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Our Voices

Dispatch from Kate

Julian, Sandy, and I were lucky enough yesterday to attend the LGBTQ Pride Month Commemoration event at the White House. President Obama and First Lady Michelle were there, along with some of NCLR’s closest colleagues and so many who have fought tirelessly for this moment. The Advocate asked me to write about my thoughts on the day. A link to that piece is below. We know we are far from finished. Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case will make it more difficult to...

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High Court Strikes Massachusetts Abortion “Buffer Zone”

Today, the Supreme Court held that a Massachusetts law creating a 35-foot buffer zone for patients at clinics that provide abortions was too broad, but affirmed that laws in line with the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act are valid, and implied that smaller anti-harassment zones could be valid. Buffer zones are important protectors of patient safety and clinic access, and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights joined the National Women’s Law Center and several other...

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A Landmark Decision and an Incredible Year for Marriage

A year ago today, we celebrated a major tipping point in the movement for LGBTQ equality—a watershed United States Supreme Court decision that continues to impact the lives of same-sex couples across the country. The Supreme Court’s decision on June 26, 2013 striking down the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barred the federal government from recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples, set off a legal tidal wave unlike anything we have seen before. Inspired by Justice...

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All LGBTQ Kids Are #BornPerfect

Even as the LGBTQ community enjoys huge gains in understanding and acceptance. Even as we have key leaders from every sector and across every spectrum supporting our full equality and rejecting rank bigotry. Even as we seem closer than ever to winning the freedom to marry nationwide, a persistent and longstanding threat has reemerged. You have likely heard or read a chorus of anti-LGBTQ voices in the last few weeks supporting so-called “conversion therapy,” the vile practice used by some...

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The Next Chapter in the Sports Equality Movement

Last week, I was in a room of about 100 LGBTQ sports advocates and stakeholders at the 3rd annual LGBTQ Sports Coalition Summit hosted by Nike. Formalized in 2013, the LGBTQ Sports Coalition consists of nonprofit members, engaged individuals, and affiliates dedicated to ending homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in sports by 2016. We held our first informal convening in 2012. The summit only had about 30 participants that first year. Now, our summit is over 100 strong, representing advocates...

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A Year Like None Other: NCLR’s Litigation Work

Ever since NCLR’s founding, we have been at the forefront of some of the most important legal cases in the history of the LGBTQ movement, from winning the freedom to marry in California, to securing critical protections for LGBTQ parents in courts around the country, and all the way to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. But no year in our history has ever been quite like this one. The Supreme Court’s decision last summer striking down the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which...

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The Loss of Family

I was sad all day yesterday. It was only in the moment of hearing the news of Dr. Maya Angelou’s death that I realized how much her living had meant to me. I never met Dr. Angelou, but like so many of us, when we heard this news, I felt like I had lost a beloved sister, aunt, neighbor, or mentor. I was 13 when I read “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” I was in 8th grade in Ogden, Utah. I was white and Mormon in my overwhelmingly white and Mormon public school. I had nothing in...

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Maggie, Michael, Marriage, Memory, and Where Our Movement Goes Next

The column was not exactly as advertised. This week, I finally got around to reading the blog posted on May 1 by ardent same-sex marriage foe Maggie Gallagher. A number of sources had described the blog variously as her abandoning the fight or conceding failure, noting this passage: “Hiding or pretending is not going to help us, now. We have to face the truth. And we have to find the love at its heart. And we will have to do new things, not simply do what failed, over and over again, harder.”...

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The Women of Texas: Part 1 of a Series

Later this week, I’m traveling to my home state of Texas, inspired in part by a report detailing the harsh realities facing Latinas in the Lower Rio Grande Valley: Nuestra Voz, Nuestra Salud Nuestro Texas: The Fight for Women’s Reproductive Health in the Rio Grande Valley. Written by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the report details the shocking human rights abuses suffered daily by women in the Rio Grande Valley. From...

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Michael Sam is Achieving Greatness

The news that Michael Sam had been drafted by the St. Louis Rams late on Saturday, becoming the first openly gay athlete in the NFL, was met with two very different reactions in my house. While I was overcome with pride and emotion at this historic moment, my two sixteen-year-old daughters—one a rock climber and one a water polo player—simply yelled, “Yes!” when they heard, and moved on to the rest of their day. Our two very different reactions are possibly the most perfect metaphor for the...

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