Sunday, June 8, 2014

Barbara Gittings Memorial Pink Trangle Chicken Salad Luncheon


Ingredients:

 
12 oz. cooked chicken cut in small dices
2 cups cantaloupe in small dices
1 celery stalk finely diced
1 8oz. Tub cream cheese spread – pineapple flavored
½ cup chopped pecans optional
5 drops red food coloring
1 tube of croissant dough

Red seedless grapes
Diced cheddar



Preheat oven as per directions on croissants. On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, lay out the individual triangles of dough: DO NOT roll up. Bake as directed watching to make sure they don't burn.
When done take out to cool on a wire rack.

Dice the cooked chicken – slave used left-overs.
Dice the celery
Cut up the cantaloupe. Try to make the pieces of chicken about the same size as the melon.



Stir the 5 drops of food coloring into the cream cheese, and whip with a fork to soften. Then with a large wooden spoon, mix the chicken, cantaloupe, celery, and cream cheese together.

To Serve.
Place 2 tbs of the pink colored chicken salad onto the triangles. Finish the plate with a few red grapes and some diced cheddar cheese. A perfect summer luncheon!



These festive “Pink Triangles are to honor another of our LGBT heroes: Barbara Gittings

Born in 1932, Barbara Gittings was just another child who grew up during the second world war.
In 1950 During her freshman year in college: she consulted a Chicago psychiatrist who diagnosed her “Un-natural feelings as “homosexual”--and offered to "cure" her.
However instead, she sought out more information. She searched the college libraries, even the medical and law branches. She quickly discovered that resources were few, and often to be found "under such headings as 'abnormal,' 'perverted,' or 'deviate.'" The articles were horrifyingly filled with gross descriptions. Images intended to scare anyone into seeking redemption from this disgusting disease.
Gittings observed that what information there was dealt almost exclusively with gay men. Some of the “facts” reported were ludicrous!. That all homosexual men could not whistle, they loved the color green, and other such things as we would consider “Old Wives Tales”. Mostly the subjects were not treated as human at all but rather as things.
She was also struck by the fact that there were no references to love.
That same year, 1950 the first “homophile” society was formed by Henry Hay. It became the Mattachine Society.
Few others started cropping up when newsletters, little more than fliers were mailed to “friends” around the country. They had to use the “cell” techniques developed by the Communist party to keep themselves safe. It was said that they were paranoid that the FBI would be spying on them. Well under the Freedom of Information Act we finally learned they were correct. J. Edgar Hoover kept extensive files of any such society. Given what is now common knowledge about him, it should not surprise anyone.
Gittings traveled out to California in 1956 because she had heard about a group named “One”, while there she discovered the Daughters of Bilitis, which had just formed the year before.
Within a couple of years, the DOB's founders, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, asked Gittings to form a chapter in New York City!
At one of her meetings she invited a gay activist, Dr. Frank Kameny. Together they were to change the course of history. He made a huge impression upon Gittings with his point that it is useless to try to find cures and causes for homosexuality since there is no valid evidence that it is an illness. 






Gettings latter recalled: "My thinking didn't change until Frank Kameny came along and he said plainly and firmly and unequivocally that homosexuality is no kind of sickness or disease or disorder or malfunction, it is fully on par with heterosexuality ... Suddenly I found that I was looking at things that had happened in the past in a very different light and I was taking a position that was increasingly diverging from DOB’s positions."
The attitudes and tactics of both the Mattachine Society and The Daughters of Bilitis started to quickly change. No longer content with being “assimilationist” and “apologetic”, demonstrations were held. The women had to wear dresses and the men wore business suits and ties.
Both Gittings and Kameny believed in using the proven tactics from the civil rights movement, even Gandhi’s “Civil disobedience”.
Together they succeed in eliminating “Homosexuality” from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders!
Barbara Gittings never forgot how empty her research at the libraries had been. She took that on next and for decades was the main driving force to develop lists and resources. Thanks to her efforts, libraries across the county would have reliable information for the questioning youth of tomorrow.
Following a brave battle with breast cancer, Gittings died on February 18, 2007. She was survived by her significant other, never having the legal ability to marry.

Slave remembers well going to the Main library in Downtown Indianapolis and searching for anything on “Homosexuality”. This was in 1962. There I found mention of both a society of the Daughters of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society. However both were so far away and I knew they could not help a 12 year old who was going to undergo Electro shock aversion therapy. However, just knowing they existed out there gave me something to hold onto and helped me survive that summer of hell.



I cannot thank Barbara Gittings or the work she did, nor can I stress how very important it was and continues to be into the 21st century!
Serving my Master Indy
socialslave

To satisfy and restore.
To nourish, support and maintain.
To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,
to nurture, assist, and sustain
..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon








 

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