Sean Cormie, a newly out gay man, and his boyfriend, Gary Gardner, were attacked at First Assembly of God in Blackwell, Oklahoma after being lured there by Cormie's family.
Cormie says that he is traumatized by what happened.
"I wanted to go to church to make my mom proud and make her happy."
What started off as a normal service soon turned ugly when the pastor began preaching directly at Cormie and Gardner that homosexuality was "an abomination."
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, actor Kristen Stewart, who has been romantically linked to model Stella Maxwell since 2017, said, “I have fully been told, ‘If you just like do yourself a favor, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie.’ I don’t want to work with people like that.”
Stewart has said publicly she does not identify as bisexual or lesbian, and doesn’t want to choose a label for her sexuality. In the same interview she added, “I was informed by an old school mentality, which is — you want to preserve your career and your success and your productivity, and there are people in the world who don’t like you, and they don’t like that you date girls, and they don’t like that you don’t identify as a quote unquote ‘lesbian’, but you also don’t identify as a quote unquote ‘heterosexual’. And people like to know stuff, so what the fuck are you?’”
A prominent LGBTQ rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced Thursday that it will host a presidential town hall on LGBTQ issues next month. The event will air on CNN.
LGBTQ advocacy groups told ThinkProgress that they know exactly what ideas they want to hear discussed at the town hall set for Oct. 10, which is National Coming Out Day. Many said that first and foremost, they want candidates to acknowledge the struggles of the most marginalized in the community, including LGBTQ people of color, and put forward policies to respond to anti-LGBTQ bias in the criminal justice system.
“LGBTQ people are more likely to come into contact with the police due to discriminatory policing, be incarcerated, and experience violence while locked up than non-LGBTQ people. Black and Latinx LGBTQ people are most impacted,” Tyrone Hanley, senior policy counsel for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told ThinkProgress.
The Winchester Star, a daily newspaper in Virginia that claims to be pro-LGBTQ, published an editorial recently that both called into question the right of same-sex couples to marry and the very existence of transgender people.
The publication, part of the Ogden Newspapers chain, is controlled by the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, Robert Nutting.
As first noted by the progressive blog Blue Virginia, the paper published an editorial on Wednesday slamming Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA) for boycotting President Donald Trump’s recent appearance at the 400th anniversary commemoration of the Jamestown settlement.
“Gov. Northam?” the paper opined. “He made a speech earlier in the day, a few hours before Mr. Trump, speaking not of the tradition’s majesty, but of Virginia’s dubious 21st century achievements — i.e., homosexual marriage, elevation of the transgender lifestyle, etc. And then disgracefully departed, nowhere to be seen or heard when Mr. Trump spoke.”
A new law in Illinois will promote a more LGBTQ-inclusive history curricula in schools across the state. The measure goes into effect in July of next year.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed the legislation into law on Friday. The bill, which passed the House in March and the Senate in May, would amend the school code to ensure public schools “teach about the the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people” in U.S. and state history.
The measure provides for textbooks in public schools that include the “roles and contributions of all people protected under the Illinois Human Rights Act” and mandates that they be non-discriminatory toward those groups. Queer, trans, and nonbinary people are protected under state law.
Lawmakers who supported the bill say that LGBTQ-inclusive curricula will not only provide a more accurate telling of history but will work against transphobia and queerphobia and help LGBTQ students feel more welcome at school.
By almost all measures, AT&T has been a stalwart supporter of LGBTQ equality for a long time. It has protected workers from sexual orientation discrimination since 1975. It sponsors the Trevor Project to help LGBTQ youth in crisis. It received a perfect 100 score from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in its annual equality index, ranking among the nation’s most inclusive places to work.
By any measure, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is among the nation’s most anti-LGBTQ bigots. He defended bans on same-sex marriage as “sound public policy” and spearheaded the effort to block the elected government in Washington, D.C., from enacting marriage equality. He boasted of receiving a “True Blue Award” from the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated anti-LGBT hate group. He consistently earns a 0 score on HRC’s congressional scorecard, ranking among the lawmakers most virulently opposing equality.
Yet, AT&T’s corporate political action committee has given tens of thousands of dollars to Jordan’s campaigns since 2010, helping bankroll the re-elections of a man who HRC once inducted into its anti-equality “Hall of Shame” for “proactively [working] to undermine existing legal protections and promote anti-LGBT discrimination.” And AT&T’s PAC has given more than $400,000 to other firmly anti-LGBTQ members of Congress in recent years.
In 1966, three years before the world-famous Stonewall riot in New York, a group of trans women in San Francisco stood up to police inside Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, an all-night restaurant in the Tenderloin neighborhood and popular queer gathering spot. A trans woman fed up with the harassment and abuse is said to have thrown a cup of coffee in an officer’s face, sparking a chaotic riot and unprecedented moment of trans resistance to police violence.Full story
Asked about his 2017 decision to ban transgender troops from openly serving in the military, Trump claimed: “They take massive amounts of drugs, they have to. And you’re not allowed to take drugs, you know, in the military you’re not allowed to take any drugs, take an aspirin.
“They have to, after the operation, they have no choice, they have to. You would actually have to break rules and regulations in order to have that.”
Pressed on why he was enacting an anti-transgender policy while claiming to support LGBT+ rights, the president responded: “It is what it is. Look, also people were going in and then asking for the operation, and the operation is $250,000 dollars.
“The recovery period is long, and they have to take large amounts of drugs after that… and you can’t do that. I said, when it came time to make a decision on that, because of the drugs and the cost of the operation.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two LGBT rights activists who took part in the 1969 Stonewall rebellion and founded an organization that helped homeless gay youths, will be honored with a public monument in New York City, officials announced Thursday.
The yet-to-be-commissioned monument is part of an initiative to increase the diversity of the statues and monuments in public places around New York City. It will be paid for out of $10 million allocated for new public artworks.
The monument will be installed in Greenwich Village a block away from the Stonewall Inn, where patrons resisted a police raid on June 28, 1969, and helped usher in a new, militant phase of the movement for gay rights.
Last week, the annual Side by Side (Bok o Bok in Russian) LGBT International Film Festival was held in Moscow. Amid screenings of films, gatherings within the community and providing a safe space for the LGBT community, the presence of anti-LGBT protestors and bomb threats tainted an otherwise peaceful event in the capital.
“The first festival in 2008 (in St. Petersburg) faced a lot of challenges, with pressure on the venues not to support [us], and emergency services closing down spaces,” organizer Manny de Guerre told The Moscow Times. “In some respect, we still face the same challenges today.”
In spite of these ongoing difficulties, the festival has powered through and has no intention of stopping. “Hundreds came to the event [in 2008] and it was clear that the festival was needed and in demand,” de Guerre said. “That is what kept us going.”
Last week was a harsh week for LGBT Kenyans.
Kenya's high court upheld colonial-era anti-sodomy laws and the community lost Binyavanga Wainaina, a beloved, award-winning writer and gay activist.
"It's a dark day not just for Kenya, but also for Africa," Andrew Maina, program coordinator at HIVOS, told Reuters.
He hoped Kenya would set a precedent and be a beacon of hope for other African countries that have similar anti-sodomy laws.
The court ruling came a few days after Wainaina's death on May 21.
NPR reported that Wainaina, who came out as being HIV-positive in 2016, died of an illness. Reports are unclear if it was an illness due to HIV. He was 48.
Wainaina came out as gay in 2014 in a lost chapter of his memoir, "I Am a Homosexual, Mum." He published the essay largely due to Kenya's criminalization of LGBT people.
"I felt this is one of the most successfully, put-together and honest pieces I've ever written," he told NPR at the time.
When a debate broke out over which bathrooms transgender individuals should be able to use, Trump told the Today show that Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower. He later tweeted that he would be better for LGBT Americans than Hillary Clinton. And during his acceptance speech at the Republican national convention, he cited the shootings at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
“As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology,” he vowed.
But since becoming president, Trump and his administration have repeatedly rolled back existing protections, especially for transgender Americans.
Transgender and gender non-conforming people could soon be barred from federally funded shelters, after the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced plans Wednesday to scrap recently added regulator protections.
HUD’s rulemaking would rescind the Equal Access Rule that currently requires shelters that wish to segregate clients according to their gender to modify their structures accordingly – rather than turn people away.
Homeless shelters serve a particularly crucial role in protecting the lives and safety of gender minorities, who are often put out on the street early in life by intolerant families and are frequent targets for violent bigots once they find themselves in such a vulnerable situation. The Equal Access Rule, enacted in 2012, has been heralded as an essential protection by hundreds of advocacy groups concerned by this cycle of abandonment and violence.
Alabama Public Television chose not to air PBS’s Arthur episode that included a same-sex marriage.
In the episode, which aired nationwide May 13, Arthur and his friends attend their beloved teacher Mr. Ratburn’s nuptials to his partner.
APT preempted the episode by showing a re-run of Arthur.
Mike Mckenzie, director of programming at APT, said APT was notified by WGBH and PBS in mid-April about the episode titled “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone” and decided to show a re-run. Mckenzie said APT has no plans to air the episode at a later date.
OMAHA, Neb. - A group of teenagers decided not to stand by and watch as the United Methodist Church voted in favor of anti-LGBT measures.
The confirmation class of 2019 was all set to finally become full members of their church -- the First United Methodist Church in Omaha, Nebraska -- after a year of learning about their faith and exploring their beliefs.
But when it came time to join, the eight teens decided against it.
"We want to be clear that, while we love our congregation, we believe that the United Methodist policies on LGBTQ+ clergy and same sex marriage are immoral," the group wrote in a statement. "We are concerned that if we join at this time, we will be sending a message that we approve of this decision."
President Donald Trump’s State Department is quietly de-recognizing the marriages of some LGBT couples, and using that as an excuse to then deny their children birthright citizenship.
The policy specifically deals with an interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that sets forth the conditions for eligibility for birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
According to the State Department website, “The U.S. Department of State interprets the INA to mean that a child born abroad must be biologically related to a U.S. citizen parent. Even if local law recognizes a surrogacy agreement and finds that U.S. parents are the legal parents of a child conceived and born abroad… if the child does not have a biological connection to a U.S. citizen parent, the child will not be a U.S. citizen at birth.”
The LGBT Caucus of the Democratic Party of Hawai‘i, Hawai‘i’s only political, legislative and/or policy organization dedicated to advocating for LGBTQIA rights, congratulates Taiwan’s LGBTQIA community as they achieve Marriage Equality and become the first Asian country to reach this historic milestone. On Friday, May 17, 2019, the Taiwanese Parliament in a vote of 66 to 27 passed this momentous legislation.
Taiwan’s LGBTQIA community won a landmark court case in 2017 when the court ruled that same-sex couples had the constitutional right to marry. The court gave the Taiwan’s government until May 24, 2019, to extend these rights. There were three competing bills to achieve this requirement.
As a gay man living in the United States, Brian Kelly was shocked to read about the violent anti-gay crackdown in the Russian republic of Chechnya a few years ago. So when he heard about Rainbow Railroad, he knew he wanted to help.
Based in Toronto and operating without government funding, Rainbow Railroad helps LGBT individuals escape violence and persecution in their home countries and get across borders to safety. Named in homage to the Underground Railroad, the group has its work cut out for it: same-sex relations are a crime in 70 countries worldwide, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
The first time I met Shaquanda, the drag persona of Andre Springer, was during Queer Soup Night, a party highlighting LGBTQ+ chefs while raising money for community organizations. She was hosting a queer chili cook off, sauntering through the crowd providing cheeky commentary while encouraging attendees to make donations, and of course, sample the chili. She greeted me with the warmest embrace, pressing my face into her colorful hair wrap and dangling gold earrings. After chatting with her for several months via Instagram, it was a delight to feel her radiant energy in real life.
Shaquanda's Hot Pepper Sauce was launched in 2014 when Springer debuted his hot sauce at Bushwig, a drag and music festival hosted in Brooklyn, New York. Springer wanted to add another dimension to his drag, and introducing hot sauce would take his performances from eyes to mouth. Springer enlisted the help of his friend (and current business partner) Dominic Mondavi to create custom bottle labels adorned with Shaquanda's face and cheeky, queer-centric catchphrases. He filled each one up with his signature hot sauce blend and attended the event in full Shaquanda drag, complete with a colorful bandana and linen apron — a look inspired by his Barbadian grandmother and the many characters he grew up with in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His signature sauce, made with fresh chiles and a slew of aromatics, filled audience members' mouths with flavor as lively as Shaquanda herself. The performance was a success, and from that initial debut, Shaquanda's Hot Pepper Sauce took off.
The head of Chick-fil-A’s tax-exempt foundation addressed the growing backlash against its continued giving to anti-LGBTQ organizations on Wednesday, telling Business Insider that it does not intend to change its ways. He dismissed concerns about the Chick-fil-A Foundation giving millions to organizations that discriminate as an unimportant “political or cultural war that’s being waged.”
ThinkProgress reported in March that the Chick-fil-A Foundation distributed $1.8 million in 2017 to non-profits with a history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination — contrary to repeated promises that it was winding down its giving to groups that discriminate. This included more than $1.6 million in contributions to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a religious group that works to spread an anti-LGBTQ message to college athletes, requiring a strict “sexual purity” policy for its employees that bars any “homosexual acts.”
Texas state Rep. Jeff Leach (R) said Tuesday that lawmakers had an obligation to ensure Chick-fil-A was able to have stores in every airport across the country.
His comments come one day after the Republican-controlled Texas state Senate revived a bill that would prevent local governments from impeding Chick-fil-A and other companies based on their religious beliefs, moral convictions, and anti-LGBTQ views.
“People love Chick-fil-A. You can’t argue with Chick-fil-A’s food and I don’t think you should be able to argue with the organizations that Chick-fil-A chooses to support either,” Leach said, speaking with Fox & Friends.
He continued, “It’s our obligation as policymakers, as lawmakers, is to protect that right of Chick-fil-A to do that and to protect their right to exist and to have an establishment in any airport, in any city, in any community across the country.”
Baltimore, MD, May 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The challenges, struggles and triumphs of older LGBT adults will be commemorated on Thursday, May 16 during National Honor Our LGBT Elders Day.
The day of recognition will pay tribute to the sacrifices and successes of LGBT older adults and thank them for leading the fight to expand LGBT rights. There are an estimated 3 million LGBT adults over the age of 55 throughout the U.S.
PARIS — France is seeing a rise in reported attacks and other abuse targeting members of the LGBT community.
The French Interior Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it registered 1,378 infractions based on sexual orientation last year, a rise of 34 percent from the year before.
LAS VEGAS — Pete Buttigieg sought to diffuse weeks of fraught questions about white privilege and his struggles attracting minorities to his campaign by calling out fellow Democrats on Saturday for playing “identity politics” and pitting one group’s grievances against another’s.
In a risky speech to the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBT rights group, Buttigieg warned of a “crisis of belonging in this country,” arguing it was exacerbated by “so-called identity politics” that emphasize how one person hasn’t walked in another’s shoes — “something that is true, but it doesn’t get us very far.”
He drew a direct line between the obstacles faced by a black, trans woman excluded by mainstream society and an out-of-work auto worker excluded by the new economy.
California has overhauled its sex education guidance for public school teachers, encouraging them to talk about gender identity with kindergartners and give advice to LGBT teenagers for navigating relationships and having safe sex.
LGBT advocates praised the new recommendations for giving attention to a community that is often left out of sex education policies. But some parents and conservative groups assailed the more than 700-page document as an assault on parental rights, arguing it exposes children to ideas about sexuality and gender that should be taught at home.
The guidance approved Wednesday by the California State Board of Education does not require educators to teach anything. It is designed as a guide for teachers to meet state standards on health education, such as nutrition, physical activity and combating alcohol and drug abuse.
US ‘death to gays’ preacher Steven Anderson has been banned from visiting most of Europe, officials in the Netherlands have been confirmed.
Dutch security minister Mark Harbers confirmed he had taken steps to exclude Arizona pastor Steven Anderson, who is known for his incitements to anti-gay violence, from entering the Netherlands ahead of a planned May 23 visit as part of a European tour.
Iowa is one signature away from enacting a law that would limit transgender people’s access to necessary health care.
The law would allow government entities to opt out of using public insurance dollars, including Medicaid, to pay for any kind of transition-related care. This language was tacked on as an amendment to a health and human services appropriations bill late in the process, LGBTQ rights advocates said, without any committee hearings or public comment process. Lawmakers approved the legislation on Saturday.
Now, it’s up to Gov. Kim Reynolds (R). The governor hasn’t signed the legislation yet, and LGBTQ groups are talking to her staff to convince her not to do so.
Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, an LGBTQ advocacy group, told ThinkProgress that transgender Iowans are waiting for an answer.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega Nord Party who serves as Italy's minister of the interior and deputy prime minister. Lega is a far-right party with an anti-immigration agenda. Recently Salvini addressed an anti-LGBT and anti-abortion group in the city of Verona.
He was in the city of Caltanissetta in Sicily for a rally last week when he posed for a selfie with Gaia Parisi and Matilde Rizzo, both 19. Except it turns out they weren't supporters, but two friends ready to photobomb Salvini by kissing each other.
"We queued with his supporters and when it was our turn, we kissed while I was taking the photos," Parisi told BuzzFeed News via Instagram DM.
"An officer immediately separated us, as you can see in the second photo. Salvini's reaction was giving a pat on Matilde's head and saying, 'auguri e figli maschi.' That's an Italian saying that could be translated with 'I wish you all the best and male sons.'"
A production of Don Giovanni opening this weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stars a transgender woman in the title role.
While operas around trans themes are starting to emerge, Tulsa’s take on Mozart’s classic represents the first time a professional opera company in the United States has hired a trans person to sing the lead in a standard work.
Lucia Lucas, the woman charged with playing one of the opera canon’s best-known protagonists, is a rising star. The 38-year-old singer has performed on major stages in Europe and Asia. Next season, she will make her debut with the English National Opera in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. And all this using the dramatic baritone voice with which she launched her international career, before she transitioned, a decade ago.
“I think I can retrain my voice to contralto, mezzo or soprano. But how long would that take and what’s the likelihood I would get hired?” says Lucas, who was born and raised in Sacramento, California, and calls Karlsruhe, Germany, home. “Whereas I have work in the standard baritone repertoire into 2022. Why would I mess with that?”
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate, has been facing a lot of criticism from conservative Christians due to his outspokenness about his own Christian faith and his experience as a married gay man.Full story
On Wednesday, Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, criticized Buttigieg’s sexuality and called into question his standing as a Christian.
Graham tweeted, “Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian. As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman—not two men, not two women.”
Morehouse College, a historically black men’s college, recently announced it would start admitting transgender men in 2020.
Terrance Dixon, Morehouse vice president for enrollment management, said in the announcement, “In a rapidly changing world that includes a better understanding of gender identity, we’re proud to expand our admissions policy to consider trans men who want to be part of an institution that has produced some of the greatest leaders in social justice, politics, business, and the arts for more than 150 years.”
Although it was a historic win for transgender men who want to attend Morehouse, trans women will not be admitted and students who are admitted to Morehouse identifying as men and transition during their time at Morehouse as trans women, would no longer be eligible to stay at the school.
A group of fans in Cincinnati protested their professional hockey team’s partnership with Chick-fil-A on Saturday, holding signs calling the restaurant chain “anti-gay.” The team responded by blasting their peaceful protest as not “family friendly,” reaffirming their partnership, and barring the fans from coming back.
ThinkProgress reported last month that Chick-fil-A’s foundation donated $1.8 million in 2017 to groups that discriminated against LGBTQ people and that the company is one of a small number of major American businesses with a non-discrimination policy that does not protect employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Since then, the company has lost deals to open locations in airports in two different cities and the city council in a third city voted to place rainbow flags and blue, pink, and white transgender flags near the company’s airport spot.
BOULDER, COLORADO — Students at the University of Colorado Boulder held a protest Monday in opposition to the impending confirmation of former Republican congressman Mark Kennedy as president of the university system, citing his record of conservative and anti-LGBTQ votes.
Kennedy, the former president of the University of North Dakota, was named as the sole candidate to be the next University of Colorado president by the University’s Board of Regents in an announcement last week. In the announcement, the Board of Regents cited Kennedy’s “commitment to diversity.”
Kennedy served as a congressman representing Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2006. While in office, he voted in favor of and co-sponsored bills that aimed to create a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. He also voted in favor of funding health care providers that do not provide information about abortions and against providing grants to black and Hispanic colleges.
Indiana lawmakers are trying to make it harder for transgender and non-binary people to correct the gender on their ID cards and driver’s licenses only a few days after Indiana became the sixth state in the nation to provide non-binary people with a gender marker option.
A new amendment, introduced by a Republican state representative, would require people who want their correct gender marker on their ID card to first change their birth certificate — something that is often impossible for people born in a different state.
Chick-fil-A has taken great pains to downplay its anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and giving, seven years into a national boycott by LGBTQ and allied diners. But contrary to the company’s latest claims that it has no political or social agenda, newly released tax filings show that, in 2017, the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave more than $1.8 million to a trio of groups with a record of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
The donations — $1,653,416 to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, $6,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, and $150,000 to the Salvation Army — actually represent a slight increase from the previous year. The foundation’s funding comes almost entirely from the corporate treasury and shares leadership with the company.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is a religious organization that seeks to spread an anti-LGBTQ message to college athletes and requires a strict “sexual purity” policy for its employees that bars any “homosexual acts.” Paul Anderson Youth Home, a “Christian residential home for trouble youth,” teaches boys that homosexuality is wrong and that same-sex marriage is “rage against Jesus Christ and His values.”
Congressional Democrats reintroduced a sweeping nondiscrimination bill last week to bolster protections for LGBTQ Americans. If passed into law, the bill would clarify existing protections and fill the gaps in federal nondiscrimination laws.
The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, employment, education, federal programs, jury service, public accommodations, and credit and lending. It would also update the law to include protections against discrimination in public spaces and services like retail stores, transportation services, banks, and legal services.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, only 21 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination and gender identity in employment and housing. Twenty states and D.C. explicitly prohibit discrimination in public accommodations. Only 14 states have non-discrimination laws covering credit discrimination.
“I strongly support equality for all people and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. No one should be afraid of losing their job or losing their housing because of their sexual orientation,” Manchin told the press. “I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools.”
The Equality Act, which would ensure legal protections for members of the LGBTQ community, was reintroduced in Congress on Wednesday. Shortly thereafter, the Human Rights Campaign announced a 167-member corporate coalition in support of the legislation.
But a ThinkProgress review of campaign finance data reveals that, through their corporate PACs, members of that coalition have recently given more than $750,000 combined to the two biggest congressional obstacles to the Equality Act’s passage: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
While 20 states and the District of Columbia have laws specifically banning discrimination in employment and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, dozens of others do not. The Equality Act, co-sponsored by nearly every House and Senate Democrat and three Republicans, would expressly prohibit these and other types of anti-LGBTQ discrimination nationally by adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the federal Civil Rights Act. It also would expand and enhance existing protections for gender, race, and religion.
President Donald Trump’s proposed 2020 budget would seriously harm the LGBTQ community, many of whom rely on the public programs the administration is intent on shrinking. Even the initiative to end HIV is deeply flawed, experts on LGBTQ policy say.
The 2020 budget includes a $8.6 billion cut for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and proposes eliminating the Community Development Block Grant program and capital improvement funds for public housing repairs.
The LGBTQ community disproportionately experience homelessness and rely on public housing assistance.
A 2017 Center for American Progress (CAP) survey found that LGBTQ people and their families relied on public housing assistance at 2.5 times the rate of people who weren’t in the LGBTQ community. Sharita Gruberg, director of policy for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at CAP, said trans people are five times more likely to report receiving some kind of housing assistance. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent news site housed at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.)
A 2012 Williams Institute report found that 30 percent of clients utilizing housing programs identified as LGBTQ.
Republican congressional candidate Fern Shubert has a unique theory about the root cause of crime. In a statement on her campaign website during her unsuccessful 2004 bid for North Carolina governor, she explained that she opposed same-sex marriage because “[t]he government’s attack on traditional families is already reflected in rising crime rates. Anyone who cares about the future should seek to structure a society that provides the best environment for raising children, and that is the traditional two parent family.”Full story
According to the policy, military secretaries and the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant can issue waivers bypassing the ban, but it provides no explanation as to what warrants such waivers. Hypothetically, then, a secretary could choose to grant waivers to every single trans person who wishes to enlist and effectively not enforce the ban at all. The guidance clarifies that any individual granted such a waiver will then be treated exactly like the group of openly-serving transgender personnel who are grandfathered in, including having their medical needs met.Full story
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously reversed an Alabama court's refusal to recognize a same-sex adoption.Full story
The justices upheld a challenge brought by an Alabama woman after her state's highest court refused to recognize the adoption she and her former lesbian partner were granted in Georgia.
The couple never married and have since split up. But the case presented a test of an issue that crops up occasionally in state and federal courts since the Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage: Can gays and lesbians be denied adoption rights?
The case was brought by "V.L.," as she is identified in court papers, against her former partner "E.L.," who gave birth to three children between 2002-04 while the couple was together. To win adoption rights for V.L., they established temporary residency in Georgia.
Nebraska is one of more than two dozen states that have no LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections at the state level. That’s not changing anytime soon, as a bill to create employment protections came to an abrupt end this week.
State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks (D) introduced LB 627 in January this year. The legislation would have updated all relevant state statutes to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Pansing Brooks, whose son is gay, pleaded with fellow lawmakers Tuesday to consider the bill.
Pansing Brooks nearly secured the 25-vote majority she needed for passage, but could not find the 33 votes she needed to overcome a filibuster-ending cloture motion. Opponents of the bill claimed that it would be used to target religious business owners in the state and punish them for their beliefs.
For just the second time since the global epidemic began, a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.Full story
The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The surprise success now confirms that a cure for H.I.V. infection is possible, if difficult, researchers said.
The investigators are to publish their report on Tuesday in the journal Nature and to present some of the details at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle.
Ariana Grande has been forced to step in and defend herself after facing criticism when she was announced as the headliner of an LGBTQ pride festival.
It had been rumoured for weeks that Ariana was set to top the bill at Manchester Pride this year. The performance would mark her first visit to Manchester since the One Love concert two years ago.
But when it was finally announced that she would indeed be performing, both Ariana and Manchester Pride were heavily criticised for a number of things. Many took issue with the price of the tickets, calling the jump in price "exploitation of LGBT people".
