“We are the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. We are lawyers, judges and other legal professionals, law students, activists, and affiliated lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender legal organizations. We work for justice in and through the legal profession for the LGBTQ+ community in all its diversity. We are here to serve and support LGBTQ+ legal professionals, including their vital efforts to uphold the rule of law, and to promote LGBTQ+ belonging and opportunity.
As a matter of policy, we do not make endorsements for elected political office or comment on the outcomes of candidate races. And yet, we will always name the rights, needs, and dreams of our intersectional LGBTQ+ communities, and we will always call out the harms directed at our community members.
In recent years and more so, in recent months leading up to the election, politicians and candidates across the country have unleashed an overwhelming barrage of anti-trans and LGBQ+ tropes and accompanying legislation. A painful and disproportionate focus of this vitriol has been racist hate towards BIPOC and immigrant members of our communities. LGBTQ+ people have always been here, we will always continue to exist, and our right to exist and to thrive is not up for debate. We are in solidarity with all our LGBTQ+ community members and will not allow hatred to splinter us. We call out the racism, ableism, xenophobia, sexism, homo-bi-transphobia, and other forms of oppression being wielded against us by those who do not value our humanity. We defend the rule of law, and we will defend the futures of our LGBTQ+ youth. There is a long and steady history of LGBTQ+ lawyers using the law to fight for the most vulnerable members of our greater society, to secure our collective fundamental rights. We as LGBTQ+ people deserve our own security and rights as well.
It is a painful truth that the founding generations of this nation promoted and executed a white supremacist, heterociscentric, and patriarchal ideological blueprint for this country. Under this framework, LGBTQ+ individuals were rendered invisible under the law and unworthy of protection. As we dig into the anti-LGBTQ+ and racist rhetoric and violence of recent years we see a direct line to the dehumanization of our community’s collective ancestors.
What we know, though, is that LGBTQ+ people are strong and vibrant, beautiful and powerful, creative, joyful and loving. We deserve to thrive professionally and personally, and our youth deserve the opportunity to define their own futures. The National LGBTQ+ Bar is here to stay, to be in solidarity with you all through challenging times and celebratory ones. We deeply believe that love, justice, and community will always be the way forward. We invite you to join us, to engage with us, and to support us as we find our collective way.”
Anya L. (they/she), Executive Director, National LGBTQ+ Bar Association and Foundation
