ABA honors 3 lawyers with Stonewall Awards for their work in the LGBT community
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Three attorneys, including Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, have been selected to receive the American Bar Association’s third annual Stonewall Award. The accolade is sponsored by the ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
“The American Bar Association is pleased to recognize these three gay rights pioneers. Each has been a forceful voice for LGBT inclusion and legal progress,” said the commission’s chair, Mark Johnson Roberts.
Wolfson is considered by many as the father of same-sex marriage movement, according to the commission’s press release. He founded Freedom to Marry in 2001, and wrote Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality and Gay People’s Right to Marry in 2004.
Another 2016 honoree, Abby Rubenfeld, was co-counsel for some of the plaintiffs in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case that found a constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples. A former chair of the ABA’s Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section, she also was involved in overturning Tennessee’s sodomy law in 1996.
Thomas Fitzpatrick, the first openly gay ABA Board of Governors member, is also receiving the Stonewall Award. A partner with the Seattle firm Talamadge Fitzpatrick Tribe, his work has involved expanding the ABA’s diversity goals to include sexual orientation and gender identity, and creating the Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
The awards will be given out at the ABA’s Midyear Meeting, which will take place Feb. 6 in San Diego. The honor is named in recognition of New York City’s Stonewall Inn. In 1969, police confrontations outside the establishment were a turning point in the gay rights movement.
Related article:
ABA Journal: “The Stonewall legacy: ABA commission creates an award commemorating a key moment for LGBT rights”
