Jeff Montgomery, gay-rights advocate, dies at 63
Jeff Montgomery, gay-rights advocate, dies at 63
Matt Helms, Detroit Free Press 3:45 p.m. EDT July 19, 2016
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Jeffrey Montgomery, who turned his anger over inaction in the wake of his partners killing in an anti-gay hate crime into the Triangle Foundation, an influential group fighting for LGBT rights in Michigan and beyond, died Monday at Harper Hospital in Detroit. ... The Detroit resident was 63. A cause of death wasnt immediately known, but friends said his health had been declining in recent years.
Montgomerys legacy will be the amazing impact that he had on our state, said Stephanie White, executive director of Equality Michigan, a statewide LGBT-rights organization created in 2010 with the merger of the Triangle Foundation and Lansing-based Michigan Equality. Its a little bit hard to overstate the legacy. At a time when a lot of us were afraid to come out of the closet, he was very public and very unapologetic. He inspired a generation of activists. He was a little rock with a big ripple.
After his lover, Michael, was shot to death outside a Detroit gay bar in the mid-1980s, Montgomery said he learned through a Wayne County prosecutor that Detroit police werent spending many resources on solving the murder, saying it was just another gay killing, and that other anti-gay crimes similarly went without investigation. Michaels killing was never solved.
Montgomery in 1991 helped found Triangle, formed initially to assist victims of anti-gay crimes and work with police and prosecutors to change the culture of how anti-LGBT crimes were treated. Soon the foundation, for which Montgomery was the first executive director, was taking on other forms of discrimination against LGBT people, including in housing and employment, and branching into lobbying in Lansing and Washington on legislation affecting the gay community.