Malcolm L. Lazin

Malcolm L. Lazin (born December 5, 1943) is an American social activist, prosecutor, entrepreneur and educator.

His endeavors include Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) civil rights, federal and state law enforcement, developing Philadelphia's waterfront, lighting the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and incorporating Washington Square—the largest revolutionary war burial ground—into Independence National Historical Park.

Lazin is the founder of Equality Forum (a national and international LGBT civil rights organization headquartered in Philadelphia) and the LGBT History Month icon series.

As Vince Bellino explains, "Equality Forum has, for the last decade, organized LGBT History Month, which honors 31 icons of the movement each year."

Lazin is also the executive producer of three award-winning documentary films and an Off-Broadway play.

In 1961, Lazin enrolled in Lebanon Valley College, his father's alma mater.

He was president of his college class (freshman, junior, and senior years) and became president of the faculty student council in his senior year.

In 1963, he participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—the civil rights demonstration at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

In 1964, Lazin stood among the crowd in the nation's capital to witness President John F. Kennedy's funeral cortege.

At Lebanon Valley College, Lazin majored in biology and minored in chemistry.

He attended Boston University School of Law, where he graduated with a J.D. in 1968.

Lazin was married for 10 years to Terry Weinstein.

After fulfilling active training in the U.S. Army reserves, Lazin began his career in 1969 at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the Philadelphia regional office.

He went on to become an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1970 to 1974.

In the early 1970s, The Philadelphia Inquirer ran front-page stories on alleged abuses in the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) low-income mortgage insurance programs.

U.S. Attorney Louis Bechtle asked Lazin to examine the allegations.

Lazin enlisted the help of neighborhood activists who accompanied FBI agents on interviews.

After a preliminary investigation suggested a pattern of abuse, Lazin involved the IRS as well as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General.

The probe resulted in the convictions of 18 real estate brokers; the largest FHA mortgage company in Pennsylvania; and the Director, the deputy director and the Chief of the Property Management Section of the Philadelphia FHA Insuring Office.

At the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, he taught his white-collar-crime investigative techniques to nine U.S. Attorney's offices.

Lazin also led a successful investigation into fraudulent relocation payments made by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority.

He brought the first successful civil litigation in the nation under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the first criminal environmental prosecutions in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

He was profiled in the June 2019 issue of Sarasota Magazine.

In 2020 he co-organized the National COVID-19 Remembrance, held on October 4 in Washington, D.C.

Lazin's political commentaries following the 2016 U.S. presidential election have been published in the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Washington Blade and following the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, by Smerconish.

On February 15, 2023, acting as a former federal prosecutor, Lazin asked the office of Congressional Ethics to investigate U.S. Representative George Santos for immigration fraud.

Lazin's request and accompanying letter were covered the same day by The New York Times.

Lazin has received the U.S. Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award (the Department of Justice's highest honor); the Creative Leadership in Human Rights Award from the National Education Association; the Lifetime Hero Award of the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund; and is a Prime Mover of the Hunt Alternatives Fund.

He serves as an adjunct professor at the New College of Florida and an Emeritus Trustee of Lebanon Valley College.

He has presented lectures on LGBT civil rights at high schools, colleges, and national meetings in the United States and Canada.

Lazin resides in Sarasota, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Lazin is the 2020 recipient of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA's) Special Presidential Commendation.

He is the first person to receive this distinction who is not a medical doctor.

Additionally, the APA selected Lazin as the recipient of its 2021 John Fryer Award.

The oldest of five children, Lazin was raised in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

His father was an osteopathic physician and his mother a homemaker.

Lazin attended Lebanon High School.

In his junior year, he won the Lebanon County Optimist Oratorical Contest.

In his senior year, against the advice of his teacher, he selected the topic "The Plight of the American Negro" for the school's contest, which began his lifetime of activism.

He was also president of the Lebanon AZA, a Jewish youth organization, and became president of the AZA's Southeast Pennsylvania and Delaware region.