GLS - Celebrating Our 20th Anniversary

2006 marked the 20th anniversary of the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Sierrans (GLS). In January 1986, the SF GLS was formally sworn in as an official activity section of the SF Bay Chapter of the Sierra Clubóthe first LGBT Sierra Club section in the country. While we are now a well-established part of the local Sierra Club, our acceptance into the larger Bay Chapter Club was not without controversy. Our start was the result of classic grassroots activism.

As far back as 1984, club founders Steve Griffiths and Alan Weaver began handing out flyers in the Castro to encourage LGBT people to join the environmental movement. They were met with enthusiasm by the community and went on to form a 12 member "Committee to Form Gay/Lesbian Sierrans". They issued the first GLS newsletter in February of 1985, and the first GLS hike (to Alamere Falls at Pt. Reyes National Seashore) was held in March of 1985. However, they were met with less enthusiasm by some segments of the Sierra Club. In February of 1985, a move to make the group an official activities section of the local Bay Chapter was voted down by Chapter leaders who feared GLS would focus on Gay and Lesbian issues rather than the environment and create a social group rather than one based on outdoor activities. Some Chapter leaders were also concerned that the inclusion of a Gay and Lesbian section would hurt fundraising and drive away members.

The GLS (then still "The Committee to Form Gay/Lesbian Sierrans") continued to organize to gain inclusion. They marched in the 1985 Pride Parade, and set up a booth at the Celebration afterwards. They highlighted their participation in conservation and environmental activism. The group decided to support a slate of pro-gay candidates running for the Board of the Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club in order to gain inclusion. They organized gay and lesbian Sierra Club members and gay-friendly heterosexual members to support this slate, which went on to win, replacing 4 incumbents who had voted against the inclusion of the GLS. Amongst the GLS-approved candidates was Steve Krefting, the first openly gay person to be elected to Sierra Club office. The formation of GLS also won special support from Michael Hanna Muir, the gay great grandson of Sierra Club founder John Muir. In January of 1986, the new Bay Chapter Executive Committee was sworn in, and its first action was approval of the GLS activity section. The struggle had been widely publicized; when GLS marched in the 1986 Pride Parade, they were cheered along the entire route.

In the early years, the group took special care to draw attention to the environmental activities of its members, logging many volunteer hours and winning awards for members' conservation work. The group tracked how many members it drew to the Sierra Club, and at one point in the late '80ís boasted more than 1,000 members. The GLS also donated money to the Sierra Club at the end of each year, becoming one of the most productive activities sections in fundraising for the local Chapter. Many of the early founders were environmental activists and have served as leaders with local environmental organizations including Save Mt. Diablo, the Sonoma County Land Trust, National Parks Conservation Association, and the Sierra Club itself.

The club is still vital, but smaller in size partially due to its own success and that of the LGBT movement in general: today there is a wealth of LGBT outdoors and activities groups in the Bay Area, including other GLS sections, and many predominantly straight environmental and outdoors groups are more welcoming of LGBT participants.

--Lisel Blash, 2006
Many thanks to Steve Griffiths and Pam LoPinto for providing background material for this article, and to all the other GLS founding members.