There’s been a lot going on:
Quite a week for the LGBT community!
From NCTE:
Last night, Representative John Conyers of Michigan re-introduced The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, H.R. 1913. This would be the first-ever federal law to provide protections for transgender people. It is identical to the hate crimes bill passed by the House of Representatives in 2007 and includes the language that transgender advocates requested. It is also the first transgender inclusive bill to be introduced during this Session.
In his comments introducing the bill, Rep. John Conyers stated, “Hate crime statistics do not speak for themselves. Behind each of the statistics is an individual or community targeted for violence for no other reason than race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. Law enforcement authorities and civic leaders have learned that a failure to address the problem of bias crime can cause a seemingly isolated incident to fester into widespread tension that can damage the social fabric of the wider community. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 is a constructive and measured response to a problem that continues to plague our nation. These are crimes that shock and shame our national conscience. They should be subject to comprehensive federal law enforcement assistance and prosecution.”
Representatives are heading home to their districts for spring recess from now until April 21st. It is vital that you call them in their district offices to urge their support for this critical piece of legislation. Those who oppose this legislation will be active during this time-we need to be as well so that members of Congress are hearing from those directly affected by this legislation. Please take this important step to help address the violence faced by transgender people.
To find your Representative, visit our webpage or go to the House of Representatives webpage at www.house.gov and enter your ZIP+4 to find your member of Congress.
WHAT THE BILL SAYS
The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, H.R. 1913, would:
- Extend existing federal protections to include “gender identity, sexual orientation, gender and disability”
- Allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes
- Mandate that the FBI begin tracking hate crimes based on actual or perceived gender identity
- Remove limitations that narrowly define hate crimes to violence committed while a person is accessing a federally protected activity, such as voting.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act is supported by nearly 300 civil rights, education, religious, and civic organizations. The bill is also endorsed by virtually every major law enforcement organization in the country-including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Sheriffs Association, the Police Executive Research Forum, and thirty-one state Attorneys General.
For more information:
- Read the specifics about this legislation from the Library of Congress, go to their website and search by bill H.R. 1913
- View our fact sheet about the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act and read additional information about hate crimes on our website.
& That’s exactly why I love NCTE: all the info you need to do what you need to do.
NCTE asks:
What would federal policy look like if transgender people were fully and fairly included? Over the past months and years, NCTE has compiled a list of 112 separate policies that directly impact the lives of transgender people and our families that need to be added, removed or changed. Our latest publication, “Transgender Equality and the Federal Government” outlines each of these issues. We expect that some of these policies can be changed in the short term, while others will require long term activism. Some of the issues here will be at the forefront of NCTE’s work in the coming year and in other areas, our partners in this work will be the ones to lead, with our support.
You can read that document online, or check out in .pdf format.
Today NSRC (National Sexuality Resource Center) held a live chat with Jamison Green, Dallas Denny, Masen Davis and Joy O’Donnell on the national state of trans rights. Worth reading.
Like plenty of others, I’ll believe it when I see it, and will continue supporting The Task Force and NCTE over HRC, but this, if it turns out to be true, is a very.good.thing.
QUESTION: “But on AIG, why did you wait — why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? It seems like the action is coming out of New York and the attorney general’s office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, “Look, we’re outraged.” Why did it take so long?”
OBAMA: “It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”
= the best bit of Obama’s press conference tonight.
Okay, so I’m going to say it: I love Barack Obama. There are days I come home & worry about the uncertainty of my own life for the next couple of years, & then I see him and his rapidly-graying hair, & it consoles me to know that what I’ve got to deal with is nothing in comparison.
He’s a truly remarkable man. His talk tonight in CA was so reassuring. It amazes me that he has room to be funny while he’s dealing with all this bullshit we’re neck-deep in.
Pam’s House Blend reports that Mara Keisling is one of the many women who have been invited to participate in an announcement ceremony.
Mara Keisling, for those of you who don’t know, is a lesbian-identified trans woman who is also the executive director of NCTE.
(Toldja he was trans-inclusive.)
(Thanks to Pam & Diana in CT.)
Today the opposing sides face off in California State Supreme Court about Prop 8. In their corner, the detestable Ken Starr; in ours, the inimitable Shannon Minter.
My friend Megan has already sussgested the headline: Minter Blows Starr Away.
I have absolute confidence in Shannon Minter.
The NAACP has been one of our strongest allies in the fight against Proposition 8 in California. The national NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF) and the California branch of the NAACP joined other civil rights groups in filing a major brief before the California Supreme Court in support of equality, and LDF recently urged the California legislature to enact resolutions calling for the invalidation of Prop 8.
The NAACP is getting some push-back for these efforts. Now is the time for us to support them and show that coalition politics goes both ways. Please join me in expressing your support for their statement of equality to your local NAACP branch:
We are not alone in this fight. Let’s show that we know how to step up to the plate when others step up for us.
Barnard College is hosting a conference on reproductive technologies on Saturday, February 28th; I wish I were there, but I’m not. Hopefully someone will go & report back!
All the info below the break.
Every day I wake up & read the news & every day I smile:
Obama Pledges Restoration of US Funding for UNFPA
President Obama Signs Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Senate Approves SCHIP Expansion Bill.
It’s like a dream, really. These things that caused so much sadness and chagrin in past years, just fixed, just like that.
I don’t think I can watch footage of Obama talking to young volunteeers without getting weepy. The teenaged girls especially crack me up, though, and I have to say I suspect I’d be just as goofy if I got to meet the man in person, too. The awe you can see in people’s eyes is so exciting.
Tomorrow I’m just going to cry through the inaugural, I just know it. We all expect it to kick ass, & I have no doubt it will. He’s walking around today like a man who’s got a good piece written.
It really is true that us Gen Xers finally understand the Kennedy thing the Boomers have been going on about our entire lives. We never had this kind of president before, someone who is really an inspiration, and young and strong and sexy, with a beautiful wife to boot.
From National Stonewall Democrats:
Washington, DC – Today, the Stonewall Democrats congratulated Laura Calvo upon her election as Treasurer of the Democratic Party of Oregon. Calvo, a seasoned Democratic operative, becomes the first openly-transgender officer of a state Democratic party. A member of the Board of Directors for National Stonewall Democrats, Calvo also serves as Chair of the Oregon Stonewall Democrats and as Treasurer of the Multnomah County Democrats. Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, is the largest county in the state of Oregon.
Allyson Robinson posted this message about Equality Florida’s fight for a gender-inclusive non-discrimination law in Gainesville, Florida on our message boards, & I thought it deserved a larger audience:
Many of you are aware of the fight brewing in Gainesville, Florida over their trans-inclusive non-discrimination law, passed by the city council last year. Gainesville’s non-discrimination ordinance had covered sexual orientation for years, but when gender identity was added last year, opposition was activated. The opposition group collected a huge number of signatures–over 10% of the projected voting population–to get the anti-discrimination ordinance placed on the ballot in a special election. That’s tremendous for this kind of municipal issue; more people signed the petition against these protections than voted for the mayor or any sitting city council member in recent elections.
Though the charter amendment the opposition group is pushing would eliminate protections for the whole LGBT community, their messaging is focusing on transgender people–the “bathroom diversion.” Their flyers state, in letters a inch tall, “KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S RESTROOMS.” As we’ve seen all over the country, and writ large in California last fall, this kind of fear-based messaging is very, very difficult to dislodge from voters’ minds. The special election is scheduled for March 24.
This fight has national significance. The “bathroom diversion” is quickly becoming our opposition’s weapon of choice. They used it successfully in Hamtramck, Michigan, it might have succeeded in Montgomery County, Maryland had the courts not intervened, it’s getting drug out in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it’s already being raised at the state level in places like Connecticut that are considering inclusive non-discrimination bills this year. We must show both our opponents and our supporters that we can consistently defeat this tactic. If we don’t, municipalities or states considering trans-inclusive non-discrimination laws may become gun-shy, preferring not to deal with costly ballot initiatives in response to pro-equality laws.
A study done by two NYU researchers shows that in fact, party, ideology, frequency of religious service, and age were far more important factors than race in the defeat of Prop 8.
So at long last, we can put this one down.
The other good news is that they also found support for same sex marriage has increased in nearly all demographics.
Press release at Freedom to Marry, & the actual study is here (pdf).
From the NCTE:
Today, January 6, Members of Congress raise their right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution as they begin the new legislative session.
Let’s make sure the first thing they hear about is the importance of an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that protects all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224 3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them: “I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I strongly support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”
Then, call back and leave messages with your two Senators too!
Request an in-person meeting for you and other community members with your two Senators and your Representative (or their staffs) in their home district offices. You can call the district offices to request these meetings but they often want you to fax a meeting request. To find contact info for district offices, go to to www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.
Sample meeting request letters, and other talking points and resources for your meetings, are available in the following toolkits:
Rachel Maddow on the Rick Warren decision:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Congratulations to Diego Sanchez for his new appointment as Barney Frank’s senior policy advisor.
There are misgivings, of course, precisely because Sanchez has worked with HRC & crossed picket lines in SF to speak at an HRC dinner (when even the SF mayor wouldn’t).
(I’m going to agree with Courtney, who wondered aloud on the MHB forums, as to whether or not Frank will be comfortable sharing a bathroom with him.)
It certainly looks like Huckabee is doing some early work to get out in front for the 2012 presidential run, doesn’t it?
As Pam over at PHB points out:
“This man ran for president and intends to do so again. Journalists, particularly openly progressive ones, have an obligation to bore in on pols like Huckabee because their views are often wrapped up with a wink and a smile and sold as protecting family, children, the word “marriage”, etc. as if this is all a benign act that hurts no citizens in this country.”
Jon Stewart took him down in a good way - you can see the clip at Pam’s - and I agree with her that we need go shut this down before it gets too big.
