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House Votes to Name Post Office after PFLAG Founders
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted on a bill introduced by Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) to designate the United States Postal Service located at 7802 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, New York, as the “Jeanne and Jules Manford Post Office Building.” Jeanne Manford founded PFLAG, formerly known as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, to support the parents, family and friends of LGBTQ people. The bill was passed by voice vote and now awaits consideration in the Senate.
The idea for PFLAG began in 1971 when Manford marched with her son in the precursor to New York’s pride parade and participants asked to her to talk to their parents. What started as a small support group meeting of 20 people at the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church on March 26 1,973 turned into a national organization in 1981.
While Jeanne died in 2013, her legacy lives on. PFLAG has hundreds of chapters across the U.S. and continues to create safe schools for all, offer scholarships to LGBTQ people and allies and advocate on a number of issues relevant to the LGBTQ community on Capitol Hill.
When PFLAG was first envisioned in 1971, there were no federal laws explicitly protecting LGBTQ people and sex between consenting same-sex adults was illegal in many states. The progress that we have made over the past four and a half decades is a testament to the work PFLAG and many other LGBTQ organizations, including HRC, have done to create a more welcoming and supportive society of LGBTQ people.
HRC is proud to have partnered with PFLAG countless times in the past several decades to support LGBTQ people, their families and friends and looks forward to continuing our work in the years to come.
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