OutRight Action International returned to its birthplace ahead of its 30th anniversary year, touting its accomplishments working toward global LGBT rights at two fundraising mixers in San Francisco and Sonoma last weekend.
“I value the transformative power of LGBTQI organizations,” OutRight Executive Director Jessica Stern told guests who attended the May 10 event in San Francisco. “They connect you with communities and they make you safer.”
She talked about the impact OutRight, founded in San Francisco as the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in 1990, has had over the years.
The organization has published groundbreaking research documenting discrimination and persecution of LGBT people around the world, recommended solutions, and has held governments accountable for human rights abuses against LGBT people, Katie Hultquist, a lesbian who is OutRight’s West Coast director, told the audience.
OutRight is the first and only LGBT organization to be granted consultative status at the United Nations.
Providing an example, Stern spoke about a report published last year that asked: How many LGBT organizations were legally registered?
“Legal registration means access to funding. Legal registration means that you can hire staff. Legal registration, if you are lucky enough to get it, means recognition from your government,” said Stern. She noted that LGBT organizations in 55 countries around the world can’t register and, therefore, their LGBT work operates clandestinely behind the cover of health, youth, or other type of organization.
“In all those countries, if you are running an LGBTQI organization you can face arrest, your organization can be banned, or something worse can happen to you,” she said.
Being seen by an organization that advocates for you “that has a transformative impact on you,” said Stern, adding that the report is reshaping how donors fund LGBT organizations and provide a pathway to prevent crises.
“We don’t want to be just responding to violence. We don’t want to just be responding to crises,” Stern concluded. “We want to prevent crises. We want to make our community safer. That’s what OutRight does.”
The organization operates on a nearly $3.5 million annual budget and raised $25,000 from the two events attended by more than 150 people.
OutRight had a transformative effect on Ricky “Rikki” Nathanson, founder of Trans Research, Education, Advocacy and Training, the event’s keynote speaker.
TREAT is a transgender advocacy group in Zimbabwe.
The transgender Zimbabwean woman was granted asylum in the United States at the beginning of this year with OutRight’s assistance after suffering years of harassment and assault by authorities in her homeland.
She is currently the director of HIV/AIDS prevention and outreach at Casa Ruby in Washington, D.C.
“All the work they do around the world is fantastic,” Nathanson told the Bay Area Reporter. “They are really doing marvelous work.”
Omair Paul, a 28-year-old gay man who attended the event while on vacation from New York, said OutRight’s work is important.
“You may not know the nitty-gritty of the work [but] to be made aware of that work and also support it and interact,” he said, is crucial.
Julie Dorf, a 54-year-old lesbian who founded OutRight, expressed hope for the future despite the current political climate around the world.
“In this incredibly globalized world there is just no doubt that the trend is in our direction,” Dorf said at the event. “We are going to see progress continue everywhere. Outright is definitely the leading international NGO still to this day.”
Learn more about OutRight Action International at https://outrightinternational.org.
Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at Skype: heather.cassell or oitwnews@gmail.com.
Originally published by the Bay Area Reporter.
