The LGBT community and our allies celebrate June as PRIDE MONTH. We remember a riot that started at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, when our community stood up to the New York City Police Department and said we will no longer allow you to arrest us for drinking while queer.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1992, the Kentucky Supreme Court decided that sodomy was no longer a crime. The U.S. Supreme Court caught up with Kentucky in 2003. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage.
If you have ever seen “Queer Eye” you might think that all gay men are obsessed with shopping, decoration, fitness, grooming and throwing parties. If you have ever seen “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” you might think we all strive to wear outrageous wigs and sequined dresses. But I think it is important to show you that we have different identities, a variety of profiles and varied careers. I would look pathetic in a Speedo and I’ve never worn glitter.
My friend, and our ally, Shannon Fauver, knows that lawyers ARE working in the background to help build the LGBT community as well as our entire society. But often what lawyers do is not as visible. If you look at the civil rights movement, you think of Rosa Parks or Dr. King, you don’t think of Fred Gray, Charles Hamilton Houston or Thurgood Marshall fighting in the courtrooms. Approximately 3% of the lawyers in the U.S. identify as LGBT. Our allies most certainly outnumber us.
June 2020 is the fifth anniversary of the LGBT Law Section of the Kentucky Bar Association. While all Kentucky attorneys must belong to the KBA, membership in a section is voluntary. I want to celebrate those five years of growth. I am incredibly proud to be one of the co-founders of this group. I’m a member of two bar associations. I also belong to the National LGBT Bar Association. I wanted to profile a few of my friends.
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Kevin Brown is the interim commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Education. Fayette Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone in one of three judges. Ernesto was one of the lawyers who won the Wasson case in 1992; he was the first openly gay member of the Kentucky General Assembly and first openly gay circuit court judge. Ernesto was the first attorney to ask the KBA Board of Governors to create an LGBT Law Section. We have two other judges in the section as well.
We have members who work for the Federal government, state government and in various county and municipal jobs. We have two law school professors. We have Keith Elson who runs the non-profit Kentucky Youth Law Project. We have two corporate counsel at internationally known companies.
We have JoAnne Wheeler Bland, the most amazing transgender person I know. We have prominent folks in private practice such as John Selent who recently funded a scholarship at Brandeis School of Law for LGBT students. We have amazing allies like Fauver and Dan Canon who fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for marriage equality. Something they didn’t need!
These folks are not what you’d call rich and famous. But they are ALL committed to making our STATE a better place FOR EVERYONE — not just the LGBT residents. I am proud to celebrate LGBT PRIDE MONTH. I am PROUD to be an openly gay attorney who works with these compassionate people. I certainly never imagined when I graduated from law school in 1978 that I would actually become known as a leader and advocate for the LGBT community. Or that I would regularly speak to the Kentucky Supreme Court or write about it in The Courier Journal.
I never believed I was mentally ill or was worth less because I was gay. But I mentor several fellows who are still told that. I hope that this column is an example of courage and hope to all the LGBT youth, indeed to all the residents of our commonwealth. We can’t just wear our faith, or our professional title, as some sort of mark of approval. It is imperative that our lives challenge everyone to examine the prejudices they hold about our community and to admit they are rubbish.
It’s too easy to hide behind flags and Bibles. The Jesus I worship threw the money changers out of the Temple. He denounced the priest and Levite who ignored the beaten and bloody traveler going to Jericho — let’s make that local, how about instead of being from Samaria, the good guy was from Russell, California or the West End neighborhoods of Louisville? Indeed, Jesus instructed us to go and do likewise — to get blood on our clothes by helping the wounded, and to spend money to pay for rehabilitation?
Now, more than ever, “United we stand, divided we fall.”
Bruce Kleinschmidt is an attorney and advocate for diversity and inclusion.
