June 16, 2010 - LEO Weekly

by Carla F. Wallace, co-founder of Fairness Campaign, Prospect

With the passing of George Unseld, Fairness has lost one of the most persistent, wise and genuine “friends in high places” we have ever had.

George was never an elected official we had to “convince” of every human being’s right to equality. He never put his finger to the wind to see if supporting justice for LGBT people was the “smart” thing to do politically. What mattered to George was whether it was just.

In the period leading up to the 1999 vote on civil rights protections for LGBT people, many of our friends on the former Board of Aldermen wavered on the Fairness insistence on including not only sexual orientation, but also gender identity in the ordinance. At a meeting at the Fairness Campaign office, lead by our transgendered sisters and brothers, other alderpersons were questioning their ability to win enough votes if gender identity was included. At a certain point, George, who had not spoken yet, leaned his 6-foot-something self back in his chair and said, “I may spend the rest of my life trying to understand the terminology around gender identity, but that’s not the issue here. As a black man, I know discrimination. That’s what we have here. Gender identity is going in the law.”

And so it did.

Thank you, George. Thank you.