THE LGBT SOUTH is a weekly email newsletter from the Campaign for Southern Equality that highlights the voices and experiences of LGBT people living in the South. Send feedback and story tips to felicia@southernequality.org.
“A new report on hunger found that more than one in four L.B.G.T. adults could not afford to feed themselves or their families at least once in the past year. By comparison, only one in six heterosexual adults reported a similar crisis.”
“Certain subgroups in the L.G.B.T. community are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, including minorities, women, the unmarried, bisexuals, those without college degrees, younger people and those who have children in the home. (It is believed that transgender people also go hungry, but data on this group is lacking.) Experts say L.G.B.T. teenagers, who are not covered in this report, are also at risk of going without food, especially if they are homeless.”
“’This is eye-opening for many people, and it’s even eye-opening for many in the anti-hunger world, who haven’t typically worked with the L.G.B.T. community,’ said Adam P. Romero, a scholar of law with the Williams Institute at U.C.L.A. School of Law who is one of the authors of the new study. ‘I’ve had a number of people from different anti-hunger organizations say, ‘Wow, I had no idea that hunger was such an issue in the L.B.G.T. community.’”
“It is clear that the traditionalists are frustrated with what they see as the lawlessness of the reformers and that the reformers are no longer willing to honor patently homophobic language and policy within the denomination. Since efforts to reach a compromise have repeatedly been thwarted by conservatives, progressives have resorted to civil disobedience and defiance.”
“More than 750 American UMC congregations have publicly identified themselves as ‘reconciling congregations’ that welcome all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, to participate fully in congregational life. In addition, many campus ministries, annual conferences, and other UMC groups have issued ‘reconciling’ statements. In some jurisdictions, UMC pastors so routinely perform same-sex weddings that it makes no news or incurs any complaints.”
“In effect, there are already two American United Methodist denominations. One, largely urban, and bicoastal, embraces social justice and civil rights for LGBT people as a religious and moral as well as a social principle. The other, largely rural and Southern, clings to a traditional interpretation of the Bible’s ‘clobber passages’ and accepts the ‘Book of Discipline’ as a binding authority. It is unlikely that these two branches can coexist very long under a single rubric.”
“At schools with gay-straight alliances, LGBTQ students report significantly fewer incidences of bullying based on sexual orientation or gender expression. Researchers find they also have a greater sense of personal safety, compared to students in schools without GSAs.”
“The new report is a meta-analysis of 15 independent studies surveying nearly 63,000 high school students. Robert Marx and Heather Hensman Kettrey of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute report their work in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.”
“The researchers found that students who attended a school with a GSA were:
52 percent less likely to hear homophobic remarks;
36 percent less likely to be fearful for their personal safety; and
30 percent less likely to experience homophobic victimization.”
“’Compared to their straight and gender-conforming classmates, LGBTQ students are at an increased risk of victimization in high schools, and our work suggests that GSAs might be a promising solution to this problem,’ says Kettrey, a research associate at Peabody Research Institute.”
“The week after the presidential elections could be the opening salvo in the trial over House Bill 2.”
“U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder scheduled the trial start for Nov. 14 in the HB2 challenge brought by six North Carolinians shortly after the law was adopted.”
“Five lawsuits have been filed in federal court over HB2, the law that requires transgender people to use publicly owned restrooms and locker rooms in accordance with the gender on their birth certificates instead of the gender with which they identify.”
“On Aug. 1, Schroeder will hear arguments on whether to put the law on hold while the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina, Lambda Legal and Jenner & Block law firm filed on behalf of three transgender residents, a lesbian N.C. Central University law professor and lesbian couple in Mecklenburg County.”
“During the full trial, the court will also consider challenges to sections of HB2 that prohibit local municipalities from extending nondiscrimination protections to LGBT people.”
“A Christian non-profit drafted much of the language in Mississippi’s controversial Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act and even helped write Gov. Phil Bryant’s signing speech, emails obtained by the attorney suing the governor show.”
“Alliance Defending Freedom, which supported Mississippi’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act enacted in 2014, brought the idea of the ‘religious conscience’ bill, which would eventually become HB 1523, to Mississippi more than a year ago.”
“‘We appreciate the Alliance Defending Freedom working with the Legislature to draft House Bill 1523,’ Bryant said in a statement Friday. ‘It is perfectly normal for our office to work with individuals and organizations, who have had a role in requesting and/or opposing legislation, during the bill review process to gather additional information.'”
“While it may be normal, attorney Robbie Kaplan says it is a crucial distinction to the legal case she is making against the governor.”
“Kaplan, the attorney who successfully overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act, suggests in her federal lawsuit that HB 1523 violates the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of religion by Congress.”
LGBT Atlanta Pride School counts down days to opening two years in the making By Patrick Saunders, The Georgia Voice“For [Christian] Zsilavetz, a transgender educator [and executive director], Pride School is personal. He came up with the idea in March 2014 while working at a small private school. He realized that even though he had transitioned eight years prior to that, he was not out to families and most of the staff.”“’I realized that it was inhibiting my ability to be the best educator I could be because I could not be authentic on the job and be the best educator,’ he said at the time to Georgia Voice, the first media outlet to report on Pride School.”
“He currently has four students signed up to start school next month with a goal to start the school year with seven—they’re hoping to open on August 8 to follow the Dekalb County school calendar.”
“Pride School is renting out three rooms [at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta] totaling 1500 square feet, which Zsilavetz says is more than enough room for 10 to 15 students. And the amenities were hard to pass up, including a keycoded door, a fenced-in playground that’s wheelchair accessible, a large patio, a vegetable garden and a butterfly garden. The school will use the rooms during the day on weekdays while the church will use them for various functions on nights and weekends.”
“Being trans is about gender, but loving a trans person is about sex. From the outside, at least. It must be a fetish, or I must be secretly bi, or — at the very least — I’m sacrificing, just a little. A very female thing, the pity of love.”
“My partner doesn’t want his body. But I do.”
“I wondered, at first — what it meant about me, my sexuality. I adore men. Their shoulders, their chests, their thick arms. Deep voices and the prick of stubble against my neck, someone who can wrap me up and protect me from the world. That was how I knew I liked him: I couldn’t help but watch as he worked with his horse. I watched his small hands, his strong forearms, his jeans tight around the muscles in his thighs. I watched him break the neighbor’s gelding, his limbs lithe as the animal reared and bucked beneath him, his face calm in a way I’d rarely seen it. I never had a thing for cowboys until I met my own.”
