HONORING
SUCCESS
Outlaw
dinner celebrates three in area’s gay community
Three
people prominent in Western New York’s gay and lesbian community were honored
on the evening of Wednesday, April 27, as Outlaw – the Law School’s student
association for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people – celebrated
its ninth annual recognition dinner at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo.
The
honorees were Barbra A. Kavanaugh ’83, confidential law clerk to New York
State Supreme Court Justice John F. O’Donnell; John H. Morgan, executive director
of the Men of Color Health Awareness Project; and James A. Ver Steeg, executive
director of the Pride Center of Western New York.
Under
the leadership of first-year law student Heath Miller, Outlaw was revitalized
this year. Previously part of the Progressive Law Society, it is now an independent
organization. In his remarks, Miller expressed his hope for an alliance among
the groups throughout the University that support gay and lesbian students,
including the undergraduate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance
and a graduate student group similar to Outlaw in the Medical School.
In
accepting their awards, two honorees used the occasion to detail the work
of their areas of work.
Morgan
said the Men of Color Health Awareness Project, or MOCHA, “started as a cubicle
in Rochester” and has grown in eight years to become the largest organization
of its kind outside of New York City. The program, with an annual budget of
more than $1 million, provides services and support to people of color in
the Rochester and Buffalo areas.
Morgan
spoke of the barriers he and his colleagues had to overcome in getting the
project going, such as existing AIDS and other organizations asserting that
an effort specifically targeting people of color would be redundant to their
work. But MOCHA, Morgan said, is “for people of color, by people of color,”
and thus is more effective in its demographic niche.
He
reminded the law students in attendance, “You are advocates for the legal
system. You are advocates for consumers. Never forget that is who you are.”
Ver
Steeg, who worked previously for 10 years as director of public affairs for
the local chapter of the American Automobile Association, said the Pride Center
has been open for a year and a half. The Pride Center, funded through the
New York State Department of Health, is an educational outreach to the LGBT
community with special emphasis on substance abuse prevention. A recent program,
for example, targeted the street drug crystal meth.
He
spoke more broadly about the question of what makes LGBT people – who represent
both sexes and all races and sexual orientations – a cohesive community. “We
define the ties that bind us through unfortunate adversity,” he said. “The
one thing that compels this community to cohesion is the fact that LGBT persons
are considered second-class citizens.”
To
combat that, he urged those in attendance to network as gay lawyers, to build
the relationships that will “make sure people understand your fundamental
humanity.”
The
third honoree, Kavanaugh, was kept from the dinner by a schedule conflict.
She has a long career in neighborhood legal services and poverty law, and
served for three years on the Buffalo Common Council. Kavanaugh also ran the
state attorney general’s office in Buffalo for three years. She and her partner
of 20 years, Lynn Edelman, were the first same-sex couple in Erie County to
jointly adopt children.
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