Our Annual Gala is Quickly Approaching!

Our gala is scheduled on October 23rd and will be hosted at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Charleston. This black tie-optional party will help us celebrate our efforts to make the Mountain State a better place for LGBTQ people to live, work and raise a family. Buy your tickets now!

This year, we’re excited to announce that Sydnee and Justin McElroy, hosts of the critically acclaimed Sawbones podcast, will deliver the keynote address and record an episode of their podcast live! The dynamic duo are a part of the well-known McElroy family of podcasters, a family whose podcasts have been downloaded millions of times.

Sawbones offers listeners a deep look at the strange history of medicine to uncover all the odd, weird, wrong, dumb and just gross ways we’ve tried to fix people over the years. Sydnee, a practicing doctor from Huntington, used her expertise to help Fairness advocate against discriminatory anti-transgender bills proposed at the state Legislature. 

In recent years, Fairness staff have launched a program to train medical providers on how to provide care for transgender people living in the Mountain State. Through this program, and with the help of doctors like Sydnee, Fairness was able to launch a comprehensive Transgender Health Guide in 2019. This program has helped an untold number of transgender people find access to competent and compassionate health care instead of having to leave our state. Our gala this year will celebrate all the accomplishments we’ve made to help West Virginia become more inclusive.

“People who live here still tell me how shocked they are that the city was progressive enough to vote for me,” she told one outlet. “And that’s the part that is a little inspiring.”

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Our Sponsors

We want to thank all of our amazing sponsors for stepping up to make this our biggest and best gala ever!