up front Photo: Dakota Fine
“I’VE MET A LOT OF PEOPLE IN MY LIFE ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND A COMMON THREAD OF THE PEOPLE I ADMIRE …
UP CLOSE & PERSONAL
are people who are proud and do things with love, who feel a sense of responsibility to others. What sensible person could be against that? The desire to love and be responsible to another person, to commit to another human being — these are virtues. That’s why we need nationwide marriage equality now.”
KATE OAKLEY HRC’s Legislative Counsel, State and Municipal Advocacy, and author, Municipal Equality Index
— Renowned chef and author Anthony Bourdain in an Americans for Marriage Equality campaign video. Host of CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, he won a 2014 Peabody Award for distinguished achievement and meritorious public service. The campaign, led by HRC, provides up-to-the-minute information about marriage equality to lawmakers, legal experts, media and grassroots supporters.
Wife Carrie. Organic vegetable farmer. Photo: John Parra
Favorite film Mean Girls. Political hero “Hillary Clinton, hands down.” What she likes most about working on the MEI “My favorite part is when I see cities really getting into the competition. Some of the mayors will actually trash talk each other. They’ll say, ‘I’ll be damned if I let that city beat me.’” Another favorite part “When a city official tells me: ‘We had absolutely convinced ourselves that we were a very inclusive place, but now that we’ve seen our score, we realize how much more work we have to do.’” Law school standout While in law school, she led a protest of the then-Virginia attorney general’s opinion that public universities must abandon any policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The protest drew local and national media coverage. Real change “After being a law fellow here at HRC, I knew this is where I wanted to come after law school. I saw real change being made, and I wanted to be a part of that.”
Photo: Phil Long / AP
And what she’s known for at the office “Compulsive color-coding: legal briefs, the entire MEI database, my schedule — I do them all.”
Oakley works closely with cities of all sizes across the country to make their cities more equal, including those where state law is severely lacking on LGBT equality. She has a B.A. in economics from Smith College and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law.
8,000 ATHLETES
M
ore than 8,000 LGBT competitors from 65-plus countries descended on Cleveland, Ohio, for the ninth annual Gay Games — for events in track, cycling, ice hockey, tennis, bodybuilding and more. A platinum sponsor of the Gay Games, HRC hosted the Official Opening Ceremonies brunch. HRC and its Athletes for Equality program also sponsored the marathon and half-marathon events, which included mile markers detailing HRC’s efforts to achieve equality at home and abroad. Inspired by the games, a number of local small businesses in northeast Ohio signed a letter in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The next Gay Games? Paris, 2018.
Look this fall for the release of the latest Municipal Equality Index on www.hrc.org.
WWW.HRC.ORG
LATE SUMMER/EARLY FALL 2014
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