Equality Now

Great video of Sunday's National Equality March in DC. Made me cry and hope.

A Kansas First! Senate committee approves bill banning LGBT discrimination

As far as I know this is the first time any Kansas legislative committee has ever taken such a pro-queer vote. The Harris News Service reports that a Kansas Senate committee just endorsed a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations.

The vote by the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee was 5-3. Harris News writes:

Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee Chairman Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, voted with the majority in favor of the bill. He said that in this day and age, there’s no reason that people should be discrimination against because of their personal characteristics. "It just affirms the obvious," Brungardt said of the bill.

Kudos to the Kansas Equality Coalition! Well done Tom Witt, lobbyist and former chair; Maggie Childs, current chair; and all the other hard-working members of KEC.

This makes the bill, SB 169, eligible for a vote on the floor of the Senate. If passed by the full Senate, it would have to go through the same process in the Kansas House. Despite the victory, the future of the bill remains uncertain.

Having said that, I'm still thrilled. This is a significant victory. Kansans who believe in fairness should savor this win. Hoorah!

Today's Must Read: Gays really ARE destroying the country!

It's true. LGBT people really are more dangerous than al Qaeda, or well, maybe not so much. Salt Lake Tribune Columnist Robert Kirby tells all.

Tell 3 people the truth about what LGBT Americans face

It can be your story, your friend's story or a relative's story. But today, right now in fact, visit Tell 3 and figure out which three people you're going to tell. Why does it matter if you do this?

It's important because California voted to get rid of marriage rights for our community. It's important because 29 other states have done the same. It's important because LGBT people get fired from their jobs just for being who they are, kids get beat up in school for seeming "queer" while school administrators do nothing about it, and same-sex couples can't foster or adopt while children in need go without homes. Isn't it getting old?

You can be a hero today. Heterosexual and LGBT. It doesn't matter. All that does matter is that you act. By doing nothing more than having three conversations you can, in fact, change the world.

Latest Column: What Gays Owe Black America

My new Political IQ column is out.

Thinking about Dr. King

By Nancy Jane Moore

My freshman year college roommate had a 7:30 class Thursday mornings. She also had a bad habit of waking up before her clock radio went off and heading out to the bathroom, so that I was frequently awakened by the news.

Which is how I learned, on April 5, 1968, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

I can still remember how stunned I felt. I got up -- no thought of going back to sleep -- and went up the hall to the bathroom to tell my roommate. It had all happened the night before, but we weren't news junkies back in those days.

My biology professor canceled class, leaving us a message that we should think seriously about what had happened. I recall taking the bus to Houston that afternoon -- it was the beginning of spring break -- still in a state of shock.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that someone would kill Dr. King. In fact, it is probably more amazing that he wasn't murdered earlier. But even though I knew about lynchings and the violent attacks against Civil Rights marchers and even though I had been profoundly affected by the assassination of President Kennedy some four and half years earlier, Dr. King's death caught me completely off guard.

I didn't grow up in the deep South, in the part of the country where the worst battles of the Civil Rights Movement were fought. But in my hometown outside of Houston, Jim Crow still held sway despite Supreme Court rulings: I went to segregated schools until I was a senior in high school.

Yet today we have a federal holiday in honor of Dr. King. And -- as is often the case with people who are honored after their deaths -- we seem to pretend as a society that he was never a controversial figure. Every Jan. 15, radio stations will play his "I Have a Dream" speech and most of us will nod in agreement while listening to his stunning oratory.

But while bigotry might have been on its way out at the time of his death, it had by no means disappeared. Further, he had begun to speak out against the Vietnam War, which did not endear him to a president who had pushed through the Civil Rights Act. He was in Memphis, where he was shot, to help garbage workers who were on strike. Many thought he should not be trying to organize poor people; perhaps some feared that he might have some success at bringing together the poor across racial lines.

He was, in short, a thorn in the side of those in power to the end of his days. If he were still with us today, I suspect he would still be making trouble.

There were riots in 1968 after Dr. King was killed. Here in Washington, people who go back that far speak of the 1968 riots as a major changing point in the city. Many blighted neighborhoods date from that time -- most are just now being rebuilt. A lot of white people left the city.

I didn't move to Washington until 1980, and like most newcomers to a city, I have tended to assume it was always the way it seemed when I first moved to town. Riots and white flight seemed like a thing of the distant past -- even when they occurred at the time I was reeling from the shock of Dr. King's death. It's hard to keep all that in perspective.

But I think it about it now, because I live in a primarily black neighborhood that was mostly white before the 1968 riots. My next door neighbors were the first black family in the neighborhood -- they moved here in 1961. I know white people in nearby suburbs who grew up in this part of town. And, knowing the history, I know when they left.

I've lived here for 15 years. In the last couple of years, I've noticed a few more white people living in the area and Hispanic families are also moving in. Today's Washington Post speculates that Georgia Avenue (a couple of blocks away) may finally experience a long-awaited renaissance.

I know some Washingtonians worry that neighborhoods like mine will become all-white again, but I hope they won't. I hope this neighborhood and the others like it will gradually become more mixed. And even though I -- like most Americans -- would like to make a bundle off my house when it comes time to sell, I hope the neighborhood stays affordable. Ideally, children of all races and backgrounds would grow up around here, play together, go to school together, date and marry and raise more children in similar circumstances.

And while I'd also like to hope that our country will eventually live up to the ideals set out in our Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, current events lead me to believe that we will always need outspoken leaders who challenge injustice in our society the way Dr. King did.

It would be a nice legacy for him if some of the children in our neighborhood grow up to become thorns in the side of the powerful.

What gay rights has to do with civil rights

By Diane Silver

Thank you, Leonard Pitts. Once again, you've made sense of what many would either obscure or deny.

Today's column really hit home. However, it isn't just because I'm a lesbian, and Pitts is arguing for gay rights. The column also hit home because I am a firm believer that all people deserve fairness and equal treatment under the law, even those who are different than I am, and yes, even those who want to destroy me.

Pitts writes:

(N)o, gay people were not kidnapped from Gay Land and sold into slavery, nor lynched by the thousands. On the other hand, they do know something about housing discrimination, they do know job discrimination, they do know murder for the sin of existence, they do know the denial of civil rights, and they do know what it is like to be used as scapegoat and bogeyman by demagogues and political opportunists.

They know enough of what I know that I can't ignore it. See, I have yet to learn how to segregate my moral concerns. It seems to me if I abhor intolerance, discrimination and hatred when they affect people who look like me, I must also abhor them when they affect people who do not. For that matter, I must abhor them even when they benefit me. Otherwise, what I claim as moral authority is really just self-interest in disguise....

I believe in moral coherence. And Rule No. 1 is: You cannot assert your own humanity, then turn right around and deny someone else's.

Amen to that.

Civil Rights, Civil Unions, Religion and the State from an Muslim Activist's Eyes

By Pamela K. Taylor

I want to point readers to an article written by a Muslim activist who was in Wisconsin recently canvassing against that state's ammendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and denying legal status to civil unions and common law marriages.

The amendment to the state constitution reads:

That marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state and that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state.

The article is a beautiful explanation of how civil rights must be applied across the board, and how the encroachment of religious traditions into politics must be challenged. It's a sincere and heartfelt demonstration of how an individual can support another human being's right to self-determination in every matter, including marriage, even though that individual believes his religion prohibits same-sex and common law marriages.

To me, it is clear that all human beings should have the right to make their own moral decisions, that freedom of religion should apply even to those whose religious choices you don't agree with.

Of course, the matter is complicated because religious freedom is not absolute. It is tempered by other freedoms and social needs. A society's need for security may justify laws which require those who veil their faces to reveal their identity under certain circumstances. Similarly, religious traditions which inflict bodily harm on their participants (say suicide cults or practices such as fgm) may be outlawed by society.

But in instances where no one is being physically harmed, and security is not endangered, then we have no moral authority to insist that any one religious interpretation can be imposed upon the entirety of society.