Sheila Kuehl was born on February 8, 1941. Her family moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles when she was 2 years old because her father worked on aircrafts during World War II. Her father was German Catholic, her mother was working class Russian Jewish, and Sheila’s coming-of-age blended the two cultures.
Due to her academic excellence, Sheila skipped two grades. Her perception of queer identity and lesbians was vague prior to starting college at UCLA at age 16. But at 18, while working as head counselor for a UniCamp session at UCLA, Sheila met a woman and fell in love. While she worried about being found out, they were together for 12 years, living together without anyone’s knowledge.
Sheila began acting in school plays at a young age and landed roles on radio shows beginning at age eight, then began auditioning for television. From 1950-55, she played Jackie on The Stu Erwin Show, and from 1959-63, she starred as Zelda Gilroy on the popular CBS show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, for which she later received praise from President Clinton. Sheila loved Zelda: she was determined, the smartest girl in every room she walked in, a counterpoint to the misogyny of the time. However, the president of CBS vetoed a Zelda spinoff show, claiming Zelda was “a little too butch.” Sheila, speculating that she wasn’t landing roles due to suspicions of her sexuality and fearing she’d be outed, eventually quit acting.
After graduating college in 1962, Sheila worked at her alma mater as an adviser. She then became interested in a legal career to address the position of women in the workplace, and was admitted to Harvard Law School at age 34. She returned to California afterwards, starting at a firm that specialized in municipal law, then learning women’s constitutional law at a feminist law firm.
After a year, Sheila left to practice family law on her own. Through the Sojourn Shelter for Battered Women, she was recruited into a group of young attorneys trying to develop domestic violence law in California, “because there wasn’t any.” Amid nationwide battles to end LGBTQ+ discrimination, Sheila also began hosting a talk show called Get Used to It in 1992, featuring thoughtful conversations on landmark legal cases and legislation, race and racism, faith and spirituality, HIV/AIDS, and more.
After meeting a group of lesbian politicians at a Women’s Caucus event, Sheila became inspired to run for office. She was elected to the California State Assembly in 1994, becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California legislature. She wrote approximately 500 bills; 171 were signed into law by three different governors. She made history two more times when she also became the first openly gay person elected to the California State Senate in 2000 and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 2014. Much of Sheila’s work has advocated for the LGBTQ+ community, such as marriage equality and protecting queer youth, alongside other strides like paid family leave, fixing nurse to patient ratios, and raising minimum wage. She ends her OUTWORDS interview on a note of serenity and satisfaction: “I am 82, and I have never been so content. I think it really comes from doing work and living life in a way that helped me to find meaning in things. I’m not saying I made it happen so that I would have meaning, but I feel very content about what I have done.”
