Transcript: Building LGBTQ+ Inclusive Legal Systems

Hannah Rarick (she/her/hers): Good morning, everyone.My name is Hannah Rarick, and I have the pleasure to welcome you to this symposium.I am the current Live Symposium Editor for Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, and today we are going to present our topic: Building LGBTQ+ Legal Systems.Throughout this event, we are going to be talking with several experts, both legal experts and practitioners and professors in academia on the status of LGBTQ+ rights in areas such as religion, health, displacement, and violence.We will also have a keynote speaker who will focus on the criminalization of LGBTIQ+ persons in Uganda.Before we go on, I have a few thank you's.I would first like to thank Morgan Robinson, who is the Executive Publication Editor of the Symposium for our Law Review.Not only has she been assisting me with planning this event but also handling the publication portion of our symposium which will include pieces from a couple of our speakers today.I would also like to like our Editor-in-Chief Timothy Morgan for assisting with this event and running the law review in general.I would like to thank Barbara Beeker and Elizabeth Allington of the Office of External Affairs, for their assistance in planning this throughout the past few months.I would also like to thank our Dean Karen Bravo for supporting us in putting on this timely event and introducing our keynote speaker later today.Finally, I would like to thank all of our panelists, our moderators, and our keynote speaker, for taking their time to prepare their presentations, those who had to do their articles on the side of this and be here today to make this symposium happen.Morgan and I selected this topic with the intention of increasing awareness about the LGBTQ+ community, highlighting the effects of past and current laws on individuals, and exploring how our legal knowledge can contribute to shaping a more empathetic society.So we do kindly request that you approach this discussion with an open mind.And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Morgan Robinson for an intro.