Love Makes a Family (LMF) has a simple goal: to achieve marriage equality in Connecticut so that two people who love each other can marry.
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By Jamie L. Mills | Contact
Jamie Mills is a private practitioner in Hartford, Connecticut.
Her practice is limited to representing employees in labor and employment related matters, advocacy organizations in public policy and impact litigation, and victims of sexual assault and abuse in civil cases.
She has represented the Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services, Inc. since 1987 and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) since 1988.
She is an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law where she teaches a Civil Clinic in LGBT issues and also teaches “Sexuality, Gender and Identity” at the University of Hartford.
Currently, she is the President of the Love Makes a Family Foundation, a member of the Advisory Board of the National Association of Victims’ Rights Attorneys, and serves on the Law and Public Policy Committee of the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund. (CWEALF).
Attorney Mills was selected as a Connecticut Super Lawyer 2007, representing the top 5% of attorneys in the state, by Law & Politics and Connecticut Magazine.
Attorney Mills received her J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1987. She lives with her partner/fiancee, Maureen Murphy, in Middletown with their labradoodle.
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In 1981, I was an organizer for the National Organization for Women's "ERA Countdown Campaign" in Florida. Opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment argued that the ERA would lead to homosexual marriage and unisex bathrooms. "That is absurd" I would respond. Although I was a lesbian, I couldn't conceive of a time when marriage would be a choice for me.
SHORT HISTORY
Before there was Love Makes A Family in 2000, Connecticut had a statewide civil rights organization known as the Connecticut Coalition for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Civil Rights, that had, after years of organizing, successfully passed a "gay rights bill" in 1991. By the late nineties, it had become a small volunteer organization struggling to survive. I had been active in the Coalition in the late 1980’s and then, like so many others, was less active after the “gay civil rights” bill passed. Connecticut’s only statewide political organization was barely visible.
Love Makes a Family (LMF) formed as a coalition of civil rights and advocacy organizations in 1999 in response to a need to change Connecticut's adoption statute to permit second-parent adoptions. By 2000, LMF, with no staff of its own, had passed an adoption law in the General Assembly with strong bipartisan support. Connecticut was the first state to pass such a law without its state supreme court having previously ordered it.
TOTALLY FOCUSED ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN CONNECTICUT
After the success in amending the adoption statutes, it was decided to continue LMF with its future focus on marriage equality. Anne Stanback, who had been instrumental as the Executive Director of the Connecticut Women's Educational and Legal Fund in the second parent adoption campaign, agreed to serve as LMF's Executive Director.
Since 2000, LMF has been the omnipresent articulate voice for marriage equality. Anne Stanback, the public face of LMF, is an organizer’s organizer: hardworking, attentive to details but always within a strategic vision, kind, democratic, trustworthy, exceptionally competent, and gifted in the art of persuasion. On an issue often used to polarize, Anne Stanback has built consensus, with a majority of Connecticut voters now in support of full marriage equality.
LMF is highly respected within political circles, the lgbt community, as well as with the general public. Today, marriage equality in Connecticut seems almost inevitable.
But, there is nothing inevitable about marriage equality. It will require our continued best efforts and vigilance to win and then protect marriage equality in Connecticut.
THE COURT CASE
I am honored to be on the Board of the LMF Foundation during this historic time while we plan for the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision in Kerrigan et al v. Department of Public Health and focus on the political work that lies ahead. I have practiced law for over 20 years, yet I was awed by the brilliance of GLAD attorney Ben Klein's oral argument before our highest court both in its legal complexity and its moral simplicity. There was awareness in that courtroom on that day that we were all witnessing the world changing. One long serving justice had his parents present for the oral argument, the first time we were told that he had ever done so.
MY GIVING
I will continue to focus all of my efforts and my giving on Love Makes a Family. My financial contributions to grassroots social justice organizations have been an important part of my activism but my level of financial commitment to LMF is ten fold any previous gift.
LMF has taken and will continue to take principled positions even in the face of more politically expedient ones. Our Boards are diverse, talented and committed. Our staff, simply inspiring. We have more work to do and we have the leadership who can and will do it. I wouldn't miss being part of it for the world.
