Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
National Office
120 Wall St., Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005-3904
212-809-8585
Southern Regional Office
1447 Peachtree St., NE, Suite 1004
Atlanta, GA 30309
404-897-1880
American Civil Liberties Union
of North Carolina
PO Box 28004
Raleigh, NC 27611-8004
919-834-3466
North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Attorneys
PO Box 2164
Durham, NC 27702
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
PO Box 53013
Washington, DC 20009
202-328-3244
Equality North Carolina Political Action
Committee
and
Equality North Carolina Project
PO Box 28768
Raleigh, NC 27611-8768
919-829-0343
Human Rights Campaign
919 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
202.628.4160
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
1700 Kalorama Road NW
Washington, DC 20009-2624
202-332-6483
I started working on this book in 1984, and the first edition was published in 1985. The one you're reading now is the sixth edition, and there have been more changes for the better since the previous edition than there were in all the years before that. For the first time in history, the United States Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans, 116 S.Ct. 1620, 134 L.Ed.2d 855 (1996) invalidated a law because it discriminated against gay and lesbian individuals. Courts in several southeastern states have declared sodomy laws unconstitutional. In North Carolina the inheritance tax that created terrible hardship for many indigent same-sex couples has been repealed.
There is reason to hope for even more. In 1999 the North Carolina House of Representatives came close to adding "sexual orientation" to the hate crimes law, and the North Carolina Senate for the first time seemed to take seriously a bill to reform the crime against nature law.
Because things are looking up, it's time to add some comments that I deliberately left out of previous editions of this book so that I would not unduly discourage my readers. After more than 20 years of handling cases for all kinds of clients, I have to say that there is a double standard for homosexual and heterosexual people in our judicial system. As I have stressed throughout this book, there are very few laws that actively seek to discriminate against gay and lesbian individuals. But in practice, gay men and lesbians usually get the short end of the stick in our legal system.
Part of the reason is that the vast majority of gay people are still in the closet and will suffer any manner of indignities to avoid being exposed as gay. But even those brave gay individuals who challenge the status quo can be shot down. Fred Smith had both the law and the facts on his side, and he still lost custody of his children (see the discussion of the Pulliam decision above). The North Carolina Supreme Court reached its decision only by ignoring a series of cases going back twenty years and by misinterpreting the facts of the case. But this did not surprise me. I have seen many gay men and lesbians lose cases even when both the law and the facts made it clear they had to win.
Of course, we have to keep pushing, and despite their own setbacks, the efforts of Fred Smith and others like him have eventually improved the law for everybody else. So if you have a claim or a problem, please contact one of the organizations listed on the next page and get the help you need.