It may seem like common sense that the California Supreme Court—our state’s foremost judicial body—would ban judges from belonging to groups that discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. While this has in fact been the case since 1996, the state high court made an exception to this ban for nonprofit youth organizations that discriminate. It did this specifically to accommodate judges who serve as troop leaders in Boy Scouts of America. Now California’s...
Our Voices
Even as we celebrate a new breakthrough every week, we must be vigilant for threats to our community. Case in point—Arizona. This week, the Arizona legislature passed a bill which would allow businesses to refuse service, based on their religious beliefs, to LGBTQ people or anyone else. The bill is patently unconstitutional, but we cannot just sit back without taking action. This bill is one of the most brazen attacks our community has ever faced—and it jeopardizes basic anti-discrimination...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...