Lesbian activist Eva Freund pictured today (left) and in her early days as an activist, will be honored Saturday for 40 years of gay activism.
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Thursday, June 08, 2006
Lesbian activist Eva Freud’s reaction to being named a Capital Pride Hero wasn’t one of unmitigated joy.
“It feels like I’m getting old,” Freund, 68, says about her selection. “I know that young people usually aren’t chosen to be Pride heroes. If someone is 18 years old, they’re probably not going to be selected unless it’s a pretty unusual situation.”
Well, there aren’t any 18-year-old Pride heroes this year, but there is a 17-year-old hero. Tully Satre, founder of Equality Fauquier/Culpeper, was one of the eight heroes selected by a committee for their work for gay equality.
The generation-bridging roster of heroes coincides with this year’s theme, “Many Communities, All Proud,” according to Capital Pride director David Mallory.
“Certainly we wanted our heroes to be a reflection of that theme, and we succeeded very well, I think,” says Mallory, who is also associate director of special events for Whitman-Walker Clinic. “This year particularly I think one of the interesting things we have is the generational diversity.”
In addition to Freund and Satre, the heroes include Mario Acosta-Velez, a Latino and gay rights activist who is president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club; Jonathan Blumenthal, co-founder and president of gay volunteer group Burgundy Crescent Volunteers; Kris McLaughlin, president of the Arlington Gay & Lesbian Alliance; Sterling Washington, who works at black gay AIDS organization Us Helping Us and is co-founder of the Bisexual, Lesbian & Gay Organization of Students at Howard; Bruce Weiss, executive director of the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League; and Robert York, former director of Capital Pride.
Freund was an obvious choice, Mallory says.
“She was really a pioneer as one of the early members of Mattachine and the founder of its newsletter,” Mallory says.
The Mattachine Society, was one of the first gay organizations in the United States.
IN THE 1960s, Freund moved to D.C. from New York City, where she grew up, and quickly became a critical part of the emerging gay civil rights movement.
“She was very much a part of the groundbreaking and pioneering work that we were doing in the ‘60s to create a gay movement — an effective gay movement — here in Washington and she deserves a great deal of credit for that,” says fellow activist Frank Kameny, who worked with Freund as an early member of Washington’s chapter of the Mattachine Society.
Freund worked for the National Organization for Women and also played a critical role in the passage of Title 34, D.C.’s first human rights act, in 1973.
“It’s just recognizing over four decades worth of work to advancing the goal of equality in all people,” Mallory says about naming Freund a Pride hero.
Freund’s activism is now concentrated in Fairfax County, where she lives in Vienna with her partner of 14 years, Elke Martin. In addition to her day job working on development of computer software and systems, Freund volunteers at Equality Fairfax.
She says she is concerned about the changing role of gay history and politics within Pride as well as among gays.
“When I’ve spoken occasionally to people in their 20s and sometimes even in their 30s, and I talk to them about the history of the gay community whether it be nationally or here in D.C., they really don’t have a clue,” Freund says.
The youth are not so much to blame as a gay culture that removes its historical context during its celebratory days, Freund says.
“I remember the early Pride days here in D.C. were very political and were used to galvanize the community,” Freund says. “It was one more form of community activism and now you say Gay Pride or any kind of Pride to most folks and they think party.”
Although she acknowledges that the decision to emphasize the social rather than political aspects of Pride was a conscious one, Freund says she doesn’t entirely agree with the decision.
“I think partying and socializing for the sake of partying and socializing is kind of useless,” Freund says. “If you have a March on Washington and you don’t use the presence of all those people to do lobbying, then I don’t think you’ve wisely used those resources.”
Freund worries that current gay activism suffers from complacency.
“The really big change that I’ve seen has to do with the attitude of individuals,” Freund says. “That is that the more acceptance of gays and lesbians that has taken place, the more lackadaisical individuals have become. [They’re] lackadaisical in the sense that, well, ‘I’m safe and I don’t have to worry about anyone else and…I don’t have to do anything more because we have already created the changes.’”
Such thought, Freund says, places gay civil rights in a vulnerable position.
“Social causes operate on a push back system,” Freund says. “When one minority group makes some advances, the majority group is going to try to push back to create the old status quo.”
THE PRIDE HEROES will be honored during the Capital Pride Parade on Saturday.
Honoring leaders this way can help advance the cause of gay civil rights, Kameny says.
“I think the whole context of the open public celebrations including the honoring of particularly people who have contributed individually to making advances is very important to establishing and furthering our rights and our equality,” Kameny says. “In the end, the achievement of equality in every aspect is sort of the bottom line definition of the gay agenda.”
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