Following the death of pioneering feminist, journalist, and activist Gloria Steinem at age 92, Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings issued the following statement:
“Yesterday we lost a giant. For more than half a century, Gloria Steinem insisted that none of us is free until all of us are free, and she understood long before her peers that the fight for women’s rights and the fight for LGBTQ+ rights are one and the same. She stood with our community when it was neither safe nor popular to do so, naming plainly that feminists and LGBTQ+ people share the same struggle and the same opponents. She helped beat back Anita Bryant’s campaign to strip gay people of protection from discrimination, and insisted the word ‘lesbian’ be spoken with as much honor as any other.
“Steinem’s legacy also reflects her evolution as a lifelong activist. Her early writings about transgender people caused real hurt and were rightly challenged. But she listened, reconsidered, and changed. In later years she became an outspoken supporter of transgender people and their rights, affirming that trans people live authentic lives and standing against efforts to strip them of civil rights protections.
“Gloria Steinem showed us that liberation is indivisible — a truth that lives in the work Lambda Legal does every day. We are grateful for her decades of allyship and for the advocates she inspired. We extend our deepest condolences to her family, her friends, and the countless people who found courage in her example.”