Prominent LGBT+ rights lawyer sets himself on fire in protest

Famous US attorney and LGBT+ activist David S. Buckel has died from self-inflicted injuries. Buckel set himself on fire early Saturday morning in Prospect Park in Brooklyn to protest fossil fuels.

Buckel has a long list of famous LGBT+ cases which he fought for: he was lead counsel for Brandon Teena, a trans man who was raped and murdered in 1993 (Hilary Swank earned an Oscar playing him in the movie Boys Don’t Cry); he was a strategist behind notable same-sex marriage cases in Iowa and New Jersey that were key in advancing the same-sex marriage fight in the US; and he was a senior counsel and marriage project director at the LGBT+ civil rights organisation Lambda Legal. He also argued against the scouts' ban on gay leaders and fought for woman’s right to include the epitaph “beloved life partner” on her same-sex partner’s tombstone.

Buckel left a suicide note on a nearby shopping cart: “My name is David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide, I apologize to you for the mess.”

“Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather,” he continued. “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.

“A lifetime of service may best be preserved by giving a life… I hope it is an honourable death that might serve others.”

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