Nancy Polikoff

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Email Address: nancy@bilerico.com

Location: Washington, DC

Project Contributor Since: May 2008

Entries by this Contributor: 66

Gay rights activist and American University law professor Nancy D. Polikoff is the author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law, published by Beacon Press in 2008. The book is the first in Beacon’s Queer Ideas series, edited by Michael Bronski. Nancy has been working on issues involving lesbian and gay families for more than 30 years and is a member of the National Family Law Advisory Council of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Before joining the faculty at American University Washington College of Law, she was one of the founders of a feminist law collective and she directed family law programs at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in J. D=Emilio, W. Turner, and U. Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (2000). She helped develop the legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents, and she was successful counsel in In re M.M.D., the 1995 case that established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia, and Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father=s visitation rights. Nancy also blogs at www.beyondstraightandgaymarriage.blogspot.com