Why I Joined The Board of Lambda Legal
Filed By Dr. Jillian T. Weiss | May 07, 2012 11:00 AM
http://www.bilerico.com/2012/05/why_i_joined_the_board_of_lambda_legal.phpThis past weekend, I was elected to the Board of Directors of Lambda Legal, a national legal organization dedicated to achieving full equality for LGBT people. I thought carefully before I agreed to begin the process as a potential Board candidate about the state of our fight for civil rights, and I would like to share my thoughts.
It is a critical time for our civil rights movement. We have made great strides towards social, political and legal equality, in ways that were practically unthinkable when I was growing up. I remember being a young person a half century or so ago, thinking that I must be mentally ill because of who I was, hoping that I could hide myself forever and ever, and praying to God for a cure. The idea that I, as a transgender person, could be entitled to respect for my gender identity and sexual orientation, that I could be protected from discrimination under the Constitution and laws of our country, that I could marry a person I love regardless of our sexes, that I could serve in the military or be safe from having my son being taken away by a court, and a million other degradations to which we have been subjected - these were not thoughts that I could have had. But I did not know, when I was ten years old, that Lambda Legal was being formed in a small New York City apartment in 1971, and that it would one day come to champion respect under the law for me and mine in the highest courts in the land.
