Rita Addessa: A Tribute

The Legacy of a Pioneering LGBTQ Rights Advocate

Last week, I emailed Rita Addessa, former Executive Director of the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force. Rita didn’t respond to my email within a day, which was uncharacteristic for her. The next morning, purely as a coincidence, I saw a LinkedIn post from David Fair noting that Rita had died a few days previously.

Rita Addessa in an undated photo - Photo: David Fair

So, with a feeling of profound sadness, I offer here some reflections on Rita and the groundbreaking work she did at PLGTF. I served as Legal Counsel to the organization for almost a decade, beginning in the early 1980s.

A Tireless Advocate

Rita was an indominable and indefatigable advocate not just for LGBTQ civil rights, but under her leadership (to quote from an official organizational description) PLGTF “supported the rights of all oppressed minorities” by “focusing on law, public policy, and development of public education and mass media as critical elements in the long process of social change.”

Perhaps some movement historian can confirm this, but my recollection is that Rita took up the motto “They’ll never have the comfort of our silence again” and had it printed on the PLGTF letterhead and other publications.

At some point in the early or mid-1980s, Rita set up a meeting with some politician—one of these very important people that it’s so difficult to get an audience with. Today, I don’t even remember who that guy was on the other side of the big desk (probably, it was Mayor Goode), and I don’t remember the specific agenda that brought us there, but I do remember how Rita simply wouldn’t let him get the last word. He’d talk on, as politicians are wont to do, with a series of rationalizations or excuses about how what Rita was demanding just couldn’t be done, and Rita kept coming right back at him. I remember marveling at how she held her own in this discussion. That was her indomitability.

As is the case with so many small nonprofit organizations, Rita was responsible not just for doing the work, but also for raising the money to pay for it. Local foundations had little if any history of funding gay and lesbian advocacy projects, and often were uncomfortable with doing so. One of the lessons I learned from her was not to take “no” from foundation funding sources. If a leading foundation in Philadelphia turned down her grant proposal, she was likely to issue a press release accusing the foundation of anti-gay bias.

In one memorable scenario, after two years of submitting unsuccessful funding proposals to the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, we had a third proposal pending in the fall of 1983 when Rita learned about the Foundation’s annual black tie gala fundraising event, the Andrew Hamilton Ball, which was scheduled for December. She sent a hand-written note to me, asking, in the event that our grant proposal was not funded yet again, “how would you like to demonstrate outside of the Bellevue [where the Ball was held].” A public protest on the evening of their gala, Rita noted, would be a “terrible embarrassment to confront their latent bigotry.” I believe that our proposal must have been funded; that protest never took place. But this was how Rita just wasn’t about to give up.

Visibility, Then and Now

Today, it seems hard to imagine that there was a time when a gay community nonprofit would be worried that potential donors wouldn’t write checks to the organization out of fear of writing “gay” or “lesbian” in the payee’s name. Would a potential donor be outing himself, at least with his accountant—who might then gossip to others—with such a donation? That was one of Rita’s concerns and reflects the deep sense of vulnerability that so many gay people lived with.

When the organization was spun off from its original sponsor, the Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania, to continue as an independent nonprofit, we incorporated it in 1982 as “The Philadelphia Task Force,” which was how the organization would appear on those donors’ checks. We then filed by a “fictitious name” registration, which allowed The Philadelphia Task Force to hold itself out to the public as Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force.

Note as well that very early on, the organization was referred to as the Philadelphia Gay Task Force. That was changed to add “lesbian”—I’m sure Rita wouldn’t have had it any other way—but note that it was merely “lesbian and gay,” but the more current and common formulation of “LGBTQ” with the inclusion of B (bisexual), T (transgender), and Q (queer) was yet to come. https://gaycenter.org/about/lgbtq/

The same year, 1982, that PLGTF was set up as an independent nonprofit, Philadelphia City Council passed a sexual orientation anti-discrimination law (Bill 1358). This was a watershed moment—only four years after San Francisco adopted a similar law, and three years before New York City adopted one. The effort to pass that law was very broad-based, involving many organizations and individuals. PLGTF was a part of that successful effort.

Whether it was actual anti-discrimination enforcement, the threat of enforcement, or simply the fact that protection under the law conferred a new legitimacy—that same-sex sexual orientation was worthy of and had received legal protection—Bill 1358 provided a kind of leverage that Rita would use going forward.

Putting “Gay and Lesbian” Up in Lights

Probably largely at Rita’s urging, Philadelphia City Council proclaimed a Gay Pride Week in 1983, in recognition of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. This Pride Week proclamation was a follow-up on Bill 1358, which had been passed the year before.

Rita then seemed to develop an idée fixe with the Philadelphia Electric Company’s Crown Lights display, the lighted text banner on top of the 25-story PECO headquarters building at 23rd and Market Streets in Center City. She wanted to see “Lesbian and Gay Pride” atop the PECO for Pride Week, the last week of June.

She repeatedly wrote to Clifford Brenner, Vice President for Corporate Communications at PECO, requesting the lighting display during Pride Week. He responded that PECO had plans to “mount a patriotic display during the period extending from Flag Day [June 14] to July 4.” He turned down her request without further comment.

Rita’s response to Brenner’s rejection deserves quoting:

PECO’s interest in “mounting a patriotic display” during the period from extending from Flag Day (June 14) to July 4 (Independence Day) would seem to preclude a display as requested from June 21-28. However, since “America” and “Patriotism” generally still symbolize the lofty concepts of democracy, individual freedom and justice, perhaps the lesbian and gay pride week display would actually be appropriate during this period.

Of course, Rita knew this would get her nowhere, so she proposed some acceptable (to her, of course, not necessarily to PECO) alternatives: PECO could display “Lesbian and Gay Pride” any week in June or July; or PECO could just commit to such a display in 1984. “Although,” Rita concluded, “a 1983 display is preferred, particularly in light of our recently enacted civil rights ordinance.”

What she was demonstrating, perhaps with a view toward future litigation, was that PECO’s claim about scheduling conflicts was a pre-text and that PECO’s rejection of the display was result of anti-gay attitudes within PECO.

I still have two research files on the PECO matter. Suffice it to say that although we developed some very ingenious legal theories to challenge PECO’s refusal to run the Pride Week messaging, they ultimately were not put to a test.

Challenging Temple Law School’s Support for Discrimination

We were soon busy enough getting U.S. military recruiters barred from using the placement office at Temple University Law School to recruit lawyers on the theory that Temple was violating the recently amended Philadelphia law. We won that case with the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, prompting the U.S. Justice Department to sue and block the Commission, in United States v. City of Philadelphia, from forbidding Temple’s assistance to the military. PLGTF sought to intervene to ensure that the lesbian and gay community had a voice in this important litigation. We lost that case in the trial court and then on appeal in 1986. But PLGTF’s participation gave a level of visibility to the organization and to the community that it had not had before.

Fairness in Broadcasting

Today, it seems so quaint that there was once a “fairness doctrine” for broadcasters—Ronald Reagan ended it in 1987—enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. Under that doctrine, PLGTF filed seemingly countless licensure renewal complaints with the FCC and sought airtime to rebut the opinions of anti-gay broadcasters. It must have a rude surprise to those broadcasters, whose anti-gay attitudes were unthinkingly ingrained, to be confronted by this feisty activist. There might not have been any broadcast licenses denied by the FCC as a result, but Rita started us on the long road of making anti-gay bigotry socially unacceptable.

Hate Crime Documentation Project

In 1988, one of PLGTF’s most important projects was sponsoring the ground-breaking work of Annenberg School Professor Larry Gross and criminologist Steven Aurand in documenting the high levels of anti-gay violence experienced by local members of the LGBT community. This was the first of a series of efforts by PLGTF to education the public, as well as legislators and policy makers, to this problem.

The Legacy

As I got more involved in AIDS advocacy in the late 1980s, I didn’t have much time for Rita and PLGTF, and eventually I resigned as legal counsel. I didn’t see much of Rita after that. Then, one evening years later I was attending a chamber music concert and was surprised to see Rita (I had forgotten that she was a music lover) sitting there in the row ahead of us. At intermission, I introduced my wife to Rita, and they started in on a conversation just out of my earshot that lasted through the entire intermission. When we all sat down again for the second half of the program, my wife told me Rita couldn’t say enough nice things about me and the work we had done together years ago. That was indeed generous of Rita.

Without any claim that this is an exhaustive or complete survey of what Rita and PLGTF accomplished, I do want to emphasize how she was consistently on the right side of history.

PLGTF was perhaps the first LGBTQ organization to be funded by the Philadelphia Bar Foundation. But today and for many years previously, such funding support has been the norm, with, for example, the Mazzoni Center receiving funding this past year. Rita, as much as anyone, deserves credit for bringing local philanthropy in on LGBTQ issues.

In 2000, the PECO Crown Lights finally said “GAY”—17 years after Rita started pushing the idea to them. Today, of course, it’s not a pride week, it’s a pride month, and PECO’s Crown Lights are just one of many public lighting displays celebrating the community.

Boathouse Row Gay Pride Month 2018 - attitudes have changed since Rita Addessa urged PECO to display a gay pride message in 1983 - Photo: Philadelphia Parks and Recreation

The military policy on homosexuality that PLGTF and the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission challenged in the mid-1980s in the Temple Law School case was abandoned in 2011, resulting in openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual military servicemembers being able to serve. In 2021, the ban on transgender servicemembers, briefly imposed by President Trump, was also reversed.

The problem of anti-gay hate crimes that PLGTF documented in 1988 has now been addressed by legislation. The federal hate crimes law passed in 2009 added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the groups protected. Pennsylvania’s Ethnic Intimidation Act was amended in 2002 to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, although that amendment was struck down on the basis of the technical issue with the legislative process. Attempts to re-enact that law have been unsuccessful—so far. As Rita might say, “There’s still work to be done.”

After Rita and I saw each other at that concert, we kept more in touch regarding our mutual interests—like getting Larry Krasner elected Philadelphia District Attorney— and re-elected. (That one, we won.) Now and then, I’d get an email from Rita, and she’d ask me to take some action to help resolve some human rights or social justice issue—as I said, she was indefatigable. She seemed to have an exaggerated sense of my ability to deliver on what she thought was needed. But I appreciated it, beyond her knowing, that she thought I could still contribute to that “long process of social change” that PLGTF had taken up decades ago.

In that famous phrase, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Rita contributed mightily to that long arc toward justice, something we should never forget.

Do you have your own recollections of Rita Addessa and the work of PLGTF? Please feel free to share them as comments below.

Update: A obituary for Rita was published in the Philadelphia Gay News on July 21, 2022, and in the Philadelphia Inquirer on July 26, 2022.