Gay judges serve justice and community

Gay judges serve justice and community
By Gary Barlow
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
October 11, 2006


Every year now, a handful of people complain that Chicago’s Pride Parade is too full of public officials.

But Colleen Sheehan remembers what it used to be like.

“I remember going to the Gay Pride Parade when (now-Mayor Richard M.) Daley was the state’s attorney and was the only public official in the parade, and that was so significant that he was there,” Sheehan says. “Now there are 12 of us in the parade who are judges who are gay and lesbian.”

Sheehan and Tom Chiola are two of the 12 gays and lesbians who are current or soon-to-be Cook County Circuit Court judges. Chiola paved the way, winning election to the bench in 1994 and becoming the first openly gay person ever elected to any public office in Illinois.

“It’s very important for our community to be represented,” Chiola says. “The stereotypes can’t take hold when we’re there. They have to see us as real people.”

Judges on the Cook County Circuit Court have to stand for retention every six years. That means their names appear on the general election ballot and voters can choose to either vote yes to retain them as judges or no to boot them off the bench.

This November, Chiola is up for retention for the second time and Sheehan, who was elected in 2000, is up for the first time.

“It’s important for people in our community to vote,” Sheehan says, noting that judges must win 60 percent of the votes cast for or against them to stay on the bench. Though judges are rarely voted off the court, their races seldom attract much attention and tend to be far down on the ballot.

This November, voters need to go all the way down and punch No. 156 to vote for Chiola and No. 238 to vote for Sheehan.

“I do think things have changed in the courts, and that is due to our presence,” Chiola says, pointing to the addition of non-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians who are lawyers and judges by the Illinois State Bar Association. When Chiola was first elected, those protections didn’t exist, but as a judge, he says, he was able to lobby more effectively for them.

“The ability for me to pick up the phone as a judge and call the (Illinois Supreme Court) chief justice and say, ‘Judge, would you consider this?’—that was important,” Chiola says. “”It was done very soon after that.”

Both Sheehan and Chiola say they’ve seen how being a model for others who work in the justice system has had a positive effect.

“I think that has been one of the things I have been proudest of in my life—to be completely who I am,” Sheehan says.

Sheehan says the importance of openly gay and lesbian judges was brought home to her two years ago when the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago held a reception to honor Cook County’s gay and lesbian judges.

“I kind of expected it would be a dozen people at Gentry or something like that,” she says. “We pulled up and there was this banquet room, and there were hundreds of people there—judges, even federal judges. I was amazed.”

Serving as they do is both an honor and a challenge, Chiola and Sheehan say, one they hope they get to do for many more years.

“There’s a real gratification in serving,” Sheehan says.