Equality Federation won’t stop until all LGBTQ+ people are fully empowered and represented in their communities, experiencing full equality in their lives.
Equality Federation’s Legislative Action Center (LAC) is a proactive state legislative tracking and assistance program that will serve Federation partners, coalition members, and movement leadership and staff.
This week, we wrapped up the second convening of Fair Share for Equality, our annual forum of California state and local elected officials, LGBT and civil rights leaders and social service agencies, aimed at addressing the daunting disparities in health and wellbeing LGBT people still face compared to the general population. In her address to the audience, California Controller Betty Yee said that “the agenda for California and the rest of the country is quite vast.”
As efforts to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people from discrimination intensify, LGBT social justice organizations’ revenues experienced a decline in revenue for the first time since the Great Recession of 2007-2008. According to a new report (below) by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), despite the decrease in revenue, leading LGBT social justice organizations are projecting combined 2015 expense budgets totaling $189.6 million, a 12% increase from 2014 expenses.
Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance honoring the transgender people we’ve lost, often due to violence. This year, at least 23 transgender women were murdered in the United States and 81 worldwide.
In early November, over 30 leaders representing Equality Illinois, OutFront Minnesota, Equality New Mexico, Equality Ohio, PROMO (Missouri), Equality Pennsylvania, and Equality Utah gathered in Chicago for Equality Federation’s West by Midwest Leadership Summit.
Equality Federation is concerned Indiana’s Senate Bill 100, introduced by Senate Republicans, would not cover many Hoosiers from discrimination. While the authors are framing the bill as nondiscrimination legislation, it includes broad exemptions allowing discrimination by a host of organizations and businesses.
When even the anchors at notoriously anti-LGBTQ/biased Fox News think your law is discriminatory and unnecessary, it might be time to rethink things. Watch as host Megyn Kelly rakes Gov. McCrory over the coals for his flawed defense of HB2.
Equality Federation congratulates South Carolina Equality and all of the hardworking South Carolinians who helped ensure the defeat of S.1203, an anti-transgender bill that would have enshrined discrimination into state law by forcing transgender people to use the bathroom consistent with their biological sex, not their gender identity that they live every day, in all publicly-owned facilities including schools.
Federation member PROMO Missouri is celebrating victory as anti-LGBTQ, religious exemption legislation, SJR 39, has failed to make it out of committee rendering it dead.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has signed discriminatory legislation that allows counselors and therapists to refuse treatment based on their religious objections or personal beliefs. The American Counseling Association has called the legislation an “unprecedented attack” on the counseling profession.
On Thursday, April 28th, the House Armed Services Committee voted to pass a discriminatory amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act introduced by Representative Steve Russell (R-OK). The amendment applies the private employer religious exemptions of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act to religious organizations receiving any federal contract or grant – which could include universities and hospitals employing thousands of people.
President Obama called for the repeal of Anti-LGBTQ bills in North Carolina and Mississippi at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister, David Cameron. The British Government recently issued a travel warning to LGBTQ tourists visiting those states.
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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.
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