Sexual orientation chair for UCLA law

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The University of California-Los Angeles will establish a chair in sexual orientation law, using a donation of more than $1 million from a gay male couple.

The couple, John McDonald and Rob Wright, told the Los Angeles Times they hope some day to marry in California. The UCLA law school chair is described as the first endowed academic chair in the nation to specialize in sexual orientation issues.

The gift is intended to help fund the research of a professor at the school's Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy -- a 5-year-old think tank that investigates discrimination against gays, the U.S. military's don't ask-don't tell policy and other related issues.

"This is going to support legal scholarship, legal research and education that covers a whole area so fundamental to creating change," said McDonald, a retired businessman and attorney who earned his bachelor's degree at UCLA. "We just think this is one of the best things we've ever done."

The UC system has approved an agreement to accept the money, but system officials told the newspaper the chair can not be formally established until a review is completed to make sure it comports with the system's research and teaching missions and is not too narrowly drawn.