“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.” – Muhammad Ali
If that’s the case then Rue Landau, who worked as a housing activist for a decade as well as serving as director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations and Fair Housing Commission, has a room and a whole house at this point. With years of service to the community, Landau is now Philadelphia’s first openly queer member of City Council. Since she is an old friend of mine, I grabbed her for a quick convo as she sprinted from meetings to hearings, trying to improve conditions for all in the city. Some responses have been edited for length or clarity.
Where in the Philly area of it all were you born?
My mom’s from North Philly. Dad’s from West Philly, but we grew up just over the line in Cheltenham. It was a typical suburb and close enough to Philadelphia that we figured out how to have a lot of fun in the city.
What did your folks do?
My mom is this free-spirited, wacky artist, and my dad was a banker, so a very funny combination that I think balanced very well.
What kind of art did your mother do?
She works as an oil painter. She can’t do it as much anymore, but she was an oil painter. It’s really amazing. Kind of abstract humans and flowers and stuff. She also made a lot of collages, and she would create them from broken-up pieces of jewelry and art and even old newspapers and stuff.
They were upcycling before it was a thing!
Yes, yes.
What’s a favorite family tradition or favorite family memory?
Oh, man, that’s a doozy. Give me a second. Passover Seders were very fun in our house. We brought together a lot of family and always had delicious food.
How many kids are in the family?
I have a twin sister and a brother who’s only 19 months older than us, so a lot to handle at one time.
So if people don’t know, you and your sister Suzanne are identical twins. Did your parents color code you when you were young?
Ha! I have no idea if they color-coded us or if we color-coded ourselves. When we were born, we were named Ruth Ellen and Suzanne and in about first grade on the playground, we told people to call us Rue and Sue. So it was Rue red, and Sue blue and it’s stuck ever since. Though since then, she’s gone back to being called Suzanne. But it was Rue red, Sue blue — which was easy, and very helpful. We seemed to have had a lot more snow in the winter when we were kids. So when we were outside and our parents were trying to figure out who was who, they’d see big red or blue coats, which made it easy to identify us!
I interviewed a guy who was a triplet and he was saying that when they were kids, his parents had them each pick a Power Rangers color. To this day, he wears blue every day.
Actually, when I’m going to be around my sister for photos, I sometimes intentionally wear red so she can do her blue thing. We’re very close. We call each on the phone often, and crack up non-stop over the silliest things that probably most people wouldn’t get!
I know during the campaign, Suzanne said that people would come up to her and congratulate her. And when she tried to say, “No, it’s not me” they’d be confused.
Yeah, we live three blocks from each other, and people stop us on the street, often confusing us for one another.
Does she get housing questions?
She does! And when her kids were little and had made friends in school, I would get lots of little kids stopping me in the street wondering where they were. I was like, they’re at home with their parents. So that was really kind of confusing.
Not a twin thing, but when my mother was younger she looked like Lena Horne.
I totally see that.
Yeah, and on occasion she signed autographs for people as Lena!
You’re kidding. My brother told me that he gets mistaken for Bradley Cooper sometimes. He’s had a couple instances where he’s told people, “Sorry I’m not Bradley.” And they’re like, “Nah, you are.” They won’t believe him. I was walking with him one day and this woman stopped him and was like, “Hey, you’re…” and he stopped her, “No, no, I’m not Bradley Cooper.” And she was like, yes you are. He’s like, I’m really not. And she was insistent that he was. I watched the entire thing happen. It was crazy!
I think that’s why my mother signed autographs. It was easier than arguing. Tell me something about your not-Bradley brother.
My brother is an amazing vegan chef. He and his wife own Vedge on Locust Street and Ground Provisions out in West Chester.
I love Vedge, and I’m a meat eater! So, when you were a kid, what were you like?
A lot of energy — a lot of energy and curious, very inquisitive. You can only imagine with the three of us, we all had a ton of energy, and were just all over the place all the time. It’s really shocking we made it through that period!
Did you do gymnastics or anything sporty to burn it off?
Yes, when I was little, and I played some sports through middle school. But I had asthma, and by the time I was in high school, they said I couldn’t play sports. They didn’t have as many options to help as they do now. So that sucked. But I loved writing, riding my bike — I just loved being outside, and playing with my friends. Unfortunately, the artistic talent did not trickle down.
I read that you went to University of Delaware, home of the Fighting Hens. What did you study?
International Relations with a minor in Spanish.
And what did you think you were going to do with that?
Yeah, I wasn’t 100% sure. But, I was wondering if there was a government track to pursue. After college, I worked and did a bunch of activist work with ACT UP, WHAM (Women’s Health Action and Mobilization), Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and then worked at some other nonprofits for a little bit, including the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Then I decided I wanted to go to law school, so I took the LSAT. I knew I wanted to do public interest law so I only looked at law schools that were not too expensive so I’d be able to pay back my student loans and ended up at Temple.
Good plan. Was there an inciting moment that made you decide to go into law?
I really loved the work that I was doing with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, even though it was volunteer work at the time. And I was working alongside lawyers from Community Legal Services who were doing intake and helping solve people’s ancillary housing issues right there on the ground. I would go and help and one of the things that I did was to work alongside some legal aid lawyers who were trying to help solve problems, whether it was some of the housing issues or maybe somebody needed their social security card or their birth certificates or even family court issues. I was helping with that and it was one of the biggest motivations for me to go to law school.
What was the hardest thing about law school?
The fear that I wouldn’t do well, but when I got there, I loved it. The fact that I took off a few years after undergrad and did hands-on work, both in nonprofits and with community organizations helped. Doing work with ACT UP, where we were watching the government act as a barrier to life-saving medications for people with HIV and AIDS and folks fighting for housing and not being able to get access to it really prepared me. I didn’t realize how much I walked into law school fully equipped to tackle what was being taught to me. So I actually did better in law school than I did in undergrad.
After law school, what did you do first?
I had worked at Community Legal Services as a law student for two years, and it was such a great fit that I got hired and stayed for 10 years. After that, I was appointed by Mayor Nutter and then Mayor Kenney to run the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations and the Fair Housing Commission, which are the city’s civil rights and housing enforcement agencies. It was important because at the time, I was the first lesbian director and also because I really got to get my hands into — at least on the periphery — law-making and rule-making. It’s what really sparked me to want to run for office.
When I was there, I strengthened our Fair Practices Ordinance or city civil rights law to include stronger protections for the LGBTQ+ community, plus a host of other things. Whether it was helping people with criminal records, removing barriers so they could gain employment, or helping folks remain in housing and not get evicted for no reason by their landlord, I got to do all of that work alongside and with a lot of council people. [I even helped write] regulations for the laws that were on the books, laws that my agencies were enforcing. I took it all very seriously. I loved it, and it really started to open my eyes to how much I wanted to be in not just an advisory role to council people, but I wanted to have a seat at the table. I wanted to make sure that a member of the LGBTQ+ community would be there every day.
There were issues from things that were critical to our lives about health care or housing and our civil rights, or something maybe not as dire, like maybe street closures for repaving that they didn’t realize were happening right in the Gayborhood on Pride weekend. Something like that, where I could just say, “Hey, it’s Pride in Philly, can you do it another time?” We’re just consistently reminding people to be inclusive of members of our community when they’re creating policy and laws, especially for the transgender community. It’s essential now more than ever, at a time where Trump 2.0 is really reeking hell on all of us. I think it’s important that we’re here on a local level, doing everything that we can to make sure that we’re protecting members of our community from any of these federal attacks.
So switching gears, tell me your coming-out story.
So I’ve already told you I have an identical twin sister, which I think makes for a unique situation. You grow up oftentimes being very similar to somebody else, sometimes wanting to be absolutely identical to somebody else. And then you realize that you’re queer, and you’re going to take a different path. And the way you see it is, I’m taking a path from the norm of heterosexuality and who we both were. So I had a delayed coming out story.
Right after college, I came out to my twin first, of course, and then slowly told my parents and the rest of the family. It was awkward, as many coming-out stories are, and I really wish we didn’t have to do it. Hopefully, it’s easier for many people now, but it’s still often awkward. I mean, heterosexual people don’t have to come out to their families. It’s just assumed. So the fact that you have to have this conversation with your parents that most people don’t have to have kind of makes me mad. But they were fine. They were supportive of me and my life.
It definitely can be awkward. I remember my 16-year-old nephew coming out to me.
My wife Kerry and I have a son, and we always made sure to let him know from a young age, that no matter who he wants to be with or who he wants to date — boys, girls, anybody — it was completely fine with us. [Smiling] He ended up being heterosexual, but it was important to normalize anything that he would want to do. Something that would have been a blessing and would have made things a lot easier for us if parents started that conversation when we were young.
Speaking of your family, tell me about the excitement of being the first gay couple to get married in PA?
We were the first LGBT couple to get a marriage license. We didn’t have the first wedding. I think that was a young 20-something couple who went to the Art Museum steps and got married immediately after getting their license. For us, one of the most special things is that Gloria Casarez was still the director of LGBT affairs. She was a dear friend of both of ours, and one of our motivating factors for wanting to be first was because Gloria was going to be there and be by our side. She was literally there with us the entire time, when we got the license, when we were talking to the register of wills — everything. It was really very heartwarming for us, that she was a part of it and that she got to witness it.
And you got to be part of history then, and now you are a part of history again as our first openly gay councilperson. What was the fear of running and what was the joy?
The fear of running is that you’re not going to win! The joy of running was being able to go out to every single community in Philadelphia and really connect with people in every neighborhood. I had already done that with all of the housing work I did at Community Legal Services. Oh, and we didn’t talk about the work I did at the Commission on Human Relations. I had already been out in neighborhoods throughout the city, engaging with people about their everyday issues and problems. And I just loved it. So being on the campaign trail and going out again into every neighborhood, I was like, “This is the job for me. I just can’t wait.”
I went to several events. You did a great job.
It was hard work, which is typical for us. Often we hear of people in places — in their jobs or the military or wherever — who were saying they were the best because they were scared that if they weren’t the best they would be looked at differently because they were queer, or maybe even fired or let go or dismissed from the military because they were queer. I heard these stories of “queer excellence” a lot, including when I was in law school. If you don’t fit into the societal norms of what they believe a woman is supposed to be like, or a man is supposed to be like, you work nonstop, and you make it happen. And for me, that was making sure that I never rested during the campaign trail, that I did every single thing that I needed to do, and then even more, it was important to me, and it clearly paid off.
And we’re the better for it! Now time for some random questions. How do you relax?
Right now, I’ve been running in preparation for the Broad Street race! Even though I’ve never run more than 5 miles in my life, it’s been a nice way to destress, especially as we approach budget season.
Do you have a family heirloom?
Yes! There is a small sculpture my parents had and all three kids loved it. We called it the Lollipop Sculpture. Twenty years ago, my dad decided to pass it down to the kids, so we switch off who has it every year at Thanksgiving. Right now, I think my brother has it.
Embarrassing fashion?
Right before we got our kindergarten photos, my mom cut mine and Suzanne’s hair. She gave us the Dorothy Hamill haircut, a figure skater with a short bowl cut. We looked awful!