E. Carrington Boggan (died January 20, 1992) was an American lawyer and gay rights activist. He was a founding member of civil rights organization Lambda Legal, and represented clients such as Leonard Matlovich and Vernon E. Berg in prominent gay rights cases.
Boggan was a founding member and the general counsel of Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization focused on litigation on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and those living with HIV and AIDS. [1] [2] [3] He was also active in the American Bar Association, serving on the board of the ABA Journal and heading the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, as well as the editorial board of its magazine, Human Rights. [4]
During his career, Boggan litigated a number of prominent gay rights cases, representing clients including Leonard Matlovich and Vernon E. Berg. [1] [2] [5] In the 1973 appeal of Harris L. Kimball, a lawyer disbarred after his conviction for sodomy, Boggan filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Gay Activists Alliance. [6] In National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education , he filed an amicus brief on behalf of Lambda Legal. [3]
Boggan died on January 20, 1992, of complications from AIDS. [1]
The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, better known as Lambda Legal, is an American civil rights organization that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) communities as well as people living with HIV/AIDS (PWAs) through impact litigation, societal education, and public policy work.
Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force, serving as executive director from 1989-1992 — the first woman of color to lead a national gay-and-lesbian organization. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012).
Delta Lambda Phi is an international social fraternity for gay, bisexual, transgender and progressive men. The fraternity was founded in 1986 in Washington, D.C. It offers a social environment and structure similar to other Greek-model college fraternities. It was the first, and as of 2013 the only, national fraternity with an emphasis on gay and bisexual men.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Belarus face significant challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Although same-sex sexual activity is legal in Belarus, gay and lesbian rights in the country are otherwise severely limited and homosexuality remains highly stigmatized in Belarusian society. Households headed by same-sex couples are not eligible for the same legal protections available to opposite-sex couples. Belarus provides no anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people, nor does it prohibit hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Many Belarusian people believe that homosexuality is a psychiatric illness, and many LGBT persons in Belarus tend to hide their sexual orientation in public. Those who are "out" face harassment, violence and physical abuse.
Evan Wolfson is an attorney and gay rights advocate. He is the founder of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States, serving as president until its 2015 victory and subsequent wind-down. Wolfson authored the book Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, which Time Out New York magazine called, "Perhaps the most important gay-marriage primer ever written". He was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. He has taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, Rutgers Law School, and Whittier Law School and argued before the Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. He now teaches law and social change at Georgetown Law School and at Yale University; serves as a senior counsel at Dentons, the world's largest law firm; and primarily provides advice and assistance to other organizations and causes, in the United States and globally, that are seeking to adapt the lessons on "how to win" from the same-sex marriage movement.
Franklin Edward Kameny was an American gay rights activist. He has been referred to as "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement.
Technical Sergeant Leonard Phillip Matlovich was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known openly gay man in the United States of America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk. His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a cause célèbre around which the gay community rallied. His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally. Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine. According to author Randy Shilts, "It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point."
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Syrian Arab Republic have limited legal rights. Article 520 of the penal code of 1949 prohibits "carnal relations against the order of nature", punishable with a prison sentence of up to three years.
Shawn Syms is a Canadian writer and activist on LGBT issues and other aspects of progressive politics based in Toronto, Ontario.
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) is a non-profit legal services organization in Washington state. NWIRP's mission is to promote justice by defending and advancing the rights of immigrants through direct legal services, systemic advocacy, and community education.
Immigration Equality is a United States nonprofit organization founded in 1994. Based in New York, it both advocates for and directly represents LGBTQ and HIV-positive people in the immigration system.
Vernon E. "Copy" Berg was U.S. Naval Academy graduate and artist. He was the first Naval Academy alumnus to actively fight the policies against homosexuality in the services. After Mr. Berg's suit against the Navy, which had given him an other than honorable discharge as an ensign in 1976, the armed forces adopted a policy of generally granting honorable discharges to homosexuals.
The state of Georgia mostly improved in its treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents in the years after 1970, when LGBT residents began to openly establish events, organizations and outlets for fellow LGBT residents and increase in political empowerment.
Roberta Ann Kaplan, also known as Robbie Kaplan, is an American lawyer focusing on commercial litigation and public interest matters. Kaplan successfully argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of LGBT rights activist Edith Windsor, in United States v. Windsor, a landmark decision that invalidated a section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages. She was a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison before starting her own firm in 2017. In 2018, she co-founded the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.
Maurice Tomlinson is a Jamaican lawyer, law professor, and gay rights activist currently living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been a leading gay rights and HIV activist in the Caribbean for over 20 years and is one of the only Jamaican advocates to challenge the country's 1864 British colonially-imposed anti gay Sodomy Law. This law predominantly affects men who have sex with men (MSM) and carries a possible jail sentence of up to ten years imprisonment with hard labour.
David Stroh Buckel was an American LGBT rights lawyer who worked with Lambda Legal on a number of their notable cases. He was also an environmental activist, focusing on composting. He died on April 14, 2018, by self-immolation as a protest against the use of fossil fuels.
The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is a memorial wall in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, dedicated to LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes". Located inside the Stonewall Inn, the wall is part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to the country's LGBTQ rights and history. The first fifty inductees were unveiled June 27, 2019, as a part of events marking the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. Five honorees are added annually.
Sharon McGowan is an American lawyer and a partner at Katz Banks Kumin LLP, an employment and whistleblower firm based in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining KBK, she was the legal director and chief strategy officer for Lambda Legal. McGowan was an Obama administration appointee in the role of Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel for Policy at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. She also served as Principal Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. In 2019, she was honored with the Stonewall Award, bestowed by the American Bar Association's Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.