Ed Sedarbaum, ‘grandfather’ of Queens LGBTQ movement, dies at 78Ed Sedarbaum, who founded a gay activist group in Queens, led LGBTQ groups in Westchester and the Berkshires, and was a leader in the fight against hate crimes, died on Nov. 20, 2024 in Williamstown Massachusetts. He was 78 and pre-deceased in 2019 by his beloved longtime partner and husband, renowned gay cartoonist Howard Cruse. [Photo show Ed Sedarbaum with his parents at a gay pride event in 1980.]
At the dedication of the “Coming Out in Queens” exhibit at the Queens Museum in 2017, another pioneering Queens gay activist, former Councilmember Danny Dromm, described Sedarbaum as “the grandfather of the Queens movement.” At the time that Julio Rivera was viciously murdered by anti-gay thugs in 1990 in Jackson Heights, a group called Gay Friends and Neighbors of Queens and LAGPAC (Lesbian and Gay Political Action Club of Queens) had already folded, so Sedarbaum got busy organizing a grassroots LGBTQ rights group in the borough. (He and Cruse had heard of the attack while at a Queer Nation meeting.)
Aware that the number of New York City councilmembers had just been expanded from 35 to 51, “it seemed a great time to make our local candidates declare their positions on our lives,” he said. “So I organized a candidates night at a local church, and everyone was shocked that over 100 people showed up. Of course I took names and addresses (remember when addresses were useful in organizing?) and invited them to my apartment to talk about what kind of organization they wanted and needed. And that’s how Q-GLU [Queens Gays and Lesbians United] was born” in 1991.
At the forum “John Sabini won over the audience in a walk,” Sedarbaum said. “His chief opponent [the incumbent councilmember] Helen Sears doomed herself with us by saying she cared for our community but opposed domestic partnership because it would ‘undermine something we all believe in — the family.’ The sound of 100 people gasping in disbelief was powerful.” Sabini defeated Sears in the primary.
Sedarbaum worked with the Anti-Violence Project (AVP) to train cops at the 115th Precinct to make them more responsive to the burgeoning gay community in Queens and went on to be the coordinator for a time of AVP’s Hate Crimes Bill Coalition for two years to lobby for the New York State Hate Crimes Act (that finally passed in 2000). Veteran gay activist Howie Katz, his comrade in the fight, called him “a tireless advocate and an incredible community organizer.”
He later served as associate director of the Anti-Defamation League working against hate violence and harassment. Sedarbaum himself, with Dromm as his campaign manager, ran for public office in 1998, trying to unseat State Sen. George Onorato, a Democratic 14-year incumbent. He told me on our Gay USA show back then he wanted to show that “we could run and win in areas outside of our strongholds,” not just as a gay person but as a progressive. While Sedarbaum did not win that primary, Jimmy Van Bramer — who would himself be elected to the City Council in 2009 — said Sedarbaum’s run “put the LGBTQ community on the map in Queens” and garnered the endorsement of the New York Times, paving the way for out LGBTQ elected officials in Queens such as Van Bramer and Dromm in 2009 and Lynn Schulman and Tiffany Cabán in 2021.
Van Bramer said when he was trying to organize a gay student group at St. John’s University in Queens in 1993 and was being denied by the Catholic administration, “someone told me I needed to meet Ed, who could help me organize a protest march and rally” on campus to protest the exclusion. He credits Sedarbaum with getting him “more heavily involved in his work and Queens LGBTQ politics” in 1996.
When Queens Community School District 24, led by the anti-gay Mary Cummins, blocked the use of gay-inclusive curricula, Sedarbaum was one of the lead organizers in 1993 of a “March for Truth” in Ridgewood to denounce the bigotry.
Matt Foreman, the then-director of AVP, said, “Ed was tireless, fierce,
Read this full article now
Yes, lots of hot gay videos. We are a not-for-profit organization of a few gay seniors with disabilities who created an online gay network that includes all kinds of photos such as, naked men on the beach, nude men in nature hiking, sex in public, gay sex photos, men jerking off, men fucking and sucking. What’s especially fabulous is that the photo library categorizes pictures by topics, such as men naked in public, guys naked on the beach, nude men on the street, even men jerking off in public.
