Tammy Bruce is an openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Reagan progressive feminist. She was drawn into feminist activism in the late 1980's to contribute to the ongoing effort to ensure safe and legal abortion for all women. Just two years after joining the National Organization for Women, and with a brand of feminism that places her somewhere between Donna Reed and Thelma and Louise, Ms. Bruce was elected president of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW at the age of 27. The youngest ever to achieve that position, she doubled the chapter's membership from 2,000 to 4,000 within a year with issue campaigns that introduced a fresh view of feminist activism. In her seven years as president (1990-1996, the longest continuous tenure in the chapter's 30 year history) she mobilized activists locally and nationally on a whole range of issues, including women's image in media, child care, health care, violence against women, economics, and domestic violence. Ms. Bruce also served two years as a member of the National NOW board of directors.
An important contributor to the author's position on the relevance of free speech comes from her experience as a radio talk show host in Los Angeles. In fact, with the "Tammy Bruce Show" on KFI-AM 640, she was the first openly gay women in the country to host a show on mainstream talk radio. Her editorials and commentaries on significant social issues have been published nationally and internationally in a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, and on television and radio programming.
Ms. Bruce's first book, The New Thought Police, was published by Forum, an imprint of Crown/Random House, in October 2001. An analysis of freedom of expression and the culture wars, it explores the importance of freedom of expression and personal liberty and how that liberty is under attack by the dangerous rise of Left-wing McCarthyism. She is currently writing "The Death of Right and Wrong: How the Left's Moral Vacuum Corrupts Our Culture and Threatens Our Liberty," also for Forum (April 2003)
A native of Los Angeles, the 39-year-old writer and political commentator notes that her interest in politics and individual liberty was sparked during her childhood in part because of the work of authors Ray Bradbury and George Orwell, both of whom remain her favorite writers. Ms. Bruce lives in Los Angeles with her foundling cat, Sadie.