Issue Number 979 | Highlighting the Supreme Court's role in our life | Advocate.com Highlighting the Supreme Court's role in our life  | Commentary | Advocate.com

Health Promo 03 (Getty) | Advocate.com
 

Highlighting the Supreme Court's role in our life

From The Advocate  January 30, 2007
Highlighting the Supreme Court's role in our life

Mikhaela Reid, a New York City cartoonist and illustrator, readily admits that she is no legal scholar. So when the 26-year-old was commissioned by the national LGBT legal rights advocacy group Lambda Legal to create its new “Life Without Fair Courts” series of comics depicting what life would be like without such key court victories as Lawrence v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws, Reid had to bone up on reams of legal opinions and decisions before she could begin to draw. “Legalese is not the most exciting thing,” she says. “It’s like, What does this matter to me?”

Lawn Gign cartoon Lambda Legal Mikhaela Reid | Advocate.com

That is the question Lambda Legal hopes to answer with its novel public-service campaign cartoon strip series, which features 10 comic strips corresponding to 10 precedent-setting court cases, from obviously LGBT-relevant ones such as Lawrence to those with more obscure but no less important connections as City of Ladue v. Gilleo, in which the high court ruled in 1994 that signs on private property are protected by the First Amendment. “We want to show what courts do when they do their jobs,” says Hector Vargas, Lambda Legal’s deputy director of education and public affairs. “It’s difficult to imagine what this alternate reality would look like because the way life is, is so ingrained in our daily lives. These decisions are so basic to our understanding of equality, so ingrained in our daily lives, that it’s difficult to imagine what the alternative is.”

Reid, who is bisexual, knows that without the role of the court, she would not be allowed to marry her fiancé, who is African-American, since interracial unions were illegal until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. “These court cases are really vital to our daily lives,” she says. “It’s kind of crazy to imagine how we’d be living without them.”

Lawrence v. Texas cartoon Lambda legal Mikhaela Reid | Advocate.com

In addition to the comics campaign, which will run in The Advocate and Advocate.com, Lambda Legal has partnered with Prism Comics, an association for LGBT comic authors and fans, and The Advocate to hold a contest for cartoonists, both professional and amateur, to illustrate what fair courts mean to them. Submissions will be accepted through March 15, 2007, and the winning entry will be selected through online voting with the help of judges Mikhaela Reid, Joan Hilty, Phil Jimenez of DC Comics, and Advocate art director George Stoll. The winning entry will be published on Advocate.com. For more information and to submit your work, visit www.prismcomics.org or www.lambdalegal.org.

Reader Comments

These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.

Be the first to comment on this story.

Back to top

Submit a comment for this story:

*Type your comment here (Required, 1000 characters max.):

*Name (Required): 

*Hometown (Required): 

*E-mail address: (Required, but will not be displayed)

Is this comment for publication? 
Yes   No

Daytime phone number: (Required for print publication only and will not be displayed)

Please enter the words you see in the box, in order and separated by a space. Doing so helps prevent automated programs from abusing this service.

  

If you would like to submit a comment for posting, please fill out the form above. 

All comments submitted via this form are subject to posting or publication. (To send a private letter to an Advocate editor or writer, please use the e-mail button at the top of the page, or use snail mail.) If you would like your comment considered for publication in The Advocate magazine, please include your full name, your city of residence, and a phone number where you can be reached during business hours so that we can confirm your identity. Your e-mail address and telephone number are strictly confidential and will not be shared or used for any purpose other than to contact you about your comment.

See the Contact page for sending comments for reasons other than responding to Advocate editorial and news stories.

Please note that comments sent by fax or snail mail are unlikely to be posted, although they will be considered for publication along with all letters received via e-mail or via this Web page. Comments that chiefly concern Advocate.com content will be considered for posting only on the Web site. The Advocate reserves the right to edit submitted comments for grammar, spelling, obscenities, or libel; we will, however, do our best to preserve the original comment's style and intent. Comments considered for publication in The Advocate magazine may also be edited for length.