Issue 25, Volume 43, June 19, 2015
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With liberty and justice for all: Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu by Shaun Knittel SGN Associate Editor There are few people in this world that put you completely at ease; whose presence makes you feel that somehow the world is a little brighter because they are in it. For me, Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu is one of them. Yu made history when Washington State Governor Jay Inslee (D) appointed her to the Washington Supreme Court effective May 16, 2014, making her the first Asian, the first Latina, the first woman of color, and the first member of the LGBT community to serve on the Supreme Court. And although Yu is not the first woman to ever serve the court she is the 6th woman currently serving and the 11th women ever to serve on the state’s Supreme Court. In order to reach the echelons of success that Yu has you certainly can’t deny the fact that there are going to be things in this life you must face; things you simply cannot run away from. What I find to be most admirable about Yu is her sense of self and selfworth. And although I was nervous and had just spent nearly two hours traveling from Seattle to Olympia at 8 a.m. to meet with her inside the Temple of Justice on the same grounds as the Capitol Building, within minutes of interviewing her for a documentary about the life and times of some of Seattle’s most notable or trailblazing LGBTQ elders in Washington state that I am producing for Social Outreach Seattle called The Legacy Project, Justice Yu made it clear that she, without being self-righteous and free of all martyrdom, would not shy away from talking about her ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender. In fact, because she believes so strongly in people always telling the truth no matter what, and the importance of people living their truth, she welcomes the questions just like she welcomes her guests – with open arms.
Yu was born in Chicago, Illinois to immigrant parents. Her father came to the U.S. from Mexico and her mother, from China. She credits her upbringing, which included attending Catholic Church and school (she graduated from St. Mary’s High School in 1975), for her devotion to social justice. She told me that she believes most people have a good sense of what is right and what is wrong in terms of how to treat others and how one conducts oneself on a basic social level but what she has always been drawn to is the righteousness of why that is. She became the first of her family to graduate from college when, in 1979, she received her degree in theology from Do-
“my experience with the Church would’ve greatly changed.” “At the time, that was not what I wanted,” she said. “I did not lie about who I am, I just didn’t talk about it.” The irony of the vast difference in which she now lives her life as a well-known out Lesbian who has made history as a justice of the Supreme Court is not lost on her. However, Yu pointed out the fact that when people only look at the way things are now for LGBTQ people they must also have the empathy to recognize the way that things were back then or one could easily get the wrong idea. When you do this, you realize that “hiding” in the closet is the wrong word to describe life for LGBTQ people
Mary Yu – photo by Janelle Rekta
minican University, just outside of Chicago in River Forest, Illinois. “Even in college I wasn’t out to everyone about being Lesbian,” she said. “I felt it just wasn’t the time or place to do that. And in many ways the need to tell everyone about that part of me just wasn’t really there. I knew who I was and that was the most important thing to me, that I remain, always, honest with myself.” Like many others who are Catholic and LGBTQ, although there were many things she enjoyed and loved about the Catholic Church, it was made clear to Yu that if she were to one day come out as Lesbian,
when the modern LGBTQ equality movement was just one decade old; surviving would be closer to the truth because, you see, when Mary Yu entered the institution of higher learning in the mid-1970s LGBTQ people didn’t have basic protections against discrimination in all areas of education, employment and safety. Then add to that the fact that she was also a biracial woman of color and suddenly the hill of life becomes a mountain. Luckily for us all, Yu turned out to be one hell of a mountain climber. After completing her undergraduate education, Yu went to work for the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, which serves more than 2.3 million Catholics in Cook and Lake Counties in Northeastern Illinois. She was initially hired by Rev. Francis J. Kane as a secretary for the Office of Peace and Justice for the Archdiocese of Chicago. In 1989, Yu earned a graduate degree in theology from Mundelein of Loyola University and rose to become director of the Office of Peace and Justice for the Chicago Archdiocese. When asked about the internal struggle that someone must feel as they work for what is largely considered an anti-LGBTQ religion, Yu said that while there were some bad days along with the good, as is in all areas of life, the social justice work of the Church as a whole allowed her to take solace in the fact that the Chicago Archdiocese presided over a great deal of that work. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago is the largest in a nationwide network of faithbased social service providers that form Catholic Charities. Together they form the largest private network of social service providers in the United States, which provides services to nearly 10 million people in need each year regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds and the Chicago Office of Catholic Schools is the largest private school system in the United States serving various ethnic groups, including Irish, Germans, Poles, Czechs and Bohemians, French, Slovaks, Lithuanians, African Americans, Italians, and Mexicans. “In those days you essentially had two lives. There was your work or professional life and then there was your personal life,” she said, adding, “Of course, it was like that for most people, not just LGBTQs. People did not share the details of their private life as freely as they do now.” Yu explained that fact as being important because it is necessary for people to see mary yu page 23