Herb Selwyn became active in the movement for GLBT rights soon after becoming a lawyer in the early 1950s. His father, a physician, had a lesbian patient who was active in the Mattachine Society, a clandestine association of gays and lesbians that was established in Los Angeles in the late 1940s and is considered to be the first gay rights organization in the United States. That patient, Ruth, asked if the younger Selwyn might come and address the group on the rights of homosexual individuals.
His father relayed the question, and Selwyn decided that since he had become a lawyer in order to help people, this was something he should do. So he addressed the meeting, which was held in a private home with 20-30 people. He advised those present how to avoid arrest, but in retrospect, he feels that his advice was a bit naive, coming from a heterosexual male unfamiliar with the lifestyle of gay and lesbian people.
"Not too many lawyers in those years were anxious to get involved with a homosexual group," Selwyn said. According to historian Vern Bullough, an openly gay lawyer at this time could be disbarred. "With such official hostility to gays and lesbians, it was perhaps inevitable that many of the public advocates for the community were straight."
Selwyn concurs, recalling that there was only one other attorney at the time that actively defended homosexual clients. Still, he decided to fight in court on behalf of homosexual men and women and to work against the practice of police entrapment. Selwyn worked with Harry Hay to incorporate Mattachine a few years later, and he never charged for his services.
Selwyn continued to advocate on behalf of homosexual rights throughout the '50s and '60s. He helped to create a wallet-sized card called "Know Your Rights" that was distributed in the local bars. A friend of his who was a prosecutor in the city attorney's office once showed one of these cards to Selwyn, not knowing that he had been the author, and said, "Isn't this terrible?" Selwyn asked if any of the statements were incorrect. The prosecutor replied, "No! But letting people know they didn't have to talk to the police..." He didn't understand why Selwyn couldn't see the problem. Many gay men and women came to Selwyn for counsel. One such client was a cosmetologist who had been convicted for lewd conduct.
The cosmetology board was trying to strip him of his license. Selwyn joked with the then attorney general, who was representing the state board, by telling him to ask his "wife whether she knows any gay hairdressers and whether the women of America would find that their hair would go to hell, in effect, if all of the gay cosmetologists had their licenses taken away." He won the case. Selwyn also represented schoolteacher Don Odorizzi in 1965, winning a significant case and setting a precedent for undue influence. This was the first homosexual case to be taken on by the American Civil Liberties Union. He considers these cases to be among his greatest contributions to the movement.
In 1952, a small group split from Mattachine in order to form ONE Inc. and publish ONE magazine. When ONE itself split in 1965, both factions approached Selwyn for representation, but he refused to get involved. After a prolonged court battle that drained the resources of both sides, Selwyn helped ONE magazine editor Don Slater to incorporate the Homosexual Information Center (HIC) in the spring of 1968. He considers this to have been a significant achievement because the HIC provided "information on the subject, rather than apologetics."
In 1970, Selwyn helped to found Christopher Street West in Los Angeles, which coordinated the first gay Pride parade. Soon after, he realized that there were many homosexual lawyers working in the Los Angeles area, so he stepped aside and began to watch from the sideline the movement that he helped to create.
Selwyn feels that the greatest achievement of the movement so far is that there are now gay members of city councils and other government offices that can be open about their sexuality. Gay teachers, lawyers, policemen and firemen are now more common, whereas when he started his work they would have lost their jobs or been discriminated against.
He believes that "through the march of history, we may all come to embrace a different attitude as to the position of gays in society." Same-sex marriage or domestic partnerships may be a litmus test for this. No matter what unfolds, Selwyn's early victories in court will continue to provide bedrock on which the current movement is grounded. The law today most often works in our favor, thanks to the legal precedents set by white knight lawyers like Selwyn.
