LGBT ¨PIONEER¨ ACTIVIST PAULA ETTELBRICK, R.I.P.-- “Paula is a legendary figure. She was an passionate organizer, a smart lawyer, an incredibly astute lobbyist and a fighter to the end...¨

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum remembered Paula Ettelbrick, pictured, for her groundbreaking career as a LGBT activist who she said “fought with every fiber of her being.”

¨Paula Ettelbrick, the former legal director of Lambda Legal, the former executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and a heralded LGBT activist of more than 25 years, passed away Friday at the age of 56, after a battle with aggressive ovarian cancer.

Ettlebrick was a fiery activist who took many fights to the court room and won. She pushed and prodded government officials for every inch of equality she could extract, and often gave much better than she received. Paula Ettelbrick was always tilting at windmills and meeting new horizons, as recently as 2003 when she moved into international gay human rights, having spend the majority of her career in domestic gay politics. She was as comfortable in the classroom teaching students as she was taking on homophobes at the barricades; she worked as an executive in the board room and battled federal and state representatives. Sadly, Ettelbrick has lost a life-​ending battle and the LGBT community will be much poorer for her absence...¨ please read it all, HERE

·  Thanks to The New Civil Rights Movement, sidebar
·  Thanks to Paula Ettelbrick, R.I.P.
·  Thanks to Tanya L. Domi, Columbia University