Bay Windows - June 6, 2002
Peter Cassels

For nearly 25 years the nonprofit legal organization has taken on cases throughout New England that range from opposing odious and outmoded sodomy laws to gaining marriage, domestic-partnership and adoption rights for its clients.

GLAD's most famous victory was Baker v. State of Vermont, in which the state Supreme Court ordered the state Legislature to create the landmark civil-unions law. The court handed down its decision in December 1999, the Legislature passed a bill in 2000, and the state began granting civil unions on July 1, 2001.

It seems GLAD and its attorneys are always making headlines. Just this year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that neither of the state's two sodomy laws are applicable to private, consensual conduct and that no one can be prosecuted under the laws unless the conduct took place either in public or without consent. And the court soon may hear another high-profile case involving marriage. GLAD said it would appeal a May 8 decision by a Suffolk Superior Court judge in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health against seven same-sex couples challenging Massachusetts laws that deny them the right to marry.

There's no doubt that GLAD's attorneys, graduates of some of the nation's top law schools, could command hefty salaries in any of the big firms. Bay Windows recently interviewed them to find out what attracted them to advocacy law, where remuneration obviously isn't the motivator. To a person they say it's the work they love, as well as the opportunity to further civil rights.

Gary Buseck, 51, has been its executive director since 1997, but had a history with GLAD dating back to its early days. Buseck, who earned his law and two other degrees from Boston College, first started volunteering with GLAD in 1979 while he was still in law school. The Pennsylvania native is single and lives in Boston's Bay Village neighborhood. He opened a two-person law firm in 1981 with Stephen Ansolabehere, who has since died of AIDS (Buseck founded GLAD's AIDS Law Project). For four years, the partners did general legal work for members of the gay community, which fit in well with Buseck's volunteer duties at GLAD. Later, he went to work for an 80-member law firm where he specialized in appellate and insurance law, personal injury and professional malpractice. Before becoming executive director, Buseck was a member of GLAD's board of directors for seven years.

"I suppose I had been looking for some time to work full time with the gay and lesbian legal movement in some fashion," Buseck says of his decision to take on the job of heading the organization. "GLAD has obviously been my first love. It was the strongest commitment for me for my pro bono work and so it was a natural place for me to go."

Buseck has witnessed the rapid expansion of the legal-aid group, from two attorneys in the early days to five now. He oversees a $1.2 million budget, one that has doubled during the last six years. About 70 percent of its funding comes from individual donors. Private foundations provide the balance. "It is the gay community and friends of the community that has made what GLAD has accomplished possible," he points out. GLAD represents its clients at no charge.

As GLAD approaches its 25th anniversary, Buseck has begun reflecting on its achievements. "I look back at the list the community has accomplished and find GLAD's fingerprints on all of them," he says, ticking off such victories as non-discrimination laws in every New England state except Maine; second-parent adoption in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, recognition of visitation rights to separated non-biological same-sex parents in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and advances in transgender rights, to name a few.

"It doesn't mean that we're anywhere near the end," Buseck cautions.

"Things are getting more intense. I like to think we spend a lot of time fighting for the rights of individuals and a lot of progress has been made on that. Now we are entering the world of families. Adoption is so much on the plate nationally, spousal benefits, reproductive technology, employment benefits for partners, pension issues, and the biggie - marriage. Obviously, our opponents see us making progress and they are desperately trying to stop it. We are going into a new phase that will be even more intense. It offers opportunity and even more dangerous terrain."

Bennett Klein, 42, has directed the GLAD AIDS LAW Project since 1994. The Boston native, who is single, grew up in Brookline and now lives in the South End. A graduate of Oberlin College and the Boston University School of Law, Klein accumulated what he calls "very good litigation experience" as an associate at the Boston law firms Gaston & Snow and Kotin, Crabtree & Strong before joining GLAD.

Asked why he gave up earning the big bucks at private law firms, Klein said he wanted to be involved with legal issues affecting the gay and lesbian community ever since he first came out while a college sophomore:

"I really wanted my career to reflect that. I wanted to do work in which the cases made a difference in creating civil rights and I wanted to be involved in fundamentally changing some of the important issues the community is working on. So for me, in some way I sort of feel like I went to law school and then went down a path that wasn't really personally satisfying for a while."

A highlight of his GLAD career thus far was being the lead counsel in Bragdon v. Abbott, the first HIV discrimination case to be heard by the U. S. Supreme Court. The case involved a Bangor, Maine, dentist who had a written policy of refusing to treat any patient who had tested positive for HIV. The 1998 decision established nationwide protection against discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act for all people with HIV.

Arguing a case before the nation's highest court was "very exciting and very stressful," Klein acknowledges. He worked just about full time on preparing case, from the day before Thanksgiving in 1997 when the court agreed to hear it to the following March 30 when oral arguments were presented: "That period was one of total immersion and being consumed by that one case. Because at that level there was so many questions that were new and hadn't been answered before that had to be addressed." The fact that the federal government entered the case on the plaintiff's behalf certainly helped the case, he explains.

"What was going through my mind was 'don't blow it,'" Klein recalls. The Supreme Court justices place the greatest emphasis on briefs filed in cases it hears and "we put a terrific amount of work into our briefs.

There is a saying that you don't win your case at oral argument but you can lose your case by making some kind of concession. I remember thinking that no matter what I said, no matter how it came out, I was not going to get myself locked into a corner. The justices come at you very fast, many of them with hostile questions trying to box you in and get you to make that key concession. At that point it is so surreal and things are happening so fast, but all you are really doing is just reacting. We anticipated in our preps that I might get one or two sentences out. We spent hours trying to figure out what those one or two sentences should be."

Klein got help in preparing from Buseck and GLAD Civil Rights Project Director Mary Bonauto and from attorneys throughout the nation who have expertise in disabilities.

Bonauto, a graduate of Hamilton College and the Northeastern University Law School, assumed her position in 1990 after spending several years at a law firm in Portland, Maine. She has a long record of achievements in gay rights court decisions, including the Baker case, in which she served as co-counsel with two Vermont attorneys. Bonauto lives with Jennifer Wriggins, her partner of 14 years and is now on leave caring for twins she recently gave birth to.

Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Levi joined GLAD in 1998 after experience at Skadden Arps, one of the largest corporate law firms. The Florida native who now lives in the Boston suburbs with partner Susan Donnelly, a chemist, is a graduate of Wellesley College and the University of Chicago Law School. She clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge and after leaving Skadden and Arps taught at the Chicago-Kent Law School.

While she was able to accrue plenty of litigation experience at the law firm, "I've always wanted to work on issues relating to GLBT people and that wasn't happening," she explains. She had always wanted to live in Boston and when she had the opportunity to join GLAD, "I jumped at it."

She enjoys the impact her work had on "on people's day-to-day lives. I like being able to work directly with clients who are facing difficult issues because of who they love or who they are and being able to do something about it."

Like Buseck, Levi says that while a lot has been accomplished in securing gay rights, "We have so far to go. The marriage work is just an example of where we hit the limits of many people's understanding of our lives. In many ways we've challenged our own community to speak openly and honestly about our families. That's raised the stakes a lot." Levi is co-counsel on the Goodridge case.

Levi is among those at GLAD who have been working on the fight against the anti-gay marriage amendment initiative the religious Right wants to get on the Massachusetts ballot in 2004: "There's been a growing response from the community to the marriage issue. There may be have been an early sense that this couldn't happen in Massachusetts, but I think everyone understands that not only can it happen, but it is happening. There needs to be heightened vigilance on our part that Massachusetts doesn't go the way of other states. We've had a tremendous number of inquiries at GLAD.

There have been literally thousands of constituent contacts. I'm not seeing complacency in our community, but neither am I overly confident that the community will appropriately respond, because we have to continually remind each other of the importance of being open and proud."

Karen Loewy, 27, is the most recent addition to the GLAD stable of attorneys. Heterosexual, she is married to a rabbi at Temple Shalom in Newton. A graduate of Brandeis University, she joined the organization right after graduating from Fordham University Law School. "I went to law school knowing that I wanted to be working on great civil-rights and civil-liberties issues," she says. "GLAD is doing cutting-edge, really important work." Although she worked for a law firm before attending Fordham, she "felt it wasn't the right place for me. I really wanted to be involved with issues I cared about and no amount of money was worth giving that up."

Loewy enjoys her work - "The group decision-making and collaboration and bouncing ideas off of each other. "

She acknowledges that she is getting valuable experience that some of her law school classmates would envy, like taking depositions. "I have opportunities I wouldn't have in the private sector. Sometimes it's a little scary, but it is healthy and I grow a lot faster that way."

Peter Cassels is the Associate Editor at Bay Windows. His e-mail address is pcassels@baywindows.com.

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