In the past two years, the threat to LGBTQ individuals and families has grown, and the nonprofits supporting our families need our help more than ever. Please consider giving today, the seventh annual Give OUT Day, in order to increase the impact of your giving.
I’ve been celebrating the spring holidays with my interfaith family and reflecting that Passover and Easter this year come in the shadow of ongoing and spiteful religious exemption laws in a growing number of states and in the federal government. These laws, widely seen as targeting the LGBTQ community, would allow people to cite their religious beliefs as a reason to discriminate against others. I have to remind myself, however, that we shouldn’t set religion and LGBTQ equality as necessarily opposing forces.
President Trump’s senseless ban on transgender people in the military went into effect Friday. Here are two recent pieces on transgender servicemembers who are parents and the impact the ban is having on them and their families.
Two weeks after the state of Arizona was sued for its anti-LGBTQ health curriculum in public schools, Governor Doug Ducey (R) signed a repeal of the law.
Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate with bipartisan support to block President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military. Now your help is needed to get additional sponsors for these bills and protect the many transgender service members—and their families—serving with honor and bravery.
In a major reversal of policy, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has said that children of LGBT parents may now be blessed and baptized in the faith, and that same-sex couples in the LDS Church will no longer be considered “apostates.”
Let’s roundup some stories I haven’t already covered—including, unfortunately, the progress of anti-LGBTQ bills in several states in the past week.
In a historic victory, Lori Lightfoot last night was elected mayor of Chicago, becoming the city’s first Black woman mayor, its first openly LGBTQ mayor, and the first openly LGBTQ woman of color to be elected mayor in any of America’s 100 largest cities. She’s also a proud lesbian raising a 10-year-old daughter with her spouse Amy Eshleman.
Arizona law currently bans any instruction in its HIV/AIDS health curriculum that “Promotes a homosexual life-style,” “Portrays homosexuality as a positive alternative life-style,” or “Suggests that some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex.” Several LGBTQ advocacy organizations are suing to change the harmful, archaic, and potentially deadly law.
President Trump’s proposed 2020 budget, released March 11, reinforces his intention to let foster care and adoption agencies discriminate against LGBTQ people and others in the name of religion, using taxpayer money. There is legislation pending that could stop these religious exemptions to nondiscrimination laws, however. Here’s what you need to know.
