Activist lawyer sets self on fire

NEW YORK — A lawyer who burned himself to death in a grisly protest against ecological destruction was a nationally known gay rights advocate and lead attorney in a famous case involving transgender murder victim Brandon Teena.

The charred remains of David Buckel, 60, were found in a meadow in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park at dawn Saturday. He left a suicide note in a shopping cart near his body, writing that he hoped his act would bring attention to the need to protect the environment.

“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,” the note read, according to the New York Times, which received an emailed copy.

Buckel was best known as a champion of gay rights. A 1987 graduate of Cornell Law School, he served as marriage project director at Lambda Legal, a national organization that fights for LGBT rights. In one case he led, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples and their children were harmed because they were excluded from rights granted to married couples.

Buckel worked on Brandon vs. County of Richardson — where the sheriff ’s office in 2001 was found liable for failing to protect Teena. Hilary Swank won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Teena in the 1999 movie “Boys Don’t Cry.”

Susan Sommer, a former Lambda Legal attorney who is now the general counsel for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in New York City, told the Times that Buckel “was all about justice, but he was also all about what it means to be human.”