Barbara Gittings, 75, leader in the fight for gay rights

Barbara Gittings, 75, formerly of Philadelphia and Wilmington, a gay-rights pioneer, died Sunday at Kendal at Longwood, a retirement community in Kennett Square, after a seven-year struggle with breast cancer.

On July 4, 1965, Ms. Gittings helped organize a march at Independence Hall to support homosexual civil rights. "It was both scary and exhilarating," she said later. "We knew we were doing something that hadn't been done before. It was our first in-your-face street picketing."

The demonstrators dressed conservatively. "We were fighting for federal employment," said Ms. Gittings' partner, Kay Tobin Lahusen. "We wanted to look employable."

Ms. Gittings continued to march on July Fourth at Independence Hall for three more years, and in 1972 she helped organize the city's first major gay pride parade. In 1990, she was grand marshal of a parade that included 10,000 participants in a crosstown march from Rittenhouse Square to Penn's Landing. "Barbara was a real pioneer who fought tirelessly in the name of human decency and human dignity," Gov. Rendell said.

"She is our Rosa Parks," said Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum in Philadelphia.

"Barbara gave a face to the gay community when it was deeply in the closet," said Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News.

"She had a sense of humor," Lahusen said. "She had fun winning over hostile audiences."

Ms. Gittings said in an interview in 2001 that as a young woman, she tried to resolve her sexual orientation through books and literature, and could only find homosexuality listed under "sexual perversion." "This was not about me," she said. "There is nothing here about love or happiness." Eventually, she said, "I simply found my own people."

In the 1950s, she became involved in gay rights, and was a founder of the New York chapter of the lesbian-rights group Daughters of Bilitis and edited its magazine, the Ladder. She was active in the campaign that led the American Psychiatric Association to drop its categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973, and received an award from the association last fall.

Ms. Gittings headed the American Library Association Gay Task Force and edited its gay bibliography. The Free Library of Philadelphia's Gay and Lesbian Collection is named in her honor.

Ms. Gittings was born in Vienna, Austria, where her father was serving in the U.S. diplomatic corps. She graduated from Wilmington High School and spent a year at Northwestern University. She worked at office jobs and in a music store in Philadelphia while pursuing her activism. She and Lahusen met in 1961 at a picnic in Rhode Island. They lived in Center City and in University City, and moved to Wilmington in the 1990s to care for Ms. Gittings' mother and aunt.

She enjoyed classical music concerts, especially baroque and renaissance music, and sang with the Philadelphia Chamber Chorus for 50 years.

In addition to her partner of 46 years, Ms. Gittings is survived by a sister, Eleanor G. Taylor.

A wreath-laying ceremony in honor of Ms. Gittings will be held at noon today at the northwest corner of Sixth and Chestnut Streets, in front of the historical marker commemorating the Independence Hall demonstrations.

A memorial service will be held a future date.

Memorial donations may be made to Lambda Legal Defense Fund, 120 Wall St., Suite 1500, New York, N.Y. 10005-3905.