Mina Kay Meyer was an activist, feminist, and educator. She worked tirelessly to advocate for LGBTQ rights.

Meyer was born in 1940 in Sewickley, Pennsylvania and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio with her father Edwin, mother Madeline, and brother Clifford. At 19, Meyer moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, with her parents. In her 20s she moved to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles, where she made her home.

Meyer first met her partner, Sharon Raphael, when she was five years old and the two lived across the street from each other in Cleveland. They were friends until Mina moved away at the age of 12 and the two lost track of each other. Many years later in 1971, Meyer and Raphael met again by happenstance at a restaurant in Hermosa Beach, California. Meyer and Raphael called this meeting "Beshert", Yiddish for "fated to be". Soon after, they started the life-long relationship that would last until Meyer's death in 2016.

Raphael was active in the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements and Meyer quickly became involved on both fronts, becoming the Director of the Gay Women's Service Center, the Vice-President of the Board of Directors and Director of Women's Programs at the Gay Community Services Center (GCSC) of Los Angeles (now the Los Angeles LGBT Center). At GCSC, she helped found the first women's health clinic for lesbians.

Meyer was one of the founders of the Los Angeles AIDS Healthcare Foundation formerly known as the AIDS Hospice Committee. She helped set up the first residential hospice in Elysian Park near Dodger Stadium and worked to end discrimination against HIV positive persons and people with AIDS. She also worked with Marriage Equality California, Jews Against Briggs, and the Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem.

After moving to Long Beach in 1983, Meyer became involved in Long Beach City politics, working with a group called Long Beach Citizens Involved, the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club, and served for nine years on the Long Beach Human Relations Commission. She worked at Sisterhood Bookstore, a feminist bookstore in Westwood, for 16 years and was a founding member and the first treasurer of Beth Chayim Chadashim, the world's first synagogue for gay and lesbian Jews.

Meyer received awards from the LA AIDS Hospice Committee, Lambda Democratic Club, Advocate Magazine, Christopher Street West, the City of Long Beach, the City and County of Los Angeles, and United States Congress for her activism.

Inspired by her work at GCSC and Raphael's teaching career, Meyer decided to get her college degree, receiving both her Bachelor's and Master's from California State University Dominguez Hills. Her Master's thesis The Older Lesbian (1979) was the first social science research conducted specifically on the lives and issues of aging lesbians. She wrote numerous articles on lesbians and aging for both academic and feminist publications and taught courses on the topic at several Cal State Universities.

While working on her thesis, Mina became one of the founders of the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Gerontologists (NALGG). This association brought researchers, older LGBTQ persons, and activists together to focus on lesbian and gay aging issues. In 1981, Meyer coordinated the First National Conference on Lesbian and Gay Aging co-sponsored by NALGG and California State University Dominguez Hills. In 1987, Mina was the conference coordinator for the West Coast Old Lesbian Conference and Celebration. This was followed a year later by a similar conference in San Francisco. She served as co-chair of the steering committee of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC). Mina created a local OLOC chapter and a brunch group for older lesbians in Long Beach called Lez Chat. In 2001, Meyer and Raphael were honored by the American Society on Aging for their pioneering work in the field of lesbian and gay gerontology.

Mina Meyer passed away in Long Beach, California in 2016 at the age of 76.

References: https://www.oloc.org/Spotlight/archives/Mina-Kay-Meyer.php https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/mina-meyer-obituary?id=8087336 https://www.luybendilday.com/obituary/6542232