd, Martin Burley and Robert Meza, Maureen Burmley and Tatiana Carayannis
Carol and Patricia Cantor, Jorge Cao and Donald Thomas, Rea Carey, David Carlson, Vincent Carrafiello, Suman Chakraborty, Jerry Chasen and Mark Kirby, Jerry Clark, Julie Childs and Sara Speargas, Reuben Chong, David Clark, Daniel Cochran, Bruce Cohen, Alex Collett, David da Silva Cornell, Portia Cornell, Lisa Corrin, Michael Curtis and Eric Thom
Dade Community Foundation, Colgate Darden IV, Darden Restaurants, Donald Davis, Juli Davis, Marty Davis and Barry Young, Steven Deggendorf, Robert Denny, Robert Dockendorff, David Draigh, John Dreyer
Ruth Eisenberg, Equity Foundation, William Eskridge, Brian Esser and Kevin O'leary, Joseph Evall and Rich Lynn
Law Offices of Kevin Farrelly, Robert Flavell and Ronald Baker, Dwight Foley, Keving Foley and Stephen Littell, Matt Foreman and Francisco de Leon, William Forrest and Mark Smithe, Barbara Frank and Veronica McCaffrey, Richard Fremont Smith, Liebe and Seth Gadinsky, Lewis Gautieri, Ian Gibson-Smith, Gill Action, Allan Gilmour and Eric Jirgens, Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, Tobler Glandorf, Stephen Glassman, Emily Gochis, Suzanne Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Sandi Greene, Peter Grigsby, Samuel Grubman
Bill Hahne, Thomas Harshman and Stan Gwyn, Vincent Healy, Jason Heffner, George Heidorn, Stephen Herbits, Marjorie Hill, Craig Hoffman, Jane Hoffman, David Hollander, Steven Holley, Crispin Hollings, Jim Hooker, Ernest Hopkins, James Hormel, Alan Horowitz
Tim Hosking, Douglas Houghton, Daniel Hovenstine, Frank Howell, H. Huizenga, David Husch, Sue Hyde, Yosbel Ibarra, Michaeol Isbell, Harold Levy
Also, Youth Leadership Institute materials
Materials from the Youth Leadership Institute, including participants "Visions for the Future"
Includes an autographed letter from President Clinton inviting Rea Carey to participate in the conference
Includes stickers "I Voted No" and "Committed Volunteer"
Surveys 10001-12289, collected in Philadelphia, Houston, and Washington, DC.
Surveys 12290-16423, collected in Washington, DC, Oakland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit.
Surveys 17001-18210, collected in New York City and Atlanta. This box also contains "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud", the compiled results of the Black Pride Survey 2000.
Materials concerning AIDS, AIDS legislation, its prevention, treatment and all social aspects of the disease, both in the United States and the world.