Pauli Murray LGBTQ+ Bar Association Fundraising
All of the products that are in this collection are fundraising products for the Non-Profit Pauli Murray LGBTQ+ Bar Association.
About a year ago, the immediate past president of the North Carolina Bar Association, Clayton Morgan, held a meeting to inform members of the NCBA’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee that he was canceling SOGI’s drag trivia event. Clayton Morgan stated that he had canceled the event because he didn’t want the NCBA or SOGI to be “perceived as trying to advance [the LGBTQ] agenda on the world.” Additionally, Clayton Morgan stated that holding the event would negatively impact the NCBA’s backed legislative agenda. The NCBA established SOGI in 2021, tasking the committee to “work to oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression; to promote the expertise and advancement of LGBTQ+ legal professionals; and to serve the larger LGBTQ+ community through providing legal education, resources, and information to the legal community and the public.”
A year has passed since the NCBA informed its SOGI Committee that they were canceling the event, and NCBA leadership has not taken accountability for the pain they inflicted on the LGBTQ+ community and has yet to issue an apology. Therefore, we have decided to host our second annual Pride drag event on the evening of the first day of their annual meeting, which is being hosted in Charlotte this year, hoping their leadership hears our message.
Our message is clear: we are UNAPOLOGETICALLY STILL HERE! LGBTQ+ legal professionals will not be erased; our culture belongs in professional settings and drag is a part of our culture—it is part of our resistance. Our allies have stood with us and will continue to do so. We are not alone; we have a community that embraces us for who we are and doesn’t ask us to hide a part of our identities. We can confidently say that we will not give up fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, especially trans rights. We will not sacrifice any members of our community because we know that not only are we stronger when we are united and that we will never truly be free until every member of our community has attained the same freedoms and rights.
The Pauli Murray LGBTQ+ Bar Association (PMBA), established in April 2020, continues to condemn the NCBA’s decision to cancel the networking drag and trivia event planned for June 8, 2023, and urges its leadership to issue a sincere apology—an apology that has concrete steps to remedy the anti-LGBTQ stance it took by canceling its June 8, 2023 event. PMBA continues to urge the NCBA, as well as law firms and companies, to take a stance on legislation that affects our LGBTQ+ community—we strongly encourage them to issue a statement opposing legislation that discriminates against the LGBTQ+ community, most importantly, legislation that aims to erase our trans community. We also encourage allies and LGBTQ+ legal professionals to contact NCBA leadership to urge them to make the necessary changes to fully support LGBTQ+ individuals. We further encourage everyone to demand their representatives, both local and national, to take a stance opposing anti-LGBTQ legislation, specifically legislation aimed at erasing trans bodies. Most importantly, we also encourage everyone to VOTE!
