I don't usually 'do' hero worship

[canetoad]

But this man is a shining beacon of light and one of my few true heros.

Michael Kirby (b. 1939) recently retired from the Supreme Court of Australia. He was openly gay, although it only became main-stream knowledge 3 years after his appointment.

He is termed 'a radical activist', continuously supporting and speaking out on human rights issues, particularly GLBT.
http://www.michaelkirby.com.au/

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rass19/kirby241006_narrowweb__300x421,0.jpg



"...........If I had been completely candid there was a risk that I would be put into a box as the 'gay judge' and if that had happened to me I would not be sitting where I am now in the High Court of Australia. -- That is the unfortunate truth: that there is a glass ceiling for women, and there is a glass ceiling for gays. But it was my partner who said to me, "You owe this to younger homosexual people, this is something we both owe to make the point that homosexuals are responsible people; they do not fit the stereotype necessarily, and they are everywhere" Now, since I did that I have had a loss of hate mail but I have also had a lot of support and the support has overwhelmingly been from straight people, heterosexual people, so that times are changing, but they will only change if we break the code of silence because it is the code of silence that lulls some people into the false belief that homosexuals are a small group of wilful, evil people who are simply defying the order of God and nature . Well it is just not like that, and people have got to be told that it's not like that.