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Our Voices

Equality and Inclusion in Sports Takes Major Leap Forward

The announcement by University of Missouri football player Michael Sam that he is gay marks a new milestone in sports history. This has been a long time coming, but we are ready. The uncommon courage demonstrated by Sam makes clear he is a force to be reckoned with. The NFL team that has the wisdom and leadership to draft Sam will have a champion in the making. Sam will have the support of countless NFL fans and non-fans alike. For far too long LGBTQ athletes have languished in the shadows,...

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Overcoming Injustice: CeCe McDonald and Our Culture of Violence

This week, CeCe McDonald was released early after being unjustly sentenced to forty-one months in prison in May 2012 after pleading guilty to reduced second-degree murder for the death of Dean Schmitz, one of the people who attacked her. In June 2011, CeCe was the victim of a racist and transphobic hate crime while on her way to a grocery store. She was viciously attacked by a group of people, including Schmitz. In the resulting confrontation, Schmitz was fatally stabbed. Despite being the...

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Utah: This Time it’s Personal

January 2014 has barely begun and already we are off like a rocket. On December 20th, federal district court Judge Robert Shelby ruled that Utah’s Amendment 3 is unconstitutional and that same-sex couples could begin marrying there immediately. Our community, and everyone committed to justice for LGBTQ people, has been buzzing ever since. In our home, Judge Shelby’s ruling was particularly electrifying. I grew up in Utah, and I came to consciousness as a feminist and a lesbian at Weber State...

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A Healthy 2014 For Millions–For the First Time

In August 2012, I had (another) bike crash. It was my own idiocy that caused the crash. I was riding down a hill in San Francisco, just blocks from home, when, in trying to beat the light, I swerved around a MUNI train.  My bike tire got wedged in the MUNI track and I was thrown to the ground. I landed on my head (thank the goddess I always wear a helmet). A very sweet guy stopped to help me. He called 911, I called Sandy, an ambulance came, and I was taken to the emergency room. Everything I...

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Indian Supreme Court Recriminalizes 17.4% of Planet’s LGBTQ People

Wednesday’s Indian Supreme Court decision reversing a lower court and recriminalizing same-sex sexual intimacy marks a dreadful new judicial low for international LGBTQ human rights Even as we in the U.S. enjoy ever increasing visibility and protections for our community, life for many of our brothers and sisters in other countries is going from bad to intolerable. It is repellent that extremist religious opposition worldwide is such a corrosive impediment to basic human rights. The...

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Hungry For Immigration Reform

And Sam Ames, Esq. NCLR Staff Attorney For the past 5 days, we have eaten nothing. We continue to work, drinking only water. We continue to prepare food for our families, and we watch our colleagues eat at lunch. Sometimes it’s hard, but we are committed to fasting because we are committed to Fast for Families. We are committed to raising awareness about the need for commonsense immigration reform. We are fasting to show Speaker John Boehner and other House leadership the urgency of voting on...

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First Person: “My Relationship as an Immigrant in this Country has Come Full Circle”

Listening to President Obama speak yesterday on the need for comprehensive immigration reform in San Francisco’s Chinatown made me realize how my own relationship as an immigrant in this country has come full circle. I grew up in the small border town of McAllen, Texas, located in the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Only eight miles from the Mexican border, it is a predominantly Mexican, Spanish-speaking, rural, farm worker community. I was born in Mexico, but lived in McAllen since...

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Every Child Deserves a Family—Respect the Right to Parent

November is National Adoption Month, and there are currently more LGBTQ parents waiting to adopt than there are children in the foster system. Unfortunately, some LGBTQ couples are denied the right to parent—and children are denied a home—because of discriminatory state policies governing same-sex adoption, and policies that allow adoption agencies to give preference to different-sex couples. Anti-LGBTQ bias and discrimination in the courts further leads to LGBTQ parents being denied custody...

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New Report: LGBTQ Workers of Color are Among the Most Disadvantaged

A new report released today shows that LGBTQ workers of color are among the most disadvantaged in the country, facing high rates of unemployment and poverty due to workplace discrimination, unequal job benefits and taxation, and unsafe and under-resourced U.S. schools. The report—A Broken Bargain for LGBTQ Workers of Color—examines how LGBTQ workers of color face unique types of discrimination based both on their race and sexual orientation/gender identity. The report is co-authored by the...

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New Mexico Woman Who Won the Freedom to Marry Her Spouse Loses Battle to Cancer

After a long battle with a rare form of brain cancer, Jennifer Neuman-Roper, a client of NCLR and bold advocate for marriage equality, passed away on November 8. Jen and Angelique Neuman-Roper joined Griego v. Oliver—a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of New Mexico and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights—in August, and played a pivotal role in the struggle to win the freedom to marry for same-sex couples in New Mexico. Because Jen suffered from Stage 4 brain cancer, the couple of more than 20...

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