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Born in Houston, Texas, in 1950, Patricia A. Robertson, MD knew at the age of 5 that she wanted to become a doctor. She is the founding mother of Lyon-Martin Health Services, established in 1979. The goal was to provide affordable, nonjudgmental, comprehensive healthcare and health education for lesbians. Here she talks about the evolution and early days of the clinic, which still exists today.

Along with Sue Dibble, Dr. Robertson co-authored the first comprehensive textbook on lesbian health, Lesbian Health 101. Here she shares an “aha” moment in an emergency room that catapulted her to become a pioneer of all things lesbian health (including having two CVs). She also talks about the crucial nature of black and brown mentors in medicine.

What is she most proud of? Her family and her work: “Making the decision to become pregnant at a time when LGBT people rarely had children” and “to go to medical school despite all of the adversity of getting in and tolerating a fairly hostile environment.”

Henri Bensussen, born in 1937, writes: "I grew up in L.A. and married at 18, then finally discovered my lesbian nature at 46, after 27 years of marriage (and two children). I was not the only older woman coming out in the early 1980s. It was an exciting time. The bar culture was still viable, and because of Stonewall, lesbians became a presence. They dressed in a tux or a ball gown to attend a formal dance, organized conferences, went on campouts, wrote and attended plays, participated in a visible culture. Transsexuals and bisexuals were starting to come out too. At our local GLBT Center in San Jose, California, you could meet everyone. At the S.O.L. (Slightly Older Lesbians) meetings you heard stories and concerns from all kinds of women. There was an S/M subculture. There was a gay father’s group, book groups, hiking groups. We had a monthly newsletter (Entre Nous) for lesbians. And then, in the mid-1990s, things changed, respectability happened—who knows, anyway, the bars closed, bookstores closed, and lesbians seemed to melt into the larger community. Was all that to be forgotten?"

Henri talks about becoming a lesbian later in life, reading Rubyfruit Jungle and what the work "dyke" means to her. 

A San Francisco native and registered nurse, Marcy Fraser, born August 19, 1952, has spent her career showing up for people in crisis. In the 1980s, she worked in Ward 5B at San Francisco General Hospital — the country's first dedicated AIDS ward caring for patients during the height of the crisis, when many others turned away. She later continued that work in hospice care, again right here in San Francisco. More recently, Marcy was appointed by Mayor Lurie to the San Francisco Fire Commission.

Hear Marcy talk about how the lesbians showed up, the kinship and shared experience "that will never leave any of us" among the 5B nurses and staff, her superpower, her legacy, and what it was like for families to show up to see their loved ones at the end of their lives (without knowing "their son was gay AND had HIV") — and how it was an immediate "yes" when her friend George told her about the AIDS ward for the "new disease that's killing gay men." Hear Marcy talk about the immense support from Rita Rockett, Leather Daddies, porn stars, and the City of San Francisco, who did things that no other city did — "bringing that spirit of the gay community onto the ward," she says with a nostalgic smile.

So much gratitude to you, warrior and shero.

Rick Gerharter, born in March 1952 in a farm family in Aberdeen, South Dakota, hitchhiked to San Francisco after graduating with a degree in Urban Studies from Macalester College.  He arrived on October 1, 1977.

He is a San Francisco-based freelance photojournalist who has documented the queer communities of San Francisco (ACT UP!, to name one) for nearly 40 years. He has been regularly published in the Bay Area Reporter of San Francisco since 1987.

Seeing and photographing Nelson Mandella at the 2000 AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa was a true highlight of his career. Rick remains proud to have been able to support himself, travel, and photograph history in "one of the richest cities in the world."

"It's very important to photograph what you know," he says. "Outsiders have their views." After 40 years, he certainly considers himself a real insider. . 📸 

 "One of my favorite was disrupting the opening of the opera (Stop AIDS Now Or Else on 9/8/1989)," he says with a chuckle and a smile. He  was the only photographer (Stop AIDS Now Or Else / SANOE) on the Golden Gate Bridge on January 31, 1989. 

https://rickgerharterphotos.com/

Stan Stone, born in Philadelphia, PA in 1954 to the late John Sr. ("Stoney") and Lela ("Scrap"), is a creator, improv actor, poet, and playwright. Stan talks about growing up in a mostly white neighborhood, answering his mom's question: "Are you funny?" and coming to San Francisco in 1985 at the height of the AIDS crisis, where "the idea of living long was not something a lot of gay men had at the time, and it was hard to imagine being an elder gay. It wasn't just AIDS that we had to fight -- there was homophobia, workplace and job discrimination and being beat up on the streets.  There were all these factors that made life so difficult.  It feels really good to have lived the life that I led, and it feels especially good to be in a long, loving relationship with the man that I married," he says with a gentle laugh. Stan's play, Revenge of the Q.A.I. was recently performed at the Potrero Stage as part of Playground SF.

Selisse Berry grew up in a Presbyterian church in Stillwater, OK, where she was already, as a teenager, establishing herself as a leader in her church's youth fellowship.  She went on to earn her Master of Divinity from the San Francisco Theological Seminary, but the church's ban on ordaining LGBTQ clergy posed a serious problem.

Plot Twist: During a visit to the LGBT Center in Marin County, Selisse met powerhouse and activist Reverend Janie Spahr, a trailblazing lesbian Presbyterian minister who, to this day, has been a tremendous support in her life. That meeting became the impetus behind the creation of S.L.U.T.S.: Seminary Lesbians Under Theological Stress, a group of women who made Selisse feel "totally free to be herself." 

Selisse Berry's resilience became a movement. In 1996, she founded what became Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, growing it from a one-person operation into the world's largest nonprofit dedicated to LGBTQ+ workplace equality, with global reach and a $10M+ annual operation by the time she stepped down as CEO in 2018.

Over time, her spirituality evolved beyond the institution that had rejected her — toward a deep and ongoing commitment to the spirituality of the feminine divine and the sacred energy of the Goddess. That expansive, embodied spirituality has remained a guiding force in her life and leadership. 

From her earliest days founding a girls’ club at an orphanage, Richelle Evelyn Donigan has been a builder of community and a champion of the Goddess and human potential. Donigan has collaborated with artists like Prince and Seal. Here she talks about conjuring, changing, creating and moving the molecules -- and her dance trajectory at Robert Henry Johnson's Dance Company, Club Q, Dance Brigade (Krissy Keefer), and Sarah Bush Dance, companies that have long been at the heart of dance and queer cultural life here in the Bay.

 "We are conjuring. We are calling something forth that does not, in this realm, exist. We are using our woman power, our female power. We are the creators. Thought create. Women have birthed every human being on this planet.  From our bodies, we have brought every human being here. To be able to create a human being in your body... That is powerful. We are creating every human being and everything that has ever been created comes through every human being. We are the source of all of it.  That's what we are. When we conjure, we can move mountains and we can create universes. And we do. You are a Goddess, and your power is the greatest power that exists." 

In the 1970s, Corona "Cora" Rivera, born in 1946, was on the front lines of gay liberation in New York City, active in Daughters of Bilitis, the Gay Liberation Front, and the Gay Activists Alliance. Cora talks about "being dragged" to GLF meetings, CR (consciousness-raising) groups, Bonnie & Clyde's Bar, and Vito Russo Sunday movies for $1. As a woman of color in the Gay Liberation Front, Cora talks about how it felt, and the leadership seminar she attended — the only woman — on Fire Island. While DOB (Daughters of Bilitis) offered community, it was the GLF and GAA's ZAP tactics that lit her fire. "The action and movement were so exciting at the time. It was a chance to fight — and I wasn't afraid at all," she reflects with a smile. "We ran a revolution. I was free to be as loud and as strong and as big as I wanted to be, and as much of myself as I wanted to be, and there was no watching what you said, and no societal norms. It made you feel stronger and validating, and like a way to get to know yourself. All that stuff came up and out. I didn't have to be a lady anymore, and the ZAPs taught me how not to be a lady, and I didn't have to speak softly."

A few years into her career, and not yet out to her family, Shann's grandmother spotted her name — "Friday Night! Lesbian Comedian, Shann Carr" — on the marquee in Portland, OR and promptly called her mother... "It was good to be a comedian because that perspective of coming at stuff with humor -- it saves everything," says Shann. 

A 1988 winner of International Miss Leather, Shann performed stand-up comedy on cruise ships with Atlantis Cruises (mostly gay men), sailing the seas 77 times over a decade, before putting down roots  in 2010 as a Palm Springs homeowner. Shann confesses that she was raised by drag queens, leather men, and bears, and came out "as a dyke" at the age of about 19 at summer camp.  Shann's first girlfriend was a Jewish, radical, feminist, separatist SM dyke into witchcraft. The mentorship within the leather community is something for which Shann remains grateful.  Today she continues to make her Palm Springs community laugh by producing insanely fun and unique events through World Wide Whimsy. www.shanncarr.com 

Curiosity and Wonder.

Born in 1941, Martha Wheelock is a documentarian and historian of the women's suffrage movement, a filmmaker (featuring lesser-known women in history), writer, educator, and graduate of Miss Hall's School. Here, she discusses the impact of a photo taken at the 1974 Christopher Street Gay Parade in New York City. The photo, by Bettye Lane, of then-33-year-old Wheelock holding a sign reading "Mother Nature is a Lesbian" written with lipstick, was printed in TIME magazine in 1975. This prompted Wheelock to urgently drive to her parents' home, where the magazine was prominently sitting on their coffee table when she arrived, and come out to them. How did she come up with the slogan on the sign? At the time, female seagulls were reproducing without males, a phenomenon called parthenogenesis — and Wheelock felt it made a statement about homosexuality as a natural force. Watch to hear her mom's reaction. And then her dad's.

 After many years together, Shad & Jody finally tied the knot — but the decision didn't come without a change of heart decades in the making.

 Jody had always treasured their rebellious path. "We used to be sexual outlaws, and that was our thing," she reflected. For decades, they had proudly lived as "gender outlaws," going against the grain and forging their own way. "Everything is so normal now. The edge has come off, the fire is gone, and we are status quo status," she said wistfully. Shad remembered the deeper principles that had once guided them. "We were fighting to give women the right to not be married," she recalled. "We had to break the rules and create a new culture — and that meant giving women the freedom to choose." So after a lifetime of writing their own rules, what led them to change their minds? Listen to find out. Shad & Jody are documentarians and produced a film, Mom's Apple Pie and the horrific custody battles lesbian moms faced in the 1970s.

 On Family Building: My daughter was born in 2001 and my son in 2003. At the time, only two states allowed same-sex couples to adopt openly and simultaneously. "We were able to openly adopt two children the way we wanted to," says Kiki with love and conviction. New York offered another gift: on her children's birth certificates, there was no "mother" and "father" — only "Parent 1" and "Parent 2." "Neither of us had to be the baby daddy," she laughs.

Kiki also reflects on being chosen by her daughter's birth mother, who later revealed she had been looking for a "strong Black woman," someone she assumed would be single. When she saw the profile of a lesbian couple instead, she thought "you guys would have to be strong black women to be out."   Kiki was a member of the NIA Collective in Oakland and is currently founder and editor-in-chief of BlackHistoryEveryday.com.

Danny Nicoletta is just as compelling a speaker as he is a photographer.

"Each image is its own gratification in terms of evoking some sort of cultural poetics and asking certain questions of the viewer. If you are asking questions that get people out of their comfort zone, and also ask significant questions of themselves, that’s the ultimate success," says iconic photographer Danny Nicoletta. "They get to win the prize in terms of cultural praise because they ask the questions that ask the questions and make us think about our lives in ways that we weren't scheduling to do so."

"In a way, detrimentally, I was attracted to the exhibitionistic in life. I didn’t get that memo — what is the queer vernacular? I was more attracted to the bombastic. I didn't photograph hot guys. Scott (Smith) and Harvey (Milk) used to joke with me that  all I came back with was drag queens and theater people." 

"It's your decision to be yourself and nobody else gets to have a say in that," Danny says when asked about advice for this generation -- and do take a listen to hear how José Sarria was Danny's bridge. "I am very grateful for having the wisdom to pay attention to his story. That's really what it is at the end of the day making a better world for LGBT people and their allies -- that's what I keep on returning to when people ask me why I do what I do." 

From Shanghai to San Francisco, born in 1947, Judge Kay Tsenin’s journey led her to the bench of the SF Superior Court, and here she talks about the night in 1996 "one of the best days of my life," when she won the election as a lesbian judge in San Francisco. 

"I started imagining being a judge, I think – well, the way I ended up going to law school was that on a school field trip they took us down to the Hall of Justice. I got fascinated with trials. I used to come down on school holidays. I had nothing else to do so I’d come down and watch trials."

Lisbet Tellefsen and Pippa Fleming founded 𝘈𝘤𝘩é: 𝘈 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘴𝘣𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵. The word aché translates to “so be it” or “may it happen.” The publication, which had a global distribution, ran from February 1989 through 1993. 

Tellefsen, born in 1961, painstakingly documented and preserved the history of 𝘈𝘤𝘩é. Her archive of the magazine includes photographs of board members, meeting minutes, event flyers, grant applications, and more. In 2012, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired both the 𝘈𝘤𝘩é materials and the Lisbet Tellefsen Papers, a broader collection she created and collected over her career. Her collections have been featured in Yale Library exhibitions, including 𝘞𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦: 𝘓𝘦𝘴𝘣𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 (2018).

She is an event producer, archivist, collector, and curator focused on late 20th-century African Americana, with specializations in the Black Panther Party, Angela Davis, Afro-Cuban culture, Black LGBT culture, and political graphics.

While not exactly a household name, Buzz Bense (1/23/49 - 11/19/2016) — and Bob West helped build sex-positive, safety-conscious spaces for gay men through the height of the AIDS crisis and the decades that followed,  one of which was Eros, where Stephen worked from 1999 to 2001. "Eros was wonderful. I tell people I would have paid them to work there." It was, Stephen says, a moment when gay men were beginning to feel safe having public sex again. Eros was sprawling and social, and its rooms had names  -- Lucy, Ricky, Little Ricky, Ethel and Fred. Stephen describes lines out the door by 4 PM when he opened, and he walked regular "loops" through the space, keeping watch that rules were being followed. 

 Born in 1949 in The Bronx, Hal Offen was part of New York City's Gay Liberation Front (1970), and later, the Gay Activists Alliance (1971-1972). Here he talks about the distinction between the two organizations, and the people who defined them — Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Arthur Evans, and Marty Robinson — and what it meant to be among those who chanted 'Out of the Closets and into the Streets.' Hal recalls  the gay power chant and meeting Arthur Evans after only having seen him and Dick Leitsch on TV, at his first demonstration in March of 1971 on Park Avenue in New York City. 

Hal isn't just reflecting on history. He is the history.

Andrew and Jim met in 1989 at the respective ages of 24 and 28 at the then-Café Flore in San Francisco. Andrew talks about what it felt like to create a life together "interweaving our lives," and what it was like when Jim started to feel like family. Jim tells us he was struck by Andrew's depth, wisdom, maturity, and self-confidence. "It's fascinating how that initial chemistry can evolve into something deeper. Now our relationship has so much more depth and history. We've grown, evolved, and matured together. Thirty-seven years seems like a long time, and it is, and it's wonderful. I feel so blessed to be with this man," Jim reflects with quiet sincerity. 

A self-described Christian, African American chef and musician, Paula “Tuffy” Eldridge is the daughter of Rev. Canon Frankie Easter. She began playing guitar at the age of six and went on to become an acoustic singer-songwriter based in Oklahoma City.

In 1980, she co-produced the first all-woman art and music festival in Oklahoma and was a member of the True Star band.

Tuffy talks about the first girl she ever kissed, falling head over heels while in high school, how her nickname was coined, and her activism beginning in ninth grade—advocating for Black women to be selected for cheer and pep squads.

Paul Evan Gross helped plan the 1981 International Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration. "We politicized the f*** out of that parade," he recalls with a laugh that carries the weight of someone whose activism and passion made a profound impact on San Francisco. At the heart of his story is a storefront on Valencia Street, where Paul lived with Tede Matthews alongside lesbian activists with whom he built a community.  In an era when men's and women's movements operated in separate worlds, these women brought Paul into the heart of feminist activism, opening doors and building a bridge between communities at a time when gay bashing was prevalent.

Patrick Eugene Batt, born in 1946 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, grew up the eldest of seven, with six sisters.  Auto Erotica, the Castro institution he built, isn't entirely about those types of magazines (he'll tell you himself that the place is about gay history).  A short documentary that won a 2025 Frameline award (one of many), captures what locals have known for years: Patrick Batt is not only a legend and historian, but an irreplaceable piece of this city's soul.