A Portland attorney has been named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. The fellowships - often called "genius grants" - recognize creative, high-achieving individuals who show promise for important contributions in the future. Mary Bonauto is a civil rights lawyer credited with breaking down legal barriers to achieve marriage equality across the U.S.
Marriage equality wasn't on the top of Mary Bonauto's list when she first started a job at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston back in 1990. "I didn't think it was the right time," she says. In 1990, we only had two states that even had non-discrimination laws."
As a civil rights lawyer, Bonauto got plenty of requests to take on gay marriage cases. A lesbian herself, she understood the desire to marry. But she was focused on things like discrimination in the workplace, housing, and adoption.
"You know, people just still viewed gay people and same-sex couples as 'other,' and really as unworthy of something like marriage," she says. "So I believed that we needed to build more respect and understanding of who gay people are, of our relationships, before we would ever have a fair shot at being able to secure the freedom to marry."
That strategy is what led to Bonauto's success in helping legalize marriage equality across the U.S. Seven years later, in 1997, Bonauto took on a Vermont case that ultimately created the nation's first civil union law. She says it was an important victory - that irked her. "Civil unions were created as a way of keeping people out of gay marriage also," she says.
Case by case, Bonauto continued to challenge marriage exclusion. In 2001, she filed a case on behalf of same-sex couples in Massachusetts who wanted to marry. Two years later, Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage.
About a decade later, Bonauto led the first efforts that successfully challenged the Defense of Marriage Act. Those cases paved the way for the Supreme Court to strike down the section of the law that denied same-sex couples protections available to married couples in 2013.
"She is the architect of the movement. There's no doubt in my mind," says Dianne Phillips, an attorney and board president of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD. She says there were many, many other cases Bonauto fought that led to the big name victories.
"She knew that those building blocks were critical to the work that now looks like a foregone conclusion," Phillips says. "But at the time, it didn't. And that was what was so brilliant about her strategy."
"I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that she's probably the single best civil rights lawyer in the country right now," says Pat Peard, an attorney at Bernstein Shur in Portland. She met Bonauto in the late 80's and has worked with her on various cases ever since.
"What Mary does very well is, 'don't bite off more than you can win,'" Peard says, "that it's okay to do things incrementally and go slowly. And sometimes people don't like that, but it has been a key to her success."
When Bonauto got the call from the MacArthur Foundation that she was a 2014 Fellow, she says she thought it was a joke. As the news sinks in, she says the recognition and the $625,000 award paid out over five years with no strings attached is a vote of confidence. "A big part of the MacArthur Fellowship is about the future, and not the past," she says. "I'm keeping my day job. I think there is so much more work to do."
Nineteen states have legalized same-sex marriage. Bonauto, who still works for GLAD out of her Portland home, says her sights are set on supporting gay, bisexual, and transgender kids and elders. She says transgendered people are currently the most vulnerable in society, and she wants to help make sure everyone has the freedom to live and work safely in their communities.
