It's nearly impossible to begin to disentangle the fight for LGBTQ+ rights from the battle for AIDS education, prevention, protections and awareness. 
So I try to begin each Pride month by recognising some of the people who were truly pioneers that helped shape my own work as an AIDS activist, a social justice warrior, civil rights ally, and LGBTQ+ activist.
And that list always begins with some of those pioneers who can easily get "lost" in the pages of history...
Queer women.
Queer women.
Barbara May Cameron was one of those incredible women in my life. She was a gifted photographer, women's rights activist, Native American rights advocate and creator of the nation's first Indigenous People's LGBTQ liberation organisation (the Gay American Indians).
The reason for founding GAI, according to Cameron, was that Native American LGBTQ people had different needs/ struggles than the gay white community.
She was among the first to point out that there was a lack of support for people of colour within the LGBTQ+ community...
She was among the first to point out that there was a lack of support for people of colour within the LGBTQ+ community...
...an issue that remains largely unresolved to this day -- forty-six years after she and Randy Burns started their organisation.
Barbara was also, like so many lesbians, among the first to respond to the AIDS epidemic, helping to create networks of "buddies" to assist gay men who were sick and dying, in the earliest days of the epidemic.
It's important to remember that when we saw that first wave of sickness and deaths, many gay men shunned their dying brothers and sisters in fear of "catching the gay plague", but Dykes on Bikes, Trans women and other women's organisations stepped up led the way.
Barbara was a celebrated author, a film maker, and part of the leadership of the Lesbian Gay Freedom Day Parade in the early 80s, and of the Alice B Toklas Democratic Club.
She served as the co-chair of Lesbian Agenda for Action, and was among the first people to come to my side, when my longtime companion, Ronn DeKock, whom she "watched grow up" as a kid in San Francisco, lay dying from PCP in 1990.
And while she left this world in 2002, she will always live in my heart.
#BarbaraCameron, #LGBTQHistory, #LesbianVisibility, #LGBTQPride
#BarbaraCameron, #LGBTQHistory, #LesbianVisibility, #LGBTQPride
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