Aspen Gay Ski Week, while known for its rowdy parties, is predominantly a fundraiser to support AspenOUT, a nonprofit providing mental health care and scholarships for LGBTQ+ youth and grants for queer-serving nonprofits.
Valerie Sullan, who serves on the AspenOUT board, is drawing attention to legal challenges she sees as critical in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. A retired lawyer, Sullan also serves on the board for Lambda Legal, which fights for the legal rights of queer communities.
Sullan spoke with All Things Considered Anchor Hall Zander at MOLLIE Aspen on Wednesday as part of a live broadcast from Aspen Gay Ski Week.
Halle Zander: Aspen Gay Ski Week has celebrated queer representation in skiing for 48 years now, but we're starting to see more representation here within that demographic as well. For example, we're here at the MOLLIE Aspen, which has been deemed womxn headquarters for this week. So was this an effort to get more women to show up for the event?
Valerie Sullan: Absolutely. You know, the fun of Aspen is in the diversity of Aspen. And I think that organizations like AspenOUT can become a bit myopic just because of the demographic of who wants to come, and I know that Kevin McManamon and Melissa Temple are very much devoted to broadening the appeal, and the fun, and making sure that everybody can join now.
Zander: Yeah. So Gay Ski week is a big party. Everyone knows that. But courtroom advocates are working right now on several legal battles to protect this LGBTQ+ community with rights at the national level. Lambda Legal plays a big role in this. Can you speak to what you think are some of the legal fights right now that are instrumental?
Sullan: I can, and I would like to say in support of what you just commented on, that it's my own personal belief that the battles going on right now surrounding the LGBTQ community are not just our battles. They're the civil rights battles of this generation. I can't remember a time in our history going all the way back to Jim Crow when the institutions of our society have been singularly focused on passing discriminatory laws against one group that lives within our societies simply because of how they express themselves.
And so, we've been fighting this fight at Lambda Legal now for a long time. Lambda South has been in existence almost 50 years. And we owe gay marriage to Lambda Legal, and Lambda partners, obviously, with the ACLU and other very important organizations.
But Lambda has been at the heart of the most important decisions that have affected our community for a long, long time. But in the future, in the next year and with this new administration, we can anticipate sort of focusing our attention on three important goals.
One would be blocking, another preventing and another defending. And what I mean by that is, you know, we intend to fight to block Trump's threatened actions like banning transgender people from serving in the military. It's already hard enough to get volunteers to join our armed services, and they're proposing to kick out the 15,000+ very dedicated, very highly-trained people simply because of how they present themselves, not because they're bad soldiers, but because of how they present themselves. And that's what I was talking about a moment ago.
This is unprecedented. Well, except that it happened in (Trump’s) first administration, and we fought it back then.
Second is preventing, and by preventing, I mean preventing the implementation of over 140 anti-LGBTQ bills that have been passed in over 26 different states in the last two years. This has been a singular effort aimed at such a small minority that it's clear that it's not based on any real policy, it's simply based on discrimination.
And lastly, defending victories like gay marriage and some of the other employment rights that we've won.
Zander: So on that note, President elect Donald Trump in his first term removed several protections for LGBTQ people in the health sector. I wonder if you think most of the fight over the next few years will be defensive trying to protect existing rights? Or if it will, there will be room to seek new protections.
Sullan: In the law, obviously there is a defense of action and certainly many of our anticipated roles in the upcoming future will be defensive. But when you win a case by correctly defending a legal principle, you also sort of establish a new right in many cases. If you're fighting against discrimination against transgender youth, when you win, you probably have a case you can use to argue it's not legal to discriminate against transgender youth. So it plays both ways.
Zander: Right, so that was Valerie Sullan, a board member of Aspen out and Lambda Legal speaking with us during Aspen Gay Ski Week about the landscape of LGBTQ+ legal battles currently underway and what to expect in the next few years.
From MOLLIE Aspen, this is Aspen Public Radio News.
