As all LGBTI activists from all over the world, ILGA mourns the passing of Paula Ettelbrick, a spirited and unwavering fighter for the rights of LGBT people worldwide. Ettelbrick died Friday morning after an ongoing battle with cancer. She was 56 and leaves behind her partner and three children. She worked for numerous high-profile LGBT organizations, among them the New York based Stonewall Community Foundation, the US national LGBTI Community Movement LAMBDA Legal, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). She was also a reknown legal scholar, teaching at New York University Law School and Barnard College. One of her noted statements was: “Justice for gay men and lesbians will be achieved only when we are accepted and supported in this society despite our differences from the dominant culture and the choices we make regarding our relationships.”
ILGA Co-Secretary General Gloria Careaga, who knew Paula Ettelbrick personally, sent out the following message after hearing of her passing: “The LGBTI movement has suffered an important loss. Paula Ettelbrick has left us. The struggle against cancer is never sufficient and often leaves us feeling powerless. I have great beautiful memories of Paula, not only because of her passion and commitment to the struggle for LGBTI rights in her long career as lawyer and as director of IGLHRC, which allowed us to share so many moments since the beginning of the 1990’s, but also because of the moments we had as intimate friends which allowed us to jointly experience and share the personal things we cared for, and the joy of living. Definitively, it is a great loss.”
In a statement the North American Gay Men’s Health Crisis GMHC called Paula Ettelbrick “Beautiful, articulate, smart and hard-hitting”. “Paula was a force to be reckoned with… We will miss her fierceness, eloquence and graciousness”, GMHC said.
Lambda Legal’s Executive Director Kevin Cathcart said: “We mourn the loss of one of the pioneers of our movement for equality under the law and a woman who never stopped fighting for social justice.
UK LGBTI and general human rights activist Peter Tatchell said upon hearing about her death: “She had an unshakable commitment to the ideals of universal human rights. A truly wonderful, warm-hearted person of great humanity. She lived her politics in her daily life, going out of her way to show kindness to so many people. I feel very honoured to have known her. She’ll be long remembered for the many causes and people she touched with such extraordinary compassion”.
Human Rights activist and former Executive Director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch , Scott Long said: “Paula fought hard on every level for what she believed in. And since she believed in many things with fixity and fire, she seemed always to have a new fight on her hands. She could be difficult, but she could also inspire”.
IGLHRC’s Executive Director Cary Alan Johnson, whose organization greatly expanded under Ettelbricks leadership, said: “Thanks to her skills as a lawyer, we became more firmly grounded in international and domestic legal principles. She brought gravitas, humor and spunk to our organization. Paula was genuinely deeply unfalteringly committed to our liberation as LGBT people”.