Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon move to San Francisco from Seattle in 1953. Hoping to meet other lesbians, the two women visit “gay girls hangouts” in bohemian North Beach. Lesbian bars like Mona’s, the Paper Doll and Miss Smith’s Tea Room, which serves no tea. Homosexual bars can be raided by the police, Martin and Lyon are warned, which makes it difficult to relax knowing a paddy wagon might pull up in front of the door at any moment.
At Tommy’s on Broadway, Martin and Lyon become friends with Rose Bamberger, a Filipina who wants to be known in those dangerous times only as “Marie.” Marie tells Martin and Lyon that she and five other friends are starting “a secret lesbian society.” They’ll meet in each other’s homes and create a safe space to dance and share a drink, and maybe occasionally go bowling or horseback-riding. The year is 1955.
The group calls itself Daughters of Bilitis, a name inspired by an obscure 1894 book of poems about lesbians in ancient Greece. They choose the name because it sounds mainstream like Daughters of the American Revolution or Daughters of the Nile, the women’s auxiliary to the Shriners. They assume only lesbians will understand the reference to the poems, which they hope will keep the group’s identity secret.
Del Martin is elected president, and Phyllis Lyon is elected secretary. Daughters of Bilitis becomes the first lesbian organization in America.
A primary goal of the group is “to help the individual lesbian overcome the isolation and fear that are her worst enemy.” But Martin and Lyon believe that Daughters of Bilitis should be more than a local social club. In 1956, to reach lesbians outside of San Francisco, Daughters of Bilitis begins publishing a magazine, The Ladder.

Martin and Lyon know they put themselves at risk publishing a lesbian magazine. Even receiving a lesbian publication is dangerous at a time when homosexuals are being fired from jobs for being “immoral” or “subversive.”
Subscribers to The Ladder are promised that the mailing list will never “fall into the wrong hands.” Editorials repeatedly say: “Your Name is Safe!”
However, the Daughters of Bilitis do not escape the notice of the Federal Bureau of Investigation which keeps a file that says – accurately enough — “This is a group that is active in educating the public to accept the homosexual into society,”
,In the 1950s, when most gay people are closeted and fearful, the Daughters of Bilitis and their magazine are the first to suggest that the millions of homosexuals in America should unite to fight for their rights at the ballot box. The Daughters and The Ladder are among the first voices to even suggest gay people have rights.
As Del Martin writes in 1956 in The Ladder, homosexuals “are citizens of the United States, and as such are entitled to those civil rights set forth in the Constitution.”
Long before the Stonewall riots in New York trigger what has been called a gay revolution, The Ladder becomes increasingly militant. Its new editor, Barbara Gittings, runs articles that blast the so-called medical experts who characterize homosexuality as a “preventable and treatable illness,” as well as articles that exhort gay people to move from “endless talk” about their lack of rights to “firm, vigorous action.”
In 1965, when homosexuals are still often considered presumptive criminals under the law, The Ladder reports on cases around the country in which gay people challenge unjust laws against homosexuals and win. The Ladder also keeps stressing the importance of the gay vote. “Homosexual Voting Bloc Puts Pizzazz in Politics,” a 1965 headline declares.
Chapters of Daughters of Bilitis are started in Los Angeles, as well as in several other cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. But the Daughters’ greatest impact is through The Ladder, which reaches lesbians nationwide and gives them comfort, courage, and the idea that as American citizens they have rights.
Martin and Lyon marry on February 12, 2004 in the first same-sex wedding during the “Winter of Love,” when Mayor Gavin Newsom orders the city clerk to begin providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. They marry again on June 16, 2008 after the California Supreme Court’s ruling in In re Marriage Cases which legalizes same-sex marriages in California. Two months later, Martin dies from complications of a bone fracture. Lyon dies on April 9, 2020.

Lillian Faderman is the author of several award-winning books of LGBT history, including Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and The Gay Revolution, which have all been included on the New York Times’ list of “Notable Books of the Year.”
Her latest book, Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death, published by Yale University Press, was named by the magazine The Nation as the “Most Valuable Biography of 2018.”