Lambda Legal celebrates 50 years
Shelly Skeen The Landmark Dinner marks a half century of fighting for LGBTQ equality DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writertaffet@dallasvoice.com Lambda Legal celebrates its 50th anniversary of fighting for LGBTQ equality with the Landmark Dinner at the JW Marriott Arts District Hotel on Saturday, Aug.
19. “Our story begins with a band of volunteer lawyers who believed they could break new ground for LGBTQ+ people through the American justice system,” Lambda Legal explains on its website. “They had $25 in the bank and a new name — Lambda Legal — that co-founder Bill Thom taped to his apartment mailbox using a Band-aid.” Dallas-based Southwest Regional Director Shelly Skeen explained this week that the organization became its own first client.
When judges in New York blocked the organization from filing as a nonprofit corporation, it represented itself in its first case.
Finding Lambda Legal was “neither benevolent nor charitable,” the founders appealed the lower court’s ruling and won before beginning to represent other members of the LGBTQ community.
