2021/05/06 06:49 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The hilltop cottage belonging to a lesbian couple who were the first same-sex partners to legally marry in San Francisco has become a city landmark. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to give the 651 Duncan St. home of the late lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin landmark status. The home in the Noe Valley neighborhood is expected to become the first lesbian landmark in the U.S. West, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “They provided a place for lesbians who were really, really, really in the closet to hang out and dance, have holiday potlucks so they wouldn’t have to go home and hang out with their homophobic relatives,” said Shayne Watson, an architectural historian who specializes in LGBTQ heritage conservation and was active in the movement to get the home landmarked.
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin bought the cottage in 1955
It soon became a meeting place and refuge for local lesbians
The couple founded the Daughters of Bilitis, a political and social organization for lesbians, and wrote books and magazines about lesbian rights
They became the first to get married in 2004, when then-mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to challenge the state s ban on same-sex marriages
They were married again four years later, when the Supreme Court struck down the state s ban
Lyon died in April 2020, and the house was left to Martin s daughter
She sold it for $2.25 million, but local activists wanted to save it
The group started as a social support organization but quickly transformed into activism and politics.
“The Daughters of Bilitis didn’t have an office space, so 651 was really ground zero for the lesbian rights movement at the time. It was a place where people could be safe and reveal their sexuality, said Terry Beswick, executive director of the GLBT Historical Society.
Lyon was a journalist who met her lifelong love, Martin, while working at a magazine in Seattle. The couple moved to San Francisco in 1953. Besides the political organization, they published a national monthly for lesbians and a book called Lesbian/Woman in 1972.