Deborah Jane Price – the U.S.’s first mainstream lesbian columnist who wrote about gay life – died at 62 on Nov. 20, the New York Times reported. Price wrote about high-profile LGBTQ+ issues but also the nuances of everyday gay life.
Deb PricePrice – born Feb. 27, 1958, in Lubbock, Texas – died from interstitial pneumonitis.
Price’s goal was to “demystify” gay life, attempting to depict same-sex couples in normal situations to make it that much more difficult for people to deny them equal rights.
Price’s Detroit News column first made the rounds on May 8, 1992, a time when the U.S. was petrified by the AIDS epidemic.
Price faced bigotry over her work – she had pitched a gay perspective column at The Detroit News.
“If there weren’t hostility and if there weren’t misunderstandings about gay people,” she once said, “there would be no point in doing this column.”
Price worked at a number of publications, including The Northern Virginia Sun, the States News Service and the Washington Post.
