Director Rob Reiner Remembered As Longtime LGBTQ+ Ally

Hollywood director and producer Robert Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, 67, were found dead in their Los Angeles home earlier this week. Police are investigating their death as a homicide and have arrested the pair’s youngest son, Nick Reiner as the main suspect.

The couple were reportedly found dead with multiple stab wounds by a close family member.

According to Los Angeles Police, the son is currently being held in custody on bail of four million US dollars.

A long standing and active ally for the LGBTQIA+ community

Being the director behind Hollywood mega hits including When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and The Princess Bride, it’s safe to say Reiner was a household name in the entertainment industry. 

But outside his work in entertainment, Reiner has long been politically active within American politics for the Democratic Party, and have supported several presidential candidates through the years including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden—and a long standing critic of the current US President Donald Trump. 

Through the years, Reimer’s political activism has included a continuous fight for economic and social justice. In 1998, he also led a campaign in favour of the successful Californian proposition 10—a tobacco tax to raise funds for early childhood health and education. 

But most significantly for the LGBTQIA+ community, Reiner co-founded the non-profit organisation American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) in 2009 following California’s Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of Proposition 8 in 2008. The law banned same-sex marriage in the state, and AFER was created to fight this law.

In a piece written for Variety back in 2015, Reiner explained that he felt he had to do something to reverse the law. Ultimately, Reiner and AFER, along other community allies, ended up working together with President George Bush’s former solicitor general Ted Olson who in 2009, alongside Democratic attorney David Boies, filed a legal challenge that led to the overturn of Prop. 8.

In the piece he further expressed how he felt that part of the change in society is generational, and that he views the younger generations as a positive force for social change.

“It’s so heartening to think young people don’t think twice about gay marriage. And I think it’s going to be the same with the transgender community. It’s going to get closer and closer to the ideal that we are all one. 

“When I started speaking out about this, I said, “Forty years from now, we’ll look back on this the same way we do on women having the right to vote or on African-Americans having civil rights. It will be kind of quaint. People will wonder what all the fuss was about,” Reiner stated.