A H o me f o r I na l ienab l e R i g hts
ripened yet to the point where there would have been an active gay group at Penn.” A few telltale signs, however, showed Millinger that the movement was well on its way. For instance, in his first year he was required to take an income security course that focused on government welfare programs for the economically and socially disadvantaged. In his third year, he took part in a Penn-funded clinic that provided free legal service to people who couldn’t afford it. “There were a lot of messages out there that proved Penn is a place that's progressive and supportive of people who are not in the mainstream, and at that time gays and lesbians were a marginalized and often disadvantaged group.”
Case in point? When he graduated in 1979, he didn’t know a
single openly gay law firm partner in Philadelphia. “At the time there was great fear that being [out] would hurt your career, or would inhibit you getting a partnership.” He began to see change — on the world stage and on Penn’s campus — during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. “We were threatened so significantly
The stock market crash of 1987 threw the legal market for a
loop. Suddenly firms were laying off people and gay law graduates began to shuffle back inside the closet. “I think people were so concerned about their futures and the job market, which they realistically perceived as a really conservative place,” says ACLU Pennsylvania Senior Staff Attorney Mary Catherine Roper L’93, an out lesbian who noticed the effects when she arrived at Penn as a second-year student in 1991. She recalls going to her first meeting for gay and lesbian students held in a bar across the street from campus. “One of the first things that was brought up by the few people who attended was that the group needed bigger signs hung up about the meetings” so people could read them from far away. “Literally, people did not want to be seen standing in front of a posting for the Gay and Lesbian Law Students Association." Though she was disheartened by the lack of enthusiasm in her peers, she remembers finding overwhelming support from the administration. “Gary Clinton was one of the first people I met as a transfer student. It made a huge difference having a
... much like America's gay rights movement -- Penn Law's journey to becoming the rainbowflag-waving institution it is today "is really about an evolution and not a revolution."
role model like him. It showed me that, from at least an official position, I was fine. I had nothing to worry about.”
By the time she graduated, she noted that things were starting
to loosen up when "some younger students arrived wanting to do active, public things." Coincidentally, this was also the same year “don’t ask, don’t tell” was being debated (and eventually enacted), firing up young, progressive thinkers in a way that hadn’t been seen since the ’80s. From there the LGBT milestones kept piling up. In 1996, in Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado amendment denying gays and lesbians protections against discrimination. The entertainment industry
as a community that it changed a lot of people’s consciousness,
was forever changed in 1997 when Ellen Degeneres came out
and the laws of activism.”
on national TV. And in 2000, Vermont became the first state to
During the height of the epidemic, Millinger used his know-
legally recognize civil unions between gay and lesbian couples.
how as a corporate and business lawyer to help local HIV-fighting organizations like the Philadelphia AIDS Task Force get up and running. He says the formation of these types of politically
Students who attended Penn in the aughts remember an in-
charged groups, and new LGBT-centric policies like the 1982
stitution that was not only gay-friendly, but, well, maybe a little
amendment to Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination ordinance
queer itself.
to include sexual orientation, generated more LGBT-focused
“I would say Penn has a reputation of being a very gay law
discussions in Penn Law classrooms. “As those things were
school,” says New York attorney Bud Jerke L’10, who recalls
happening in the outside world, they were being reflected on
realizing that before he even applied in the fall of 2007. “On
professional school campuses. And because of Penn's history [of
its application, Penn had a box where you could self-identify as
championing social justice], they were quicker to embrace those
‘LGBT.’ The only other [dozen or so] schools I applied to that
sorts of things than some other colleges.”
had that was Cornell. … I took that as a real confidence sign
that the school acknowledged a need for a diverse student body
But that momentum was short-lived.
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