In September, 2023, a memorial was held in New York City to honor the life and work of Joan Love. There were speakers, years-old video footage of Love’s speeches, media coverage, tributes, and more.  A feminist activist, Barbara fought for gay rights and for lesbians to have a voice in the early days of the women's movement.

Barbara Joan Love was born into an affluent and conservative family in Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 1937.  She and her two brothers grew up with a maid and chauffeur and Sunday dinner at the country club.  In her 2021 memoir, "There at the Dawning: Memories of a Lesbian Feminist", she described it as "upper-middle-class comfort".  In high school, she was a competitive swimmer and won several state championships. She graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in journalism and had hoped to join her father's company, but he didn't think women were qualified to run a business.  Instead, she worked in publishing as an editor.

In her early 20s Barbara registered as a Democrat, the first person in her family for generations to do so..  She began her activism in the late '50s as a closeted young woman in Greenwich Village, haunting the city's Mafia-run lesbian bars.  In those days these bars were often raided by the police.  A blinking red light signaled the police's arrival.  Officers then warned the women not to dance or touch or they would be arrested.

Love was convinced by a girlfriend to cut her hair and dress more like a man.  One evening their car broke down and a group of male thugs stopped to help them.  Seeing her masculine appearance, the thugs beat her bloody.  In those pre-Stonewall days, if you were discovered to be gay, you could be openly harassed, attacked, and/or discriminated against in all sorts of ways.  Your own parents might turn on you.  Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a mental illness.

But times were changing, and Barbara felt empowered.  At age 33 she finally came out to her family.  

Love was on what is now known as the National LGBTQ Task Force for 10 years and co-founded the New York-based Identity House with activists and therapists to help LGBTQ people find acceptance. She was involved in the establishment of PFLAG, an organization dedicated to the support and education of LGBTQ individuals and their families, which helped Love’s mother accept her.  Her mother then participated with her in marches and other gay rights activities.

She forged lifelong friendships with those fighting for the same rights of recognition and equality for all, in her work with the National Gay Task Force; with the formation of Identity House; advocating for the recognition of lesbianism as a feminist issue by the National Organization for Women (NOW); as a board member of Veteran Feminists of America; and as an author of important works, from the first non-fiction book to put lesbianism in a positive light, Sappho was a Right On Woman: A Liberated View of Feminism (1972), to the record of many women and men who took news making actions in protest for change in the encyclopedic, Feminists Who Changed America: 1963-1975, and other books.