Beyond the Wedding Ring: LGBT Activism in the Age of Obama

From Washington University in St. Louis News & Information By Barbara Rea Oct. 14, 2009 -- Urvashi Vaid, one of the most visible faces of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement, will deliver the Spencer T. Olin Fellows annual lecture at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 in Graham Chapel. Her talk is titled "Beyond the Wedding Ring: LGBT Activism in the Age of Obama." The event is free and open to the public. In 1979, Vaid was a 21-year-old college graduate whose strong streak of activism, exhibited from an early age, was channeled into the feminist movement and encompassed lesbian and gay rights. By the mid-1980s, Vaid was an attorney working for the ACLU's National Prison Project. She left that position to become the public information director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the oldest national LGBT civil rights organization in the country. In 1989, she became its director and then executive director of the NGLTF "think tank" policy institute. Thirty years later, Vaid is as passionate as ever about human rights and social justice issues and continues to work toward real equality for all. Throughout her career, Vaid has fought for equal rights for gays and lesbians. In her 1996 groundbreaking book, "Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation," she lays out her view that true liberation will come only from institutional transformation. After leaving the NGLTF, Vaid became deputy director of the governance and civil society unit of the Ford Foundation. Since 2005, she has led the Arcus Foundation, whose mission includes the achievement of social justice that is inclusive of sexual orientation, gender identity and race. Born in New Delhi, India, Vaid arrived in the United States with her family as an 8-year-old. She earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College and a law degree from Northeastern University.