Get Used to It: Ep. 159, "Voices of Our Lives: Nan Hunter"

(keyboard clacking) (soft piano music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, your hostess for the hour, taking you as I do through some interesting conversations, at least they're interesting to me, I hope they're interesting to you. And today we have a wonderful guest. My guest is Nan Hunter, who is a law professor, in Los Angeles visiting, and she is one of the major legal theoreticians, for our movement over the year. And I know that you know that, the legal progress that we've made in the LGBT movement has been an essential part. Really, I think of the recognition of our community. So I'm very pleased to have you here, Nan. - I'm delighted to be here. - Well, as I told you, every so often we do kind of interview one person, we call it "Voices of Our Lives," and it's kind of an oral history in a way to help us understand, what pieces people have brought to this movement. 'Cause we use the word movement, it's really more like a mosaic in a way where we all kind of fit together but we don't know how. So I wanna know maybe a little bit about your early years, where were you born, and what was your childhood like? - Well, I was born and raised and grew up, went to high school, in Wilmington, North Carolina, it's now a small city. It was then really a town, on the Atlantic Coast, Southeastern tip of North Carolina. So I come out of this classic, southern white 1950s, '60s background. Went to the Southern Baptist Church growing up, the whole nine yards. - What were your folks like and what did they do? - My dad was an engineer, and my mom was a housewife, and I have one younger brother, growing up I just thought it was incredibly oppressively normal. (all laughing) - Funny how normal can be oppressive? - It's funny how awful normal can be, it was a small town, it was really a small town childhood. For me the best thing about being in that location, was the beach, because the beach was right there. Our house wasn't on the beach, but our house was like a few miles from the beach, and I've always loved beaches. It always is now the place when I want to just, find some inspiration, I take a walk along a beach and I'm good to go. - Well, it is a funny thing I think, here on the west coast, having beaches of course as well. And it's always been funny to me when I stand and face out, thinking that there's an entire continent at my back, and I'm at the very, very edge, of the continent. And I think it gives me a feeling of freedom or the ability to be different from the other, 300 million people standing behind me or something. - [Nan] Oh, that's interesting. - But so if you found it oppressively normal, were you oppressively normal? (all laughing) - Probably. (laughs) Not actually, in some respects actually I was, kind of oppressed and abnormal. I was not really oppressed, but I grew up in a time and place where gender roles were very strong and really not even questioned or thought about, or discussed. And I was classically, this tomboy. I grew up loving sports, I still think one of the great injustices of my life was that I couldn't play little league baseball, that was a really strong, way that even as a child, I felt somewhat different, just a little bit more interested in athletics than most of the other girls. - And was that of concern to your parents, or known to them or? - Well, it wasn't. Yes and no. My dad taught me a lot of sports, my mom was more concerned. My mom was more concerned, I do recall that she once asked a doctor to come by the house, and we just chatted. And I found out later that the doctor was trying to figure out if there was anything wrong with me, or if this was just a phase I was going through. So, I think he assured my mother that it was a phase I was going through. So, there's a little bit of malpractice going on there. (Sheila laughing) - Or it's just been a really long phase. - A really long phase. Yeah. - Well there must have been some racial issues going on in North Carolina in those days? - [Nan] Yeah, yeah. - It's sort of the Northern part of the south, but still. - Yes. And that was the other thing that really was intense for me as a child, for who knows what reason, I just had this very strong reaction, to seeing what seemed to me to be clear injustice, all around me. And I really experienced it as the emperor has no clothes. I had a kind of I think really a childlike response, to what was so obviously wrong. That was a period of legal segregation. As a child I saw, the proverbial drinking fountains and the bathrooms, and the formal segregation. At some level, I still don't understand how anyone could not think that was outrageous, but, I guess I just hadn't been taught yet. And so I had this very, very strong reaction as a child. And it was fed of course, by the times, there wasn't really much civil rights activity in the town where I grew up while I was a child. There was quite a bit later, but there wasn't much at that particular moment, that was visible to me. And so it was from my experience of it, it was a more distant kind of debate, but it was one, that I started weighing in on actually, when I was in elementary school. And that caused a fair amount of friction with my mother especially. - Yes, parents, you have to feel sorry for them in a way. 'Cause I don't know that parents ever really understand their children or vice versa. - [Nan] Yes. - But in a way I think that parents often think this sense of injustice or wrongness in the world, is also a phase, that they kind of hope we're going through. I think part of it is that, at least with my parents, I felt like they wanted to protect us from getting hurt. And therefore if you were gonna have these strong opinions or you were not going to be, even in California, we had segregated neighborhoods and really still do in Los Angeles, not by law. But it's still pretty strong. - [Nan] Sure. - And I think they don't want you to. Now some parents have very strong views, and they want you to have their views. But I think other parents are just, or they're kind of worried that you're gonna be so different, and out of step, with society. Little did they know because this was not anything, in your or my parents' minds, I think- - Yeah. - In terms of gay and lesbian people. - Oh, that's for sure. That's for sure. Those concepts were not even, legible to me at that point in time, and my parents were not political. They were not engaged one way or the other, in these issues. They were very accepting of something that I just thought was inconceivable that people should accept. - And so did you go to college after high school? - I did. I went to Northwestern, outside of Chicago. - Well, that was a big move? - It was a big move. I was very caught up, starting in high school in journalism. I was the editor in chief of the school paper, and I think journalism appealed to me for a couple of reasons. One is that, I've always loved writing, but the other is that it just, seemed like it would be a, kind of fun adventurous, way to live one's life back when journalism still was a viable commercial enterprise. And Northwestern had ran a series of summer institutes, for high school students around the country. And one of them was journalism and I went to that, one of the summers that I was still in high school. And that was a very powerful experience for me because, that was the first time I'd ever been on a college campus. To me it was just this incredibly wonderful universe of, intellectual and cultural excitement. And Northwestern I think does have the best journalism program in the country. So, I went to undergraduates, and Northwestern is very, very, very far away. (Sheila laughing) And especially seems so at the time, from where I grew up. So, I wanted to go north to college. I wanted to go into journalism and so I went to Northwestern. - So what was your experience like in college? It's interesting with people in our community all come to their own sort of realization about their sexual orientation, different times in different ways. And especially I think, though not only with lesbians, we often are involved in activism, at least a lot of us who are still involved in it. And that brings us kind of in contact with others who are outcasts, in other ways. Journalists are in a way designed to be outcasts. You're supposed to be critics of society or writing about it. So what was college like for you? - It was a mixture of experiences. It was incredibly important experience for me. I went to college, really sort of focused on journalism as this, path and so forth. I ended up actually, not majoring in journalism because I found, the training to be a bit narrow in a sense. And so I just moved to the college of arts and sciences, and ended up with a political science major. But that was so often the case, the least of what was interesting about college. I was in college in the height of the Vietnam War. Demonstrations. - Late 60s? - Late 60s, early '70s, and that completely dominated my college experience. When I went to college, I had really no particular knowledge, of what was going on in Southeast Asia, and I educated myself and became educated and so I became very active in some of the anti-war activities on the campus. - So what was it that drew you to that? - I think that to some extent, that early reaction to the racial injustice that I saw around me, primed me. Looking back on it, it seems to me, it really primed me, to think about things in the world in the context, of wondering if they were right or wrong, if they were just, or unjust, if there were subordinating, powerful interests that were taking advantage of people who shouldn't be taken advantage of. And the more I learned about American foreign policy, and the more I was sort of exposed to that critique, which I had never been exposed to before, the more powerful I found it. It was a life or death issue. - Well, there's also the activism against the war on college campuses was almost by definition an outsider activity. We weren't in the administration, we weren't making decisions about the war, we weren't in the military. We didn't really have much that we could do except to say, very vociferously, this is wrong, and this has to stop. And I think the interesting thing about activism then was that it actually had an effect, because it was so widespread. I don't know that we've seen a student movement, since then that's been quite as effective. - Well, I think that's right. And I think another piece of it of course, is that although this did not affect either of us because we're women, but they couldn't continue the war without men, being willing to go off and do it. And so the young men, both had a lot more at stake, but also the unwillingness, to just sort of march off and do it became a real problem for the government. - It seemed to me it also informed a number of us that we didn't know at the time about organizing. It wasn't a thing, we weren't engaged with necessarily directly with civil rights movements in the south, or with the farm worker movement, etc, but there was something about that, that was instructive about, the success of work done by people, just by there being more and more and more, people to do it. - I think that's true. I think that was magnified by many things. It was certainly magnified, by the obvious growing impact in terms of the war and the ability of the government carry on the war, and the turn away from increasing troops to decreasing troops, it was magnified by the political campaigns. This was Gene McCarthy, and Bobby Kennedy, running for President. For those of us, who were in the political position we were in, it was sort of like, "Well, which one is gonna end the war faster? Which one is going to bring, kind of more justice to this society." That was the frame, for the debate among students on many, many campuses. And so I think that whole sense of, taking steps to respond to injustice was echoing really throughout the society. - Well, the women's movement followed fairly quickly, on the heels of the anti-war movement. And there were a number of women who kind of made, the transition. Some of whom said, "We were tired of getting coffee for the guys in the anti-war movement." And they didn't seem to realize that they were also causing these divisions, but were you engaged in any feminist organizing at college or? - Not really so much at college. The activity that I was most engaged in, was the anti-war activity. I was drawn for sort of obvious in what seemed to be very natural reasons toward the women's movement. I guess sort of the later stages of college, when I started to read, some of the early literature. - Always a dangerous thing to read. - Yeah. I'm reading. (Sheila laughing) can get you in trouble. - No wonder the right wing doesn't want there to be libraries. It's a dangerous activity. - Absolutely. - So what happened after college? - Well, after college, I went to work at a legal aid clinic, in Chicago, and it was a legal aid clinic that was affiliated with Northwestern Law School. It was engaged in, not anti-war issues, but it was engaged in community organizing issues, and providing legal services for community organizations. And that's really the point when I decided I wanted to go to law school. I really am not sure exactly what I thought I was gonna do, some combination of politics and journalism I suppose. But working in the legal aid clinic, I guess really persuaded me that, certainly I could be a lawyer if I wanted to. And the lawyers got to do all the interesting things. - (laughing) So you went to law school? - So I went to law school. - Where'd you go? - I went to Georgetown. - So back towards the south but not quite well. - DC's always a little iffy on that. - So we're in the '70s now, right? - Yes. We are. - So what happened, and also in terms of your own personal development, in terms of your own thoughts about sexual orientation or your own realization, is this starting? - Yes. I came out basically in my first year of law school, I had started to sort of realize that was a possibility before that, and then it was in law school, a highly unlikely place to come out in some ways, especially then, but that was the moment when I came out. And in law school, I actually enjoyed law school I'm one of those incredibly nerdy people who enjoyed law school. (Sheila laughs) There were very, very few openly gay people, in law school. But that was the period in my life, when I really moved into that, that phase that the doctor was so worried about of my life. - Well, but you went way beyond just coming out. (Nan laughing) Eventually and I don't know really what the timeline was, but, there's really only a handful of people in the country, may be two handsful, who have made it their life's work, to think about, the relationship between the law, and in many ways discrimination based on sexual orientation, or how sexual orientation is treated, one way or the other. Negative, positive, etc, in the law. So, there's more than just coming out. Something happens, where our own situation, and it can happen like some women said, feminism made them realize that, all the rights they've been fighting for other people, actually kind of related to them too. How did your experience of coming out, or to yourself and other people in law school, relate to your decision to make this a part of your life's work? - Well, that's a good question. I went to law school, to become a lawyer to do some kind of social justice work. That was always what I intended to do, always what I wanted to do. I could have gone in various directions with that in terms of taking up different issues. But, coming out of law school, what I did was together with some other women form a feminist law office in DC. - Right out of law school? - Almost right out of law school, a year out of law school. And there was then a feminist law office in New York. There was a feminist law office in San Francisco, which is now equal rights advocates. And there was a feminist law collective in DC. And I was one of the co-founders of that. That was really an attempt by several of us who had had, in one way or the other similar backgrounds, who wanted to use law, to engage with forms of injustice, really at a ground level. I actually participated, in a couple of big test cases, but that's not most of what the office did. The idea behind the office, was to provide services to women, but not only to women, or gay people. And there weren't that many gay clients at that point. Openly gay clients, but to provide services that would be professional, and high quality, but would also, have within them sort of feminist spirit, sort of feminist understanding. - Let's take a few examples, putting aside the big cases just for a minute, which I wanna return to. But for example, who would come to you and what would you do? Wasn't just theory and advice to other attorneys, you were actually doing cases. - Oh yeah, yeah. It wasn't theory at all. It was the foundation of some theory maybe but very much from the ground up. No, it was the practice that we engaged in. Different people did different things, but it was a lot of family law, and it was a lot of employment discrimination law. The employment discrimination law was probably, more sex discrimination than anything else. I didn't do this but, other people in the office did, represented tenant unions, and represented some of the other progressive groups in the DC area. I remember at the time, conversations among feminist lawyers, specifically in the area of family law, that was an area that affected a huge number of women. It was probably the area that, was most likely to bring someone into active engagement with the law, but because the cases are not set up, the nature of the law is such that's very difficult to do any kind of impact litigation. They're very, very individualized. - And hard to get an appeal. - And hard to get an appeal. - You can't even afford a transcript sometimes. - That's right. That's right. And so there was really a sense that several of us had it that was really an area of great need. And so for several years, a number of us did a lot of those cases. - And did you also then have family law, cases related to gay or lesbian people? - Yes, we did. We represented, several lesbian mothers, and I think those were the primary gay. I remember doing an employment discrimination case on behalf of a gay man in DC, but those were the primary gay related cases that we did. - And so this is how you found, that the law was severely deficient in these areas? (all laughing) Probably at the same time, 'cause I think it might have been 1980. I was an associate in a feminist law firm. - Oh! Oh! - In LA. That split its time between employment discrimination, on feminist principles and family law. And that's really where I learned family law especially related to domestic violence issues, that we worked on all through that and then. - I never thought we had that in common, Sheila. - Well, 3000 miles away, who knows what's going on really? So what was your feeling as you were bringing these individual, or representing these individual clients. Did you find it difficult? We found the law very deficient. - Huh, the law was very deficient, and as I'm sure you know, it can be a very draining process. And so in fact, after a few years of working with that group, I actually did go the test case route, and I went to work for the ACLU national office. - Doing what kind of stuff? - Well, initially I did reproductive rights work, in the New York office. Well, I did it in the New York office, but I actually traveled a huge amount throughout the country doing cases. And then I started in 1986, I started the lesbian and gay rights project. - Was that the first one in an ACLU, or was it a national? - It was a national project. ACLU of Southern California has long been a leader on gay rights issues within the ACLU, at that point I was certainly one of the leaders, but there was not, and they had an attorney who did almost entirely gay rights work, but there was no one in the national office, who did gay rights work, and no sort of central location, central project for doing it. So that is the project that I started. - And I'm sure the ACLU was welcoming, but did it seem sort of bizarre in legal circles? - Well, it's interesting. That was the first, non-gay organization, to have a national gay rights project. People for the American way, religious groups, they're all over the place, which is wonderful, but that was the only one. That was the first and the only one. There was a period of time when the gay rights legal groups were growing. So the gay rights legal groups, were starting to have, some kind of presence in some kind of real role. But the idea that a non-gay group would think the issue was important enough, to prioritize it in that way was definitely a new step. - And so what kind of big cases did you do? Either before the ACLU or with them? - Starting before the ACLU, I was part of a challenge, or one of the lawyers on a challenge, to the Bureau of Prisons Policy for keeping gay materials out of the prisons, that was litigated over the course of many years, I represented a student organization, in Arkansas, that had been denied funding. Its sort of share of the student organization funding materials. This was right on the cusp performing the project, but I was part of a number of people, who did collaborative work in terms of the Bowers versus Hardwick case. The lead council in that case was Larry Tribe, assisted by Kathleen Sullivan, but it was an ACLU of Georgia case. I was brought by the ACLU of Georgia. And a lot of the cases that came to us, had come in especially when the project was first beginning, had come into affiliates, we worked on the Perry Watkins case which was out of the ACLU of Washington. We did the Braschi case in New York, which established that the meaning of the term family, in New York housing law, included the survivor of a gay partner. Survivor of a man who died with AIDS. So there were a lot of cases. It was an intense time. - People who watch this show know that I have sort of an undo interest in lawyers being one. I've always been interested in issues of access to justice. Before we go onto your teaching role which I wanna explore next, there's a dialogue, that sort of a constant dialogue, in the legal profession about, whether it's truly possible, to have access to justice, without representation. And there is also sort of the subgroup of discussion about impact litigation, where you have class action suits, you have a whole lot of people in the same circumstances and you want the law to change. You've been an attorney most of your adult life and you obviously believe this is an important part of it. So I wanna talk for just a minute about the law, because to me, the law is very majestic. It has within it, such possibilities, such vision. But on the other hand, what I learned in law school was, it's shaped by human beings. It has to be fought over, the whole law is an argument. There's no such thing as the law from day to day. It's just an argument. So, tell me for a minute or two, how do you find working in the law? Joyful, frustrating, do you know what I mean? It's an interesting and tangible kind of work. - Well, sometimes it's quite frustrating. Personally, I find it an enormously powerful tool, I also for social justice although I do think, that in some ways American political culture, has been a kind of victim of the success, of civil rights culture. The civil rights paradigm, because when you look out at political organizing now, I think it's too heavily around the law. When you think about who are the movement leaders in any movement, you often come up with lawyers. And lawyers actually, it's fine for lawyers to be movement leaders, but that's really not the role of the law. I think we would be better off, better served, if our movement leaders were people who were more engaged in organizing, and less oriented to litigation certainly, and perhaps even to legislation but certainly to litigation. At one point, again because of the success, going back to the civil rights movement, of big impact cases, there was romanticization, a mystique around the lawyer role. Now we're so far past that, I think that has diminished. The problem is I'm not sure what has taken its place. I'm not sure what the function is that's taken its place. - Well, of course as a former legislator, I have to say that, to me it was like the quick and dirty way to change the law. - Sure. - Because why go through all of that impact litigation? You have to file all those papers when you can just put in a bill, and if you can get enough votes, there's no more discrimination. Now of course, the law and reality are often two different things. I can get it in the law that you can't discriminate against kids at school, then you've gotta have regulations that takes another four or five years, down transgender kids use a bathroom. And then, school by school, you have to make certain, that they're doing it. So it didn't turn out to be quite as quick and dirty, as I thought. - Well, I think the question is really, that people like us are really concerned with, is how you change the culture, how you change the norms. We can change the law by legislation, we can change the law sometimes by lawsuits, but really the question is how you change, the lived experience of people, who haven't been getting the kind of treatment that they should get. And that is a much more complex question. I do think the law plays an important role, but I think it's important, that that law be engaged with, you can use it as a basis for talking to people and for organizing people. If people don't know that the law has changed, then their lived experience is not gonna change. It's nice to have a law, but it's most important I think, to shift the culture in the way that you're trying to shift it. - Well of course but we have said to change behavior, sometimes you have to force it. - [Nan] Sure. - That's been one theory and I have to say it's been my theory. - [Nan] Sure. - If you have bad law like segregated schools, and then you change that law or simply remove the bad law, you have to put in another law that says, you must segregate the schools which leads to, 70 years of trying to figure out how the heck to do that when you have segregated neighborhoods, and you have neighborhood schools. So we experiment with busing and all those things, but still to get rid of the bad law I guess, was the first step. - Oh, absolutely. And not just to get rid of the bad law, but to mandate that certain things happen. I think when one does that, the struggle isn't over, that's my only point. You outlaw something like segregation, and you can enforce that, if you've got a government that's willing to really enforce that. And even if you do, then I think there's a lot of work, going forward in terms of really building up new norms, and new attitudes. But I think you can't do that unless you have a legal environment, that allows you to do that, and that supports you in doing that. - It may sometimes involve a demystification of the other. If people say, "Gee, I never met her." That they knew of in our case of course. Well, I was the first open gay person to be in the state legislature. And many of my colleagues especially across the aisle, truly didn't feel that they had ever met a gay person. For them, it was somewhat of a revelation if they truly believed the demonization, and also some admission that they never quite really believed all the demonization, but that forced change in behavior is I think an interesting thing. Also, there's a generational thing that happens. - [Nan] Yeah. - Which brings me to teaching. - [Nan] Yeah. - Which I think is what you did next. - [Nan] Yes. That's right. - Now what made you decide to make that leap? (laughs) - Well, I was then at the ACLU and I was running the ACLU. It was called the Lesbian Gay rights project then, it's now called the LGBT rights project. And, it was a wonderful job. It was like the job that everyone I knew envied, this job. (Sheila laughs) And so there I was, thinking about leaving it, (Sheila laughing) which seemed a little insane. - In grade. - Yeah. Something, but, I really wanted to be able, to sort of step back and think about some of the issues that I had been involved in litigating, and have the opportunity to write about them, to be in a position where, I didn't have to take the party line, although most of the time I agree with the party line but not always. And I just wanted to have, a position from which I could have a more, critical and thoughtful view than it is possible to have just structurally. There are many brilliant people, who are in our LGBT legal rights organizations, but they're institutional responsibilities that you have in that role. And I wanted a different role really. - So where'd you go to teach and what did you write about? - I first went to Brooklyn Law School to teach, I stayed in New York, and I started writing about, the relationship, between expression and identity, and how the laws categories, in first amendment law for example, don't really accommodate the lived experience of what I called expressive identity. So that, especially in a context where the identity marker, which is often the case for gay people, and for others as well, is not immediately visible or apparent. One takes an additional step to come out, and so analyzing coming out speech, analyzing that process, arguing that it was something that the law, basically the point being that, the law hasn't really had to deal with this compound, of constitutional interest around expression, around equality, around liberty. And it's coming up in the context all the time of gay rights issues, which is important by itself. But actually it's even more important than that. It should be a way that legal thinkers try and analyze, some of the bigger questions about how constitutional indoctrine works, and what equality means at this point in time. - So when you say expressive identity, do you mean as spoken or as lived, or both? - Well, both. Both. There various ways that people come out, people come out in different degrees, one can choose to moderate, how out you are. We all do that all the time. That if nothing else I think, brings a degree of agency, that we all have that sometimes I think, and at that point in time and perhaps still true, I think gay people were a little bit uncomfortable with claiming, there was a lot of talk about, this a somewhat different point, but a lot of talk about homosexuality, is it chosen, or is it inherent? And the "pro gay" position was, that you have no control over it. And the "anti-gay" position was, that you could choose. Or you could at least choose to act on it. I remember listening to a debate on television between these two people, and that those were the positions they took. And I remember thinking, "Oh, that's." I don't wanna say I have no control, that I have no agency. I certainly feel it as my authentic sexual orientation, but I could choose not to act on it. I could choose to hide it. Why are we so into this, we can't help it? The source of that intellectually, is an ideology. It's a history of illness. Is it an illness that you have no control over? Or is it something that you choose to do? And I think people experience that in different ways, they experience that spectrum in different ways. And some people have very strong experiences one way or the other. And so I'm not about trying to declare that there's one true answer that. - Well, but the law was also sort of fascinated in the equal protection part of the constitution with, the fact that you couldn't choose what you were. - [Nan] The immutability. - The immutability of race and gender. They never touched religion because you could change that. But we had a whole separate part of the constitution, for religion. So clearly that was different. We'll protect it but not because you can't change it. So I think that we were to some extent feeling, somewhat trapped by the lines. - Well, the immutability. Immutability is a fascinating story about where that comes from. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, gave us immutability and at the time she constructed that argument, it was a progressive argument. The argument being made against her when she was running the Women's Rights project to the ACLU. Was that, it was appropriate to have all these different, job categories and everything else for women, because it was biological destiny. It's biological destiny whether you're a man or a woman, which we now know is not even so much the case, but that was the argument. And she flipped that by saying, instead of it being biologically ordained, in some kind of natural way, that women should take this role and men should take that role because of the anatomical differences between them, her flipping of that was, the characteristic of sex, whether you're male or female, is something you have no control over. So therefore it is profoundly unfair, that you should be discriminated against on that basis. So that was really the beginning of that argument, and the mutability criteria was picked up by a number of courts although, it's never been found to be essential. It's always sort of one of those, "Well, here are some of the things that we look to when we're thinking about heightened scrutiny." And one idea is, "Well, we shouldn't discriminate against people, based on characteristics that they have no control over." That's fine if you have no control over it. - Right. And I think a lot of our audience now is thinking, "I never really fell in love with a man. I'm clearly a lesbian, and I can't help it, and I shouldn't lose my job for that." And I think that, there's no way that you're saying, that's not the case, but, the more complicated issue of your research and writing, was, but what if you did choose it, does that mean you could be discriminated against then? - Yeah. It's a very dangerous- - Because that's the whole thing about making Jews kiss the cross during the World War II. It's like, "You could just be a Christian, so we won't kill you." Well, that's not really the point. - [Nan] Yes. - And I think, the point of your research was to try to find not just the intersection, but why are we having this argument? That's one of the points. - Yeah. That argument while it may work in some context, does not work in this context. It also doesn't work in the religion context, but, judges like to sort of forget about that. That we should not have to. And again, I recognize and respect that different people have different experiences of this, but we should not have to basically say, "I can't help it. Please feel sorry for me, please don't discriminate against me." If someone experienced the authenticity of their sexuality that way, then who am I to say that it's wrong? I'm not saying that. I'm just saying two things really. One, is that shouldn't be a legal criterion. That the criterion and law should be, that there's no good reason to force someone. We would never accept that, the government should be able to force people to change religion even though people change religion all the time. But we also understand that when people change religious faith, it's not like picking an ice cream flavor. It's important to them, it's serious. - It's profound. - Although there are many people who experience their sexual orientation as given, there are other people who don't. And there are people who experience their sexual orientations bisexual, so I think the experience is quite varied. And the last point is simply that is a dangerous argument, because, even if one assumes, that this puts you in the category of immutability, there are just too many personal stories, of people who don't experience their sexuality that way. - Well, it's gonna be kinda old fashioned too. - Yes. (laughs) - When you look at gene X and gene Y and whatever came the millennials, they're saying, "Why are you putting me in these boxes? I don't get it right. Why do I have to be either or? If I'm attracted to, but then I'm attracted to, and I have affectional preference in whatever. And these definitions." So I think it was very, and is very important work. - [Nan] Yeah. - Where are you now and what's your research now? - Well, that is something that I, was looking into, I guess a while ago. What I'm doing actually right now is, I'm doing a lot of work with the Williams Institute. - You should tell our viewers what that is. - Yes. The Williams Institute, the full name is the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation, Law and Policy. And it's headquartered at UCLA Law School. And that's really why I'm visiting at UCLA Law School this semester. - And we're very happy to have you there. - Well, I'm enjoying it. (laughs) And Williams does tremendous work, just tremendous work. And I've signed up in the last couple of years, as the Legal Scholarship Director at Williams. So I have responsibility for, sort of overall responsibility for, nurturing our law teaching fellows. We've sent 1/2 a dozen young law teachers into the world who will go out to various places, and build the scholarship, and build a presence in American law schools which is really wonderful I think. And we're starting to actually do more research in-house. We did a huge project this past fall, to analyze some of the ramifications that endo would have, on the Employment Non-discrimination Act, and some of the complexities with Sovereign Immunity law. So that's a big direction for me at this point in time. - And your partner is also here in Los Angeles with you? - Yes, she is indeed. - And she's had a big event in her life. - Yes, she is- - This is Chai Feldblum. - Chai Feldblum who is- - Also a professor. Yeah. She was at Georgetown. - Georgetown. Yeah. Yes, and that's right. Actually I went to Georgetown, a few years ago, and so that's my home base now. But yeah, Chai has just been appointed in a recess appointment as the first openly gay commissioner of the EEOC. - Very, very impressive and wonderful. - Yes. She's gonna be terrific too. - Well, I'm gonna try to corral her for an interview as well. - Excellent. - I've known Chai over the years, a wonderful partnership really. How do you find the students that you're teaching? - I enjoy teaching, I enjoy my students, in all of the classes not just in the sexuality and law classes. They're energetic, they're bright, many of them certainly do think the idea of boxes or categories of sexual orientation is like so. - So yesterday. - So yesterday. (Sheila laughing) One of the most interesting moments to me teaching was, this was some years ago. Was when I was covering marriage issues in one of my classes. And I just sort of asked the students, this was before Vermont, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I asked my students if they thought, for the ones who were gay or the ones who were straight, what they thought about their gay friends, if they thought they would be able to get married, if they expected to be able to get married. And I was stunned, at how many of them said yes. And I realize now of course, that their instinct was in some ways better than mine. There are not many states where you can get married now in the United States but there are few. And certainly people can do it. I just was so impressed at how, it wasn't that they hoped they could get married. I don't know if they even want to get married or not, but that they expected, to be able to get married if they wanted to. And that I thought was such a dividing line between their generation and my generation. - Well, it's interesting when you were talking about the lesbian mother cases. I remember in the old days, how very difficult, those cases were, in many ways you could not come out, and if you came out you lost your children. You easily lost them, to your ex-husband. Or you would have a custody order that would not allow, any other woman to stay overnight, in the house with you because it was a bad influence on the children. And there were a number of people who said, "This is just gonna change. This is gonna change." And I thought, "I don't know how it's gonna change." It's one of the reasons why I wanted to go into legislation, because I wanted these things to change. And thought, "We'll just say in the law." Well, you can't take this into account, or the best interest of the child should be the same, whatever the sexual orientation of the parents should be about the child, etc. But how quickly, some of that changed. And how straight appellate court judges were saying, "Just not fair, just not fair. They're a good mother." And it's been stunning over the past 30 years or more. - [Nan] Yeah. - Really how much change there has been? - Well, I think that's right. I think that historically speaking, the LGBT movement has moved faster. It doesn't always seem that way in the moment, but I think if you sort of step back, it seems like it's gone farther, faster, even though there's quite a bit of distance yet to go. And I think that's because, it's a baby movement historically speaking, and it was born, more or less during a period, when the civil rights movement really gave a master frame, to our ideas about what the law could and should do. And so we are immeasurably indebted, for that because we came along at a moment as a group, when those basic ideas had been formulated, and had taken hold and gained some traction. I have to think that's the reason. - Well, I think two other things. One is that our community, had money. The men had money, and after the AIDS pandemic started, and so many of our guys saw that it didn't matter if they were the bank president, it didn't matter if they were the real estate lawyer, they were gonna be kicked out of their job because AIDS forced them to come out. And they were made more aware of discrimination with more, notion that they would therefore establish something, to fight it, at the same time, as I think that the lesbians in our community were really showing up for the guys, in the AIDS epidemic. And the basic social justice organizing that lesbians had done for so many years, in an impoverished way, kind of came together. And the new movement had, a ready made impulse towards social justice and a ready made impulse towards some fundraising, that came together in a way that was very different from other movements. - Yeah. I think that's right. - And also helped I think propel it. So what's next for you, Nan? - Well, that's a good question. (laughs) That's sort of the big question for me is what's what's next to me. - Is it a geographic question? - It could be a geographic question. - Well, Los Angeles would be very happy to have you guys even 1/2 the year. And if you wanna spend the time at some beach how about, 1/2 of the east coast beach and 1/2 of the west coast beach. - Boy, that sounds like heaven. (all laughing) - I think it's happening too. It'd be very welcoming. Well, your work has been incredibly important, really to the community and to the country. I think anyone who works on, forwarding the rights of any group, and making the argument about, America needs to really believe in equality, and here's another opportunity America to do it. So I guess my last question to you would be, has it all been worth it? - Oh God, yes. I wouldn't trade a minute of it. I feel like I'm just incredibly lucky, incredibly privileged, that I have been able to spend my life and sort of spend my energies, doing what I've done. It's hard to imagine, having had a better, set of opportunities than the ones I've had. - Well, thank you very much, Nan for being with us and thank you for being with us. And you heard it, the opportunity just to use your life to make a difference, and get used to it. (bright upbeat music)