San Francisco Makes Home of Lesbian Couple a Landmark
The home of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the first same-sex couple to legally marry in California, was an integral meeting spot for activists.
Phyllis Lyon, left, and Del Martin at their home in San Francisco in 2008. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to give the home landmark status this week.Credit.Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press
May 7, 2021
The home of the first same-sex couple to legally marry in California will become a historical landmark, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors ruled this week.
On Tuesday, the city’s supervisors voted unanimously to grant landmark designation for the home owned by the couple, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who are both lesbian activists and co-founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organization in the United States.
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Gloria Berry, D10 resident, candidate for supervisor and elected member of the Democratic County Central Committee Assembly District 17, sponsored a broadly endorsed and near unanimous resolution adopted by the DCCC in 2020 calling for full moratorium, medical monitoring and reparations for Hunters Point residents.
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Biomonitoring detects pollution in people. As a method for measuring toxic chemicals in human tissues, HBM is a proven tool for studying harmful environmental chemicals to confirm exposures and validate public health policies. Population biomonitoring was first applied to environmental public health in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory reduction of lead in gasoline on Jan. 1, 1986.
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin bought the cottage in 1955
It soon became a meeting place and refuge for local lesbians
The couple founded the Daughters of Bilitis, a political and social organization for lesbians, and wrote books and magazines about lesbian rights
They became the first to get married in 2004, when then-mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to challenge the state s ban on same-sex marriages
They were married again four years later, when the Supreme Court struck down the state s ban
Lyon died in April 2020, and the house was left to Martin s daughter
She sold it for $2.25 million, but local activists wanted to save it
Just over a year after Phyllis Lyon passed away at the age of 95, the home that she shared for over five decades with her wife and life partner Del Martin is being declared a city landmark.
Ron Bailey/Getty Images
In late-May 1887, around 30 Chinese laborers were mining gold in an isolated part of northeast Oregon, when the entire group was gunned down by a white gang of horse thieves. Initially referred to as the “Hells Canyon Massacre” or “Snake River Massacre,” and more recently as the “Chinese Massacre at Deep Creek,” the event is considered one of the deadliest attacks against Chinese-Americans in U.S. history.
Like previous acts of violence against Asian immigrants at the end of the 19th century, the identity of the seven murderers was known, but none were convicted or punished. The event was largely forgotten for more than a century. Then, in 1995, a Wallowa County clerk discovered details about the massacre in files that had been locked away in a safe, long hidden from the public eye.