LGBTQ rights pioneer Kay Lahusen holding a photo of her lifelong partner, the late Barbara Gittings Katherine “Kay” Lahusen, 91, died in gentle hospice care at Chester County Hospital on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, after a brief illness.
She was born in Cincinnati in January 1930 and, as an infant, was adopted and raised by her grandparents. After graduating from Ohio State University, she moved to Boston, where she met her lifelong partner, Barbara Gittings, at a Daughters of Bilitis picnic in 1961.
Kay and Barbara lived variously in New York, Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del. They were gay activists from the early days of the Gay Rights movement in the U.S., marching openly in picket lines in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia in the early