Jay Michaelson

Dr. Jay Michaelson is the religious liberty fellow at Political Research Associates. An attorney and activist, Michaelson has worked as an advocate for LGBTQ people for ten years. He is the founding director of Nehirim, a national LGBTQ Jewish organization, and has worked closely with HRC, GLAAD, and other organizations. His book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (Beacon 2011) was an Amazon.com bestseller and Lambda Literary Award finalist. Michaelson holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a contributing editor to the Forward newspaper and a frequent contributor to The Daily Beast, Religion Dispatches, and The Huffington Post. In 2009, Michaelson was included on the Forward 50 list of influential American Jews, and in 2010 he won the New York Society of Professional Journalists' award for opinion writing. Michaelson has held teaching positions at Boston University Law School, City College of New York, and Yale University, and is based in New York City.