She helped to found consciousness-raising groups for lesbian feminists and was active in the gay liberation movement.
She also helped in the presentation to the American Psychiatric Association which led to the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
[4] At 12 years of age as a competitive swimmer, she was the first person in New Jersey to break the record of the 100 yard freestyle in under a minute.
"[5] Love began having crushes on girls in middle school, but did not realize she was a lesbian and did not have anyone to talk to about her feelings.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she lived in Greenwich Village and frequented lesbian bars in New York City.
[5][nb 1] Aside from Friedan, whom she found "harsh and demanding," other activists included Rita Mae Brown and Kate Millett.
[6] Friedan, reflecting the tenor of some other heterosexual members of NOW, stated initially that the presence of lesbians in the organization was damaging to their image.
It hosted conferences, held consciousness-raising sessions, wrote position papers, and in the early 1970s published a newspaper entitled Matriarchists.
[9] While Kate Millett was speaking about sexual liberation at Columbia University in 1970, a woman in the audience asked her, "Why don't you say you're a lesbian, here, openly.
[10] A couple of weeks later, Time's December 8, 1970 article "Women's Lib: A Second Look" reported that Millett admitted she was bisexual, which it said would likely discredit her as a spokesperson for the feminist movement because it "reinforce[d] the views of those skeptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians.
"[10][11] In response, two days later a press conference was organized by Love and Ivy Bottini in Greenwich Village which led to a statement in the name of 30 lesbian and feminist leaders which declared their "solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society".
A week after her appearance on the David Susskind Show, a middle-aged couple approached Gittings in the supermarket to claim, "You made me realize that you gay people love each other just the way Arnold and I do.
[14]That year, at a national NOW conference in California, Arlie Scott led an effort that resulted in NOW passing a resolution asserting that lesbianism is a feminist issue.
[7] Sidney Abbott, Kate Millett, Phyllis Birkby, Alma Routsong, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.
Barbara Gittings, Love, and other lesbian and gay people made a presentation in 1971 to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that influenced the December 15, 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM.
In 1971, Love co-authored the first non-fiction book about lesbianism from a positive perspective, Sappho Was a Right-on Woman, with Sidney Abbott.
[5] For instance, she brought home several gold medals in the senior woman's age group of the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998.