Dallas LGBT Bar Association From Staff Reports The birth of the Dallas LGBT Bar Association came in January of 1992 when gay attorneys Lee Taft and Ed Ishmael sat down together and talked about the need for just such an organization.
LGBTQ attorneys in Dallas were already meeting infrequently in private homes as The Stonewall Legal Society, and Taft and Ishmael felt it was time to formalize the group and thus become a voice for LGBTQ attorneys and their clients.
They started out by creating the Gay and Lesbian Study Group within the Dallas Bar Association, which lasted through 1999, when Rob Wiley formed the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Bar Association and served as its first president.
And then in November 2019, the board of the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers voted to recognize what had by then become the Dallas LGBT Bar Association as an official Sister Bar Association.