Equality Federation won’t stop until all LGBTQ+ people are fully empowered and represented in their communities, experiencing full equality in their lives.
On Monday, January 7th, Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order banning discrimination against LGBTQ state employees and Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers signed an executive order expanding nondiscrimination protections to transgender state employees.
On a cold December night in Chicago, Fran Hutchins, our deputy director, and I hustled from our hotel to dinner with four executive directors who’ve stepped up to lead in their states in 2018. We’d just wrapped up the first of two intensive days of training at our New Executive Director Boot Camp.
Our regional summits are growing! This year’s West by Midwest (WxMW) Leadership Summit was our biggest and best ever. For the third year in a row, we’ve invited members from the Western states to join us at what used to be the Midwest Leadership Summit.
When two-year-old Katie fell and knocked her tooth out, her mom, Jane, did what any mom would do, she rushed her crying, bleeding child to the dentist. But when she arrived, the dentist told her, “A child cannot have two mothers so the ‘real mom’ has to be here.”
Today is #GivingTuesday, a national day of charitable giving, and we need you to support the state-based LGBTQ resistance.
Last week lawmakers in Georgia passed positive reforms to the state’s adoption and foster care code. HB 159 updates the state’s antiquated child welfare laws and does not include any discriminatory language.
Two additional bills targeting LGBTQ people have failed in the South Dakota Legislature. SB 160, which would have prohibited classroom instruction of gender expression or identity, and SB 202, which would have required all public restrooms to have a sign posted giving notice that a person of the “opposite sex” may be in the restroom, were both killed or voted down with bipartisan support.
The Education Department has said it will not investigate or take action on any complaints of discrimination filed by transgender students who are not permitted to use the facilities that match their gender identity.
Four bills that would have updated Virginia’s laws to include LGBTQ people in nondiscrimination protections were killed in a committee despite the broad support of fair-minded Virginians. Two of the bills had passed in the state’s Senate with 75% of the vote.
This is urgent. Trump’s extremist, anti-LGBTQ nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Stuart Kyle Duncan, could be confirmed as soon as Wednesday.
Explore why aging must be part of the LGBTQ movement’s work in this guest post by Dan Stewart, Program Coordinator of SAGE of PROMO Fund (our Missouri member organization) featuring a fabulous FEDTalk by PROMO executive director Steph Perkins!
With your support, we'll be able to continue our work to build the leaders of today and tomorrow, strengthen state-based LGBTQ+ organizations, and make critical progress on the issues that matter most—like protecting transgender people, ending HIV criminalization and ensuring access to care, and banning conversion therapy across the country.