Steven Peck – Queer Silicon Valley

Judge Shawna Schwarz

January 16, 2023February 23, 2022 by Steven Peck

In the fourth of a series, read about Santa Clara County’s first out lesbian judge, Judge Shawna Schwarz.

Although Judge Shawna Schwarz made history as the first out lesbian judge in Santa Clara County in 2006, her LGBTQ+ identity has been fairly irrelevant in her legal career. “The bench has been very welcoming,” she said. The only time her identity really comes into play is when people confuse her for fellow judges Julie Emede and Jacqueline Arroyo (both lesbians), even though the three look nothing alike.

“For example, once Judge Emede got a thank-you note from one of our colleagues for something that I did,” Schwarz stated. The three laugh about the mixups and tease their colleagues rather than take offense.

Not long after coming out at age 27, Schwarz met her partner of 31 years, Sandy Berry, who works in commercial real estate. As was the case with some same-sex couples, the two got married at the last hours of November 4, 2008, the day Proposition 8 passed and restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples. Worried the window to get married would close, earlier in the day they had arranged to have a judge friend officiate their wedding that evening. As they and their friends stood in front of the television to watch the election results, which included the victory of Barack Obama, they said their “I do’s.” Later, the brides took over a neighbor’s election party to celebrate their union.

Learning about Judge Schwarz’s childhood, one would think she was always on a path to working with children. Born in Cleveland, Ohio to a military family, Schwarz was the second of four daughters. Her two younger sisters were originally her cousins but were adopted into the family after her mother’s twin sister lost her life to domestic violence. In the eighth grade, Schwarz wrote that she wanted to be either a pediatrician, basketball player, or child psychologist.

When the Stanford graduate got to law school at Santa Clara University, she discovered her real calling through the process of elimination. “I took a property class and I thought, nope, that’s not for me. I took a contracts class and I thought, well, I’m not going be doing that. Then I took Children and the Law and I thought, oh my gosh, I could totally do this. This is what lights my fire; this is what I want to do.”

The instructor for the law class ran the Legal Advocates for Children and Youth (LACY) program, where Schwarz subsequently landed an internship and later a job upon graduation. She spent seven years as the directing attorney at LACY before applying to be a commissioner for the superior court in juvenile dependency in December 2001. The county superior court appoints a small number of commissioners, who have all the same responsibilities and authority of a judge except for the title.

After four years, the presiding judge of the dependency court, Len Edwards, encouraged her to apply for a judgeship, which she did. Subsequently, then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her in May 2006. “My nephews always wanted to know, did I actually meet the Terminator?” she laughed. “I did not. He had his appointment secretary take care of that sort of thing.”

In Schwarz’s daily work as a juvenile dependency court judge, she interacts with LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system. (In California, juveniles go through a dependency court separate from the adult court.) She has observed that sexual orientation isn’t the big deal it used to be; now, gender identity is front and center. “I’ve seen a real increase in the number of our transgender youth. Before every hearing, I will make sure to ask the lawyer which pronouns to use. The lawyers will let me know, and I will make a note so that I can be correct with the kid. If I make a mistake, I apologize.”

Schwarz has seen how fluid young people are these days. “They’re not going to be offended if I say to a boy, do you have a boyfriend? Or ask a girl if she has a girlfriend. I’ve seen a real increase in the number of our transgender youth. I don’t know if that’s because there are more of them or because they’re more comfortable identifying that way.”

Family rejection is one of the main factors leading to homelessness for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth, but in Santa Clara County, that isn’t the primary reason LGBTQ+ youth end up in foster care. Schwarz believes more often than not, parents lose custody due to substance abuse, mental illness, or domestic violence.

As far as Schwarz knows, once in a foster placement, queer youth rarely encounter a lack of acceptance. “To be fair, it’s entirely possible that some foster placements fail because of homophobia or transphobia. I may not know. I only know what’s in the court report in front of me.”

Schwarz feels immensely privileged to be able to work in dependency court, even though the system is often maligned. “We take kids away, we terminate parental rights, and that doesn’t make us very popular, but the people who work in this system, they really want to help families and kids. The attorneys who work here aren’t making a lot of money; they’re doing it because it’s a calling and they’re passionate about it.”

In Santa Clara County, providing foster homes for young people is especially challenging. Housing prices often keep local foster youth from remaining in stable placements with access to top-tier county services. “We don’t have enough foster homes or we have situations where we have relatives who would like to take the kids in, but they don’t have room in their houses.”

For those compelled to step up, Schwarz recommends working with Child Advocates of Silicon Valley, which is run by her queer colleague Fred Ferrer. “If you can’t be a foster parent, be a court-appointed special advocate. You’ve heard the expression: Not everybody can be a foster parent, but everybody can help a foster child. It is so true.”

Schwarz believes that some people who work in the field of juvenile dependency have a family situation that led them there. She confided that she has a relative with a mental health issue, and feels she has a deeper understanding of mental health issues from having soembody who’s been impacted by that. “When I’m in court talking to kids whose parents have mental health issues, I feel like I can connect with them and understand some of what they’ve been going through,” she said.

Schwarz feels fortunate to work in Santa Clara County. She does a lot of teaching throughout the state and often hears from other judges how awesome the court is here. She gives much credit to Judge Edwards, who was a leader in the field of dependency law. She also feels lucky to have worked with Judge Katherine Lucero, who recently was appointed by Governor Newsom to be Director of Youth and Community Restoration at the California Health and Human Services Agency.

At the end of talking about her work in the courtroom, Schwarz wanted to be sure to add that the Social Service Agency in Santa Clara County is one of the best in the state. “We have better services here than most other counties,” she said. “Although we are far from perfect, our Department is always striving to do a better job. But even with good services, it’s better for the kids long term if we can keep them at home or keep them with their relatives.”

Judge Randy Rice

January 16, 2023February 22, 2022 by Steven Peck

A reflection by Ann Ravel,

I first met Randy Rice when I was a sophomore at Willow Glen High School and he was a junior. We met because he was friends with my brother, Paul, who was in the same class as Randy.

Soon Randy was a staple at our house. My parents loved him, as did I, and he became a member of the family and was always there for bridge with my parents and brother, dinners, and parties. Randy was a brilliant student, and also the warmest, most charming, thoughtful and considerate person I had ever met. Throughout his life he was kind and humble, which made him a very well respected jurist.

When in high school, Randy served for two years on the school Judicial Council, and was elected as the Supreme Court Justice of the Judicial Council. This foreshadowed his future.

After high school, Randy graduated from UC Santa Cruz, and then attended the Episcopal Divinity School of the Pacific. He was ordained as a priest in 1973, served as a curate of the Calvary Church in Santa Cruz, was Vicar of Christ Church in San Francisco, Canon of Trinity Cathedral, San Jose, and Chancellor of the Diocese of El Camino Real.

Randy would go on to graduate from UC Hastings College of the Law. After graduating from law school, he became a partner at Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco, and was a founding partner at Genesis Law Group in 1996, which in 1998 merged with Skjerven Merrill Law firm.

In 1999 Governor Wilson appointed him as Judge of the Superior Court in Santa Clara County. He had all the qualities needed in a judge: he was empathetic, fair, a judicious analyst of the law, and he believed that his calling was to serve the people of this County.

Randy was the first only “out” LGBTQ Judge in the County. When he was able to do so, he married his partner and husband Nikolaus Merrell.

Unfortunately, Randy suffered a fall while trimming a tree at his home in 2004. The fall resulted in a severe head injury, which was really debilitating. But true to Randy’s commitment to public service, he remained on the bench until January of 2008, when he retired on disability. He and his husband moved to Costa Rica. He died there in September, 2019, from complications from his fall. He is survived by sons, daughters, and grandchildren.

Though he had a limited time on the bench, Randy was an outstanding Judge due to his compassion for people, his selflessness, and his legal acumen. Randy was an exceptional and unusual person, and unique in many ways on the bench in Santa Clara County.

Fred Ferrer

January 13, 2022January 13, 2022 by Steven Peck

Fred Ferrer – former CEO of The Health Trust and now CEO of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley – talks about how he dealt with homophobia with his family, Santa Clara University and his career.

Frederick Ferrer grew up in Marin County, just twenty minutes outside of San Francisco, but to him the gay world felt “millions of miles away.” He knew he was gay as early as kindergarten, but it was the era of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t even think about it.’

Although Ferrer was unable to fully be himself growing up, he felt surrounded by love. “I learned to love from my family, from my church and from my government, but I also learned how to hate from those three places as well. I experienced this notion that it wasn’t even okay to think you were going to be gay.”

In 1976, Ferrer left his Catholic Mexican family home life for a Catholic institution to pursue an undergraduate degree at Santa Clara University. He partied hard and studied harder to fit in, but noticed other queer men were missing from the social gatherings he frequented. They spent their days off making secret trips to San Francisco; their classmates oblivious as to what they were doing. Ferrer remained in the closet.

He went on to grad school at San Jose State to study to be a therapist. There, he worked with students who were coming out. But Ferrer felt emotionally unequipped to guide others on the journey he himself had not yet taken, and ultimately switched career paths. “I didn’t stay as a therapist because there was just too much internal pain, and I really wasn’t going to be a good therapist to somebody else if I couldn’t deal with this stuff myself.”

Instead, he entered the nonprofit world and began working with low-income Latino families in the early childhood care system, drawing on his education in child development. Though he was still not out at the time, colleagues often assumed Ferrer was gay, but he did not confirm it. Still, the support from those around him, which included out gay executives, made him feel welcome in the valley as an advocate and leader who served on nonprofit boards.

While he was growing more comfortable with this identity in his professional life, it wasn’t until tragedy struck in his early thirties that Ferrer began to reckon with his struggle to come out to his family. When his mother died of cancer at age 54, he knew it was time to come out, and he entered therapy to help him do so. “It really helped me come to grips with who I was, what I wanted to do, and what I was doing that wasn’t helpful to my personal and spiritual growth as a gay man.”

Ferrer’s father’s reaction to his being gay was as he always expected: He immediately began seeing his son through the lens of demonizing stereotypes. With his family situation rocky, Ferrer missed a few years of family events and tried to make up for lost time by socializing in the bars of San Francisco and San Jose. “It was like I was celebrating my twenties all over again.”

Coming out in the nineties brought its own challenge. Ferrer lost many high school and college friends to HIV. “I was going through all kinds of turmoil with dealing with the death of my mom, the aftermath of dealing with my father, and then dealing with this incredibly sad pain of losing high school and college gay friends to HIV and not having anyone to share that with.”

Despite that trauma and isolation, after he came out, he began advocating for LGBTQ-inclusion in early childhood settings. He taught a curriculum called: Makng Room in the Circle to help involve LGBTQ+ parents. Ferrer pushed on with his LGBTQ advocacy. As vice chair of the Santa Clara County United Way board in 1992, he led efforts to defund the Boy Scouts because the local chapter would not sign a non-discrimination policy that included sexual orientation. This debate led to conducting a needs assessment of the LGBTQ community and the ultimate funding of programs like the Billy DeFrank Center.

His work with the United Way showed him the power of putting money where your mouth is and walking the talk when it comes to fighting discrimination.

When Ferrer entered his new role of CEO of The Health Trust 1987, he was upfront about being gay from the start. He ensured HIV services were a top priority, and transformed and expanded the programs based on the best practices and highest standards of care. He upgraded the food baskets that HIV-positive clients were given, allowing them to choose products themselves from stores like they would if they ahopped at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. “I was able to have Michelin star chefs come in and do cooking projects with us. It was great.” Later he would co-chair a county-wide LGBTQ+ Health Assessment that would also lead to funding LGBTQ programs.

Ferrer’s identity remains deeply intertwined with his work in the nonprofit sector, being it was the first safe community he found after experiencing a homophobic culture in college.

In 1995, Santa Clara University graduates wanted to form an LGBTQ alumni group, but the school prohibited it, thinking it would somehow be approving of homosexuality. It brought back memories of the pit Ferrer had in his stomach during his four years of undergraduate enrollment. “It brought back all of the homophobia that existed when I was a student and why it wouldn’t have made sense for me to come out. It also inspired me to make a difference and to work in the world of nonprofits.”

In 2014, then president Father Michael Engh invited Ferrer to chair a Presidential Blue Ribbon Task force on Diversity and Inclusion at the school. “To have a gay latino man come back as the chair of the presidential commission, I think it showed how far the university has come.”

In 2010, the university established the Rainbow Resource Center. Ferrer now serves as a mentor at the Rainbow Center, working with young gay undergrads who share similar backgrounds. “I see the power of mentorship and the power of having the university recognizing you, and giving you a place to fit in and find like-minded people so that you can continue to develop in ways that may not be normative but in ways that you become more authentic.”

Today, in his role as CEO of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley, Ferrer advocates for the LGBTQ+ children in the foster care system, who make up a disproportionate part of the population. He is grateful for the opportunities he has had to work with children, given that one of the biggest arguments against gay marriage concerned children and their development.

Over his lifetime, Ferrer has seen Santa Clara University grow from a place where he had to remain closeted to an institution that seeks out his queer leadership. In 2014, Ferrer was granted an honorary degree from Santa Clara University for Public Service, the first gay man to ever receive this prestigous award. He saw HIV begin as a death sentence that ostracized the gay community further, and later become a chronic health condition that has lost much of the heavy stigma it used to carry.

“I keep thinking what are the ways that we, as a community, can come together to end the kind of discrimination, homophobia, and now transphobia that exists and then work to change it. I know we will have a better community when those things no longer exist it.”

Dr. George Kent

December 20, 2021December 15, 2021 by Steven Peck

Read and listen to longtime HIV/AIDS physician Dr. George Kent as he discusses his 32 years of work at the Santa Clara County PACE Clinic and what he sees as the new challenges ahead for treating patients with HIV.

Dr. George Kent has been caring for people at the Santa Clara County’s AIDS clinic for over 32 years. He started in 1989 when he began splitting his time between working with HIV patients and being a primary care physician with his own clinic.

“I’m not making this up,” the longtime ally said. “I would deliver a baby in the morning, then go to my private practice, and then to the HIV clinic. After work, I would go to the house of someone who was dying of AIDS and help his caregiver and partner with hospice. The circle of life was amazing to me.”

He has seen the disease evolve from one that was untreatable and incurable to what is now a chronic condition.

As someone who has treated patients since the early days of the epidemic, he remembers how difficult it was. “People my age were dying in the prime of their lives. Many were gay and estranged from their families. There was social stigma. It was a terrible time.”

The Stanford and Case Western Reserve graduate came to the HIV field after a residency at the UCSF-affiliated program in Santa Rosa, followed by training at the CDC as a medical epidemiologist, then returning to San Jose and completing an HIV mini-residency with the AIDS Education and Training Center at UCSF.

Afterwards, he looked around San Jose to see who was caring for HIV patients. One day he went to the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

“The clinic was in this little corner in the outpatient department; there were a few exam rooms. A person I met there was Dr. Ira Greene, a dermatologist and wonderful guy. We hit it off. After he got to know me and checked me out a bit, I said, ‘Ira, do you need some help?’ He said, ‘sure, you can join us.’ That was in 1989, and I’ve been there ever since.”

Kent reflected on some of the difficulties in the early days. “We felt a little like a M.A.S.H Unit. At one point we were in a flimsy little trailer in a parking lot. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It made us more cohesive because we really did feel like it was us against the world.”

The PACE Clinic, or Partners in AIDS Care and Education, assembled an interdisciplinary team from the beginning. “You had oncologists, you had infectious disease, you had primary care, and you had dermatology because a lot of these conditions manifested with skin problems.”

Working with HIV was the ultimate medical education for Kent. The virus was a multifaceted issue that impacted family relationships, societal attitudes, and the whole of the LGBTQ+ community when it first hit the United States. There were concerns over confidentiality and end-of-life planning that just did not exist when it came to other terminal illnesses.

“It certainly has made me a better doctor,” Kent said of caring for his patients.

In the PACE Clinic, the staff kept a whiteboard where they recorded the names of the people that died each month. “At the end of the month, we’d have a service. We would all get in a circle and say something about each person that died. We light a candle and have a memorial service, and then we’d have to erase the whiteboard and start over the next month.”

Witnessing the deaths of so many young people took a toll on Kent, and he needed time to cope with the stress and burnout. “I took two months off during the height of it,” he said.

Things started looking up for HIV patients in the early nineties, more than a decade after the first cases were discovered in the United States. With protease inhibitors and other medical therapies, the virus no longer claimed the lives of the majority of people in Kent’s care. “People just came back to life.”

Some of those individuals are still alive today. “I have these 25-year relationships with these patients who were basically at death’s door.”

Although Kent recognizes the magnitude of his work back in the early years of the AIDS crisis, he doesn’t want to glorify it. “We were all there on the front lines, and we felt like we were doing something important and meaningful.”

Today, HIV is no longer a death sentence. It is a chronic condition that can be managed with medications and even prevented with treatments like pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. Kent is hopeful some of his patients might see a cure for HIV in their lifetime.

He believes more primary care physicians need to be trained to work with HIV to expand access to treatment and help normalize the condition. By giving patients the option to see their regular doctor, the medical community can make living with HIV part of mainstream medical care.

“I see HIV as a primary care condition,” Kent said. “I don’t think you have to go to a specialty clinic just because you have HIV.”

Advances in HIV treatment have only been part of the battle; the other is getting people into care and keeping them in care.

Today, healthcare disparities among those affected by HIV complicate the “Getting to Zero” mission, which aims for zero new HIV infections, zero deaths, and zero stigma.

In particular, he highlighted the importance of reaching vulnerable and underserved communities like the homeless and people of color living in the South. Two barriers that keep Black HIV patients from getting the care they need are medical racism and mistrust of doctors.

“We definitely need more outreach into those communities with culturally-competent clinicians who can establish trust, because our biggest challenge right now is accessing these communities.”

In Santa Clara County, medical teams serve homeless encampments and bilingual Latinx community outreach workers manage care for Latino HIV patients. “The outreach workers will go to someone’s house. If we have a patient that missed their appointments, or didn’t refill their medication, they’ll go to their house. They’ll meet them where they work.”

Translators of every known language are available at the PACE Clinic, which offers additional services like counseling, psychiatry, nutrition guidance, and a treatment adherence program.

“We have world-class institutions here in Santa Clara County with the expertise that you don’t see hardly anywhere else in the world, much less, our country or our state.”

Kent grew up admiring his father’s impact on people as an obstetrician. Working at the PACE Clinic has helped him to fulfill the societal benefit of the medical career he always wanted.

Working in Family Medicine at Stanford Health Care and the PACE Clinic has proven beneficial to him and his patients.

“If one of my Stanford HIV patients loses their insurance, then I can see them at PACE Clinic. I love that because then I don’t have to lose them. So, I have one foot in both worlds—enabling that continuity of care that I think is really helpful. I feel very fortunate.”

Judge Julie Emede

January 17, 2023December 7, 2021 by Steven Peck

In the second of a series, read about Julie Emede, an openly lesbian judge who has served on the bench since February 2010.

Even when members of the LGBTQ community feel comfortable in their own identity, fears can still seep in about being accepted and respected in daily life.

Stemming in part from her experiences finding acceptance as an out lesbian from Michigan to California, Emede prides herself on trying to have a greater understanding of people’s circumstances when they become before a judge.

“I think coming to court for anybody is scary, but I think it’s additionally scary if you feel like you’re different and have something else that you have to think or worry about than anybody else,” Emede says. “It’s really important to me as a judge that when people come into my courtroom, they feel like they can say whatever they need to say about their circumstances and not be afraid that they’re going to tell me something that will cause me to treat them with any less respect or any less dignity and they’re entitled to it in my courtroom. I work really hard at that.”

Emede had a “classic Midwest life,” growing up in a medium-sized town in Michigan. But after graduating from Michigan State in 1984, she began coming out and questioning whether the Midwest would be a place she could find happiness and acceptance.

“So, I moved to California,” Emede says. “I definitely believe that the way my life is now and the things I’ve been able to do professionally, I could not have done if I’d stayed in Michigan.”

That’s when she acquired a job at Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, where she worked for seven years in a range of positions, eventually managing the production scheduling for product lines from Malaysia and Singapore. Eventually, she took a voluntary severance from HP, which ended up paying for the first year of law school at UC Hastings College of the Law, commuting from San Jose to San Francisco.

Despite worries her sexuality would impact her success in the profession—particularly in passing the “moral application” required of all law students—Emede graduated and passed the bar in 1995. She worked for nearly two years in a “boutique” civil law firm in Tiburon, before ultimately ending up at a San Jose firm, where she eventually became a partner.

She says she was drawn to family law because she wanted to do a practice in an area that dealt with people with their real everyday lives, and was able to get her start from connections she made playing softball, of all things.

The idea of a judgeship had never really crossed Emede’s mind, since only a few lesbians had ever donned those robes when she started off as a lawyer. But by the late 2000s, she started giving real consideration to the idea of becoming a judge, from not only coworkers but also fellow LGBTQ lawyers who successfully were appointed. Despite being a Democrat when then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in office, Emede submitted her application in early 2008 and was appointed to the bench by the end of 2009.

However, the application for judgeship brought back the same anxieties and questions she felt when applying for the bar: would being a lesbian threaten her chances at this career?

“It’s sort of a black box, it’s very behind the scenes,” Emede says. “But I knew I did really want to do something different that I felt was more public service.”

Emede and her partner, Marci Garcia, have been together for 31 years. After registering as domestic partners in 2001, they married in October 2008—hoping to tie the knot before the Prop 8 election would possibly take that right away. The couple were involved in different aspects of the LGBTQ community; she was on a clogging team that performed at Pride and was elected co-president of the political organization Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, or BAYMEC, while her wife was a contestant in gay rodeos.

“If I hadn’t been involved with BAYMEC, I’m not sure I would’ve had the courage to seek appointment,” Emede says. “I recognize that I’ve benefited from all the hard work and groundbreaking that happened long before I was here. Without having people like Ken Yeager and Wiggsy Sivertsen’s influence, I just don’t think that my path would be the same.”

However, Emede had to tone down that open involvement in LGBTQ community politics and events once she was appointed to the bench. While it was a sacrifice she had to make, she says it was worth it to be able to make a different kind of impact.

“Judges all understand that when we take our oath that we can’t be involved politically in the same way that we were before,” Emede says, even though she does still openly mention her wife in various settings, like at Bar Association meetings and when teaching lawyers and judges.

“I do look forward to someday being able to participate in a way again, but it’s been very different inside the system—working on cases one at a time as opposed to trying to work on broader change.”

Emede prides herself on her work as a judge, from broadening recognition of people’s pronouns in courtrooms and managing cases of name and gender changes on her court calendar.

“I think it’s important that there are people on our bench that reflect what people in our community look like, and I feel like it mattered for there to be an open lesbian on the bench,” Emede says. “I don’t think we’re probably out in the world enough for people to see that it does matter that we have judges on our bench that are LGBTQ. I think that that is a really powerful thing for the community to know.”

Judge Charles Adams

January 16, 2023October 24, 2021 by Steven Peck

Not much is known about the six LGBTQ+ judges that serve on the bench in Santa Clara County. In the first of a series, read about Charles Adams, an openly gay male judge who has served since 2018.

Judges often lead lives of privacy, as they strive to unbiasedly guide others through the legal system’s stresses and hardships.

For Judge Charles Adams, who serves in Santa Clara County’s family courts, being “out” as a gay man at work means frequently setting that element of his personal life aside.

The 43-year-old is by no means the first LGBTQ judge in California; Judge Stephen Lachs holds that title, appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1979.

More than 40 years after that historic ‘first,” Charles proudly serves as one of 73 LGBTQ judges in California in 2021, after he was appointed in 2018—also by Gov. Brown, during his second term.

After growing up as the son of two teachers in Antioch, a relatively small town in the East Bay, Charles went to college at the University of California, Davis, followed by law school at Pepperdine down in Los Angeles, where he started working in civil litigation and family law.

Charles stumbled into a job as a research attorney for the Superior Court in Santa Clara County in 2006, combining his desire to focus on finding solutions with a homecoming back to the Bay Area.

One of Charles’ career highlights began in 2011, when he began working as a permanent staff member under Judge Edward Davila in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, prior to his own 2018 judicial appointment.

Charles says he thrives serving on the bench, as his role in the justice system revolves around being careful, caring and wanting to do the right thing to help people.

After alternating between family and criminal court, Charles became a supervising judge for family court, overseeing cases involving issues like domestic violence, restraining orders, probate and guardianship.

Notably, Charles was not previously openly “out” at work before becoming a judge. That changed in a simple yet meaningful moment: deciding to check a box identifying him as a part of the LGBTQ community on the application to become a judge.

“It’s not a required question, but for me it was going to be sort of the first public acknowledgement of being gay or LGBTQ,” Charles says, adding that he only recently began feeling comfortable and safe bringing his partner of 12 years to work events. “From then, it never came up.”

That may be, in part, because there is often little crossover between the bench and LGBTQ politics, unlike many politicians and other public figures, who often share their personal lives to connect with other residents and build community.

Charles says that judges often live lives outside of the public eye in order to avoid any potential impacts to their perception of impartiality, especially within family courts. While anyone serving on the bench has their own attributes and feelings—consciously or unconsciously—he rejects any idea that personal characteristics should be reason for disqualification, regardless of whether judges are Latino, female or LGBTQ.

“When you’re sitting on the bench, who you are is important, but it’s not necessarily relevant,” Charles says. “Personally, I think it’s smart to not put too much out there so that people don’t have preconceived ideas of how you’re going to be, how you’re going to rule and what your perspective is going to be.”

Fortunately, he has yet to run into any problems.

“Going into every case, I only see what the issues are, what the law says, what the facts are as I find them and I make a decision based on that,” Charles continued, adding the he and his colleagues take the issue seriously. “I think just understanding how people, feelings, and families work translates beyond not being a parent, myself.”

Charles has years of practice, first seeking out privacy of his personal life beginning in law school—an often competitive environment where it’s natural to be careful about what others know and slowly learn who to trust.

“It’s not something I wanted people to really know about or have a reason to think differently of me, just because of that,” he explains. “It really wasn’t until I moved back to the Bay Area that I was a little more willing to have that part of my life shared.”

That’s one reason Charles hopes that the fact that he’s gay provides another example for future lawyers and aspiring judges to know it’s possible to be successful, despite any personal background that is different from the “norm.”

“I remember being a law student and there weren’t really any role models that I knew for what I wanted to be—to see that someone could be successful,” Charles says. “What I hope is that people in the same position I was in can see me doing the things I am, now saying they could do it, too.”

Jim and Mac’s Club

August 18, 2021August 18, 2021 by Steven Peck

Jim Michl, both a patron and manager of Mac’s Club, discusses his time at the long-established gay bar and how it has impacted him and the community.

Speaking up About Marriage Equality

August 18, 2021July 20, 2021 by Steven Peck

A diverse group of leaders in Silicon Valley in 2010 explain why they strongly believe that the civil right to marry should be extended to committed same sex couples. These leaders come from business, government, law, religion, the arts and community service organizations. Their comments can help us articulate a powerful case for changing our culture to embrace same sex marriage and to promote the healthy families that such changes will allow. The film-making group became acquainted as Senior Fellows of the American Leadership Forum in Silicon Valley, an organization dedicated to joining and strengthening leaders for the common good.

Bartending at Mac’s with Rafael

August 18, 2021May 2, 2021 by Steven Peck

Rafael Cuilan was a very popular bartender at both Mac’s Club and later Renegades. Rafael was always great with faces and drinks, so no matter how long it had been since you’d been in the bar, he’d remember your drink and be busy mixing it up before you even sat down.

Mac’s was a kind of “gay family” bar, and Rafael, Skip, and Rich treated their customers like family. It was always great to sit down at Mac’s and enjoy a drag show and conversation with everyone sitting around you.

Rafael moved to Germany in 1994 but he’s back now and enjoying his retirement by getting deeply involved in helping elect progressive politicians.

Whiskey Gulch and Stockton Strip with Whayne

May 2, 2021May 2, 2021 by Steven Peck

From the Whiskey Gulch in East Palo Alto to the Stockton Strip in San Jose, the gay community was widespread in Silicon Valley. Whayne Herriford describes community life and the bars and clubs that the gay community coalesced around.