As a private membership organization, Q Law NJ, Inc. (“Q Law”) requires its members to affirm its Membership Core Principles (“Principles”). These Principles form the foundation for Q Law’s community. By affirming, members agree that these Principles will guide future work on behalf of Q Law.

 

We, as voluntary members of Q Law, accordingly affirm the following Principles:

1. the fundamental entitlement of all human beings to live out and consensually express their sexual orientation and gender identity as self-identified;

2. the right to make informed medical choices and exercise personal autonomy over one’s own body, including over one’s gender and sex characteristics;

3. the right to form, join, and define family as that family sees fit;

4. the right to exercise sexual dignity, privacy, and consensual sexual expression without societal or governmental interference, coercion or stigmatization;

5. young people, through gradual capacity with age, have the right to make their own decisions about matters of importance, encompassing self-determination, bodily integrity, and the right to influence outcomes;

6. the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community is an asset to be celebrated, and Q Law should commit itself to being an intersectional, anti-racist organization that may undertake additional efforts to ensure inclusion of underrepresented segments of the community and, as such, welcomes feedback from its members to address such goals;

7. there is a need to challenge and change the systems that create poverty and economic injustice in the LGBTQ+ community;

8. fellow Q Law members should feel welcome and affirmed in membership-spaces consistent with these Principles;

9. access to justice and equality under the law are expectations and features of a working legal system; and

10.  a positive function and purpose of Q Law is to address injustice that contradicts its Mission and Principles.