LGBTQ History and Disability
“The work of these and many other disabled LGBTQ people has long been hidden from both our history and our current image of the community, which continues to exclude disabled people.”
Disabled people have long been hidden from history, and unsurprisingly, disabled LGBTQ historical figures too have been hidden. The LGBTQ community itself has been slow to address disability as an issue, yet some of the most beloved and most commonly invoked LGBTQ historical figures also had disabilities, among them artists Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Frida Kahlo, and writers Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich. We know these names well, yet not for their disabilities. And there are so many other LGBTQ icons, past and present, whose disabilities we ignore or fail to acknowledge as critical to their identities — and to ours as a community.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits disability-based discrimination. The U.S. along with 153 other countries have also signed on to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which calls on all nations to adopt policies similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
More than a third of LGBTQ people identify as having a disability. Among lesbian, gay and bisexual adults, 30 percent of men and 36 percent of women identify as having a disability. Those disabilities can be physical, sensory, intellectual and mental. The breadth of disability, like the breadth of LGBTQ experience, should be part of our recognition of our LGBTQ history and who made that history.
Five nights a week LGBTQ people can turn on CNN and see Anderson Cooper, a CNN anchor who broke ground in broadcasting as an out gay man. Cooper also has a disability that impacts 43.5 Americans: pronounced
Barbara Jordan: Screengrab, Connie Panzarino: Photo via Facebook Left: Barbara Jordan addresses the crowd at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Right: Connie Panzarino
dyslexia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 10 Americans suffers from a hidden disability like Cooper’s. Other hidden disabilities include traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, psychiatric disabilities and disabling auto-immune diseases.
Marsha P. Johnson, renowned for her role in the Stonewall uprising, suffered from both physical and psychiatric disabilities. In the documentary about her life, “Pay It No Mind,” Johnson said, “I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong.”
Another figure of the Stonewall rebellion, Morty Manford, also had psychiatric disabilities and died at only 41 in 1992 from complications of AIDS. But throughout his activist career, which began at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 when he was only 19, Manford was dedicated to the fight for LGBTQ civil rights, despite his disability. With his mother, Jeanne Manford, he co-founded PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) in 1973.
Barbara Jordan has long been an LGBTQ icon. She was the first woman to deliver the
keynote address at a Democratic National Convention in 1976, and she was wellknown for delivering the opening statement at the House Judiciary Committee Hearings to impeach Richard Nixon. She also created legislation to broaden the 1965 Voting Rights Act to include and protect Latinx voters.
Jordan had multiple sclerosis, and she used a wheelchair in her later years to remain ambulatory, including when she spoke at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Kenny Fries is a longtime gay and disability rights activist and world-renowned poet and memoirist. Born with shortened and twisted legs, he recounted in “Body, Remember: A Memoir,” his father fainted when his maternal grandmother screamed, “My daughter gave birth to a freak!” Fries was the first disabled student admitted to a public school in New York City.
Connie Panzarino was a severely disabled lesbian activist living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy III, a neuromuscular disorder which leads to muscle atrophy. She founded
Beechwood, a communal living environment for disabled women, where she worked as a therapist, writer, artist, and activist.
As a Deaf gay man, Nyle DiMarco made history in 2015 when he won “America’s Next Top Model.” In 2016 he became the first Deaf contestant on “Dancing with the Stars,” which he won with professional partner Petra Murgatroyd, making disability and queer history.
The work of these and many other disabled LGBTQ people has long been hidden from both our history and our current image of the community, which continues to exclude disabled people. Disabled LGBTQ icons like Barbara Jordan felt compelled to hide both their sexual and disabled identities. But no one should have to hide their disabilities now. If Marsha P. Johnson understood the importance of that intersectionality in the 1970s, why has there not been more effort from non-disabled allies to address this in 2020?
As lesbian comedian Maysoon Zayid told Zerlina Maxwell on Peacock TV’s “Zerlina” on October 9, “Every issue is a disability issue because disability intersects with every other community. Disability does not discriminate. You’re welcome to join us at any time regardless of religion, faith, gender, economic class.”
Read the full article online at thegavoice.com.