GLR January-February 2023

direct connection between our LGBT equality and reproductive freedom and gender and racial justice. Recently a friend pointed me to a transcript of a conversation Urvashi had with Larry Kramer in 1994 while she was writing her first book, Virtual Equality . Here’s the rough quotation: Creating this common movement, for lack of a better word, the way I’m trying to approach it is: what if we shifted the framework? What if instead of saying, I’m in coalition with you, we tried to identify how HIV treatment issues connect with racism? It’s going to express itself differently in your life than in mine. And that’s the case in reproductive choice. It was never the case that men should march with women because they support women; it was that men should march for repro ductive freedom because we’re marching against the power of the state to tell you and me what we can do sexually, period. And that’s the issue. That’s the common thread, right? If the state can say that I can’t have an abortion, the state can say that you can’t have sodomy. Larry Kramer replied: “I have to tell you, I never realized that.” Urv laughed and said: “It’s about state power. I mean, that’s why I say maybe if we were all to think, to try and explain the connections, I think you’d see things in a different, more con nected way.” So here is Urvashi defining intersectionality 28 years ago. Today, after the fall of Roe v. Wade , these connec tions are all too obvious to everyone. Urvashi’s impact as a writer and thinker was tremendous. She reached so many people with speeches at forums and marches like the National March on Washington in 1993. While writing her first book, Virtual Equality , she went on the college circuit in order to support herself. This is how she made her liv ing. She reached literally tens of thousands of rising leaders through these talks. She inspired and ignited many young queer activists. That’s the public impact that Urvashi had. But for me, I can barely speak about the loss of my friend of 42 years. Urv was generous, she was tough, she was kind, and she was incredibly bossy, but she really hated it when I was bossy. She could be quick to anger and quick to forgive. Her ability to challenge us all was so imbued with compassion and love and charm that we could take it. She was relentless. She was endlessly supportive of her friends, she liked to dance, and she liked to talk about sex. While we were in law school, if I told her about a new sex club, she wanted to go too. And so then we did. There was one particular club that was behind the old police headquarters on Berkeley Street in Boston. It was in the back of the building and up some stairs. We would go there and then we’d get thrown out when they figured out that she wasn’t a guy. She liked to drink and do drugs, until she didn’t. She told me that she would always save a folding chair for me with my name on it in the circle of the church basement. She liked to cook In dian food and to feed everyone and to send you home with left overs. She was the person who taught me to say “I love you” without the whole world crashing down. She always challenged us and gave us lots to think about. She was a lot. Urvashi’s deepest happiness was rooted in her decades-long love affair with Kate Clinton. That gave her so much joy. I know that I think about her every day, and I know that all of us will keep on fighting with the integrity and the anger and the joy and laughter and love that Urvashi did. So, thank you.

leadership and for five years advocated not only for LGBTQ equal ity but for increased funding in the rural South; and loudly, per haps inconveniently, she argued to defund Harvard University. She then went on to be the executive director of the Arcus Foundation for another five years and successfully integrated racial justice into their LGBT DNA, a commitment that they continue to this day. Arcus, which is a private foundation, is the largest funder of queer equality in the world. She spent ten years on the board of directors of the Gill Foundation, another one of the largest funders of LGBT equality, and there she learned she could be the only woman in the room, she could make a lot of noise, make change, and at the same time make lifelong friends. And then, when she retired after ten years from that board, they brought in Mary Bonauto to succeed her. Urv went on to serve on the National Board of Directors of the ACLU, she cofounded LPAC, the first Lesbian Political Ac tion Committee, and she founded the Donors of Color Network, the first ever cross-racial community of donors of color. She co founded the national LGBTQA Anti-Poverty Action Network and the National LGBT HIV Criminal Justice Network. And in her spare time, she co-created the Provincetown Commons, the col laborative space for artists in P’town. She was chair of the Na tional Planned Parenthood Fund board of directors. For the last five years of her life, she was a cofounder of the American LGBTQ + Museum for History and Culture in New York City. And on and on; it’s exhausting just to recite them all. And this is a fraction, the edited version, of where she had an impact as a leader in the infrastructure to create change in this country and in the world. And so, my personal plan is that Urv will end up on a U.S. postage stamp. And all of you can help. There’s a letter-writ ing campaign going on right now led by the woman who fought successfully to have Harvey Milk placed on a stamp. I’ve watched some of Urv’s early speeches from thirty years ago, and, as has been widely reported, she was ahead of her time in beseeching and demanding and leading our movement for equality into a broader movement for freedom and justice and dignity for everyone. She wanted to make us all understand the

The G & LR

16