Ed Sedarbaum, who founded a gay activist group in Queens, led LGBTQ groups in Westchester and the Berkshires, and was a leader in the fight against hate crimes, died on Nov. 20, 2024 in Williamstown Massachusetts. He was 78 and pre-deceased in 2019 by his beloved longtime partner and husband, renowned gay cartoonist Howard Cruse.
At the dedication of the “Coming Out in Queens” exhibit at the Queens Museum in 2017, another pioneering Queens gay activist, former Councilmember Danny Dromm, described Sedarbaum as “the grandfather of the Queens movement.” At the time that Julio Rivera was viciously murdered by anti-gay thugs in 1990 in Jackson Heights, a group called Gay Friends and Neighbors of Queens and LAGPAC (Lesbian and Gay Political Action Club of Queens) had already folded, so Sedarbaum got busy organizing a grassroots LGBTQ rights group in the borough. (He and Cruse had heard of the attack while at a Queer Nation meeting.)
Aware that the number of New York City councilmembers had just been expanded from 35 to 51, “it seemed a great time to make our local candidates declare their positions on our lives,” he said. “So I organized a candidates night at a local church, and everyone was shocked that over 100 people showed up. Of course I took names and addresses (remember when addresses were useful in organizing?) and invited them to my apartment to talk about what kind of organization they wanted and needed. And that’s how Q-GLU [Queens Gays and Lesbians United] was born” in 1991.
At the forum “John Sabini won over the audience in a walk,” Sedarbaum said. “His chief opponent [the incumbent councilmember] Helen Sears doomed herself with us by saying she cared for our community but opposed domestic partnership because it would ‘undermine something we all believe in — the family.’ The sound of 100 people gasping in disbelief was powerful.” Sabini defeated Sears in the primary.
Sedarbaum worked with the Anti-Violence Project (AVP) to train cops at the 115th Precinct to make them more responsive to the burgeoning gay community in Queens and went on to be the coordinator for a time of AVP’s Hate Crimes Bill Coalition for two years to lobby for the New York State Hate Crimes Act (that finally passed in 2000). Veteran gay activist Howie Katz, his comrade in the fight, called him “a tireless advocate and an incredible community organizer.”
He later served as associate director of the Anti-Defamation League working against hate violence and harassment.
Sedarbaum himself, with Dromm as his campaign manager, ran for public office in 1998, trying to unseat State Sen. George Onorato, a Democratic 14-year incumbent. He told me on our Gay USA show back then he wanted to show that “we could run and win in areas outside of our strongholds,” not just as a gay person but as a progressive. While Sedarbaum did not win that primary, Jimmy Van Bramer — who would himself be elected to the City Council in 2009 — said Sedarbaum’s run “put the LGBTQ community on the map in Queens” and garnered the endorsement of the New York Times, paving the way for out LGBTQ elected officials in Queens such as Van Bramer and Dromm in 2009 and Lynn Schulman and Tiffany Cabán in 2021.
Van Bramer said when he was trying to organize a gay student group at St. John’s University in Queens in 1993 and was being denied by the Catholic administration, “someone told me I needed to meet Ed, who could help me organize a protest march and rally” on campus to protest the exclusion. He credits Sedarbaum with getting him “more heavily involved in his work and Queens LGBTQ politics” in 1996.
When Queens Community School District 24, led by the anti-gay Mary Cummins, blocked the use of gay-inclusive curricula, Sedarbaum was one of the lead organizers in 1993 of a “March for Truth” in Ridgewood to denounce the bigotry.
Matt Foreman, the then-director of AVP, said, “Ed was tireless, fierce, and funny. After insulting and fruitless conversations with Mary Cummins over her hate-based attacks against the Children of the Rainbow curriculum, it was his idea to organize protests in all five boroughs, culminating with a march through her own neighborhood. It was a great slap in her face and inspiring for us all. That was Ed.”
In 1995, Sedarbaum, with a background in social work, was the founder and first CEO of the SAGE/Queens GLBT Senior Center, “the first such senior citizens program in Queens” according to gay historian Stephen Petrus.
Sedarbaum had a stint in the Westchester gay movement as well, serving as executive director of The LOFT LGBTQ+ Center there from 1999 to 2001 where, the group said in a FB post, “he championed LGBTQ+ advocacy, community building, and equity with unparalleled passion and care,” calling him “a visionary leader and a kind soul.”
Sedarbaum moved to North Adams, Massachusetts in 2003 and formed Rainbow Seniors of Berkshire County in 2015 to create a social network for LGBTQ older people there, securing a federal grant for it.
Dromm said that he has secured the support of Councilmember Shekar Krishnan of his old Jackson Heights district to propose naming a street for Ed Sedarbaum and Howard Cruse at 84th St. and 34th Avenue by their longtime residence at 88-11 34th Avenue. The men met in 1979 at a time when Sedarbaum “had recently left the Queens home he shared with his wife of 10 years who had known of his relationship with men,” a post on the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project said. “Seeking to help others who were also coming to terms with their sexuality, Sedarbaum began volunteering at the Gay Switchboard and led a rap session at Identity House, a walk-in counseling center in Manhattan.” They lived in Queens from 1979 to 2002. They married in 2004 when same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts.
Ed Sedarbaum: a lover, a fighter, and a lifetime of unique varied and essential service to LGBTQ communities and human rights for all.
