Professor Kathleen Lahey wins CBA Hero Award

Professor Kathleen Lahey is the 2009 recipient of the CBA's SOGIC Hero Award.

Professor Kathleen Lahey received the Canadian Bar Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Conference (SOGIC) Hero Award on November 27, 2009. The award recognizes her years of work in support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and two-spirited (LGBTT) movement in Canada.

“As an educator, advocate, litigator and valuable resource to all who struggle for legal recognition of civil and human rights in Canada, we recognize Kathleen Lahey with this award,” said Edgar-André Montigny, 2008-09 Co-chair of SOGIC in a press release. “She is a mentor, friend and advocate for the LGBTT students at Queen’s and offers a shining example of professional success with the LGBTT community and to the community at large.”

Lahey’s main areas of teaching and research are taxation, tax policy, property, and law and sexuality. She has represented lesbian and gay couples in same-sex marriage litigation and has served as an expert witness and amicus curiae in other marriage and queer rights litigation. Lahey has also published several articles and books on LGBTT topics, including Canada’s first full-length treatise on sexuality, Are We “Persons” Yet? Law and Sexuality in Canada.

“I am pleased to have been selected for this award, because it helps raise the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsex, intersex, and two-spirited [LGBTTIT] people in the legal profession and in law schools,” said Lahey. “I have been teaching law and struggling with law reform issues long enough to know that too many LGBTTIT students and lawyers, clients and judges, still remain worried about being known for their whole selves. This award tells all of us that being out is just fine.”

Lahey is currently co-editing a collection of papers given at the 2009 Copenhagen World Out Games Human Rights Conference on international and domestic queer laws and politics, sitting on the board of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association, and updating her studies on queer status in Canadian law and fiscal policy. She is also helping the CBA prepare to carry out a national study of the needs of LGBTTIT lawyers in the profession.

“Academia and practice are complementary in many ways,” she said. “The academic path is important because that is where many future legally-trained people are attuned to new ways of looking at the world. But, it is in practice that lawyers develop the skills so desperately needed in Canada and around the world to advance the causes of equality and peace.”