Protecting Our Future
Over four decades ago, NCLR was founded because there was a gap in our LGTBQ movement. Everyone wasn’t included by what was then known as the Gay Movement.
We worked tirelessly to fill the gap and this primary commitment underscoring our work has never changed. Every case we take, every policy we champion, every bill we fight for, every asylum seeker and help line caller we help, every person that experiences gender discrimination in the LGBTQ community — are all connected.
We have said it before and we will say it again: our fight for LGBTQ equality is not done until no one is left behind.
This year is demanding more from all of us. More compassion. More determination. More grit. NCLR is rising to this call by leaning into our values, our agility and effective responsiveness to unforeseen and sudden challenges.
We all benefit when the most vulnerable among us are defended and protected.
Equality is not just laws protecting employment, education, healthcare, housing and family — but also shared dignity and belonging.
The systems of oppression that plague our communities are working to keep the historical lines of inequity intact. Our work is a lifetime of disrupting these systems to promote fairness, justice and liberty.
We must not simply reform but transform the systems and structures that perpetuate inequality. NCLR works hard every day to change laws, policies and opinions in support of LGBTQ justice.
“Justice is what love looks like in public.” — Cornel West
The work
2020 has brought collective heartache to humankind. Exacerbating a worldwide pandemic, Americans have experienced the confluence of police brutality, reckoning with systemic and pervasive racism and profound natural disasters as manifestations of climate change pushing our social, emotional and economic safety nets into peril.
All of this while the presidential administration works diligently to dismantle so many of the protections we worked decades to put in place.
Attempts to strip reproductive rights, ban asylum seekers, and the all out attack on transgender people in healthcare, employment, education and the right to basic dignity, respect and civility are tactics to divide us.
It will not work.
When we started working to end conversion therapy in the 1990s, NCLR was alone at the table. Not anymore. 20 states and 72 municipalities have passed laws against conversion therapy to date and countless organizations, media partners and politicians have joined us in this fight. This is the NCLR way — to take on the sometimes controversial injustice of today that will be tomorrow’s universal cause.
Fighting for justice doesn’t just happen in the courts, in elected chambers or in political arenas. Radical change in systems is sparked by radical change in hearts and minds.
We are facing an unprecedented call to action in our community — and in our country. NCLR is forging an unprecedented response. Protecting our Future for ALL OF US.