Marriage Equality

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.

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.”

Novelist

b. September 11, 1948

“No one of us should feel we can leave someone behind in the struggle for liberation.”

Jewelle Gomez is an author and activist whose writing centers on the experiences of LGBTQ women of color. Her books include the double Lambda Award-winning novel “The Gilda Stories.” Gomez was a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Gomez was raised by her great-grandmother, a woman of African and Native American descent. Gomez attended Northeastern University on a full scholarship. As one of the university’s few black students, she began her lifetime of activism participating in protests over campus inequality. She received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study at Columbia University School of Journalism and worked as a production assistant on “Say Brother,” one of the first black weekly television shows in the United States.

Gomez’s feminist and intersectional activism shapes her creative voice. After several of her poetry collections were published, the first of her many novels, “The Gilda Stories,” was released in 1991. The story, which spans 200 years in the life of Gilda, a vampire who escapes slavery, reframes traditional vampire mythology from a black lesbian feminist perspective. After winning the Lambda Award, Gomez adapted the book into a theatrical production, “Bone and Ash,” which was performed in 13 U.S. cities. More than a hundred anthologies include Gomez’s fiction and poetry, and numerous publications, such as The New York Times, The Village Voice and Essence Magazine, have published her work.

On behalf of LGBTQ rights, Gomez’s activism is “grounded in the history of race and gender in America.” She wrote, “No one of us should feel we can leave someone behind in the struggle for liberation.” From 1985 to 1987, she served as a founding member of GLAAD. She has since served on the boards of numerous women’s and LGBTQ philanthropic and cultural organizations and as a commencement speaker for multiple educational institutions. She and her partner were among the litigants who sued the state of California for the right to legal same-sex marriage, and several of her articles were quoted extensively during the case.

Gomez received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two fellowships from the California Arts Council. She has served on literature panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council and the California Arts Council.

She lives in San Francisco with her partner, Dr. Diane Sabin.

Distinguished Historian

b. July 28, 1954

“Marriage equality was neither inevitable nor, until recently, even conceivable.”

George Chauncey is a celebrated American historian and author whose groundbreaking scholarship helped establish the field of U.S. LGBT history and the basis of his work as an expert witness in numerous court cases.  He serves as the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University and the director of the Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities.

The son of a Presbyterian minister who was active in the civil rights movement, Chauncey was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, and raised in the South. He attended Yale College, graduating with his doctorate in 1989. He attained a full professorship at the University of Chicago, where he taught history 15 years.

In 1994 he published “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.” The groundbreaking work won five major awards, including the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Award in social history and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history. It remains the most widely taught book about LGBT history.

In 2000 Chauncey secured major grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations to support a conference at the University of Chicago billed as “the largest-ever” on lesbian, gay and queer history. The following year, Equality Illinois presented him with its Freedom Award.

In 2004 Chauncey published “Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality.” He joined the faculty of Yale in 2006, where he chaired the history department and the committee for LGBT studies. In 2012 Yale presented him with its prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities. He joined the Columbia University faculty in 2017.

Chauncey has served as a historical consultant on major public projects, including exhibitions at the New York Public Library and the Chicago History Museum. He has provided expert witness testimony on the history of antigay discrimination in more than 30 court cases. Five reached the U.S. Supreme Court, including  Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned the nation’s remaining sodomy laws; United States v. Windsor (2013), which struck down the core of the Defense of Marriage Act and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Chauncey earned fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Humanities Center. He was elected a member of the Society of American Historians in 2005 and has served on its executive board.

In 2014 Chauncey married Ronald Gregg, a professor of film and media studies at Columbia. They live in New York.

Marriage Equality Lawyer

b. September 29, 1966 

“No other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given, or exclude those rights, the way gay people have." 

Roberta A. “Robbie” Kaplan is an attorney who represented Edie Windsor in the Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor, a landmark victory for marriage equality.

Kaplan grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1991. She clerked for judges in Massachusetts and New York.

From 1996 until 2017, Kaplan was an attorney at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. She became a litigation partner in 1999 and successfully represented clients ranging from Citibank to Airbnb. The American Bar Association (ABA) Journal lauded her as “a specialist in emerging law.” 

In 2009 Kaplan agreed to represent Edie Windsor free of charge after hearing her story. Windsor and her lifelong partner, Thea Spyer, both U.S. citizens, married legally in Canada. When Spyer died a few years later, Windsor’s inheritance was subject to estate tax, as their marriage was not recognized under U.S. federal law. The estate tax would not have applied to the surviving spouse in a heterosexual marriage. 

In the 2013 Windsor decision, the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which held that marriage is solely between a man and a woman. The case laid the groundwork for the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. During an exchange with Chief Justice John Roberts, Kaplan stated, “No other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given, or exclude those rights, the way gay people have.” 

Former President Clinton said, “… Windsor was a landmark ruling and the case's architect, Roberta Kaplan, emerged as a true American hero.” Kaplan wrote about the experience in her book “Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA.” 

In 2013 The American Lawyer magazine named Kaplan Litigator of the Year, and Stanford University honored her with a National Public Service Award. In 2015 the New York Law Journal presented her with a Lifetime Achievement Award. 

In 2017 Kaplan founded her own law firm. She is an adjunct law professor at Columbia Law School. 

Kaplan is married to Rachel Lavine. They live in New York City with their son. 

Taiwanese Gay Pioneer

b. October 12, 1958

“This should certainly offer some encouragement to different societies to consider following in Taiwan’s footsteps and giving gays and lesbians the right to marry.”

Chi Chia-wei is a pioneering Taiwanese gay rights activist and marriage equality champion. He helped make Taiwan the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. 

Chi was raised by open-minded parents who were supportive of his homosexuality. He came out in high school and his classmates were overwhelmingly accepting. 

Chi began his LGBT activism in his 20s, when there were virtually no other visible gay rights activists. Today, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese support or have joined the LGBT rights movement. 

For some time, Chi was Taiwan’s only AIDS activist. He operated a halfway house for HIV/AIDS patients and created awareness campaigns to promote safe sex among the country’s LGBT citizens. 

In 1986 the 28-year-old Chi organized an international press conference to announce his sexual orientation and bring attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. In doing so, he became the first person in Taiwan to come out on national television. Media outlets such as the Associated Press and Reuters covered the event. 

Chi’s quest to bring same-sex unions to Taiwan also began in 1986, when he applied for a marriage license. His request was denied by the Taipei District Court Notary Office as well as the Legislative Appeals Court. Later that year, he was detained by police and served a 162-day sentence. Such imprisonment was common during Taiwan’s White Terror, a period of oppression during which the government imprisoned political dissidents. 

Chi unsuccessfully applied for a same-sex marriage license again in 1994, 1998 and 2000. In 2013, when he applied and was denied once more, Chi appealed the decision to the Taipei city government’s Department of Civil Affairs, who referred the issue to the Constitutional Court. 

Chi and the Taipei city government petitioned the court to examine the constitutionality of the same-sex marriage prohibition. On May 24, 2017, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court struck down the previous classification of marriage and ruled that same-sex couples could marry, beginning in May 2019. A celebration erupted outside the court and Chi announced, “Today’s victory is for everybody!” The decision marked the culmination of Chi’s 30 years of activism. 

In October 2016, Queermosa, a leading Taiwanese LGBT organization, presented Chi with its first Queer Pioneer Award. Chi has a longtime romantic partner whose identity he keeps private.

Marriage Equality Hero

July 7, 1966

“We have to stand up and say we’ve had enough.”

Jim Obergefell is the plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. 

A Cincinnati resident, Obergefell married John Arthur in Maryland in 2013. Arthur was terminally ill with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and Obergefell filed a lawsuit to force their home state of Ohio to recognize him as the surviving spouse on Arthur’s death certificate. The couple alleged that the state’s governor, John Kasich, was discriminating against same-sex couples who were legally married out of state. 

In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, thus requiring all 50 states and U.S. territories to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“Today’s ruling from the Supreme Court affirms what millions across the country already know to be true in our hearts,” Obergefell said upon learning the verdict, “that our love is equal.” President Barack Obama called the decision a “victory for America.”

Obergefell is an unanticipated activist. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, he is the youngest of five children in a Catholic family. He came out as gay in his mid 20s and met Arthur in 1992. They lived together for 22 years before Arthur succumbed in 2014.

When Arthur was diagnosed with ALS in 2011, Obergefell became his primary caregiver. The couple flew to Maryland to legally marry just before Arthur died. They had already filed a federal lawsuit to allow Obergefell to be named Arthur's surviving spouse. When the court ruled in favor of Obergefell, Ohio appealed the ruling and won. Obergefell took his fight to the Supreme Court.

Obergefell has become a marriage equality hero, traveling nationally and internationally. With Pulitzer Prize winner Debbie Cenziper, he is the co-author of "Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality."

Israeli Gay Pioneer and Scientist

b. October 18, 1940

“You no longer have to be ashamed. You can even be elected.”

A pioneering advocate for LGBT rights in Israel, Uzi Even became the first openly gay member of the country’s parliament, the Knesset, in 2002. He is a professor emeritus of physical chemistry at Tel Aviv University, from which he earned a Ph.D. in physics and molecular chemistry. 

Even worked for the Israeli army at the Nuclear Research Center. When the Israel Defense Forces discovered he was gay, Even was stripped of his security clearance and his rank as a lieutenant colonel. His testimony about the matter led Yitzhak Rabin’s government to change the law in 1993, thus allowing open homosexuals to serve in any position in the armed forces. The same year, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Department of Defense issued "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which remained official military policy until 2011.

Even first ran for a seat in the Knesset in 1999. He lost, but in 2002 was appointed to a vacant seat. During his tenure in parliament, he helped to advance LGBT rights and brought attention to important social issues related to the gay movement. 

Even also helped to advance same-sex spousal protection on the university level, advocating for health care coverage for his partner. He brought same-sex adoption into the spotlight when he and his partner became the first gay couple in Israel to legally adopt (by then) their 30-year-old foster son—a young man who had been kicked out of his home at 16 for being gay. “We opened a door, … a window for others,” said Even’s son, Yossi Even-Kama, “an opening of hope for the couples that will follow.”

In 2006 Even joined the Labor Party in hopes of further advancing LGBT rights. “As a community, it is important that we be involved in a major party,” he said. 

Six years later, Even set another legal precedent when he divorced his partner, whom he married in Canada in 2004. Because the Rabbinical Court does not recognize same-sex marriage, the divorce was granted in Family Court, paving the way for both straight and gay couples to bypass religious law in marriage matters. 

Even hopes his coming out and public advocacy on behalf of LGBT people will inspire others to do the same. “It’s a symbolic act,” he said. “I’m the one breaking the glass ceiling.” 

LGBT rights in Israel are the most advanced in the Middle East. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to recognize same-sex marriage.

Prime Minister of Luxembourg

b. March 3, 1973

“I didn’t get up one morning and say, ‘Hey, I’m gay.’ It’s not a choice.”

Xavier Bettel is the prime minister of Luxembourg. A member of the Democratic Party, he became the country’s first openly gay leader in December 2013 and one of only three openly gay world leaders. Previously, Bettel served as mayor of Luxembourg city and also as a member of the city’s chamber and council. 

Bettel has described Luxembourg as a place where “people do not consider the fact of whether someone is gay or not.” The tiny European country—one of the smallest in the word with just over half a million people—is a leading financial and banking center, second only to the United States in investment funds.

As prime minister, Bettel has advocated for teaching ethics instead of religion in public schools. He is credited with reinvigorating the political scene with progressive reforms and was instrumental in passing same-sex marriage laws in the predominately Roman Catholic country. He has been vocal on social media about LGBT rights.  

Under Bettel’s leadership, Luxembourg legalized same-sex marriage in 2014. One year later, after the marriage reforms went into effect, Bettel married his partner, the architect Gauthier Destenay. Bettel is the first openly gay European Union leader and only the second gay leader in the world to marry. The couple have been civil partners since 2010. “I wish for everyone to be as happy as I am,” Bettel told a crowd gathered on his wedding day. 

Born in Luxembourg city, Bettel graduated from the University of Nancy where he received a masters degree in public and European law, followed by a post-graduate diploma in advanced studies of political science and public law. He hosted a weekly television talk show early in his career.

Bettel came out publicly in 2008.

U.S. General

b. 1963

“Anyone who has ever busted through a glass ceiling got cut a little.”

Tammy Smith is the first out lesbian general in the U.S. Army. She was named a brigadier general in 2012 and formally promoted during a ceremony at the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She became the commanding general of the 98th Training Division.

Born in Oakland, Oregon, Smith began her military career when she received a four-year Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 1986 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps.

During her 30-year military career, Smith has served as a platoon leader in Panama, a logistic support detachment commander in Costa Rica and a company commander in South Carolina. She was stationed in Afghanistan, where she was chief of Army Reserve affairs during Operation Enduring Freedom.  

Smith holds a Doctor of Management in Organizational Leadership from the University of Phoenix and received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Lincoln University. She has been decorated with numerous medals and awards and is in the ROTC’s Hall of Fame. 

Smith married Tracey Hepner in 2012. The ceremony, held at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, was officiated by a military chaplain just two years after same-sex marriage was legalized in the nation’s capital. 

“For me it’s really been transitional,” Smith said in an interview, “to go from being 100 percent in the closet to being globally gay.” She continued, “She [Tracey] has been so wonderful in helping me cut loose the shackles of those 26 years in the military, of having to hide a part of myself. I don’t live a double life anymore.” 

Hepner founded the Military Partners and Families Coalition, a national military advocacy organization that provides support, education and resources for LGBT military members and their families. Smith has become active in LGBT events and advocacy and has been honored by many LGBT organizations and publications. She served as grand marshal of the 2013 Gay Pride Parade in Washington.