Berkeleyan

Double take on same-sex marriage
Civil-rights activists and legal experts to consider movement’s progress at Feb. 24 Boalt event

16 February 2005

One year after the dramatic and brief flurry of same-sex weddings at San Francisco City Hall, and in the wake of the 2004 presidential election, several leading activists and legal experts will take a “time-out” on Thursday, Feb. 24, to discuss the status of the lesbian/gay civil-rights movement and strategies for the future.

The free law-school event features talks on “Same-Sex Marriage and Beyond: What Now?” by Evan Wolfson, executive director of the activist organization Freedom to Marry, and Brooklyn College political scientist Paisley Currah, director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at City University of New York (CUNY) and an activist and author on transgender issues. Legal expert Rhonda Copelon, director of the International Women’s Rights Law Clinic at CUNY Law School, will moderate.

The event honors the late Mary Dunlap, a ’71 Boalt Hall alum who litigated many high-profile civil-rights cases, including a successful challenge to the longstanding INS policy that automatically barred gay people from entering the United States, an early class-action suit against Union Oil for race discrimination, and the long fight to integrate the San Francisco Fire Department.

The Mary C. Dunlap Memorial Lecture takes place from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Boalt Hall’s Booth Auditorium; a reception will follow. For information, see law.berkeley.edu/cenpro/csj or contact the Center for Social Justice at 642-6969.