Kirkland Sponsors GLAAD Spirit Day for Fourth Year in a Row

Kirkland & Ellis is proud to announce that it will sponsor GLAAD’s annual Spirit Day for the fourth year in a row. In conjunction with GLAAD, Kirkland will also host a panel session at its New York offices on October 13, 2016: “LGBT Youth At Risk: A Panel Discussion of Legal and Social Efforts to Promote Acceptance and Protections for LGBT Youth.”

GLAAD is a national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) media advocacy organization that works to improve the LGBT community’s media visibility and advocates for accuracy and fairness in media coverage.

Spirit Day, which takes place this year on October 20, 2016, is the largest and most visible international anti-bullying campaign in the world that aims to accelerate the acceptance of LGBT youth. Spirit Day inspires millions of people around the world to wear purple or “go purple” online in a unified stance against bullying and to show their support for LGBT youth.

Kirkland has been a proud international sponsor of Spirit Day since 2013. Each year, the Firm demonstrates its support on Spirit Day by encouraging attorneys and staff in all offices to wear purple, celebrate diversity, and continue important conversations about diversity and inclusion within the Firm, the legal profession and the community. Kirkland also contributes to GLAAD’s Spirit Day Fund, which supports GLAAD’s year-round efforts to combat bullying, protect LGBT youth and garner participation in Sprit Day each October.

In advance of Spirit Day, Kirkland will partner with GLAAD to present “LGBT Youth At Risk: A Panel Discussion of Legal and Social Efforts to Promote Acceptance and Protections for LGBT Youth.” In this panel, Kirkland partner David Flugman will discuss the Firm’s successful advocacy at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in upholding a New Jersey law that protects LGBT youth by banning licensed therapists from practicing sexual orientation change efforts, also known as “reparative” or “gay conversion” therapy, on minors.

“This issue is particularly important because it strikes at the very heart of the LGBT community,” said Mr. Flugman, a member of the Firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee and LGBT Subcommittee. “To claim that you can turn someone from gay to straight is an assault on an important component of an LGBT person’s identity and has been long discredited by the medical community as quackery.”

Ross Murray, GLAAD’s Director of Programs, Global and U.S. South, will also discuss data from GLAAD’s Accelerating Acceptance 2016 survey. 

For more information on Spirit Day, please visit www.glaad.org/spiritday.

About Kirkland & Ellis
Kirkland & Ellis LLP (www.kirkland.com) is a 1,700-attorney law firm representing global clients in private equity, M&A and other complex corporate transactions, litigation and dispute resolution/arbitration, restructuring, and intellectual property matters. The Firm has offices in New York, Beijing, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington, D.C. Kirkland’s commitment to diversity is reflected in its policies, programs and committees as well as its efforts to build and maintain a culture that values and gathers strength from differences in socioeconomic, racial, ethnic and personal backgrounds.