Tammy Bruce collaborated with Los Angeles professional women to create one of the first ad-hoc independent
pro-choice activist groups. The group's early feminist activism began in 1987. This group confronted anti-abortion group
protesters, and helped develop a strategy to stop "Operation Rescue" from successfully blocking the entrance to
abortion clinics. During the years 1987-1990 she also participated in the Los Angeles chapter of the AIDS activist group AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power
For seven years, Bruce served as president of the Los Angeles
chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) (1990–1996). Bruce served two years on NOW's board of directors,
but later criticized the organization in one of her books. During the early 1990s, she spearheaded the campaign to publicly
criticize the sexualized violence in the novel American Psycho, and led an effort to boycott all titles by the book's publisher,
Knopf, for a year.
In 1996, the NOW Executive Board voted nearly unanimously to censure Bruce
for what it claimed were "racially insensitive comments" during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. In May 1996, Bruce
resigned as president of Los Angeles NOW. Bruce claimed that the censure was due to her focus on domestic violence,
as opposed to defense attorney Johnnie Cochran's "racial issues" trial argument. Since then, Bruce has written
about the dispute in her critique on what she sees as the failings of NOW, and the political left in general. She has said
that the feminist establishment in the U.S. has abandoned authentic feminism.
In 2004, Bruce
argued that gay Americans were not uniformly supportive of same-sex marriage, and that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual
couples.[8] She described civil unions as an alternative providing equal rights.
Personal
lifeIn her book The Death of Right and Wrong, Tammy Bruce writes of her involvement with Brenda Benet, who killed herself
in a home she had shared with Bruce. They were romantically involved for a time after Benet left Bill Bixby. Bruce had moved
out two weeks prior to Benet's suicide. On the day of the suicide, Bruce thought that she would meet Benet for lunch. According
to Bruce, Benet was locked inside the bathroom of her home when she arrived. She sensed something was wrong and went to get
help, but once Bruce stepped outside, Benet shot herself. The book Soap Opera Babylon said that Benet was involved with a
male costar on Days of our Lives just prior to her death.
Bruce holds a bachelor's degree in political
science from the University of Southern California.
In a 2006 interview with C-SPAN, Bruce stated
that she was technically bisexual and that for her being a lesbian was a choice. Source: Wikipedia
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