The Dooley awards ceremony will be held the Campus of St Mary’s College, Notre Dame IN, on Saturday April 6, 2013. More details can be found below.
The Officers and Board of Trustees of GALA-ND/SMC are proud to announce the winner of the 2013 Thomas A. Dooley Award. This year’s award recipient is The Right Reverend Gene Robinson, retired Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
Bishop Robinson is widely known for being the first priest in an openly gay relationship to be consecrated a bishop in a major Christian denomination. He served as Bishop in New Hampshire from 2003 through 2012 and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Robinson, whose most recent book, God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage, was published in September of 2012, is an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights.
Bishop Robinson was also featured in the documentary LOVE FREE OR DIE, the story of a man whose two defining passions are in apparent conflict: his love for God and his love for his partner Mark. The film, produced and written by the award winning filmmaking team of Macky Alston and Sandra Itkoff, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where it received the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for An Agent of Change.
Bishop Robinson has worked tirelessly to promote LGBT rights including full civil and marriage rights. His devotion to his faith and his commitment for equal rights for all human beings are exactly the qualities that the Dooley Award is intended to recognize. We congratulate Bishop Robinson for his courageous work and look forward to his continued efforts to bring positive change the LGBT community.
Melanie LeMay, GALA-ND/SMC Chair
The Dooley award will be presented to Bishop Robinson on the Campus of St Mary’s College, Notre Dame IN, on Saturday April 6th. In addition to the award ceremony and dinner, a showing of LOVE FREE OR DIE will take place on the Campus of the University of Notre Dame that weekend. The 2013 Tom Dooley Awards are made possible in part by a grant from the Raynier Institute & Foundation.
Also being honored that weekend are:
- Lawrence Condren Distinguished Service Award: Catherine Pittman, Ph.D, H.S.S.P., Associate Professor of Psychology at St Mary’s College, for her work as the advisor for St Mary’s Gay/Straight Alliance (SAGA) and for her role in spearheading the LGBT rights ordinance in South Bend.
- Distinguished Alumni Award: John Blandford, ND ’83, ’99 Ph.D. Principal Deputy Director, Division of Global HIV/AIDS, Center for Disease Control & Prevention and prior GALA ND/SMC Chair for his life-long work fighting HIV/AIDS and for his efforts in support of LGBT issues at Notre Dame.
- Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement: Sr. Margaret Farley R.S.M., Ph.D. retired professor who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School from 1971 to 2007 for her work on sexuality and the Church.
The Thomas A. Dooley Award presentation dinner will be held in the Stapleton Room in LeMans Hall at Saint Mary’s College.
Registration for the awards ceremony is open now. To help defray the costs, event tickets are priced $30.00 for members, $20.00 for students and Notre Dame or Saint Mary’s faculty/staff, and $40.00 for non-members.
A special GALA-ND/SMC group rate has been reserved at the Residence Inn in South Bend:
Residence Inn
716 N. Niles Ave
South Bend IN 46617
(574) 289-5555
The group is for a studio suite and is available for Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5 if booked by March 6. After that date the standard rate is $109.00 per night. To take advantage of this rate GALA-ND/SMC while booking your room.
A variety of other free events are being planned throughout the day. A full schedule will be posted here as information becomes available.
The Thomas A. Dooley Award honors individuals who, through their faith-based background, have demonstrated personal courage, compassion and commitment to advance the human and civil rights of lesbian and gay Americans. The award is named for the gay, former Notre Dame student who achieved world fame in the 1950s for his humanitarian activities while serving in the Navy in Southeast Asia, and even greater fame when he continued his humanitarian work as an American “jungle doctor” in Laos subsequent to his undesirable discharge from the Navy.
Previous winners of the award include:
- Phil Donahue, an Emmy Award-winning media personality, a long-time champion for GLBT causes and a graduate of Notre Dame (B.A., ’57)
- Sister Mary Louise (M.L.) Gude CSC, past Chair of the Modern Language program at St Mary’s, past Assistant Vice-President for Student Affairs at Notre Dame and past Chair of the Standing Committee on Gay and Lesbian Student Needs at Notre Dame (which eventually developed into the Core Council on LGBT affairs)
- Sr. Jeannine Gramick, S.L., co-founder of the Baltimore and Washington, DC chapters of DIGNITY, a national organization for Catholic lesbian and gay people and the founder of New Ways Ministry, a social justice center working for the reconciliation of lesbian and gay people and the Church.