The Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois (HLAI) and the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago (LAGBAC) co-sponsored the networking event "Velada Entre Amigos y Colegas" ("Evening Among Friends and Colleagues") at the law firm of Quarles & Brady LLP April 30.
The gathering allowed Hispanic LGBT attorneys and law school students to network as it set out to encourage membership to both LAGBAC and HLAI. The event was the first of its kind in a series of efforts to raise awareness and get Hispanic LGBTQ attorneys and future attorneys involved in issues surrounding the Hispanic LGBTQ community in Ill. Hispanic LGBT attorneys, law students and their supporters were welcome to attend.
In creating the event, attorney Roberto M. Romero-Perez, who serves as co-chair of the LGBT Rights Committee for HLAI, said he and his law partners didn't know how many Hispanic lawyers were in Chicago or how many work in the community. He said initially he thought it was a low number.
With HLAI's mission to support members of the LGBT community who are members of the Hispanic Lawyers and members' clients with LGBT issues, along with focus on community outreach and the ability to support the Hispanic LGBT community through education, representation or support; Romero-Perez wanted to see how many would get involved with the mission through the event.
"I just hope we convince enough people to get some work done," said Romero-Perez.
Angelica Lopez was the evening's main speaker. Lopez is a staff attorney within an immigrants and workers' rights practice group and a former recipient of an HLAI law school scholarship. She and her wife, Claudia, stand as one of the plaintiff couples in Darby v. Orr, the lawsuit Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund filed on behalf of 16 Illinois couples challenging the state's law restricting same sex couples from obtaining marriage licenses and preventing acknowledgement of same-sex marriage.
In her presentation, during the evening's event, Lopez shared her life story for the first time ever. In detail, beginning from both her parents' upbringing, to her upbringing with no thought to sexual orientation, to coming out as a young adult, meeting her partner, the challenges they had with their families, having children and facing issues on the definition of a parent, all the way to her current standing especially in the face of the legal system. When approached to tell her account at the event, she had no hesitations about participating.
"I was really nervous coming up to today and I wasn't really sure if people were going to find it relevant, people were going to find it intriguing, if it was going to resonate," said Lopez. "Because of the audience, I did want to share my family's history because I think it's good to understand this intersection. This is what it's about: The intersection between our latino-ness and our gayness. So I wanted to be sure to provide that context, but I also wanted to really talk about the things that led up to us deciding to be a part of this lawsuit and the struggles that we went though as a couple and all of the milestones we overcame before we actually came to the point where we said, 'yea, we want to be a part of this bigger advocacy effort."
Professionally, she said, her passion has always been in immigration work and immigration law and immigrants' struggles. She described her life, as another world where she is balancing different concerns.
"I'm constantly balancing our identity, our family; those are the everyday concerns with respect to where's our daughter going to go to school, what if we need to take the kids to the hospital, who's going to be there, how do we protect our family, how do we protect each other," said Lopez. "Those to me feel separate, but ideally I'd like to be able to merge my professional and family life in a more concrete way."
Lopez said after sharing her story at this past event, she is ready to share it more and sees it as a responsibility to share her story, especially being a part of the lawsuit at hand.
Nicole Bashor, vice president of LAGBAC and chair of its outreach committee, said as lawyers it is beneficial to have different perspectives besides the one of white gay and lesbian attorneys. LAGBAC's goal, she added, is to bridge the gap with other bar associations in order to gain diverse membership.
"I think it's helpful for us in the LGBT community to understand that people who are racially diverse have our struggle plus and it's not only the LGBT issue, but it's family issues as Angelica was talking about and cultural issues that white individuals as a whole don't face," said Bashor. "Not to say it's not there, but just there are very different struggles and it's always helpful to have a reminder of what the struggle is. I think it's important to develop a community of people who understand that and can be supportive of that, especially as individuals who are discriminated against in different ways."
This event she said was a great testament of understanding the struggle of other's and things that are important to one another.
"It's so personal you can't help but connect to it," Bashor said of Lopez's account. "She's really a wonderful example of someone who's courageous and in the face of a lot of family pressure, and work, and these other struggles, and her kids, and the adoption situation, it's very courageous of her and Claudia to carry that banner, especially in light of all the family situations."
