programs

   upcoming

   2005-06

   2004-05

   2003-04

   2002-03

   2001-02

publications

Events With Williams Project Speakers

If you'd like someone from the Williams Project to speak at your event, please contact williamsinstitute@law.ucla.edu with details of your event and topics you'd like the speaker to cover.

March 3, 2006
Marriage for Same-Sex Couples in the United States and Europe
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
UCLA, Haines Hall Room 279
Presenters: Lee Badgett (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Economics)
Gary Gates (UCLA, Williams Project on Sexual Orientation and the Law)

Professor Badgett will discuss her qualitative research about the meaning of marriage among same-sex couples in Europe. Dr. Gates will provide insights about marriage for same-sex couples in the United States based on his demographic research using Census data. Presented by The Sociology of the Family Working Group.

February 21, 2006
LGBT in the Workplace
UCLA LGBT Resource Center
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Guest speakers include:
David Taylor, Executive Director, Out @ Warner Bros. Studios
Jennifer Lake, Recruiter, Warner Bros.
Amy Ross, Ph.D., Mentoring Program Coordinator, National Organization of Lesbian and Gay Scientists and Technology Professionals
Zak Kramer, 2004 Williams Teaching Fellow

Topics include:
Should you de-queer your resume?
How to present yourself when interviewing
Network, Network, Network!
Evaluating the workplace environment
On the job - in or out?
What are your rights?

February 11, 2006
ACLU of Southern California Membership Conference: Taking Back the Truth
Loyola Law School
10:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
$35 Conference Ticket

Brad Sears will be speaking on the "New Discrimination" roundtable. The panel will discuss the politics of LGBT and racial issues.

December 5, 2005
Assembly Select Committee on Hate Crimes
Renberg Theater at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center: The Village
1125 N. McCadden Place
Los Angeles, CA 90038
6:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

This hearing will explore the phenomenon of hate crimes and bias motivated incidents in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. The hearing will involve personal testimony from hate crime victims, advocates, federal and state agencies, and community based organizations. Assemblymember Judy Chu will chair this meeting. Speakers include Eddie Gutierrez of Equality California and the Williams Project's Brad Sears.

December 2, 2005
Working Towards Equality: Responding to Sexual Minority Domestic Violence
Wilsonville, OR
Brad Sears and Gary Gates will provide an overview of sexual orientation law and policy, discussing the demographics of Oregon's sexual and gender minority population and profiling the significant gay rights legal cases of the past quarter. Their talk starts off a day of training geared toward judges, law enforcement, attorneys, treatment providers, community corrections and advocates. National and local speakers will highlight the unique difficulties and obstacles sexual minority domestic violence victims face when interacting with the criminal justice system.
See the brochure for the program (216k pdf)

November 29, 2005
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Emerging Law and Legal Issues
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
In 2001, the Sexual Orientation Subcommittee of the Judicial Council Access and Fairness Advisory Committee issued California’s comprehensive report on the treatment of gays and lesbian court users and employees. The report found subtle and not so subtle forms of bias toward gays and lesbians. This second broadcast in a two-part series will cover emerging laws related to sexual orientation and gender identity that impact the courts. While the discussion will include relevant case law of interest to judges and attorneys, others may also find the content of this broadcast helpful. During this broadcast, participants will be able to discuss emerging law and legal issues that involve sexual orientation and gender identity, describe both legal challenges to domestic partner laws and benefits to same-sex partners and identify how the new juror questionnaire for criminal cases.

November 4-5, 2005
Gay Men's Wellness Summit
Long Beach, CA
Organized by the California State Office of AIDS, this summit covers gay men’s health issues. The goal of this summit is to bring together select gay leaders from across California to discuss the current state of wellness of the gay male community today, and to explore what we can all do directly and indirectly to improve gay men’s health. Speakers include Brad Sears, Dan Savage, noted columnist and author of several books, including The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family, and Dr. Thomas J. Coates with the Division of Infectious Diseases at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, who will be speaking about the state of HIV prevention today.

October 31 - November 1, 2005
The National GLBT Business Convention
Dallas, TX
Senior Research Fellow Gary Gates will be speaking as the Main Convention Luncheon Speaker at the National GLBT Business Convention. As one of the leading forums for top entrepreneurs and executives, the convention will bring together members of the GLBT business community to discuss issues on workplace advocacy, GLBT recruitment, GLBT vendor programs, political influence and entrepreneurial development which are all vital to our business recognition and success.

October 27-29, 2005
Lavender Law Conference
San Diego, CA
Lee Badgett, Gary Gates and Brad Sears will host a workshop on Friday, October 28 at 3:45 entitled  Using Empirical Evidence to Advance the LGBT Debate. This panel will present and explore cutting-edge quantitative research about LGBT people and policy issues. Topics covered will include the economics of same-sex marriage; the demographics of the same-sex couple population in the U.S., Canada, and Europe; and how "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" impacts the military's recruitment.

October 18, 2005
Gay Hollywood Panel Discussion
6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Hollywood Entertainment Museum
Holning Lau will be speaking on a panel titled "Gay Rights: Government's Changing Attitudes?" at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. This panel is a part of the museum's major exhibition called 'Gay Hollywood,' which looks at the phenomenon of being gay in Hollywood, both onscreen and off. Other panelists include Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg, Eddie Gutierrez (Equality California) and Damon Romine (GLAAD).

October 13, 2005
Ending Discrimination Against Gay People
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. PST
Online Panel Discussion
Amnesty International and movingideas.org host this discussion about the issue of impunity for abuses and discrimination against LGBT people. Panelists will answer questions about everything from police abuse and misconduct to employment discrimination to youth issues. Visiting Scholar Lee Badgett will be participating, along with Craig A. Bowman, Executive Director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, Susana T. Fried, Program Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and Ariel Herrera, acting program director of OUTfront.

August 19 - August 21, 2005
Staying Alive 2005: Positive Leadership Summit
A unique national conference for people living with HIV of all races, ages, genders, sexual orientations and backgrounds, Staying Alive is the only national HIV/AIDS conference in the United States organized specifically by and for people living with HIV/AIDS. With dozens of workshops on policy, community, leadership and living, Brad Sears spoke on a panel on the legal and civil rights of persons with HIV/AIDS.

August 9, 2005
KNOW HIV/AIDS Stories of Life: A Creative Briefing for CBS, UPN and Paramount Television
KNOW HIV/AIDS combines the expertise of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leader in public health information and research, with Viacom's media brands to foster awareness of HIV/AIDS and its prevention. Brad Sears spoke on a panel called AIDS in America, with people with HIV/AIDS and those who work with them sharing their stories with network executives.

August 7 - August 11, 2005
Joint Statistical Meetings 2005: Using our Discipline to Enhance Social Welfare
Gary Gates and Lee Badgett were part of a panel discussion entitled “Counting Out Loud: Data Collection Issues Essential for Improving the Welfare of Sexual Minorities” at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Minneapolis. Much of the little scientific information available about sexual minorities in the US derives from surveys or other studies of limited parts of the population. Most of the rest of what passes as systematic information is derived from marketing surveys--which raise serious questions about biases--and from even more informal sources. When U.S. society appears to be showing increasing acceptance of sexual minorities, their legal and human rights are points of intense debate. In the absence of substantial information about sexual minorities, the public is left prey to stereotypes. This panel sought to point a way toward more informed discussion. It focused on three issues: the scientific and scholarly needs that argue for including questions related to sexual preference in government surveys and other data collection efforts, information on difficulties in deriving "standard" definitions to use in classifying sexual minorities, and results of existing work. The Joint Statistical Meetings comprise an annual gathering of four major statistics professional organizations: the American Statistical Association, The International Biometric Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Statistical Society of Canada.

July 23, 2005
American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting
Amy Atchison, Librarian for The Williams Collection and Reading Room, spoke before approximately 175 law librarians from around the country at the annual meeting for the American Association of Law Libraries about the origins and maintenance of The Williams Project Reading Room Collection. Her talk was part of a larger panel on strategies for building legal collections on emerging social issues.

June 22, 2005
Hunter College Party Honoring William B. Rubenstein

June 10, 2005
Pride Shabbat at Beth Chayim Chadashim
Williams Fellow Zachary Kramer was the guest speaker for the Pride Shabbat at the synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) on June 10. The oldest lesbian and gay synagogue in the country, Williams Fellow Zachary Kramer was the guest speaker for the Pride Shabbat. The speech touched on the history of Gay Pride and the current state of the gay rights movement.

June 3, 2005
Canadian Population Society Annual Meeting
Senior Research Fellow Gary Gates presented his paper “Benchmarking Same-sex Unmarried Partner Data with other LGBT Survey Data” at the annual meetings of the Canadian Population Society (CPS). CPS is Canada’s premier organization for demographic and population studies. The meetings were held in London, Ontario as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Gates’ presentation was featured in a session dedicated to exploring issues associated with measuring sexual orientation. His study, co-authored with Christopher Carpenter, compares demographic characteristics of gay men and lesbians identified using three different data sources: Census 2000 (US), the 2001 California Health Interview Survey, and the Urban Men’s Health Study. It is one of the first studies on same-sex partnership rates using large, randomized government data sets. The study explores how such partnership rates affect characteristics like educational attainment and income.

May 18, 2004
Valley Dems United Meeting
Brad Sears spoke on a panel entitled "The Politics of Gay Marriage" along with Williams Project Visiting Scholar Yuval Merin, Geoff Kors, Executive Director of Equality California, Jeff Bisseri, State Chairperson of the Log Cabin Republicans and Brian Bennett, Founder of the Republican Unity Coalition.