#RIP: Chuck Williams, Founder of UCLA’s Williams Institute That Shapes US LGBTQ+ Policy

Marriage equality, HIV/AIDS research, and accurate population estimates are just a few of the legislative victories for sex and gender minorities that Chuck Williams helped win through the Williams Institute.

Williams Institute Founding Director Brad Sears noted in announcing Williams’ death:

Chuck has given over $20 million to create and support the Williams Institute. Impressive on its own, but he also gave tirelessly of his time, experience, heart, and skills. He never stopped encouraging others to get involved and support our work. And animating everything he did were his bonds with Stu and his friends and their experiences. He wanted to create a world where others didn’t have to face the same obstacles. For the last 22 years, Chuck’s vision of a better world grew to include combatting poverty in the LGBTQ community, reducing overcriminalization, fighting on behalf of transgender people, and working to improve LGBTQ rights around the globe.

One of the most important things the Williams Institute has done is get accurate populations estimates of LGBTQ Americans. The US Census has deliberately left our community uncounted or undercounted. For instance, “experts” used to claim there are only 40,000 transgender Americans. The Williams Institute demonstrated there are at least 1.6 million transgender Americans, including 300,000 children and adolescents.

Chuck Williams and Stu Walter met in 1967 and remained together for the next 56 years. Williams’ corporate job meant that the couple had to hide their relationship, to the point that Williams would bring a beard to events, even at their home. They had to do all their early philanthropy in the 1970s in cash so it could not be traced back to them.

Via the Los Angeles Blade:

Few today have had relationships that last 56 years. Even fewer relationships have been tested as theirs has been. 1967 was two years before Stonewall, every state except Illinois had sodomy laws, and gay men were regularly entrapped by the LAPD and sent for conversion therapy in state hospitals. Chuck and Stu risked being arrested, fired, and confined if they were out. But they maintained their relationship through those years, the AIDS epidemic, and through the challenges that eventually come with being survivors and living a long full life. I am particularly honored to have witnessed Stu’s incredible strength during the past several months. He remained Chuck’s principal caregiver until the end, rarely left his side, and kept him comfortable at home.

In 2021, the Institute looked back on their lives together.