Urvashi Vaid

Lawyer, organizer, and writer who argued that LGBTQ+ freedom is bound up with every other fight for justice.

Urvashi Vaid was born in New Delhi, India, on October 8, 1958, and moved with her family to upstate New York at eight. At Vassar College she threw herself into student protest and the women’s movement. While earning her law degree at Northeastern University in Boston, she worked at the weekly Gay Community News. She joined the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1986 and led it from 1989 to 1992, the first woman of color to head a national gay and lesbian organization. She helped organize the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Her books argued that LGBTQ+ freedom is bound up with race, class, and gender. She died on May 14, 2022.