Free Thought Forum – Straight for Equality
Straight for Equality
Our guest speakers, Kay Heggestad and Paul Wertsch, will talk about the national initiative to encourage more straight people to get involved in helping to obtain civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.
Kay Heggestad is a retired family physician from Madison, WI. She has been active in Madison PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) since her teenage son came out in 1994. In 2006 she became a volunteer regional director for National PFLAG and then was elected to the Board of National PFLAG in 2009. She is also on the Board of the Madison chapter and the Board of Fair Wisconsin.
Paul Wertsch, Kay’s husband, is a family physician in practice in Madison. He has served on the Madison PFLAG board of directors for the past 10 years. He is the immediate past chair person of the American Medical Association’s committee on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) issues. At the AMA meeting in Houston in November 2009, he was the driving force behind the AMA resolution to lobby congress to get rid of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military. They have a daughter and a granddaughter in Madison and their son and his partner live in Denver.
There is a local PFLAG chapter, serving the Spring Green, Plain, and Sauk Prairie areas. The contact person is Joanne Vogt, pflagplain@yahoo.com.
Free Thought Forums continue the legacy of free and open inquiry established more than 150 years ago by the founders of the Free Congregation. As the Sunday programs did then, today’s Forums express our commitment to free thought in religion, guided by reason, and inspired by the “books of Nature and World History.”
