LGBT Rights

Transgender Supreme Court Attorney

b. February 14, 1961

“This is how we win; not by being confrontational but by showing people we want to contribute to the community”

Shannon Minter is a groundbreaking transgender civil rights attorney who argued successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court. He serves as the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR).

Minter was born on Valentine’s Day in East Texas and assigned female at birth. In high school, Minter believed he was a lesbian. He came out to his family, who vehemently disapproved of his presumed sexuality. Minter experienced “a lot of rejection” in his conservative hometown and often feared for his safety growing up.

Minter attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with honors before attending Cornell Law School. He earned a J.D. in 1993, graduating Magna Cum Laude, Order of the Coif, and joined the NCLR the same year. Headquartered in San Francisco, the NCLR is a leading organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights. Minter founded the NCLR Youth Project, the first legal advocacy program of its kind.

In 1996, at age 35, Minter began his transition, keeping his given name. Minter believed it might be easier, particularly for his family, if he came out as a transgender man. Instead, the revelation shattered Minter’s connections to his family and church. Those relationships took “decades to heal.”

Minter went on to secure myriad historic victories for the NCLR. He first gained attention in 2001 representing Sharon Smith in the wrongful death lawsuit Smith filed on behalf of her lesbian partner. At the time, the only couples who could file tort claims were married heterosexuals. Minter succeeded in making the claims applicable to same-sex couples in domestic partnerships and won Smith more than $1.5 million in damages.

Minter captured the national spotlight again in 2003, successfully representing a transgender father seeking custody of his child. Minter served as lead attorney in the U.S. Supreme Court case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez in which the court upheld an antidiscrimination policy based on gender identity and sexuality at the University of California, Hastings Law School.

In 2009 Minter served as lead counsel for the same-sex couples challenging Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court. As a trans man, he was “pained by the injustice” of being able to legally marry his wife, when gay and lesbian couples were not afforded the same right. In a landmark decision, the court struck down Prop 8, making marriage equality state law.

Among numerous other accolades and bar association honors, Minter has received the Cornell Law School Exemplary Public Service Award and the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award. Minter lives with his wife and daughter in Washington, D.C.

Political Activist

b. August 16, 1946

“Issues come and go; values and principles never come and go. They are the core of your essence and who you are.”

David Mixner is a human rights activist, a political operative and a best-selling author. Newsweek once named him the most powerful gay man in America.

Mixner was born in New Jersey to a family of moderate means. His father worked on a corporate farm. His mother was a bookkeeper. In high school, Mixner supported Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and demonstrated for civil rights.

In 1964 Mixner enrolled at Arizona State University, where, in addition to civil rights, he engaged in antiwar activism. He entered his first same-sex relationship with a man he refers to as “Kit.” When Kit died in an automobile accident, the heartbroken Mixner could only attend the funeral as a friend, fearing Kit’s parents would learn their son was gay.

After Kit’s death, Mixner transferred to the University of Maryland to be closer to the political action in Washington. His activism soon took precedence, and he dropped out of college. He became a grassroots organizer for the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which coordinated the 1967 March on the Pentagon, a defining moment in the antiwar movement.

During the height of the AIDS epidemic, Mixner became an organizer and a fundraiser, lobbying for the government to proactively address the crisis. He lost hundreds of friends to the virus, including the love of his life, Peter Scott. He worked on AIDS prevention and treatment projects in the U.S. and abroad, including in Russia and Africa.

Mixner has raised tens of millions for charitable causes and political candidates. He worked on more than 75 elections as a campaign manager, fundraiser or strategist. He was instrumental in Bill Clinton’s 1992 election and served as President Clinton’s unofficial advisor on LGBT issues.

Mixner helped found the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA), a group of donor-class LGBT individuals who became involved in local politics. He served as the national co-chair of the Victory Fund, whose mission is to elect LGBT politicians and allies. He is a former member of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party Delegate Selection Committee.

Mixner is the author of three best sellers, including his critically acclaimed memoir, “Stranger Among Friends” (1997). In 2014 he premiered in “Oh, Hell No!,” the first of his three autobiographical one-man shows known as the “Mixner trilogy.”

In 2005 Yale University Library established the David Benjamin Mixner collection, which houses his personal books, papers, photos and other media. In 2019 he announced his retirement after 60 years of activism.

Indian LGBTQ Rights Lawyers

b. November 27, 1974
b. August 19, 1982

"How strongly must we love to withstand [these] terrible wrongs."

Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju are Indian lawyers who won a historic 2018 Indian Supreme Court case decriminalizing homosexuality. For the pair, who came out as a couple in the international media afterward, the ruling represented a personal triumph as well as a watershed victory for LGBTQ people in India.

Guruswamy and Katju graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Guruswamy studied law as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, earning a doctorate degree in 2015. Katju practiced law for 11 years before receiving an LLM in 2017 from Columbia University, where she was a Human Rights Fellow and a James Kent Scholar.

The two lawyers litigated many notable cases before the Indian Supreme Court prior to their 2018 victory. In 2015 they helped secure a judgment on behalf of a transgender man who was confined by his parents. They also played a prominent role in a multimillion-dollar corruption case.

In 2013 Guruswamy and Katju served as co-counsel in the Supreme Court case Sureth Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation, defending the 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that Section 377 of the British Penal Code, which criminalized gay sex, was unconstitutional. During the hearing, they realized they would lose the case because the judge had “no imagination of who was a gay Indian.” When Section 377 was upheld, Guruswamy and Katju decided “they would never let LGBT Indians be invisible in any courtroom.”

Emboldened to build a new legal strategy to win LGBT rights, Guruswamy and Katju employed an old technique: a writ petition. The device allows claimants to go directly before the court. During the 2013 case, the court never heard direct testimony from LGBT Indians. For the new approach, the lawyers sought participation from gay Indian public figures, such as the classical dancer Natvej Singh Johar and his journalist partner, Sunil Mehra.

In 2016 Guruswamy and Katju petitioned on behalf of Johar, Mehra and three other claimants, including the famous hotelier Keshav Suri, in the case of Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India.

In 2018 the Supreme Court made its landmark decision, declaring Section 377 unconstitutional and ending the 155-year-old colonial law. The decision not only decriminalized homosexuality, but also accorded LGBTQ Indians the rights and protections of the country’s constitution. The ruling also set an important legal precedent for LGBTQ rights in other non-Western countries. In 2019 Botswana cited India’s decision in reversing its anti-gay law.

In 2019 Time magazine named Guruswamy and Katju to its list of the 100 most influential people.

Groundbreaking Congresswoman

b. February 14, 1972

“We need elected officials who are honest and work for the people.”

Angie Craig is the first openly lesbian mother elected to Congress and the first openly gay person elected to Congress from Minnesota.

Born in West Helena, Arkansas, Craig was raised in a mobile home park by a single mother. Her family struggled to pay bills and lacked health insurance. Craig worked two jobs to get through college. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Memphis and took a job as a local news reporter.

Beginning in 1997, Craig and her partner, Debra Langston, faced a heartbreaking struggle to adopt a child, whom they named Joshua. The couple lived in Tennessee, a state generally hostile to homosexuality with no provision for gays and lesbians to adopt jointly. The couple’s ensuing three-year legal battle led to an unprecedented ruling, allowing them to adopt Joshua and making it easier for other same-sex couples to adopt in the state. Although Craig and Langston separated in 2006, they continued to share custody of their son.

Craig moved to Minnesota looking for a “more open and accepting” community. Professionally, she advanced through the ranks to lead a workforce of 16,000 for a major Minnesota manufacturer. As a business leader, she used her position to advocate for marriage equality in the state.

Life experiences inspired Craig to fight injustice through politics. In 2016 she ran as a Democrat for Congress against a conservative anti-LGBT talk show host. She lost by fewer than 7,000 votes. In 2018 Craig defeated her former opponent in a rematch, becoming the first openly gay Minnesota Congressperson.

Craig has worked on initiatives around health care affordability, educational access and support for rural communities. She authored the State Health Care Premium Reduction Act and co-sponsored an act aimed at lowering prescription drug costs. She introduced the bipartisan Feed Emergency Enhancement During Disasters (FEEDD) Act to provide farmers with additional emergency flexibility.

Craig has denounced the Trump administration’s anti-LGBT adoption waivers. In 2019 she introduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which sought to end anti-LGBT discrimination in foster care and adoption.

Craig lives in Eagan, Minnesota, with her wife, Cheryl Greene. They have four children.

Russian Activist

b. December 23, 1977

“Without an ideal, nothing is possible.”

Nikolay Alexeyev is Russia’s best-known and most quoted LGBT activist and the founder of Moscow Pride. In 2010 he won the first case on LGBT rights violations in Russia at the European Court of Human Rights.

Alexeyev was born and raised in Moscow. He graduated with honors from Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he pursued postgraduate studies in constitutional law. In 2001 the university forced him out, refusing to except his thesis on the legal restrictions of LGBT Russians. Claiming discrimination, he filed an appeal, but the Moscow district court denied it.

In 2005, after publishing multiple books and legal reports on LGBT discrimination, Alexeyev fully dedicated himself to LGBT activism. He realized “that it wouldn’t be possible to change things in Russia just by writing” and that he should be involved in more direct activism.

Despite an official ban on LGBT events, Alexeyev founded and served as the chief organizer of Gay Pride in Moscow. Participants in the Gay Pride parades were attacked and bullied by anti-gay protesters. Police arrested Alexeyev and fellow activists multiple times.

Through both illegal public protests and legal appeals, Alexeyev’s uncompromising fight for the right to hold Moscow Pride drew international attention to the issue of LGBT rights in his country. In 2009, alongside Russian, French and Belarusian LGBT activists, Alexeyev organized a protest to denounce the inaction of the European Court in considering the legality of the Moscow Pride bans. In 2010 he finally won his battle. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had violated Alexeyev’s right to protest and fined the government. The verdict marked the first international legal defeat of the Russian government on the issue of LGBT rights.

In Russia’s intensely homophobic political and social environment, few have risked as much as the publicly outspoken Alexeyev. He has campaigned against Russia’s “homosexual propaganda” and anti-LGBT hate speech; against the gay blood-donation ban; and for recognition of same-sex marriage. In 2008, in response to Alexeyev’s campaign, the Russian Ministry of Health eliminated a provision banning homosexuals from donating blood.

Alexeyev has received numerous international awards, including an honor from the International Gay and Lesbian Cultural Network (IGLCN) for “outstanding and courageous efforts in the face of unusually fierce homophobia.”

Governor of Colorado

b. May 12, 1975

“I'm in this fight to build a Colorado economy that works for everyone.”

A member of the Democratic Party, Jared Polis is the first openly gay person—and only the second openly LGBT person—to be elected governor in the United States. A gifted entrepreneur and well-known philanthropist, he previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Colorado State Board of Education.

Polis was born to a Jewish family in Boulder, Colorado. He studied politics at Princeton University and started his first business, American Information Systems, in his college dorm room. By age 30, he had launched and sold three successful companies, including ProFlowers, one of the world’s leading online flower retailers. Passionate about education, he founded two innovative charter schools serving at-risk and immigrant youth and the Jared Polis Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports Colorado educators. He has used his wealth to generously support progressive causes.

Polis entered politics in 2000. In one of the closest races in Colorado history, he was elected to the State Board of Education, where he served until 2007. In 2008 he won a heavily contested election for U.S. representative of Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District. In his five terms in Congress, he co-introduced numerous legislative measures concerning education and affordable housing, including the 2011 Race to the Top Act, which rewards innovation and reforms in K-12 education. One of the first openly gay people and the first gay parent elected to the House of Representatives, he served as co-chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus and pushed for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

In 2018 Polis was elected the 43rd governor of Colorado in a double-digit landslide. He campaigned to build a state economy that “works for everyone” and on issues such as education, lowering the cost of health care and transitioning to renewable energy. One of his top legislative priorities, state-paid full-day kindergarten, was signed into law in 2019.

On September 15, 2021, Polis married his longtime partner, Marlon Reis. The wedding was the first same-sex marriage of a sitting governor in U.S. history. Polis and Reis have two children.