Thomas B. Stoddard & Walter Rieman

Thomas B. Stoddard (1949 - February 12, 1997), a lawyer whose persuasiveness and erudition advanced the cause of equal rights for gay men, lesbians and people with AIDS, died on February 12, 1997, at his home in Manhattan due to AIDS related illness, as reported by his companion, Walter Rieman. He was 48.

Mr. Stoddard was executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York from 1986 to 1992, fighting discrimination against homosexuals and AIDS patients in employment, housing, health care, insurance, family law and military service. During his tenure, Lambda's staff grew from 6 to 22 people and it became a nationally influential organization.

As an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, beginning in 1981, Mr. Stoddard taught one of the first courses on constitutional law, case law and statutes that affect the lives of lesbians and gay men. There are now dozens of such courses around the nation.

Mr. Stoddard was an author of the 1986 bill passed by the New York City Council that protects homosexuals against bias in housing, employment and public accommodations.


Tom Stoddard and his husband Walter Rieman

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/14/nyregion/thomas-stoddard-48-dies-an-advocate-of-gay-rights.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

"One of the reasons gay men deal badly with dating and relationships is that they're not trained in the same way as heterosexuals," said Tom Stoddard, one of the most effective gay activists of the eighties and nineties. "They lose that experience in adolescence and have to make up for it in some fashion. I think of all the experiences I missed when I was in high school and college because I was not a sexual person, when all of my peers, except for the gay ones, were experimenting and learning and having a good time. It's one of the reasons that many gay men in their twenties and thirties, perhaps even later, act like adolescents. First of all, it's a lot of fun, at least for a while. And, secondly, they never had an opportunity to progress or to learn. You had no examples - nothing even to read about the subject, other than hostile stuff. In the good world of the future, I think that won't happen. They will be adolescents at an appropriate time in their lives."
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Each man declared, "I commit to you my life and my love for the rest of our days," put on their rings, and kissed. Then Stoddard's brother performed the traditional role of the best man by offering this toast:
"Tom and Walter have done something that gay people have dreamed of for thousands of years. Let's raise our glasses to Tom and Walter. May you continue your life together in a more perfect union, in good health, and always with adventure and purpose and love."
[...]
Two and half years after Stoddard's marriage, the country's highest Court rendered the kind of decision that Stoddard had been hoping for since he first came out in 1970. In Romer v. Evans, on May 20, 1996, the Court voted six to three to throw out the Colorado state constitutional initiative that had forbidden protection for gay people from discrimination.
[...]
Nine months after rejoicing over the Supreme Court's decision in Romer v. Evans, Tom Stoddard succumbed to AIDS. The great gay visionary had been diagnosed with the disease eight years earlier; by the time the most effective drugs were available, his illness was too advanced to be halted by the new therapies. Had he lived just a decade longer, Stoddard might have spotted our "entry into heaven," just over the horizon. --The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America by Charles Kaiser

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