GLAD Donates Historical Documents to Yale

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the New England-based legal organization that successfully challenged a section of the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this year, has donated more than 30 years of historical LGBT documents to the Yale University Library.

According to the library, one of the nation's preeminent repositories for LGBT historical documents, the papers include "correspondence, legal documents, research materials, photographs, meeting minutes, reports," and other materials.

"The materials reveal the fascinating 'backstory' to many of GLAD's groundbreaking lawsuits -- including early litigation that secured the right of a gay Rhode Island high school student to bring his boyfriend to the prom, the Supreme Court victory holding that people with HIV are protected from discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the suit that led to Vermont's historic civil union law, and the marriage equality wins in Massachusetts and Connecticut," Yale University Library officials said in a release.

"These papers will be of immense value to historians and other scholars," said George Chauncey, a professor of history and codirector of the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities. "GLAD's litigation has played a leading role in mitigating the widespread discrimination faced by LGBT people, and their remarkable records will give scholars and the public a much better understanding of both the extent of that discrimination and the legal and political strategies that have challenged it."

GLAD's suit against section 3 of DOMA is currently being appealed by the Obama administration's Justice Department.

Read more on the donation here.