UK Participates in Come Together Kentucky Conference

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 23, 2015) — Lexington will be well represented by busloads of University of Kentucky students as well as local high school students and community leaders at the 2015 Come Together Kentucky Conference: With Liberty and Justice for All, hosted today through Sunday at Murray State University.

This year is a turning point for the conference that has focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues for 20 years. In the past, dedicated student and community leaders have organized and planned the conferences.

Now, the four universities in the state that staff and fund offices dedicated exclusively to their LGBTQ communities – UK, Murray State, the University of Louisville and Northern Kentucky University – have agreed to support the annual event, giving it more stability and a more secure future. The four also agreed to rotate hosting the event. All interested high school and college students as well as community members statewide are still welcome, regardless of the hosting site.

“This will provide additional support for the event, ensuring its robust future,” said Lance Poston, director of the UK Office of LGBTQ* Resources. “This commitment will make the annual conference sustainable, lifting the burden a bit for those individuals and groups that have kept it alive all these years through sheer will power.”

The conference planners’ goals for those attending are to learn to take pride in being part of the LGBTQ community, while developing as active leaders shaping their vision of the future; to understand the intersectionality of identities to better advocate for liberty and justice for all; and to develop and cultivate friendships with other students, faculty, staff and community members.

In addition to supporting the annual conference, the four universities have committed to support each other’s ideas and programs and to serve the other Kentucky public institutions that don’t have a fully developed program of their own, said Poston.

“The conference has been student-led for all these years. It will continue to be student-led in the future,” said Poston. “The significant difference is that Come Together Kentucky will be an institution-supported force moving forward.”

With this year’s theme “With Liberty and Justice for All,” the conference will focus on LGBTQ identity, social justice and fostering community, while providing networking opportunities. Participants will experience a weekend-long professional and interactive conference with keynote speakers, programming sessions and social activities.

Come Together Kentucky’s keynote speakers this year include Brandie Balken, program director of the Gill Foundation; Carly Lehwald, a trans advocate and a cast member of ABC Family’s “Becoming Us;" Roey Thorpe, director of advocacy programs for the Equality Federation; and Alabama State Rep. Patricia Todd, who is also the director of the Human Rights Campaign for Alabama.

“The theme, ‘With Liberty and Justice for All,’ provides a space for individuals to celebrate recent progress for LGBTQ equality, while also hearing from nationally recognized speakers and participating in discussions on some of the ongoing struggles that remain for underrepresented populations in Kentucky and around the country,” said Jody Cofer Randall, LGBT coordinator at Murray State.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gail Hairston, 859-257-3302, gail.hairston@uky.edu