Public Memorial For Marriage Equality Advocate Pearl Berlin Held Thursday

A public memorial is taking place on Thursday, June 14 for celebrated LGBTQ rights advocate Pearl Berlin. She and her partner Lennie Gerber were plaintiffs in the historic 2014 takedown of North Carolina's Amendment One, which would have defined legal marriage as between a male and a female.

Lennie and Pearl, as Berlin and her spouse were affectionately known, were in many ways the poster-couple of the debate over same-sex marriage and the fight for LGBTQ equal rights. Their faces were on billboards, and the story of their 50 plus year romance was told in newspapers and on television.

Filmmaker Mary Dalton was enamored with their story, and made the documentary Living In The Overlap about the couple. She says that Berlin tried to avoid the limelight.

“You know she had this great mind for data, and organizing, and she worked for candidates and she worked on different issues," says Dalton. "She's the kind of person who brings people along and brings people together. But it's interesting that she really always preferred as much as possible to be behind the scenes.”

The memorial service will be held at UNC Greensboro, where Berlin was a professor and where the Pearl Berlin Writing Award is given to graduate students for excellent thesis and dissertation writing.