PATRICIA NELL WARREN'S ELECTION BIOGRAPHY

By Patricia Nell Warren

Patricia Nell Warren's career spans more than 40 years. Read a small part of her impressive history.

Beginning in 1994, Patricia championed our local disenfranchised youth and served as a volunteer teacher at the EAGLES Center, the West Hollywood-based LAUSD program for at-risk LGBT high school students. She later served on the school district's Gay & Lesbian Education Commission (1996-1998) and Human Relations Education Commission (1999). While serving as a commissioner, Patricia helped organize and participated in Youth Lobby Day, which was instrumental in getting Senator Sheila Kuehl's AB222, the Dignity for All Students Act, written into state law. In 1998, Patricia worked with Los Angeles City Councilmember Jackie Goldberg, canvassing West Hollywood to re-elect Jeff Horton to our Board of Education. She continues to support local youth through active participation and support of Project 10.

Patricia Nell Warren is also one of the most popular and respected authors of gay literature in the world. Her celebrated classic, The Front Runner, has sold an estimated 10 million copies since it was first published in 1974 and has been translated into 10 languages. A former book editor for Reader's Digest, she has supported our struggling independent West Hollywood bookstores, has actively participated as an author and publisher in the West Hollywood Book Fair, and has offered assistance with fundraising plans for the new West Hollywood Library. Patricia also writes on political and contemporary issues for numerous publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, Outsports.com and A & U Magazine.

Patricia is also a civil rights pioneer and free speech activist. In the 1970s, she was instrumental in the landmark women's employment-rights case Susan Smith v. Reader's Digest, and she led a group of female athletes to force major policy changes by the Amateur Athletic Union affecting women's equality in sports. Along with her small publishing house, Wildcat Press, she has twice been a plaintiff with the ACLU against the U.S. Justice Department over right-wing federal legislation designed to promote censorship on the Internet and impede the online sale of gay and lesbian content. Patricia Nell Warren was also one of the co-founders of JUST DISSENT, a grassroots California activist organization dedicated to protecting our rights to peaceful, non-violent protest. Working with Senate Majority Leader Richard Polanco, Patricia helped write and lobbied for SB1796, the Political Expression Protection Act. Unfortunately, despite overwhelming passage by a vote of 26-8 in the State Senate, and passage in the State Assembly, the bill was ultimately vetoed by the Governor.

Scion of a distinguished political Montana family, Warren was born in 1936 and grew up on the family ranch near Deer Lodge, MT. Her father served as State Livestock Commissioner and her grandfather served in the State Legislature. Patricia's great-grandfather, Conrad Kohrs, served in the first Montana legislature in 1886, and helped to write the state's first Constitution. Patricia's literary and political work has been recognized with numerous awards and accolades, including the Arizona Human Rights Fund's Barry Goldwater Award, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame, and the Gay and Lesbian Literary Hall of Fame. She was also the 1994 Community Grand Marshall of West Hollywood's CSW Pride Parade.