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Rising Together: Our 5-Year Blueprint for the Future

For more than 50 years, Lambda Legal has fought for the rights of LGBTQ+ people and everyone living with HIV — and won. We secured the freedom to love, to marry, to learn, to work, and to serve. But the progress we’ve made isn’t guaranteed. Those hard-won rights are under direct assault. Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across the country. Trans people are being denied health care. Marriage equality is threatened. The very cases that secured our rights are being targeted for reversal.

Rising Together is Lambda Legal’s five-year strategic plan, guided by three core goals: Stop Bad Laws through litigation, Pass Good Laws through policy and advocacy, and Change Public Opinion through education. Over the next five years, Lambda Legal will grow our legal team, evolve our arguments, and go on offense — creating new laws and policies that protect our community before our rights are threatened, and investing in the education that changes hearts, minds, and public opinion. At the heart of this plan is a New LGBTQ+ Bill of Rights — a vision for what full equality looks like for every LGBTQ+ person and everyone living with HIV in this country.

Learn More: How We Rise | New LGBTQ+ Bill of Rights

How We Rise

Rising Together takes more than outrage. It takes strategy.

Attacks are multiplying. Courts are shifting. Policy is spreading faster than protection. Rising Together is Lambda Legal’s five-year blueprint to build the strategy, capacity, and systems required to meet this moment — and win.

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1. Litigation

We stop bad laws in their tracks, fighting back in court before they can harm real people in our community. 

2. Policy & Advocacy

We pass good laws through targeted policy work and sustained advocacy, building durable protections at every level of government. 

3. Education

We change public opinion through education, shifting hearts, minds, and culture so that justice has a foundation to stand on. 

What Rising Together looks like. 

 

1. Rising Together takes expertise: We are expanding our team of expert attorneys — deepening our reach nationwide to stop bad laws in their tracks. Because the best defense is a brilliant one. 2. Rising Together takes innovation: We are evolving how we argue cases — meeting the courts on the principles they recognize, so justice has a fighting chance. Strategy, not just passion.

3. Rising Together takes foresight: We are going on offense — creating model policies and good laws that protect us before our rights are threatened. The best time to build a shield is before the attack.  4. Rising Together takes education: We are investing in the education that changes hearts, minds, and public opinion on LGBTQ+ rights — because lasting change lives in culture, not just in the courts.

A New LGBTQ+ Bill of Rights

In 1968 — a year before Stonewall, five years before Lambda Legal was founded — a small, brave network of advocates did something audacious. They called for a “Homosexual Bill of Rights,” demanding the right to love who you love in your own home, the right to serve your country, the right to hold a job. Rights that, at the time, seemed almost laughably out of reach. Over the next 50 years, Lambda Legal helped win every single one of them.

Lambda Legal’s New LGBTQ+ Bill of Rights builds on that 1968 vision and extends it to meet this moment. It is the foundation of Rising Together — the standard against which our litigation, policy, and education work will be measured. Through the courts, through legislation, and through public education, Lambda Legal will work to build the legal and cultural foundation that makes these rights not just possible, but permanent.

We envision:

  • Quality, affordable, and culturally competent health care that allows all LGBTQ+ people and everyone living with HIV to thrive.
  • Public education that respects and cultivates the full potential of every student.
  • A Society of Opportunity that offers all LGBTQ+ people meaningful and dignified access to the American economy and our society.
  • A Culture of Belonging for LGBTQ+ people and their families.
  • A Constitutional Republic that truly represents and serves LGBTQ+ individuals.

Rising Together Takes Community

Rising Together requires more than litigation and legislation. It requires an informed, engaged community.

Our work is strengthened by every person who knows their rights and stands up for themselves, every ally who adds their voice, every donor who makes this work possible, and every advocate who speaks up in their community, their workplace, and their family. If every generation is to inherit more freedom than the one before it, we have to invest in education and in law — and we have to bring more people into this fight.

Visit Lambda Legal’s Know Your Rights Hub

One voice can make a case in court. But it takes all of us to change the law, shift public opinion, and build a country where every LGBTQ+ person can live freely and fully.

ALL RISE.