Freda Smith

Mary Alfreda Smith (November 22, 1935 – December 3, 2019) was an American political and LGBT activist, working in the areas of women's and minority rights. She worked on the Robert F. Kennedy election campaign in 1968, and helped overturn laws that criminalized homosexual activity in California. In 1972, she became the first ordained female minister of the Metropolitan Community Church. Her parents left Depression-era Oklahoma to settle in Idaho shortly before she was born. Mary was adept in math and science in school. Her parents, Alfred and Mary, moved the family along with their three children to a remote area, along with Alfred's grandmother who was the Nazarene preacher Lydia Harriet Smith, who had rescued Alfred from a Denver orphanage and raised him in the small churches she served at. Freda's early life revolved around the Nazarene Church.

Using her passion about human rights, she joined the Bobby Kennedy Presidential election campaign in California in 1968. When he was assassinated, she decided to come out as a lesbian and a feminist and work to change laws in California. Coming out publicly was rare in those days before Stonewall; homosexuality was still against the law in California, was condemned by the Church, and considered to be a mental disease. She became co-chair of the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform and worked for the passage of Assemblyman Willie Brown's Assembly Bill 489 (Consenting Adult Sex Bill). She read her poem "Dear Dora/Dangerous Derek Diesel Dyke" to state legislators, including Lt. Gov. Mervyn M. Dymally who voted to break a tie in the California Senate

During her efforts to reform the law, Smith learned of the Metropolitan Community Church which had been founded by the Rev. Troy Perry in 1968. She felt her calling, and joined the church. In 1972, Smith became the first woman minister and first lesbian to be ordained by the Metropolitan Community Church. The next year, she convinced the denomination to change its bylaws to use pronouns "he and she". She was the first woman elected to the board of elders in 1973, at the fourth general conference in Atlanta, when the board was expanded from four members to seven.

In Denver in 1975, she co-performed with Robert Sirico the first U.S. same-sex wedding with a government-issued civil marriage license.