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WILLIAMS PROJECT STAFF RECEIVES AWARDS
FROM BEING ALIVE (Oct 10) and LGLA (Oct 16)

Next week, William B. Rubenstein, Williams Project Faculty Chair, and R. Bradley Sears, Williams Project Executive Director, will receive awards from two community organizations.

BEING ALIVE LOS ANGELES 12TH ANNUAL SPIRIT OF HOPE AWARDS

On Sunday October 10, 2004, Being Alive will hosts its annual Spirit of Hope Awards ceremony. Being Alive People receives community nominations for remarkable leaders in the AIDS field and honors them each year with a "Spirit of Hope" award, acknowledging the work and dedication of those who have made significant contributions to the lives of people with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles County. This years honorees include Dr. Eric Bing, Rabbai Denise L. Eger, Michael Niemeyer, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and R. Bradley Sears, Williams Project Executive Director. Location: SilverScreen Theatre, Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, 5:00-8:30, Sunday October 10. For more information and to purchase tickets go to: http://www.beingalivela.org/spiritofhope2004/.

LGLA 25TH ANNIVERSARY GALA

On Saturday, October 16, 2004, LGLA will celebrate its Silver Anniversary with a gala dinner at Astra West in the Pacific Design Center. LGLA will honor its founding members; William B. Rubenstein, the Faculty Chair of the Charles R.Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA; and Martha Matthews, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. California Assembymember Mark Leno, who proposed the California Marriage License Non-Discrimination Act will provide remarks regarding his efforts to secure the rights of California gays and lesbians. For more information, and to purchase tickets go to: http://www.lhr.org/calendar.htm.

R. BRADLEY SEARS, Being Alive Spirit of Hope Award

R. Bradley (Brad) Sears is the Executive Director of the Charles R. Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, a national think-tank at UCLA School of Law dedicated to promoting legal scholarship, public policy analysis, and education programs on sexual orientation and the law and public policy. In addition, he teaches courses in disability law and sexual orientation law at UCLA School of Law. Sears graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Sears' work on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS started when he was in high school, where he worked as a receptionist for the only medical clinic serving people with HIV/AIDS and providing testing in Kansas City, Missouri. During college and law school, his work on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS included being an active member of ACT UP New Haven and New York; running the AIDS hotline at AIDS Project New Haven; serving as the route coordinator for ACT UP Boston's then-unauthorized needle exchange program; and doing AIDS -related legal internships with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Jamaica Plain Legal Services Center, the ACLU's National Gay and Lesbian and AIDS Project, and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.

After law school, Sears moved to Los Angeles and clerked for the Hon J. Spencer Letts of the Central District of California. Then, in 1996, he raised money from several foundations to create the HIV Legal Checkup Project, a legal services program dedicated to empowering people living with HIV-disease to address and prevent legal problems. The HIV Legal Checkup Project provided preventive legal services to over 800 clients per year and over 100 UCLA School of Law students received training through volunteering with the Project.

In 1997, Sears also became the Discrimination & Confidentiality Attorney for the HIV/AIDS Legal Services Alliance of Los Angeles (HALSA). In this capacity, he litigated and settled HIV-discrimination cases, ending the discriminatory practices of a number of medical practices, schools, and residential care facilities. His work also included settlements that resulted in mandated HIV-training for 22,000 Los Angeles County employees, the overturning of the City of Los Angeles' discriminatory denial of licenses to HIV-positive massage therapists, and the end of a major credit reporting company's policy of disclosing consumers' HIV-status on credit reports.

Sears has been a member, volunteer, Board Member, and Board President of Being Alive Los Angeles. Sears became a member of Being Alive in 1995, the same year he was diagnosed with AIDS. After volunteering on the Speakers Bureau and with advocacy efforts, he joined the Board in 1999 and became Board President in 2002. When he took office, the organization only had one other member on its board, a budget deficit, a dwindling staff, and was facing pressure to close. By the time Sears finished his tenure as Board President, there were ten members on the Board, a budget surplus, two new staff positions, and a new Executive Director. Sears created the current Development and Advocacy committees at Being Alive, which led to three successful Spirit of Hope events and a new energy for the organization's traditional role in HIV/AIDS advocacy.

Sears has given hundreds of presentations to community groups, lawyers, medical practitioners, and advocates on HIV/AIDS legal issues and has written a number of articles on HIV/AIDS issues for the HIV and gay community press. He has also served on the advisory boards of HALSA, USC's AIDS Education Training Center, and CorrectHelp, an organization dedicated to the needs of incarcerated persons living with HIV/AIDS.

WILLIAM B. RUBENSTEIN, LGLA President's Award

William B. Rubenstein is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and the Faculty Chair of the Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy. Professor Rubenstein is a leading national expert in two distinct fields: sexual orientation law and complex litigation. He teaches courses on Civil Procedure; Class Actions; Remedies; Law & Sexuality; and Constitutional Law.

Professor Rubenstein graduated magna cum laude from Yale College and Harvard Law School. After law school, Professor Rubenstein clerked for the Honorable Stanley Sporkin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He then worked as a staff attorney (1987-90) for, and Director (1990-95) of, the American Civil Liberties Union's national Lesbian and Gay Rights Project and AIDS Project. At the ACLU, he litigated precedent-setting cases aimed at combating discrimination against lesbians, gay men, and people with HIV disease, and he oversaw the ACLU's nationwide work in these areas. Professor Rubenstein argued Braschi v. Stahl Associates Co., 74 N.Y.2d 201 (1989), the first case in which the highest court in any state ever recognized a gay couple as the legal equivalent of a family. While in practice, Professor Rubenstein taught courses on sexual orientation law at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School, on AIDS-related law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and he was a full-time visiting professor from practice for two years at Stanford Law School.

Professor Rubenstein joined the UCLA faculty in 1997. Since arriving at UCLA, he co-founded and is the Faculty Chair of The Charles R. Williams Project on Sexual Orientation and the Law, the nation's first "think tank" on sexual orientation law. Professor Rubenstein is also an Adviser to The American Law Institute's Project on Aggregate Litigation and Class Actions. In 2004, Professor Rubenstein taught as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.

Professor Rubenstein has published numerous articles, book chapters, book reviews, policy reports, and opinion pieces on complex litigation and on sexual orientation and AIDS law, as well as the following books - Cases and Materials on Sexual Orientation and The Law (1997); The Rights of People Who Are HIV Positive (with Eisenberg and Gostin, 1996); Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Law (1993); and AIDS Agenda: Emerging Issues in Civil Rights (co-editor with Hunter, 1992).

Professor Rubenstein's expertise is widely acknowledged: he has testified before Congress and state legislatures, served as an expert witness in class action cases, appeared on numerous television and radio programs, lectured extensively throughout the United States, and is a regular contributor to the op/ed pages of the nation's leading newspapers. He has won numerous awards, including the 1997 John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching at Stanford Law School, the 2002 Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching at UCLA, and the Award of Courage from the American Foundation for AIDS Research. In 2000, California Law/Business named him one of the Top Twenty California Lawyers Under 40.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Professor Rubenstein lives with his partner, James MacDonald, and their dog Frida, in the Hollywood Hills.