Member Spotlight

President’s Message

The IALGJ is busy working in conjunction with the National LGBT Bar Association and our California members to plan for our upcoming Annual Meeting, which will be held in conjunction with the Lavender Law Conference. The conference and career fair are scheduled for September 8 – 11, 2011 at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, 1755 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood, California. Details about the conference are available at the National LGBT Bar’s website. Please consider registering for the conference and attending the interesting panel discussions. Once again, some of our members will be serving as panelists.

The IALGJ Annual Meeting is scheduled for Friday, September 9, 2011 at 12:00 noon at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel. This is a working luncheon meeting, for members only. The precise room location will be determined when we are closer in time to the meeting. However, please let us know on the 2011 dues and membership form whether you believe you will be attending so we can plan appropriately.

While the details for the location of the Annual Dinner are still not definite, our
host-city chair, Zeke Zeidler, assures me that several interesting venues are being explored. The Annual Dinner will be held Friday night, September 9th and spouses, partners, or whatever your state allows you to call yourselves, are very much welcome!

We have a tentative plan for a social event for the evening of Thursday, September 8th, so consider flying in early!

If you wish to stay at the conference hotel, please make your hotel reservations early, by either calling the toll free reservations number at 1-800-266-9432 or using the Hotel & Travel link on the conference registration page. The group code is LAVLAVA.

Last year we met in Miami Beach, and while it was very hot, we had a great time not only conducting the formal business of the IALGJ, but also socializing and sharing experiences.  Miami members David Young and Scott Bernstein graciously opened their lovely home to us for a great party on Thursday evening. A big thank you to David and Scott! The next day we held our Annual Meeting at the Loew’s Hotel, followed that evening by a great Annual Dinner at Emeril’s. We had judges from as far as Alaska and Texas join us down in Florida. Kudos to our Former President, Mark King Leban, who coordinated our Florida planning.  In addition to the meeting and social events, we had several member judges participating as panelists at the Lav Law conference.

I want to thank our Secretary, Larnzell Martin, who has done a wonderful job since our last meeting of sending out emails updating our members of newsworthy developments.