National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) was founded in 1973 by Bruce Voeller, Nath Rockhill, Ron Gold, and Howard Browning (among several others) in New York City as the first nonprofit organization at the national level dedicated to furthering the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. The NGLTF has been instrumental in grassroots organizing on the state level through providing training to LGBT community organizers, activists, and community members. Until the founding of the Human Rights Campaign, the NGLTF was the sole lobbying voice of LGBT Americans at the federal level.

The NGLTF has been instrumental in achieving political and legal rights for LGBT people. The organization campaigned to have homosexuality removed as a category of mental illness in the 1970s. In this same time period, NGLTF demanded that the Democratic Party consider the civil and human rights of the gay community. In the 1980s, NGLTF played a crucial role in pressuring national legislators to address the rising crisis of AIDS. In 1984, the organization issued the first extensive report on hate crimes directed at the gay community, documenting anti-gay victimization and violence. As a founding member organization of the Military Freedom Project, NGLTF helped set the framework for the 1993 debate about gays serving in the military.

More recently, NGLTF has been pivotal in training local and state LGBT activists in community organizing strategies to support state legislation that would allow LGBT people to marry. The organization also founded the Transgender Civil Rights Project, which advocates laws at the federal, state, and local levels that ban discrimination along the lines of gender identity and expression. NGLTF provides unique and strategic organizing opportunities for LGBT grassroots organizers and activists through the annual Creating Change conference, which draws more than 2,500 attendees from all regions of the United States. The organization has been pivotal in supporting the organizing work of queer people of color through the People of Color Organizing Institute held the day preceding the Creating Change conference. Through the think tank of the Policy Institute, the NGLTF sponsors analysis and research of issues that are important to the lives of LGBT individuals and families, including anti-LGBT ballot measures, marriage and partnership recognition, religion, health and HIV/AIDS, and parenting, among many others. The organization currently has offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.