PATRICIA IRELAND, President of the National Organization of Women (NOW), born; Ireland served as president of the National Organization for Women, from 1991 to 2001 and published an autobiography, What Women Want, in 1996. She has advocated extensively for the rights of poor women, Gays and Lesbians, and African women. She has also advocated electing female candidates, and training people to defend clinics from disruptive anti-abortion protesters around the United States.

On December 17, 1991 she became the very thing NOW had feared from it’s inception. She gave an interview with The Advocate, in which she stated that she had a husband and a female partner, Pat Silverthorn, a longtime activist in the Socialist Workers Party. Lesbians had “infiltrated” NOW. This writer would wager they were probably the ones doing most of the work, anyway. Good work, Patricia!