In 1974 no federal law anywhere in America said it was wrong to fire someone for being gay, and one member of Congress sat down to write one. Bella Abzug, born on this day in 1920, introduced the Equality Act that May. It would have added sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She got exactly one cosponsor, Ed Koch, and it went nowhere. She reintroduced it the following March and stood up on the floor of the House to argue for it - the first member of Congress ever to speak there for gay rights. She had been building toward it for years. Her first campaign office in 1970 sat a few blocks from the Stonewall Inn. In 1972 she wrote to New York's police commissioner demanding to know why his officers stood and watched while Gay Activists Alliance members were beaten in public. Fifty-two years later the Equality Act still has not passed. She was first, she was early, and she was right