Astronaut Sally Ride to be first LGBTQ person on US currency / LGBTQ Nation

The Next Quarter Sally RidePhoto: US currency
Pioneer astronaut Sally Ride will become the first LGBTQ person to appear on US currency. Ride will be one of five American women to appear in the new “American Women Quarters Program”.
Ride will join poet Maya Angelou, Asian American actress Anna May Wong, Cherokee Nation leader Wilma Mankiller and suffragist Nina Otero-Warren on the coin series.
Related: 10 LGBT Trailblazers You Probably Didn’t Know Were Crazy Sexy
While Otero-Warren, a pioneering Hispanic politician from New Mexico, was briefly married to a man before launching her political career, she formed a lifelong relationship with another woman. The two lived in separate houses on the same property and were known as “Los Dos” (The Pair).
Although Otero-Warren was included on the National Park Service’s list of âLGBTQ Homesteadersâ, she was not out. It would have been incredibly rare for her to identify as a lesbian at the time.
Ride, who in 1983 became the first American woman in space, died of cancer in 2012. Her sexual orientation was not widely known until her death, when her obituary revealed that she was survived by his 27-year-old female partner.
In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded Ride a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.
