At the U of Chicago Law School’s Faculty Blog. Here is an excerpt:
We have come a long way. I remember the first time a student wrote on a classroom blackboard “Come to the First Meeting of Gay Law Students Association. Wednesday. 4:00. Seminar Room C.” This was roughly twenty-five years ago. I was stunned to see such a message. Although I had previously had one or two openly gay students, the idea of a Gay Law Students Association was completely novel to me. One of my faculty colleagues was outraged, comparing it to a Heroin-Users Law Students Association. It was, he said, a criminal conspiracy. Three years later, that professor (knowingly) wrote Supreme Court clerkship recommendation letters on behalf of the student who had written that initial announcement.
Within a decade, the Law School had banned any employer who discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation (including the United States military) from using the Law School’s placement facilities (as it had already banned employers who discriminated on the basis of race, religion, and gender) and established the Stonewall Scholarship for students who intended to devote part of their careers to defending the rights of gays and lesbians. By the late 1980s, neither of these steps was seen as particularly controversial.
Cass Sunstein has a related post entitled, “Gay Marriage Timing in New Jersey.”
