Stephen Lachs is an American lawyer and retired judge who served as a judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court from 1979 to 1999. He was the first openly gay judge appointed in the United States and is thought to be the first openly gay judge appointed anywhere in the world. Lachs was also a leader in the burgeoning gay rights movement and community support groups, that included service on the board of what is now the Los Angeles LGBT Center and, years later, as a member and chair of AIDS Project Los Angeles.
Sarah McBride made history when she became the first openly transgender State Senator in the country. In the November 2020 election, McBride was elected to the Delaware Senate. In her many years as a political activist, she has fought against discrimination based on gender identity. Prior to her senate career she worked as national press secretary for Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization. McBride is an inspiration to all and a reminder to our LGBTQ community that democracy is big enough for them too.
On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court's decision in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses in the case of Obergefell v. Hodgese.
The Okra Project is a mutual aid collective that provides support to Black Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people with the intention to alleviate the barriers that the community faces. One of the many ways the grassroots organization helps is by supplying meals to the Black Trans community where they suffer from food insecurity due to factors such as unemployment, homelessness, and poverty. The Okra Project got its name from history when, during the Middle Passage, Africans snuck okra aboard captive ships to sustain themselves during the long journey. Okra is a plant that is used in Black Diasporic cooking traditions thus inspiring their mission to alleviate food insecurity.