Adele Starr

Adele Starr has died. She was 90. The Los Angeles Times reports that Starr died in her sleep in a Santa Monica hospital after convalescing after surgery, according to her son Philip Star. In 1974, Philip, Mr. and Mrs. Starr’s second son (the couple had four sons and a daughter) told his parents he was gay, Philip recalling that at the time “being gay was still seen as mental illness. And parenting was often blamed as the cause. So parents felt really bad – they felt like they were bad parents.” According to Philip, his mother was upset, so he directed her towards a support group for families that, two years later, under Adele’s tutelage, became the Los Angeles chapter of PFLAG. “Initially the impulse was that the group was really important to her because she wanted parents not to suffer like she had — not to be isolated, to have a place to go," said Philip Starr, who has been with his now-husband, Michael Simengal, since 1974, the couple has a 19-year-old son. He says that in the beginning the meetings were “almost like an AA formant,” some members declining to reveal their true identities, but according to Philip, as his mother “got more involved, she realised how oppressive the environment was. She really became an activist.” She became PFLAG’s first national president in 1981 and served in that capacity for five years, at a critical moment in the history of gay rights, the AIDS crisis having just began. Later, she became an unrelenting advocate for full marriage equality, in 1998 she wrote a letter to the Times explaining that Philip was a devoted father, a successful businessman, a taxpayer, who deserved the “same rights and freedoms as others,” including the right to “legally marry the one he loves,” adding "We cannot understand those arrogant people who have decided that a heterosexual lifestyle must be imposed on everyone and that they have a monopoly on morality. The American way is respect for diversity with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."