Calendar of Events
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Billy Bean "Going the Other Way"
7:30 p.m., Main Lounge, Moulton Union
Reception to follow
Billy Bean played major league baseball from 1987 to 1995. After years of living secretly, he came out publicly in 1999. His story was front-page news in The New York Times, and subsequently on a nationally televised feature with Diane Sawyer. He is the only living former major league baseball player to acknowledge his homosexuality. He has been working actively to try and dispel the myth and stereotypes that follow people of diversity.
Sponsored by the departments of English, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Athletics; Health Services; Counseling Service; Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance; and the Queer-Trans Resource Center.
Open to the public and free of charge.
Gay Marriage Series
Mary Bonauto - April 26, 2007 7:30 PM
Ending Marriage Discrimination: A Work in Progress
Mary Bonauto has been the Civil Rights Project Director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1990. Her practice concentrates on impact litigation for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, as well as people living with HIV or AIDS. She has litigated widely in the state and federal courts and agencies of the six New England states since 1990. In 1999, she and two Vermont co-counsel won a ruling that same-sex couples are entitled to all of the benefits and protections of civil marriage in the case of Baker v. State of Vermont. This ruling prompted the Vermont legislature to enact the nation’s first “civil union” law for same-sex couples. She was lead counsel in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, which resulted in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declaring that prohibiting civil marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional.
Ms. Bonauto is a graduate of Hamilton College and Northeastern University School of Law. She serves on the Family Law Steering Committee of the Boston Bar Association and is the North American Co-chair of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association. In addition, she is a member of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Working Group on Racial Profiling.
(location of lecture: Kresge Auditorium in the Visual Arts Center)
Previously:
Marvin Ellison -
"The Queering of Marriage: A Progressive Religious Perspective"
February 20, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Rev. Marvin M. Ellison, Ph.D. is the Willard S. Bass Professor of Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary
Rev. Ellison, a native of Tennessee, completed his doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary (New York) and teaches Christian social ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister. He founded the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination in Maine to support civil rights protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Currently, he co-chairs the Maine Interfaith Council for Reproductive Choices, an interfaith network of religious leaders who support reproductive rights for women as a matter of moral conscience and religious freedom. His publications include Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis (The Pilgrim Press, 2004), Body and Soul: Rethinking Sexuality as Justice-Love (The Pilgrim Press, 2003), and Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality (Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). He lives in Portland, Maine with his partner Frank Brooks, a clinical social worker.
(location of lecture: Maine Lounge)
November 3, 2006
Evan Wolfson, Gay Rights Activist and Executive Director of Freedom to Marry to speak at Common Hour
Evan Wolfson is the Executive Director of Freedom to Marry, the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Mr. Wolfson worked for the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund in New York City, where he represented several gay marriage cases in front of the Supreme Court. In 2000, Wolfson was honored by the National Law Journal as one of "100 most influential attorneys in America."