Lambda Legal Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Southern Regional Office

thegavoice.com:

Last Sunday (September 18), members of Atlanta’s LGBTQ community gathered for the 25th anniversary of Lambda Legal’s Southern Regional Office.

The fundraising event, which was held at the Intercontinental Buckhead, highlighted both the past and present work the LGBTQ legal advocacy group has been involved with. “It was a way to connect people who are interested in this work as well as to raise the funds that we need,” Michael Schutt, the Southern Regional Director, told Georgia Voice. “Lambda Legal is mostly funded by individual giving through companies or law firms as well as bequests in people’s wills and estates.

We don’t receive any federal or state money because, well, we’re often suing the federal government or states. This means that every single year we have to continue fundraising to make sure we can do our work.

Being an organization that is employing some of the best legal minds in the country, this means that that work can be expensive… Part of this was making sure the community knew that everything that they were investing in us – whether it was their time, their talent, their money or resources – to make sure that they knew it was money, time, and brainpower really well spent.” The event highlighted the 25-year history of Lambda Legal’s Southern arm by highlighting some of their significant cases based in Atlanta, like removing sodomy from the books, the Vandy Beth Glenn case (which established the first understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination as sex discrimination), addressing police misconduct during the Eagle raid, and a case involving couple Derek Mize and Jonathan Gregg (who were in attendance with their family), who sued the State Department after it refused to recognize