Editing Daughters of Bilitis (section)

===Mission===

Within a year of the group's creation, most of the original eight members were no longer active, but overall numbers had increased to 16. The women decided they wanted to be more than a social alternative to bars. Several working-class women of the original members were not comfortable with being more public and left to form two secret groups for lesbians: Quatrefoil and Hale Aikane.<ref name=":0" /> 

Historian [[Marcia Gallo]] writes of the shift in DOB members, "They recognized that many women felt shame about their sexual desires and were afraid to admit them. They knew that...without support to develop the self-confidence necessary to advocate for one's rights, no social change would be possible for lesbians."<ref>Gallo, p. 17</ref>

By 1959 additional chapters of the DOB had been founded in [[New York City]], [[Los Angeles]], [[Chicago]], and [[Rhode Island]].  Upon arrival at a meeting, attendees would be greeted at the door. In a show of good faith, the greeter would say, "I'm ---. Who are you? You don't have to give me your real name, not even your real first name."<ref name="Faderman, p. 149">Faderman, p. 149</ref>

Soon after forming, the DOB wrote a mission statement that addressed the most significant problem Martin and Lyon had faced as a couple: the complete lack of information about female homosexuality in what historian Martin Meeker termed "the most fundamental journey a lesbian has to make."<ref>Meeker, p. 79</ref> When the club realized they were not allowed to advertise their meetings in the local newspaper, Lyon and Martin, who both had backgrounds in journalism, began to print a newsletter to distribute to as many women as the group knew. In October 1956 it became ''[[The Ladder (magazine)|The Ladder]]'', the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the U.S. It was one of the first to publish statistics on lesbians, as the pair surveyed their readers in 1958 and 1964, and compiled and published the results. Martin was the first president and Lyon became the editor of ''The Ladder''.

The DOB advertised as "A Woman's Organization for the purpose of Promoting the Integration of the Homosexual into Society."<ref name="Katz, p. 426">Katz, p. 426</ref> Their mission statement was composed of four parts; it was printed on the inside of the cover of every issue of ''The Ladder'' until 1970:

# Education of the variant...to enable her to understand herself and make her adjustment to society...this to be accomplished by establishing...a library...on the sex deviant theme; by sponsoring public discussions...to be conducted by leading members of the legal, psychiatric, religious and other professions; by advocating a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society.
# Education of the public...leading to an eventual breakdown of erroneous taboos and prejudices...
# Participation in research projects by duly authorized and responsible psychologists, sociologists, and other such experts directed towards further knowledge of the homosexual.
# Investigation of the penal code as it pertain to the homosexual, proposal of changes,...and promotion of these changes through the due process of law in the state legislatures.<ref name="Katz, p. 426"/>

New York chapter president [[Barbara Gittings]] noted that the word "variant" was used instead of "lesbian" in the mission statement because the term "lesbian" in 1956 had a very negative connotation.<ref>Gallo, p. 3</ref>