Family Acceptance is the Foundation of LBGT Equality

Family acceptance. It’s the foundation of real and lasting change when it comes to equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. We know all too well what happens when families don’t accept their LGBT children or loved ones. The pain and suffering are seemingly immeasurable, as is the devastation left behind. PFLAG (www.pflag.org ) works every day with families across America, via our expansive grassroots network of volunteers, to create accepting and welcoming families. Through support, education and advocacy, PFLAG is changing hearts and minds, healing families and building stronger communities, giving equality a better chance to take root and grow.

More at: The Democratic Underground!

Salt Lake City Mayor Proposes Pro-GLBT Law

The Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission conducted a study to determine what types of discrimination the city’s GLBT population faced. The study concluded that some Salt Lake City residents had been evicted from or denied rental housing because they were gay. Some had lost jobs or had been passed over for promotions because of their sexual orientation or because they are transgender. Such discrimination was widespread enough to warrant government intervention.

These findings prompted Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker and his staff to draft an ordinance prohibiting housing and employment discrimination based on sexual preference or gender identity. Becker said that there is a need since neither federal nor state law designates gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people as a protected class.

More at: PFLAG!

American Family Association’s PepsiCo Boycott

PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) is the latest Fortune 500 company to arouse the anger of the ultra-conservative American Family Association (AFA) over its support of gay rights.

AFA, which was founded by Christian activist Rev. Donald Wildmon, objects to the Purchase, New York-based company donating $1 million to well-known gay rights groups, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), “to promote the homosexual lifestyle in the workplace,” according to AFA’s website. Spokespersons for the HRC and PLFAG could not immediately be reached for comment.

The organization denies that it “hates” homosexuals. “It is that love that motivates us to expose the misrepresentation of the radical homosexual agenda and stop its spread though our culture,” the group said. Gay people who have long fought AFA would beg to differ.

Read the rest of this post at DailyFinance, and read more about the boycott here at gayagenda.com!

Tennessee School Lifts Ban on Gay Sites

After being confronted with a law suit from the ACLU, a Tennessee school district has unblocked LGBT websites that students were prior not allowed to view.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Tennessee sued Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and Knox County Schools back in May, accusing the schools of unconstitutionally blocking students from accessing online information pertaining to LGBT news and issues. One issue that sparked the suit was the fact that students, although unable to access LGBT sites for information, were able to access anti-gay sites.

Sites that were blocked from viewing included PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays), GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) and HRC (Human Rights Campaign).

Not blocked for viewing included sites that support reparative therapy or sites that support ex-gay ministries and those that make claims they can “cure” homosexuals.

ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump stated:

“Allowing access to Web sites that present one side of an issue while blocking sites that present the other side is illegal viewpoint discrimination. This discriminatory censorship does nothing to make students safe from material that may actually be harmful, but only hurts them by making it impossible to access important educational material.”

Officials at the Knox County Schools called the blocking of LGBT sites a “glitch” and reported on Wednesday that it had been corrected.

Right Wing Nuts Take Fight Against Gay Websites

A Knox County, Tennessee, school system could face an ACLU lawsuit if it does not stop blocking LGBT websites from the view of High School Students.

The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the school system to unblock LGBT websites by April 29, 2009, or they may bring suit against them. The ACLU points out that filtering such websites as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); and Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is discrimination and goes against freedom of speech. The ACLU also states by denying students access to these sites, they are blocking “political and educational information about LGBT issues” on school computers, which constitutes “censorship” and denies students information for research purposes.

Of course the Religious Right is all up in arms over this one…including Matt Starver who stated;

“They’re not just talking about general issues with respect to homosexuality, they’re pushing a very sexualized agenda in their advertisement and in their content. The school is doing the right thing not to allow these websites to be made available to students in school.”

According to the anti-gay One News Now, Starver, who is a “Christian” attorney argues that homosexual activists want to use the schools as “an incubator to sexualize the next generation.”

So here we have 11 children killing themselves because they are being harassed with anti-gay slurs at schools, yet we can’t allow students to access information that may help them?

Always the Religious Right view…It’s better to have a dead fag than to have an educated straight person!

Next Page »