Hutchins, Loraine, 1948-

Loraine Hutchins took part in the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, held outside the Seneca Army Depot, Romulus, N.Y., to protest government policy on nuclear weapons.

Self-proclaimed "sex radical," Loraine Hutchins was born in Washington, DC, the daughter of Thomas Jackson Hutchins and Adele Loraine Reese Hutchins. She graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Springs, Maryland in 1966. She then went on to Shimer College, a small liberal arts college then in Mount Carroll, Illinois, where she earned her BS in 1970. According to Hutchins' Web site, "As a white teenager growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC, I learned that social justice and equality are all that really matter, and that erotic justice, economic justice, and environmental justice are all connected. But I could not speak this insight aloud for many years." After college, Hutchins spent several years working in the DC-area, first for a juvenile justice agency and then in a series of fundraising or management positions as a consultant. Her work included fundraising for a Department of Education initiative, "Hidden from History;" with a focus on US women's labor history, one of the documentaries produced was "With Babies and Banners."

By 1990, Hutchins had come to find her true calling, as a leading advocate for the Bisexuality Rights Movement. In 1990, she co-founded BiNet USA, a national bisexual alliance, and served on its Board of Directors for its first several years. In 1991, she co-founded a local educational, support and direct action group in DC, the Alliance of Multi-Cultural Bisexuals (AMBi). That same year, Hutchins also co-edited, Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, a "groundbreaking anthology [which] soon became a primer for the LGBT movement." In 2001, she earned her PhD in Cultural Studies at the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati; Hutchins disseration is entitled, "Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary US Women's Sacred Sexuality Trends and Traditions." Since 2004 she has taught as an adjunct at two Maryland colleges, Towson University and Montgomery College, where she serves as the Vice President of SEIU Local 500, a recently-formed union for adjunct faculty. Most of all, Hutchins has dedicated her life to making the connections between sexuality and spirituality a reality.