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Columbus/Franklin County Region:
Columbus, Ohio

About Jeannette

Jeannette Birkhoff is a resident of Clintonville near Columbus, Ohio in Franklin County. She and her partner, Jeanne, who is a working artist, have a family consisting of daughter, Leah, who is at the top of her class in fashion design at Columbus College of Art and Design and a son, Jason, who has his own home repair business.

Jeannette is currently employed by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services as Assistant Deputy Director in the Office of Contracts and Acquisitions. She is a graduate of Capital University Law School and has most of a Masters in Business administration/Public Administration completed at The Ohio State University. She also holds a Bachelors of Arts in Women's History from OSU. She currently serves as Clerk of the North Columbus Friends Meeting (Quakers).

She was a reporter and photographer for the Columbus Free Press, the Gay People's Chronicle and the National Guardian. In 1984 she was part of a coalition that journeyed into electoral politics to run a Congressional Campaign. Jeannette served as press secretary on that campaign and also worked on the Jessie Jackson and Mondale/Ferraro campaigns.

Jeannette worked at NARAL/Ohio as lobbyist and Political Action Director, managing both Federal and State lobby efforts, constituent lobby efforts and the political action committee (PAC). Later she served on the Stonewall Columbus Board of Directors and took over re-activating the moribund Stonewall PAC and ran that PAC for several years, winning a "Stoney" award for her work.

She has been an activist primarily working for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi-Sexual rights, environmental issues and women's rights. She campaigned hard against Issue 1 talking to some of the most unlikely groups. After the defeat she organized a successful and visible lobbying effort where gay and straight couples took freshly baked apple pies to Ohio Senators and Representatives with cards that read "Equal Rights, as American as Apple Pie, Vote NO on Federal Marriage Amendment."

"I am completely dedicated to attaining full civil rights for all Gay, Lesbian, and Bi-Sexual people.

I come by my activist background naturally. My parents came to this country from Canada in 1964 and I have early recollections of watching Civil Rights and Fair Housing meetings in my pajamas from the landing in my parent's home in Grandview. As young children, my siblings and I experienced having bricks thrown through our windows, rotten fruit thrown at the house and racial slurs spray-painted on the house and car. We were not allowed to answer the phone.

Later during the Vietnam war, my parents activism continued. My mother was charged and investigated by the Ohio Supreme Court for practicing law without a license in connection with her draft counseling activities. My father took tear gas in the face as part of a faculty barrier between students and Ohio National Guard at OSU when Governor James Rhodes ordered Guard onto all Ohio campuses. My siblings and I learned by example and whether it was working for a neighborhood community center or to allow girls to take shop and boys home economics at the high school, we were part of making social change.

I became a Quaker (Friend) when I met a Quaker man in the late 1970s. I was disenchanted with the church of my youth. My partner, John used to say "We comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Together we worked in the Peace and Anti-Nuclear Movement for about 6 years.

I came out in the mid 1980s and split my time between the Peace Movement and the Radical Feminist movement. I helped organize and participated in both Women's Pentagon Actions and spent a summer at the Seneca Falls Women's Peace Encampment.

To the Equality Ohio Core Design Team I bring commitment, energy, creativity, experience, optimism, and a spiritual center. My hope is that Equality Ohio will be the last time we will have to organize statewide to gain our civil rights."