Well-Known Gay Rights Lawyer, Environmentalist Burns Himself Alive… For a Protest
By Bizpac Review. A nationally renowned attorney for gay and transgender rights committed suicide at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park this Saturday by setting himself on fire to protest global warming.
When authorities arrived on the scene after being alerted to his remains by joggers and runners, they found the charred corpse of attorney David Buckel and a typed suicide note.
“Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather,” the note read, according to The New York Times, which reportedly received its own copy of it at 5:55 am.
“Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result — my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves,” the letter continued.
Very sad. Prominent lawyer David Buckel died after setting himself on fire in an environmental protest in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. https://t.co/lXn0RE4U9K pic.twitter.com/eCygW9yXhE
— act.tv (@actdottv) April 15, 2018
Buckel rose to prominence in the 2000s as the marriage project director and senior counsel at Lambda Legal, a law firm that fights on behalf of the gay community. (Read more from “Well-Known Gay Rights Lawyer, Environmentalist Burns Himself Alive… For a Protest” HERE)
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Homosexual Attorney Who Burned Himself to Death Over Global Warming Characterized as “Brilliant”
By Eric Levenson and Gabriela Milian. Buckel, who had recently turned his energies to environmental causes, is known for directing major same-sex marriage cases in Iowa and New Jersey in his role as marriage project director for Lambda Legal, a nonprofit organization that promotes civil rights for the LGBT community. . .
Camilla Taylor, Lambda Legal’s acting legal director, said in a statement that Buckel was a “brilliant legal visionary” . . .
He was an attorney in Lewis v. Harris, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006 that same-sex couples be provided all the benefits and responsibility of marriage, Lambda Legal said.
Buckel was marriage project director when the organization filed a lawsuit in Iowa on behalf of same-sex couples. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in Varnum v. Brien in 2009 that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was unconstitutional, a decision that made Iowa the third state to legalize same-sex marriage. (Read more about this gay rights lawyer who lit himself on fire HERE)
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Prominent Lawyer in Fight for Gay Rights Dies After Setting Himself on Fire in Prospect Park
By The New York Times. A lawyer nationally known for being a champion of gay rights died after setting himself on fire in Prospect Park in Brooklyn early Saturday morning and leaving a note exhorting people to lead less selfish lives as a way to protect the planet, the police said.
The remains of the lawyer, David S. Buckel, 60, were found near Prospect Park West in a field near baseball diamonds and the main loop used by joggers and bikers . . .
Mr. Buckel was the lead attorney in Brandon v. County of Richardson, in which a Nebraska county sheriff was found liable for failing to protect Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was murdered in Falls City, Neb. Hilary Swank won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Mr. Teena in the 1999 movie “Boys Don’t Cry.”
Friends said that after he left the organization, Mr. Buckel became involved in environmental causes, which he alluded to in his note as the reason he decided to end his life by self-immolation with fossil fuels. (Read more from “Prominent Lawyer in Fight for Gay Rights Dies After Setting Himself on Fire in Prospect Park” HERE)
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