Raising the Bar: D.C.'s first Attorney General Robert Spagnoletti

[Quetzal]

Raising the Bar: D.C.'s first Attorney General Robert Spagnoletti

Every state in the nation has an attorney general serving as top lawyer. So do American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It seems everybody had an attorney general serving its state's (or commonweatlh's, or territory's) legal interests but the District of Columbia. At least, that's the way it was until last May.

That's when D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams made a slight change to the city's bureaucracy, renaming the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia to the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. With that stroke of the pen, the city joined the rest of the country in enjoying the services of an attorney general.

These services happen to be exactly the same as those offered by the corporation counsel. The change is in name only. Of more interest is the man behind the title. As the city's corporation counsel for the year prior to the name change, and still serving as the district's newly-minted attorney general, Robert J. Spagnoletti is a valuable asset. His impressive legal background aside, gay and lesbian residents may be pleased to know that the history books will have to note that the first attorney general of the nation's capital was an openly gay man.

"I came out late in life," Spagnoletti says. "I was 26-years-old. I'd dated women for a long time. One longtime girlfriend and I talked about getting married, but the relationship never worked out at the end of the day. At 26, I came out to myself, then to my parents. They've been wonderful."

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Raising the Bar: D.C.'s first Attorney General Robert Spagnoletti

[LibInternationalist]

1. well, I hope this helps

seems pretty semantic at this point