How change happens: What Judge Friedman learned about gay families from a lesbian law clerk
Almost 19 years ago — long before most Michiganders could imagine a day when gay and lesbian couples would enjoy the right to marry and raise children together — U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman discovered that a social revolution was breaking out in his own chambers.
It was the summer of 1995, and Judith Levy, the second-year University of Michigan Law School student Friedman had recently tapped to become his law clerk after she graduated the following June, had come to the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit to meet her future boss for lunch.
They’d come face-to-face just once before, when Levy interviewed for the clerk’s job the previous February, and Levy had chosen not to share with Friedman the good news she and her partner, Janet Johnson, were privately celebrating.
But now, seven months later, the clerk’s job was hers, and there was no hiding their secret: Levy was pregnant.
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http://www.freep.com/article/20140323/COL04/303230067/judge-bernard-friedman-gay-marriage-michigan
