Smith College basketball team in 1902, long before the school became well known for its lesbianism
JESSE POWELL writes:
Northampton, Massachusetts, home of Smith College, has been an epicenter of feminism for decades. Both Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan graduated from the Seven Sisters school, which in recent years also has had a reputation as a place where brainy women resolve their identity crises by becoming lesbians, either permanently or just for the college years.
It is no surprise, given this history and the fact that Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same sex “marriage” in 2004, that Northampton is the lesbian capital of the United States. Fully six percent of households with children in Northampton are headed by a lesbian couple and almost eight percent of “romantic partnerships’ are between women. Nearby East Hampton and Greenfield, Massachusetts also have relatively large populations of lesbian couples who live with children (156 in Northampton, 52 in Easthampton, and 38 in Greenfield). These are by wide margins the highest such ratios in the United States.
While lesbians are still a small minority of the total population in Northampton, they have unusual visibility and acceptance.
Northampton elected its first openly lesbian mayor, Mary Clare Higgins, in November 1999. She served continuously as mayor until she resigned the position in September 2011 to head an anti-poverty agency in the area.
And, Smith makes no secret of its warm approval of lesbianism. Its commencement speaker this year was the televison celebrity Jane Lynch, who spoke fondly of her “wife,” a Smith alum.
“You are the women of Smith,” Lynch said in her commencement speech. “You are fiercely independent, wicked smart, trail blazing, uber confident and shockingly entitled. Like I told you, I live with one of you. I have no doubt you will continue with this legacy and you will change the world. And, we need you to, women of Smith College — now more than ever.”
Lara Embry, Lynch’s lesbian girlfriend, exemplifies this spirit of change. She sued her ex-lesbian lover for partial custody of the woman’s child and won in a Florida court of appeals, thus redefining adoption rights there. Read More »