A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising, Sylvia Rivera was a tireless advocate for those silenced and disregarded by larger movements. Throughout her life, she fought against the exclusion of transgender people, especially transgender people of color, from the larger movement for gay rights.
Mary L. Bonauto is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has fought against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. US Representative Barney Frank called her “our Thurgood Marshall.” In 1990, she began working with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, later re-named GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Bonauto worked with the Maine legislature to pass a same-sex marriage law and helped to defend it at the ballot during the 2009 election campaign, narrowly losing. These efforts yielded results wen, in the 2012 election, voters approved the measure, making Maine the first state to allow same-sex marriage via ballot vote. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which, in 2004, made Massachusetts the first state where same-sex couples could marry. She also led the first strategic challenges to section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
On April 28, 2015 Bonauto was one of three attorneys who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, arguingthat state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The highly publicized case established that state bans against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional; it is considered one of the most important civil rights cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in modern history.