URVASHI VAID was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer, born on this date (d: 2022). An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics.

Vaid believed that LGBT equality will occur only when the larger institutions of society and the family are transformed to be more inclusive of racial, gender, and economic difference. Her book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation won a Stonewall Book Award in 1996.

Vaid became Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1989. Vaid left NGLTF in December 1992 and wrote Virtual Equality (published in 1995). She returned to NGLTF from 1997 to 2001 as the director of its think tank, the NGLTF Policy Institute. Vaid worked for five years at the Ford Foundation, and served as Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation. She served on the board of the Gill Foundation from 2004 to 2014.

Vaid hoped that the future of LGBT communities will accomplish two things. “One is to take care of the parts of our community that are less powerful. That means low-income LGBT people, transgender people and our community’s women, whose rights are getting the crap kicked out of them, parts of our community across the board—kids, old gay people” and “The second thing I would love to see happen is for the LGBT community to use its political power and access to create a more just society for all.” In April 2009 Out magazine named her one of the 50 most influential LGBT people in the United States.

Vaid shared homes in Manhattan and Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner, comedian Kate Clinton. She died at her home after a bout with cancer on May 14, 2022. Vaid was an aunt of Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender non-conforming writer, performance artist, and media personality.