Folsom Street East » Sexual Freedom Award

Sexual Freedom Award

Folsom Street East is an important opportunity for visibility, outreach and activism; a key part of that visibility and activism is taking a proud stand – outside in the sunshine – embracing sexual diversity and celebrating it. To that end, and in recognition of unwavering voices and dedication to many issues of importance to sexual minorities, Folsom Street East annually presents the Sexual Freedom Award at this each year’s street festival.

The Sexual Freedom Award comes with a cash prize to be donated to the charity of the recipient’s choosing.

2011 Sexual Freedom Award Recipient: Diana Adams

FSE is thrilled to name NYC-based attorney, activist, and educator Diana Adams as recipient of the 2011 Sexual Freedom Award. An ivy-league graduate, Diana is founder and principal of Diana Adams Law, a legal and mediation practice with offices in Brooklyn and Albany. As an attorney, she is a fierce agitator for sexual civil rights and nontraditional families, and an advocate for new, ‘alternative’ relationship options, including polyamory. Diana works frequently with gay, lesbian, polyamorous, and unmarried clients who wish to start families with intention and legal stability, assisting these families with adoptions, co-parenting and sperm donor agreements, and financial arrangements for co-habitation. Diana also represents parents in child custody cases whose kinky, queer, poly or otherwise nontraditional sexualities may be turned against them in court. She advocates for unbundling legal partnership benefits from marriage, so that those who choose not to marry are not disadvantaged in terms of taxes, health insurance, and other legal benefits.

An out-and-proud polyamorous, queer, bisexual woman, Diana is a nationally recognized speaker on legal alternatives to marriage, and sits on the Advisory Council of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, an NGO advocating for the recognition of sexual freedom as a basic human right. She is also involved with the Alternatives to Marriage Project, and serves as an in-house legal expert for the New York City’s own LGBT Community Center. Her work as an attorney, empowerment counselor, and relationship educator has been noted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and New York Magazine, and she and her poly family were featured on MTV’s True Life series in 2009. She is also a leader for Open Love NY – an organization devoted to supporting polyamorous people with resources and education on forging and maintaining healthy open relationships – and will be donating her Sexual Freedom Award honorarium to Open Love NY.

If that isn’t enough, when not practicing law or leading an intensive workshop on communication or relationship enhancement, Diana is a self-defense instructor and nationally ranked martial artist, and is currently working on her first book.

2010 Sexual Freedom Award Recipient: Susan Wright

Folsom Street East is thrilled to announce the recipient of this year’s Sexual Freedom Award: Susan Wright.

Susan Wright is the spokesperson for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which she founded in 1997. Susan coordinated the SM Policy Reform Project for the National Organization for Women which resulted in rescinding their anti-SM policy in 1999, and created the SM vs. Abuse policy statement through Leather Leadership Conference, 1997-98. Susan is a member of the organizing committee for the Smarter Sex NYC, the Sex Positive Journalism Awards (Sexies), and the advocacy committee for the American Association for Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. Susan has published over 25 books, and her latest novel is Confessions of a Demon. For more information about this year’s recipient, visit her website at www.susanwright.info.

Charity Recipient: National Coalition for Sexual Freedom