Now, we need your help. Until midnight Tuesday, we’re competing in a national fundraising contest. If we finish strong, we can win up to $15,000 for our work in 2014. Can you make your year-end, tax-deductible gift to CSE right now?
– During July, CSE offered FREE legal clinics in Gulfport, Hattiesburg, Jackson and Tupelo, Mississippi so that LGBT individuals could complete an Advanced Mississippi Health-Care Directive with the assistance of an attorney. In total our legal clinics this year resulted in 239 LGBT individuals’ completing Health Care Power of Attorney Forms (for free!) so that their medical choices will be respected in emergency situations.
(Bob and Jon create the first public record of a legally-married LGBT couple in Rowan County,N.C.by recording their California marriage license.)
– Through the WE DO Campaign, married LGBT couples recorded their out-of-state marriage licenses in 14 counties across N.C. (from Onslow in the East to Haywood in the West); creating public records highlights the reality that married LGBT couples live all across the state, yet are treated as legal strangers.
– On October 15th, we broke through with the WE DO Campaign: for the first time anywhere in the South LGBT couples had their marriage license applications accepted when Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger took this courageous step.
Love will win is something we say a lot. I truly believe these words. But I also know that winning rights in the South won’t come easily, and will require that we keep showing up and standing up, again and again. It’s going to take more than online petitions and Facebook “likes” for us to get there.
Love will win,
Jasmine
Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara
Executive Director, Campaign for Southern Equality
p.s. Donate in the next 36 hours and you can receive one of our cool new baseball style T-shirts with the CSE logo on the front and Love Will Win on the back: http://bit.ly/IAn2bU