Prominent gay-rights lawyer sets himself on fire and dies in environmental protest
David Buckel/Courtesy of Lambda Legal.
A prominent gay-rights lawyer died early Saturday in a Brooklyn, New York, park after he set himself on fire to protest pollution from fossil fuels.
David Buckel, 60, was “an indefatigable attorney” and “a movement leader, a colleague and a friend,” according to a statement by Camilla Taylor, acting legal director of Lambda Legal. Buckel was former legal marriage project director for Lambda Legal, and also helped create Lambda Legal’s focus on LGBT youth.
He retired from the organization in 2008 and had become active in environmental causes, the New York Times reports.
Buckel had left a note in a nearby shopping cart and had also emailed a note to several news organizations, according to a separate story by the Times, which had received one of the emails. CNN and Huffington Post are among the other publications with coverage.
“Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather,” he wrote in the email to the Times. “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.”
Buckel was lead attorney in a lawsuit that held a Nebraska county sheriff liable for failing to protect a murdered transgender man, Brandon Teena. The 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry was based on the incident.
Lambda details Buckel’s involvement in other important cases. He spearheaded a case in which a federal court ruled that schools are obligated to protect gay students from bullying. Buckel also filed a suit in which the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to the rights and benefits of marriage. And he championed filing a lawsuit that led the Iowa Supreme Court to strike down the state’s ban on gay marriage.
Buckel’s partner, Terry Kaelber, told the Times that Buckel had become distraught over the rollback of environmental protections in the Trump administration. He wanted to make a difference, and for the last decade had worked on composting at the Red Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn, which is operated by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
One of the staff members working at the site is Domingo Morales, who considers Buckel a mentor. Buckel “touched a lot of people,” Morales told the Times. “We didn’t come from privilege, we came from the projects. He was a light in a lot of our lives.”
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