Urvashi Vaid, Trailblazing Legendary LGBT Civil Rights Activist, Has Died at 63

Urvashi Vaid, a longtime LGBT civil rights activist and Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, has died from a prolonged battle with cancer.

She was 63 years-old.

Her groundbreaking and seminal 1996 book, Virtual Equality was a game changer for the rhetoric around gay civil rights. In Equality, she criticized the idea of “mainstreaming” what was and is, in fact, a civil rights movement. Rather than tolerance, she argued, the objective for the movement should be fundamental, actionable change. It was not an immediately popular notion, as media representation for queer people was just beginning to take shape, though it was, for her, of great moral importance.

Virtual Equality won the Stonewall Book Award in 1996.

“We are devastated at the loss of one of the most influential progressive activists of our time,” Kierra Johnson, current executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, said in a press release. “Urvashi Vaid was a leader, a warrior, and a force to be reckoned with. She was also a beloved colleague, friend, partner, and someone we all looked up to — a brilliant, outspoken, and deeply committed activist who wanted full justice and equality for all people.”

“Her leadership, vision, and writing helped shape not only the Task Force’s values and work but our entire queer movement and the larger progressive movement,” Johnson added. “We will strive every day to live up to her ideals and model the courage she demonstrated every day as an activist and a person. She will be deeply I missed. I miss her already.”

Other major LGBT groups are mourning her as well. “Urvashi Vaid was a visionary whose leadership and analysis inspired a generation of LGBT activists, including myself,” said a statement from Kevin Jennings, CEO of Lambda Legal. “Urvashi’s intersectional approach to liberation made the necessary connections between issues of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, gender, class, and other systems that interact to create a system of oppression that harms us all. A thinker, an organizational leader, a mentor, and an eloquent writer and speaker, Urvashi was a pioneer whose contributions to our movement have transformed our world. This is an enormous loss for our community.”

Vaid was an award-winning author and researcher. Her published work includes books, reports, articles, and columns; for several years she was a columnist for The Advocate. She authored: Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012), and Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay Liberation (1996). She coedited an anthology with John D’Emilio and William Turner, titled Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (2000).

Vaid, a graduate of Vassar College and Northwestern University School of Law, began her career as a staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she initiated the group’s work on HIV and AIDS in prisons.

Vaid was the aunt of activist and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, who survives her, along with her longtime partner, political humorist Kate Clinton.