Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight became the first openly gay California legislator in 1994. In 1997, she was the first woman in California to be named Speaker pro Tempore. She was also a member of the nation’s first legislative LGBT Caucus. In 2002, she coauthored a bill that defined marriage as a civil contract between two persons, which passed the state legislature, but was vetoed by the governor.  She is also was a part of one of the iconic shows in the golden age of television.  An actor, activist and academic today's Out Spotlight is Sheila Kuehl.

The daughter of a Catholic airplane construction worker and his Jewish wife, Kuehl grew up in Los Angeles and glided through school. A natural ham, she landed her first paid acting role at age 8 on a radio series. "I learned about professional behavior, showing up on time, knowing your lines, not stepping on someone else's laughs."

As a young actress with the stage name Sheila James, she played Jackie, Stuart Erwin's tomboy daughter, in the television show Trouble With Father, which was later retitled The Stu Erwin Show.  But she is best known for her portrayal of the "irrepressible" Zelda Gilroy in the long-running 1960s TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The running gag was Zelda's roaring crush on Dobie, and his resistance to her advances. The program spawned two sequels, an unsold television pilot, Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? (1978) and TV movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988). In these, Dobie had married Zelda and had a son named Georgie, who was like Dobie had been at his age. Kuehl reprised her Zelda role in both updates.

Although her character Zelda was popular enough for CBS to plan a spin-off, the pilot was canceled. A network representative later explained she was “just a little too butch.” During the same time, she was banned from her sorority house when letters from her girlfriend exposed her sexuality.

She co-starred in the short-lived television series Broadside, a female version of the hit show McHale's Navy during the 1964-65 season.  After the show's cancellation,  television roles started to dry up, she transitioned into academia getting a job as a campus adviser to student groups at UCLA and eventually became an associate dean of students.

At age 34,  she was admitted into Harvard Law School, where she excelled being elected class marshal and president of law school student council. In 1978, her final year at the law school, she chaired the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the 1953 graduation of the first group of women to be admitted to Harvard Law School. That same academic year, she became the first woman to win "Best Oralist" in the law school's prestigious Ames Moot Court Competition, judged by a panel including Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Kuehl went into private law practice specializing in civil rights and women’s issues. She advocated for victims of domestic abuse and cofounded the California Women’s Law Center in 1989. She taught law at UCLA, University of Southern California and Loyola University. 

Elected to the California State Assembly in 1994, she become the first openly gay person elected to the California legislature. She was later a founding member of the California Legislative LGBT Caucus. She served as Speaker pro tempore during the 1997–98 legislative session, becoming the first woman in California history to hold the position. After three terms in the Assembly, she was elected to the California State Senate in 2000, beating Assemblyman Wally Knox in the Democratic primary and becoming the first openly gay person elected to the Senate. Re-elected in 2004 with 65.7% of the vote, she has repeatedly been voted the "smartest" member of the California Legislature.


 In 2002, she coauthored a bill that defined marriage as a civil contract between two persons, which passed the state legislature, but was vetoed by the governor.

In 2004, Senator Kuehl authored Senate Bill 1234, an omnibus act intended to protect Californians from hate crimes, which it defined as criminal acts committed in whole or in part because of the victims' actual or perceived disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or association with persons with any of those characteristics. Her bill targeted crimes, not First Amendment-protected speech. It also protected illegal immigrants from deportation due to reporting hate crimes, increased civil protections from discrimination, and provided for law enforcement training concerning crimes against homeless persons and law enforcement response to homelessness. Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law.

In 2006, she sponsored a bill that would prohibit the adoption by any school district in California of any instructional material that discriminates against persons based on their gender or sexual orientation.



Throughout her career as a legislator, Kuehl took a leadership role on health care policy. Her foremost objective was securing passage of legislation to establish a single-payer health care system in California. SB 840 passed both houses of the legislature in 2006, but was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; it was reintroduced in 2007 and again passed the state Senate, with a vote pending in the Assembly. SB 840 passed both houses of the California legislature in August 2008 and was, again, vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger.

By the end of her political career in 2008 she had authored over 171 bills that had been signed into law.

Kuehl is the recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profiles In Courage Award (2003); the C50 Award, Celebrating 50 years of Women at the Harvard Law School (2003); the Outstanding Legislator Award from the Southern California Public Health Association (2003); the Victory Fund Leadership Award (2005); the Building a State of Equality Award from Equality California (2006); and the UCLA LGBT Center Distinguished Service Award (2007).

 “The hardest thing I ever did, coming out, turns out to give me a reputation almost instantly for honesty and courage, which any politician would kill for.”
  


And for the naysayers of twitpics.... here you go.