WAC PRESENTS SERIES
"Outlawing Homosexuality: A Human Rights Story"
featuring
Human Rights Activist
Valentine Kalende
  
Monday, July 12, 2010 • 6:00 p.m.
University of Louisville • Belknap Campus
Chao Auditorium • Belknap Library
Hosted by the U of L Women's & Gender Studies Department

FREE ADMISSION

No reservation necessary. Seating limited to first 150 guests. Pay parking is available in the Speed Museum lot.

About the Speaker
Val Kalende was born in Kampala, Uganda. A journalist and LGBTI rights activist, she is the only child of parents who both passed on during her early teenage years. She attended Makerere University in Kampala and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Library and Information Science. She worked for one of Uganda's leading daily newspapers, The Daily Monitor, as a features writer for three years but was forced to quit because of her activism and openness about her sexual orientation.
 
Since then, Kalende has worked with Freedom and Roam Uganda which is the only organization in Uganda working on lesbian women's issues. She was one of the founding members of FARUG in 2003 and is one of its longest serving members. She currently holds the position of Communications Manager. FARUG has been on the front line of the campaign against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda. They are members of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law. The coalition, formed in October 2009, is a group of over 33 local civil society organizations in Uganda, whose sole purpose is to campaign against the Bill.
 
Throughout Kalende's life, she has been continually interested in creating social change. Her career has led her to specialize in LGBT community work and advocacy for the last seven years. Along the way, she has been arrested, thrown out of houses by landlords, harassed by angry mobs, denied by family, excommunicated from church and discriminated by employers. Kalende states the one thing that keeps her going is the love and hope she has for the struggle and the progress they have made as a group young activists in her country.
 
Kalende married her partner, as she describes, "out of the official ceremonial 'legal' way" late last year. For Kalende, this was another way to prove that even lesbians can have formal relationships outside church, even if the State does not permit it. Kalende considers herself a born-again Christian and was a church minister in her local church until she was removed for being an "unrepentant homosexual."
 
When she is not working, she loves to read, to learn, and to play tennis.