Please join us in welcoming our first of two summer legal fellows to the DC office here at Family Equality Council.
Hello! My name is Lyndsey and I am excited to join Family Equality Council this summer. I am a rising third-year law student at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois.
I am here today because of my commitment to equal rights and social justice. The education I received as an undergraduate student at the University of New Hampshire, and also as a graduate student at Trinity College helped me to get to this point. At each institution my studies of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement inspired me to attend law school as I realized what a powerful tool it could be. I spent a majority of my education reading and researching the numerous forms of oppression that existed, and still exist, in our nation. After all of this research I realized I wanted to stop reading, and start doing something to help broaden the recognition of civil rights in this country.
In graduate school, I focused on the life and works of Betty Friedan. The more I read about her, the more I felt a personal connection to her in some ways. I, like her, am from a small Midwestern town, and always felt a pull to remain in the mainstream and live a life similar to everyone around me. Fortunately, I left that place for college where I was able to experience my life, as I wanted to live it. I was able to do this with the memories in the forefront of my consciousness of all of the people around me who either tried to change or simply did not accept who I was.
I am with the Family Equality Council because I truly believe in the work that we do. Every family deserves to be recognized by their local, state and federal government. I want to help in every way possible to secure the rights and needs of all families who have gone too long without such recognition and protection.