I’d never heard of “Bilitis” until this morning. It sounds like a medical condition - like phlebitis or dermatitis. As it turns out, I looked up the word online, and it wasn’t in the database at dictionary.com. Wikipedia came through for me, though. Here’s what it has about where the word “Bilitis” came from.
The name of the newfound club was chosen in its second meeting. “Bilitis” is the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of Sappho, by the French poet Pierre Louys in his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis.[7] The name was chosen for its obscurity
So the group is named “Daughters of Bilitis.” The group was begun in 1955 in San Francisco. The two women who started it, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, are now celebrating over 55 years as a couple.
Here’s what the Associated Press has to say about them and why they - and the Daughters of Bilitis - are in the news today:
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment.
On Monday afternoon, more than a half-century after they became a couple, Lyon and Martin plan to become the first same-sex couples to legally exchange marriage vows in San Francisco and among the first in the state.
“It was something you wanted to know, ‘Is it really going to happen?’ And now it’s happened, and maybe it can continue to happen,” Lyon said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to officiate at the private ceremony in his City Hall office before 50 invited guests. He picked Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, for the front of the line in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.
Along with six other women, they founded a San Francisco social club for lesbians in 1955 called the Daughters of Bilitis. Under their leadership, it evolved into the nation’s first lesbian advocacy organization.
To each his (or her) own, I guess.
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