My path to law. Landmark Life Pursuing LGBT Rights

• Author: Sharon McGowan
• Pages: 14-15

PHOTO COURTESY OF LAMBDA LEGAL

Opening Statements

Landmark Life Pursuing

LGBT Rights

By Sharon McGowan

#MyPathToLaw is a guest column

that celebrates th e diversity of the

legal profession thro ugh attorneys’

fi rst-perso n stories detailing their

unique and inspir ing trajectories.

Read more #mypathtolaw s tories on

Twi t te r.

As the child of a New York City

police o cer, perhaps it was in my

DNA that I would walk a “path to

the law.” Long before Law & Order

became must-see T V, the theme song

to Hill Street Blues cou ld be heard

in our traditional Ir ish Catholic

household every Thursday evening.

And so telling my father that I ha d

accepted a summer inter nship at

the American Civ il Liberties Union

was a bit of a shock to his syst em.

But certainly less of a shoc k than

my telling him a few minutes lat er

that I would also be intern ing at the

National Center for Lesbian R ights

in San Francisco, a nd that I was gay.

The next few years were cha lleng-

ing ones with my family, and I won-

dered whether we would reach a

point where my parents could talk

about my path to the law without

welling up with tear s (not the happy

kind). But I felt a deep calling to use

my law degree to pursue justice and

social change and hoped th at, over

time, my parents would be able to

take pride in my work.

In the meantime, I found sup-

port and mentorship from a new

family—the family of LGBT civ il

rights litigators. Nan Hunter o ered

me the opportunity to work w ith

her and Courtney Joslin to update

the ACLU’s publication “The

Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexua l

and Transgender People.” NCLR’s

Shannon Minter a nd Kate Kendell

showed me how much fun one could

have doing work that, on many days,

was really di  cult and emotional ly

taxing. Mar y Bonauto of GLBTQ

Legal Advocate s & Defenders

demanded excellence from me

as her law fellow, but she also

encouraged me to think ex pan-

sively about where and how I

might best acquire the sk ills that

I would need if I wished to fol-

low in her footsteps as an LGBTQ

civil rights lit igator. Her sage

advice resulte d in my joining the

Washington, D.C., o ce of Jenner

& Block, where as luck would have it

I was able to join the dream t eam—

led by Jenner’s Paul Smith and

Lambda Legal’s Ruth Harlow —that

won the landmark U.S. Supreme

Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which

struck down anti-so domy laws in

Texas and by extension invalidate d

similar measur es criminalizing gay

relationships in other states.

On that sunny June morning

in 2003 when Justice Anthony

Kennedy read f rom his decision in

Lawrence, I sat in the courtro om

with dozens of other members of

the LGBT legal community, where

there were few dry eyes t o be found.

I knew that I shouldn’t have needed

Kennedy to tell me that I wa s a

person of equal worth and d ignity

in order to believe it. But hearing

those words mattered deeply. And

not only to me. While my relation-

ship with my parents had a rrived at

a better place by that point , I know

that what happened in the Supreme

Court that morning mat tered deeply

to them as well. Among other emo-

tions they felt that day, they could

take deep pride in the fac t that their

gay daughter had played a small role

in moving our country a l ittle closer

toward fulfi lling its promise of lib-

erty and justice for a ll.

Shortly thereaf ter, I returned to

New York City to join the ACLU. My

father was working in N YPD head-

quarters at that p oint, and whenever

I would visit him, he’d joke that it

was fi ne if I told ever yone that I was

gay, but that I should please keep

my voice down when talking about

where I worked. To be fair, my father

was the commandi ng o cer of the

NYPD hosta ge negotiation team by

that point in his care er, and he had

tremendous respect for the ways in

which the ACLU sought to hold the

NYPD acc ountable. But in those

moments, I appreciated the grace

with which my parents ha ndled

the fact that my life ha d turned out

somewhat di erently tha n they may

have hoped or expected.

With that said, I know that fe w

things have fi lle d my father with

pride as much as my joining the

Civil Rights D ivision of the U.S.

Department of Justice, someth ing

that I would have never imagined

possible when I came out to my par-

ents in the 1990s. Being able to

stand at a lect ern and say that I was

“representing the United States of

America” was a priv ilege and an

honor that I will car ry with me for

the rest of my life. But to an even

greater degree, work ing from the

inside to help the federal govern-

ment change course with res pect

to its position on marri age equal-

ity and LGBT rights more broad ly

14 || ABA JOURNAL MARCH 2019

MY PATH TO LAW

“I FELT A DEEP CALLING TO USE

MY LAW DEGREE TO PURSUE

JUSTICE AND SOCIAL CHANGE.”

—Sharon McGowan