After nearly 25 years of being run by Kevin Cathcart, Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest LGBTQ legal organization, has a new executive director: Rachel Tiven. The change is part of a natural turnover in leadership one might expect after the LGBTQ movement achieved the major milestone of marriage equality last year.
Tiven comes to Lambda Legal with a history of fighting at the intersection of the LGBTQ rights and immigration movements. She presided over Immigration Equality from 2005 to 2013, a time period in which the group achieved two major goals: finally ending the 22-year HIV travel ban that was instituted in the late 80s, and helping to secure the right of American citizens to sponsor their foreign-born same-sex partners for residency in the United States.
I came to know Tiven and her dogged advocacy as a reporter on the LGBTQ beat and later consulted for Immigration Equality as I began work on a book (which gets a brief shout out later in this interview). Tiven was unique among many of the professional advocates I reported on from Washington, in part simply because she resided in New York. That allowed her to think outside of the confines of partisanship that often grip Washingtonians and place the concerns of her organization’s constituents front and center.
Since Tiven took the helm at Lambda Legal just a couple months ago, it seemed like the perfect time to check in about her vision for the organization and the future of the LGBTQ movement.
Kerry Eleveld: What do you see as Lambda Legal's biggest growth opportunity over the next five years?
Rachel Tiven: Visibility! We are the oldest and largest LGBT civil rights organization, but for too long we have been the movement’s quiet authority. Our obligation is to become better known, and assert more influence on the public conversation. Post marriage equality, the country is increasingly discussing what it means for LGBT people to be part of public life, to go to work, to get health care, to be safe in our homes. Lambda Legal’s perspective is critical to those conversations.
We need every LGBT and HIV-positive person in America to know that they can call Lambda when they have a legal problem. Everyone who contacts us gets an accurate, respectful, free-of-charge answer from our amazing Help Desk—and those inquiries are how we stay two steps ahead of what our community needs. The best advocacy is directly tied to service, which is why we are committed to expanding our Help Desk in the years ahead.
KE: What do you think Lambda's biggest challenge is?
Tiven: Our biggest challenge—and one that confronts every person in America who values privacy and individual liberty—stems from people and companies who claim that they have a right to discriminate because their religion “makes” them do it.
As a religiously observant Jew, I care deeply about my freedom to practice my religion. I don’t want to be fired because I can’t work on Saturdays, or have my children be required to recite Christian prayers in school. I want my Muslim friends to cover their heads if they wish, my Jehovah’s Witness relatives to decline to pledge allegiance, and my Christian colleagues to mark their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.
My religion requires many things of me, but it does not force me to disrespect or demean anyone else. No true religion does. In the privacy of my congregation we decide whom we welcome for prayer, for conversion, or for marriage. But if I open a store, a restaurant, a movie theatre, or a hotel, I am bound by law to serve any paying customer. For years, many hotels and country clubs didn’t admit Jews. Segregation excluded African Americans from restaurants, swimming pools, and amusement parks. This discrimination is now illegal, thanks to many of my own heroes who fought to pass civil rights laws. Claiming that God requires you to deny service to gay or transgender customers is no different than saying God doesn’t want you to serve black people in your hotel.
KE: In the LGBTQ landscape, what do you see as Lambda's role?
Tiven: Lambda Legal’s unique role in the LGBT movement is to use the depth and breadth of our legal skill nationally. We are the only LGBT organization with full-time, permanent lawyers and educators in every corner of the country. In Chicago and Dallas we are a crucial part of the local, statewide, and regional struggles for equality; in Atlanta our new regional director, Simone Bell, is a former state legislator; from Los Angeles and New York we have led the movement’s legal strategy for more than three decades.
Our deep legal knowledge informs our policy and advocacy work in unique ways, too. I’m particularly proud of our expertise on employment discrimination and protecting LGBT families. We are currently suing in federal court on behalf of a math professor who was fired from a community college in South Bend, Indiana, and a security guard who was fired from a hospital in Savannah, Georgia, just to name two. We just won a case in the New York high court, finally affirming what we’ve been saying for more than 25 years: that gay families are good families, and that children deserve access to both of their parents. It was a huge win—and we will keep fighting, and winning, until the day when we are no longer needed.
KE: As someone who has worked on both immigration and LGBTQ issues, what can the two movements learn from each other?
Tiven: So, so much. For one, LGBT activists should remember that success isn’t monotonic. Go back 30 years: In 1986, immigration activists had just won a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people living in the U.S. Though not seamless, the legalization program was a success, and those people and their descendants went on to become successful American citizens. That same year AIDS was decimating our community, and the Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that gay people were still criminals. Past success does not guarantee enduring victory.
The other key lesson immigration activists have shown the LGBT movement is the importance of young people’s visionary leadership. DREAM activists like United We Dream, National Immigrant Youth Alliance, and Jose Antonio Vargas have accomplished more in the past decade—both in the halls of Congress and the White House and the hearts and minds of millions—than the main line, old guard of the movement.
Conversely, immigration activists could take many cues from LGBT organizing, such as:
- Greater community support and more diverse funding. The immigrant rights movement has relied too heavily on the generosity of private foundations, and invested too little in raising small dollar contributions from individuals. If even 5 percent of undocumented Americans and their friends and family gave $5 each month to an immigrant rights cause, it would easily total $50-60 million. Over the past 20 years the bulk of LGBT movement funding came from LGBT individuals with a personal stake in the outcome. Some gave $25 and some gave $25,000—but they gave over and over again to ensure that we would win.
- Hold the party in power responsible. The suffrage movement pioneered this crucial political tactic, picketing the White House despite President Wilson’s anodyne words of support. Their incendiary banners—“Kaiser Wilson: You say you believe in democracy abroad. What about democracy at home?”—raised the stakes and helped deliver the votes needed after 70 years of trying. Early in President Obama’s first term, LGBT activists demanded the administration move farther and faster than the president had intended (there’s a good book on this topic!). It’s an important lesson for immigrant advocates over the year ahead. Action on comprehensive immigration reform must be immediate.
KE: How does your personal and/or professional biography inform your work?
Tiven: The greatest gift of my professional life came from the bi-national couples and LGBT asylum-seekers who put their faith in Immigration Equality during years that seemed bleak. Nothing makes me happier than hearing from LGBT and HIV+ immigrants who have benefitted from that work.
The chance to lead Lambda Legal and continue the work that Kevin Cathcart did for over 24 years is a huge honor. It’s also personal. As a parent, I am so grateful for the work that Lambda Legal has done over three decades to secure our right to be parents. My children benefit from the security of second-parent adoptions, as well as from legal and cultural changes that makes our family unexceptional. As the life partner of a transgender man, I have a deep commitment to the growing body of work Lambda Legal does to protect trans rights, and the integration of trans equality within LGB politics. The great privilege of being paid to work in this movement—to work with smart, passionate people to help improve the world—is something I appreciate every day.