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Activist Jean OLeary dies

Activist Jean OLeary dies
Los Angeles - Lesbian activist, former nun and Democratic party leader Jean OLeary died yesterday (June 4) at the San Clemente, California, home of Lisa Phelps, her partner of 12 years, and surrounded by her family and close friends. OLeary, who had been battling lung cancer for two years, was 57. OLeary was an advocate for the rights of Gays and Lesbians, women and people with HIV/AIDS as well as a prominent Democratic party activist. Over the course of a 35-year career, she ran several national Gay rights groups, co-founded pioneering organizations, including Lesbian Feminist Liberation and National Coming Out Day, and worked to elect Democratic candidates. Born March 4, 1948, in Kingston, New York, Jean Marie OLeary grew up mostly in Ohio. She used the occasion of her high school graduation speech in 1966 to announce her entry into the Sisters of the Holy Humility convent. In a 1984 anthology, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, OLeary said she joined the convent because there was no anti-war movement, no womens movement, no Gay movement in Ohio in 1966 and that she wanted to do something special, to have an impact on the world. She graduated from Cleveland State University with a degree in psychology in 1970, left the convent and became the drummer for a girl band, The Satin Dolls. Soon thereafter, she packed up her drums and moved to New York to pursue doctoral studies in organizational development at Yeshiva University. She became enmeshed in the burgeoning Gay and Lesbian rights movement, attending the political meetings and social events at the Firehouse, joining the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and driving once a week to Albany to lobby state legislators on Gay issues. In 1972, frustrated with the sexism of the male-dominated GAA, she founded Lesbian Feminist Liberation, taking most of the women from GAA with her and establishing one of the first organized Lesbian voices within the womens movement. Two years later, OLeary and Bruce Voeller, then executive director of the National Gay Task Force (NGTF), negotiated an agreement for co-gender management of the national Gay movement and OLeary joined Voeller as co-executive director of NGTF. Feminist leader Gloria Steinem, who worked often with OLeary, issued this statement: Jean OLeary was a link of kindness and humanity and inclusive politics who helped the womens movement to recognize the universal cost of homophobia, and the Gay movement to see that marginalizing the voices of Lesbians would only diminish its power. I know she will be with us as long as we remember what she taught us, but I and thousands of others will always miss her spirit. In her role at NGTF, and through her close friendship with Presidential advisor Midge Costanza, in 1977 OLeary organized the historic first-ever meeting of Gay rights advocates in the White House. She was also the first openly Gay person appointed to a Presidential commission, by President Jimmy Carter, who appointed her to the National Commission on the Observance of International Womens Year. In that role, she negotiated the inclusion of Gay and Lesbian rights on the agenda of the International Womens Year conference held in Houston in 1979. Costanza, who was with OLeary at the time of her death, said: I will always remember Jeans first call to me at the White House requesting a meeting with the President. With the courage and tenacity so typical of Jean, she demanded that I hold a meeting in the White House to discuss federal government policies that specifically discriminated against Gays and Lesbians. Her arguments were persuasive and I scheduled the meeting for March 26, 1977. Because of this historic gathering of Gay and Lesbian leaders in the White House, a national discussion was held to review and begin to correct the anti-Gay policies by federal government agencies. Many changes were made, and many doors were opened as a result of Jeans perseverance. OLeary was also active in Democratic party politics, including her election in 1976 as the first-ever openly Lesbian delegate to a national political convention. She served on the Democratic National Committee for 12 years, including eight on that groups Executive Committee, the first openly Gay or Lesbian person to serve in that capacity. In 2004, Senator Dianne Feinstein appointed OLeary an at-large member of the California Democratic State Committee. OLeary spent most of the 1980s building a local San Francisco group, Gay Rights Advocates, into one of the largest national Gay and Lesbian activist organizations, National Gay Rights Advocates (NGRA). As head of NGRA, OLeary pursued impact litigation and won important victories protecting Gay people from discrimination in employment, housing and other areas. In 1985 NGRA became one of the first advocacy organizations to focus on the legal and civil liberties ramifications of the AIDS epidemic. Sean Strub, founder of POZ Magazine, said, Jeans activism spanned so many movements: the womens movement, Gay and Lesbian rights, AIDS activism as well as Democratic party politics. Her early AIDS activism through NGRA, particularly in expediting access to new treatments, saved many lives. Her passing is a loss for all people who are ill, disadvantaged or suffering and all people who treasure justice. Jean taught Gay men about feminism, she taught Lesbians about AIDS, she taught feminists about Gay and Lesbian issues and she taught Democrats about everything. She personified the use of power with grace and purpose, said Bob Hattoy, a Democratic party and AIDS activist who spoke at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. In 1987, the Los Angeles Times referred to OLearys group as aggressive defenders of the rights of AIDS patients and noted litigation against the several federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, which NGRA initiated to expedite and broaden the access of people with HIV to promising new treatments. In founding National Coming Out Day with psychologist Rob Eichberg in 1987, OLeary noted that coming out is critically important to our community and to our movement. Our invisibility is the essence of our oppression. And until we eliminate that invisibility, people are going to be able to perpetuate the lies and myths about Gay people. In recent years, OLeary, with her business partner, Palm Springs City Councilmember Ginny Foat, ran a consulting firm specializing in voter contact and candidate consulting. In addition to her life partner Lisa Phelps, and their daughter Victoria, she is survived by their son David De Maria, his life partner James Springer, and their son Aiden DeMaria. She is also survived by her brothers, Jim OLeary and Ken OLeary, sister Diane Urig, and nieces and nephews. Phelps said, I am proud to have been with Jean during the last 12 years of her life, and I am proud of Jeans political accomplishments. She set an example of community involvement for our 15-year-old daughter Victoria and instilled in her the importance of political activism. A memorial service, to be held at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, is being planned.