A Gay Judge’s Case | The New Yorker

Contents:

• PNEER, PRIDG: LACHS ’63, WORLD’S FIRST OPENLY GAY JUDGE, REFLECTS
• 1ST OPENLY GAY FERAL JUDGE AD AT 72
• FIRED GAY JUDGE BREAKS SILENCE, PLEDG TO CONTUE ONLYFANS
• FIRST OPENLY GAY JUDGE CONFIRMED FOR NEW YORK’S HIGHT COURT
• A GAY JUDGE’S CASE
• WHEN A GAY JUDGE RUL ON GAY RIGHTS
• CAN A GAY JUDGE BE FAIR TO STRAIGHT FOLKS?
• PL FEMAN, FIRST OPENLY GAY JUDGE ON N.Y. HIGH COURT, DI AT 61

PNEER, PRIDG: LACHS ’63, WORLD’S FIRST OPENLY GAY JUDGE, REFLECTS

Only 14 out of 870 feral judghips are held by openly gay or lbian judg (cludg Robson), add, and there has never been an openly bisexual or transgenr judicial nomee. Wh days of his appotment to the Los Angel County Superr Court 1979, a landmark event that ma him the first openly gay judge the world, UCLA School of Law alumn Stephen Lachs ’63 uld tell that thgs would never be the same. I never thought that I, as a gay person, uld do anythg, and now I see that you n do somethg wh your life.

‘They Want to Meet a Gay Lawyer’. He was not out beyond a small circle of iends – or, as he says, “out-out” – until the early 1970s, when an acquatance asked him to attend a small meetg of gay law stunts who traveled om as far away as San Diego. They want to meet a gay lawyer.

1ST OPENLY GAY FERAL JUDGE AD AT 72

So began his learship the burgeong gay rights movement and muny support groups. Jerry Brown, then his first two-term stt as the state’s chief executive, was elected wh substantial support om members of the gay and lbian muny.

(While many sourc tablish that Lachs was the first openly gay judge Ameri, no evince apparently refut the prumptn that he was also the first openly gay judge the world, and Lachs has never heard otherwise. ) He was one a small handful of openly gay ernment officials the untry.

FIRED GAY JUDGE BREAKS SILENCE, PLEDG TO CONTUE ONLYFANS

In a sign of the tim, a headle and the ptn on a wily distributed wire-service photograph lled him “California’s first avowed homosexual judge, ” a phrase that still startl.

He had never expected to be such a trailblazer, he says, lightly addg, “I had barely taken my vows – as an avowed homosexual! Among them was Rand Schrar, another pneerg UCLA Law alumn who had been the first openly gay staffer the L. Six years apart age, Lachs and Schrar had fact met at that early-1970s gatherg of gay law stunts, when Lachs me out.

FIRST OPENLY GAY JUDGE CONFIRMED FOR NEW YORK’S HIGHT COURT

Febary 3, 2020, 4:14 PMThe first openly gay judge appoted to a U. Cuomo named the first openly gay judge to the New York Court of Appeals last week, the news thrilled gay rights advot, many of whom had been disappoted by the state’s hight had bter memori of the urt’s 2006 cisn Hernanz v. Feman, an associate jtice of the Appellate Divisn of the State Supreme Court Manhattan, to fill the seat left open by the ath of Judge Sheila Abd-Salaam April was a watershed for gay New Yorkers.

A GAY JUDGE’S CASE

”“I n’t stop thkg back to 2006 when I argued the Hernanz se and we lost such a vastatg way, ” said Roberta Kaplan, a proment gay rights lawyer who has known Jtice Feman sce the late 1990s.

“It was om this experience that I first me to tly appreciate how beg a lawyer is a helpg profsn and that helpg people n be a source of great satisfactn, ” he told the earned a full scholarship to the Universy of Mnota Law School, where he was a founr of an associatn of gay stunts.

WHEN A GAY JUDGE RUL ON GAY RIGHTS

Kaplan, the lawyer, law school, Jtice Feman anized gay stunts. He was active the gay rights movement New York Cy the 1990s, servg as the print of the L. He threw out a lawsu that tried to block the velopment through a landmark signatn, sayg the firefighter who brought the actn lacked also ma wav 2007 when he took a stand agast the sealg of rerds civil s, even when both sis want to keep documents secret after a civil rights advot, however, Jtice Feman’s experienc as a gay man matter almost as much as his legal acumen.

Person on the bench who brgs the life experienc, ” said San Sommer of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, who has argued four gay rights s before the urt. ”A versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 22 of the New York edn wh the headle: State Senators Confirm First Openly Gay Judge For New York’s Top Court.

CAN A GAY JUDGE BE FAIR TO STRAIGHT FOLKS?

There’s been another ethil twist the gay-marriage legal battle (the first one, which I wrote about earlier, volved a law firm cidg not to help fend the Defense of Marriage Act). Bh, was gay, and the San Francis Chronicle had reported that the mors were te.

There’s a “narrower, ” more “personal” nflict of tert here, he matas, bee Walker has a partner and uld marry him California if he were allowed to, and bee his lg he accepted the arguments that same-sex marriage would benef gay upl fancially, socially, and emotnally.

PL FEMAN, FIRST OPENLY GAY JUDGE ON N.Y. HIGH COURT, DI AT 61

Well, y, though Walker was not among the gay Californians who did marry when was legal the state, and for all we know might have no tert marryg.

Bis, if you accept the logic of the anti-gay-marriage si, then straight married people livg California—ed, straight unmarried people who might someday marry—would have jt as much of a personal tert the se. 8 fenrs sist would suffer, along wh any children they might have, om the unrmg of tradnal marriage they say would e about if gay marriage were legalized. Opponents of gay marriage are challengg notns of judicial ntraly a San Francis urtroom on Monday.