Ending Marriage Discrimination: A Work in Progress.

Mary L. Bonauto is the Civil Rights Project Director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Ms. Bonauto was lead counsel in the landmark case, Goodridge v.Dept. of Public Health, resulting in marriage equality in Massachusetts. She served as co-counsel, with two Vermont attorneys, in Baker v. State of Vermont, which resulted in the Vermont Legislature’s establishment of the nation’s first-ever "civil union" law. Ms. Bonauto began her work with GLAD in 1990, when hired to enforce the then-new law in Massachusetts forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation and to deal with the range of issues facing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in New England. She has successfully litigated in all six New England States to establish the parental rights of gays and lesbians and has been a leader in precedentsetting cases eliminating legally sanctioned sexual orientation discrimination in adoption, employment, public accommodations, criminal law, school settings and marriage. She has been profiled in the New York Times Magazineand U.S. Lawyers Weekly, and was named a "Bostonian of the Year" for 2004 by the Boston Globe Magazine.

In addition to her successful advocacy work, Ms. Bonauto has published several articles and book chapters on sexual orientation discrimination in the Harvard Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Law Review and in publications of both the American Bar Association and Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Ms. Bonauto is a graduate of Hamilton College and Northeastern University School of Law.