Beyond the Carolinas
Marking a landmark federal workplace rights victory, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled April 24 in a 5-0 decision that an employer who discriminates against a transgender employee or job applicant because of the person’s gender identity is practicing illegal sex discrimination based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is the first time the EEOC has ruled that anti-transgender discrimination is sex discrimination.
Lesbian mom Jennifer Tyrrell learned April 10 that she would no longer be able to serve as a den leader of her son’s Cub Scout troop because of her sexual orientation.
A coalition of 29 national LGBT rights organizations issued an open letter April 2 declaring the killing of 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin a “national call to action” urging local and federal authorities to find answers in the case and demanding justice be served.
In a show of bipartisan support for the freedom to marry, on March 21 the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 211 to 116 to reject a measure that would repeal marriage equality in the New England state.
Chad H. Griffin has been named the next president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization. He is a national communications and policy strategist who is widely credited for being the mastermind behind the federal lawsuit to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which has now been ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts.
Mirroring a landmark Maryland House of Delegates vote from the previous week, on Feb. 23 the state Senate approved a same-sex marriage equality bill introduced by Gov. Martin O’Malley.
The Women’s Music Festival will be held April 20-22 at Roy’s Hideaway Campground, 268 Catfish Ln.
The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will implement an important new rule that greatly increases protections against housing discrimination for the LGBT community.
A regional LGBT institution is gone with the Jan. 26 closing of Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse. On the day of the closing, owner Philip Rafshoon told the Georgia Voice, “It’s been a great run, but we’re closed for businesss. For good. We’re not able to relocate. We thought we could. It just didn’t come together. It was a long shot to begin with and we wanted to cling to hope that we could find a new place.”
On Nov. 19, 2011, Florida A&M University student Robert Champion Jr. was found unresponsive aboard a band bus after the school’s biggest game of the year. Police ruled the death a homicide from hazing.
Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Francis George ignited a firestorm when he compared advancing LGBT equality to the Ku Klux Klan in a television interview with Fox Chicago a few days before Christmas. Cardinal George said: “You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”
Petty Officer 2nd class Jase Daniels (pictured), discharged from the U.S. Navy in April 2005 and again in March 2007 under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” has been reinstated and returned to active duty. He was sworn in on Dec. 12.
Nearly three out of four Americans living with HIV do not have their infection under control, according to a Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released in conjunction with World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. The low percentage comes from the fact that 1 in 5 people with HIV do not know they are infected and, of those who are aware, only 51 percent receive ongoing medical care and treatment.
A new Williams Institute study released Nov. 18 finds there are more than 28,500 binational same-sex couples in which one partner is a U.S. citizen and one is not and nearly 11,500 same-sex couples in which neither partner is a U.S. citizen.
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) has filed a landmark federal lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, on behalf of current and former service members seeking equal recognition, benefits and family support for equal sacrifice and service in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Frank Kameny and Paula Ettelbrick, both prominent figures for decades in the LGBT rights movement, passed away earlier this month. Kameny, 86, died at his Washington D.C.-area home on Oct. 11, National Coming Out Day, of natural causes. Ettelbrick, 56, passed away from cancer four days earlier in New York City.
A settlement has been reached in the case of Vanessa Adams, a Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) inmate at FMC Butner, who has gender identity disorder (GID). Adams sued BOP in order to receive appropriate treatment for her GID.
The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that kept openly gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans from serving in the U.S. military officially ended Sept. 20 and according to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, the national group that led the fight against the law, the repeal was welcomed with approximately 100 celebrations in all 50 states.
On Sept. 7, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released new guidelines that strengthen the Nov. 2010 hospital visitation rules that protect patients’ rights to be visited in the hospital by their families and loved ones. The guidance, which took effect immediately, makes several important changes to current policy and provides significant protections for LGBT patients and their families.
Deportation policy a step forward WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Obama Administration is implementing new procedures for assessing deportation and removal cases. The changes are expected to aid immigrants with U.S. citizen spouses and children who pose no threat to national security or public safety. Gay equality activists say this prosecutorial [...]
