Activist honored in special Assembly ceremony

By Anthony King | SDUN Editor

San Diego resident Gloria Johnson was honored as LGBT Person of the Year for the 76th Assembly District in a ceremony held Monday, June 18. Assemblymember Toni Atkins, the district representative, gave Johnson the award on the Assembly floor in Sacramento, Calif.

Johnson, who has dedicated more than four decades to LGBT equality and social justice causes, served as the local co-char of the 1976 campaign to defeat the Briggs Initiative, a measure that sought to bar lesbian and gay people from working as public school teachers.

Since the 1980s, Johnson served on the board of the LGBT Democratic Club, now the Democrats for Equality, and the San Diego County Democratic Party Central Committee. She has also served as San Diego Pride’s Grand Marshal and Woman of the Year, and participated in the annual Uptown event for 32 years.

“Gloria was a pioneer on behalf of LGBT equality long before there were award-winning films about LGBT heroes or a president who supported marriage equality,” Atkins said in a press release. “She worked in the trenches when being openly LGBT was unpopular and risky. Year after year, her work helped advance our cause. We all owe her a huge debt of gratitude.”

Johnson also advocated – successfully so – that lesbian rights should be included on the National Organization for Women (NOW) platform, and became an official NOW priority. She is a member of the NOW Lesbian Rights Task Force and serves on the California NOW PAC. She is the current president of the San Diego County NOW chapter.

In attendance at the presentation was Sen. Christine Kehoe, Assemblymember and Chair of the legislative LGBT caucus Richard Gordon and Assembly speaker John A. Pérez, among others.