Arthur Cyrus Warner
(February 14, 1918 ? July 22, 2007) was an American lawyer and gay rights activist.
[1]
[2]
His work was crowned by successful efforts to overturn
anti-sodomy
and other laws used to persecute gay people in several US states.
Early life
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Born in
Newark, New Jersey
, Warner for almost the last half century of his life lived in the house built by his parents in
Princeton
. His mother was born in
Paynesville, Minnesota
, and his father belonged to a family engaged in the wholesale grocery business in Newark. Both parents were of
Russian-Jewish
origin.
Education
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After receiving his AB degree from
Princeton
in 1938, Warner entered
Harvard Law School
. His studies there were interrupted by
World War II
, and he served a stint in the
United States Navy
, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant. After receiving an
undesirable discharge
stemming from homosexual conduct, he returned to Harvard Law school, where he earned his LLB degree in 1946. Although he succeeded, after a long legal battle, in having the Navy discharge changed to the status of
honorable
, the damage was done, and he was never able to practice law as he had hoped. He then entered Harvard Graduate School to study English history, receiving his AM degree in 1950 and his PhD in 1960. While he briefly taught history at the
University of Texas at El Paso
, he lived most of his life as an independent scholar, maintaining many contacts from his base in Princeton.
Activism
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Arthur Warner's engagement with issues of homosexual civil rights began early, when in the late 1940s he started to attend meetings of a
New York City
group known simply as The League. From 1954 on he was active in the
Mattachine Society
of New York, serving as chairman of the legal department. Initially he chose to mask his identity under the name of Austin Wade. For a time Arthur Warner was associated with
Frank Kameny
of
Washington, D.C.
; later they had a falling out over strategy. Yet each continued to work in his own way in the service of the cause of gay rights.
In 1971 Warner founded the National Committee for Sexual Civil Liberties (later renamed the American Association for Personal Privacy), a
high-level think tank comprising
lawyers
,
historians
,
theologians
, and other professionals. From the beginning, Warner's focus, and that of the group he founded, was legal reform?especially the repeal of the sodomy statutes, which he regarded as the linchpin of all discrimination against homosexuals. He was encouraged by the recommendations for
decriminalization
of
homosexual conduct
embodied in the
Wolfenden Report
in England (1957), and the
Model Penal Code
(MPC), a statutory text approved by the
American Law Institute
(ALI) in 1962. Among those closely associated with Warner in this work were Thomas F. Coleman, an attorney; Paul Hardman; and
Wayne R. Dynes
of the Gay Academic Union.
Working largely behind the scenes, Warner and his associates achieved success in several individual states, preparing the way for the eventual
victory in the
U. S. Supreme Court
in the Lawrence case of 2003.
Arthur Warner's papers document his involvement in legal reform and other issues pertaining to homosexual civil rights. The bulk of the papers
consist of legislative and court documents about cases affecting gay civil liberties, and related memoranda, correspondence, and writings. The
papers, mainly covering the period from 1946 to 2000, are preserved in the Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University Libraries
[3]
His will directed that his funds be used to establish the Sentience Foundation, headquartered in
Freehold, New Jersey
.
[4]
References and further reading
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External links
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