On this day in queerstory: Lesbian panel speaks out on The David Susskind Show

On October 10, 1971, something remarkable happened on American television: a group of openly lesbian women were featured in a panel discussion on The David Susskind Show. Hosted by talk-show host David Susskind, the program turned a spotlight — often hostile or mocking — onto women speaking openly about their lives, desires, and struggles. That panel represented a fracture in the wall of silence and invisibility that cloaked queer lives in that era.

One of the most visible voices on the panel was Barbara Gittings, already a seasoned activist by 1971. Gittings, born in 1932, had been organizing since the 1950s, pushing back against the erasure and stigma faced by queer people.

She helped found the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian civil rights organization, and edited The Ladder, one of the earliest lesbian publications, in the 1960s.

That night on Susskind, she and her colleagues laid open truths: the isolation, the fears, and the determination to refuse shame.

What made the moment electrifying was not merely the words aired, but the act itself: lesbians speaking publicly, as lesbians, and refusing to couch their identities in euphemism. On a medium still governed by heteronormative norms and censorship, their visibility forced viewers to reckon with the reality of queer lives. The broadcast left many unsettled — and many more curious, compassionate, or simply awakened.

To appear on that panel was risky. In 1971, many queer people risked losing jobs, family, housing, and social standing simply for being out or even suspected of being gay or lesbian. Coming onto national television meant exposing oneself to backlash — harassment, threats, shaming, and worse. Yet Gittings and her fellow panelists agreed to that risk, believing that invisibility itself was a kind of violence.

In a poignant irony, for many viewers, that televised panel was among their first exposures to lesbians as full, complex human beings. Not caricatures or cautionary footnotes, but people with desires, hearts, grievances, and dignity. For many lesbian women — closeted, frightened, silenced — it offered a glimmer of possibility: that one could live openly, that one could challenge fear with voice.

That 1971 broadcast didn’t instantly transform hearts or laws. Homophobia, medical pathologizing, police raids, and discrimination persisted. But the moment mattered. It cracked a door. It made it harder to deny queer lives in the public imagination. Over time, the presence of LGBTQ+ people in media expanded — from underground publications to documentaries, from small queer presses to mainstream news and fiction.

Barbara Gittings kept pushing. She would later lobby the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — a goal successfully achieved in 1973.

Her partnership with Kay Tobin Lahusen (a photographer, writer, and activist) was central to preserving intimate and public histories of queer life. Together they amassed a vast archive of literature, photos, protests, and correspondence.

That October 10 panel also helped shift norms of what queer visibility could look like. Instead of hiding in coded language, many in the movement began to speak more boldly, demanding recognition, rights, and respect. The visibility was not safe — but it was essential.

Each date we recall in queer history is a tether to the courage of those who dared to be seen when being seen was dangerous. October 10, 1971, is one such tether. On that night, voices broke through the static, and a new possibility for queer presence in public life was born.

So today, when we mark October 10, we can pause and remember: the women who sat unafraid in the glare of television lights, the viewers who perhaps changed their minds, the hidden ones who heard a voice that said, “You exist, and you deserve to be heard.” In that moment and all that followed, queer history gained one more line in the ledger — one more proof that silence can be broken, and that visibility can be revolutionary.