“The White House has endorsed historic legislation that would give lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals full federal protection from discrimination, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday.”
“‘It is now clear that the administration strongly supports the Equality Act,’ Earnest said at a briefing. ‘That bill is historic legislation that would advance the cause of equality for millions of Americans’.”
“The Equality Act of 2015, which was introduced to Congress in July, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity as federally protected categories. The amended law would ban the discrimination of LGBT individuals from areas such as housing, public accommodations and some employment.”
“Children of same-sex couples will not be able to join the Mormon Church until they turn 18 — and only if they move out of their parents’ homes, disavow all same-sex relationships and receive approval from the church’s top leadership as part of a new policy adopted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
“In addition, Mormons in same-sex marriages will be considered apostates and ordered to undergo church disciplinary hearings that could lead to excommunication, a more rigid approach than the church has taken in the past.”
“The new policies are an effort by the church, which has long opposed same-sex marriage, to reinforce and even harden its doctrinal boundaries for its members at a time when small but increasing numbers of Mormons are coming out as gay or supportive of same-sex marriage.”
“The South as a whole gets less than 5 percent of all funding in the LGBT movement, but the vast majority of this funding goes to large metro areas. When you’re talking about the Gulf Coast, almost no funding is coming in for LGBT advocacy and services. Incredible work is happening here. But you have to ask, when the needs are so acute and the potential so profound, why is it such a struggle? Nationally, the LGBT movement needs to reckon with this question, which is both moral and strategic in nature and which could not be more pressing as we contemplate the landscape ahead.”
“The next morning, we headed to a public park in downtown Hattiesburg to start set up for Pride. In other parts of the country, Pride celebrations have morphed into something new, not unlike annual holiday parades with heavy civic and corporate participation. But at Southern Fried Pride, you had a sense of what Pride is all about, what it means for LGBT people and families to – for the first time – fill a public park and march down the streets of their hometown and say, this is who we are, this is our home. A man in his 70s pulled me aside and said he’d never thought he’d see this happening here.”
“‘We just want to be treated like any other family,’ Donna Phillips said in her court testimony on Nov. 6 in the southern Mississippi U.S. District Court in Jackson.”
“Phillips and her wife, Janet Smith, along with three other couples, are suing state Attorney General Jim Hood, the Mississippi Department of Human Services (and its acting director) and Gov. Phil Bryant over Mississippi’s same-sex adoption ban in U.S. district court.”
“Several other witnesses took the stand as Roberta Kaplan, the lead counsel from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York, laid out her clients’ case. They aren’t looking for damages but relief from the damage that Mississippi’s discriminatory ban has caused their families. Judge Daniel P. Jordan III is presiding over the case—and he questioned Kaplan as much as her counsel questioned the witnesses.”
“The Campaign for Southern Equality filed the lawsuit in August on behalf of four same-sex couples in Mississippi who wanted to adopt children, or who already had children but with just one official parent instead of two. Mississippi’s same-sex couple adoption ban is the only one of its kind in the nation.”
“[Houston anti-LGBT activists] launched a distasteful campaign that characterized the ordinance, which protected 15 classes of people, as a vehicle for sex offenders to prey on children in bathrooms. It worked: voters rejected HERO by a 22-point margin last Tuesday.”
“The same could happen here. Even if Charlotte’s City Council passed a new anti-discrimination ordinance, voters across the city could get their say on it. All it would take is the conservative N.C. General Assembly passing a local act allowing for a referendum.”
“At the least, a reintroduction of the ordinance would result in the same debate that roiled Charlotte back in March. It will be uncomfortable. It will bring out the worst in some of us.”
“But Charlotte’s City Council shouldn’t shy away from the discussion, or the fight. Instead, council members should remind the public that most large cities offer protections for the LGBT community, and that we look comparatively regressive to the businesses, young workers and big events that might be looking our way.”
“LGBT advocates say representation in North Carolina’s local government is small — and this year’s local elections didn’t help. ”
“On Nov. 3, North Carolina lost three openly LGBT local elected officials, including Chapel Hill’s Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and Town Council member Lee Storrow.”
“’Losing Mark Kleinschmidt and Lee Storrow from elected office means losing two of our biggest advocates in North Carolina,’ Carrboro Board of Aldermen member Damon Seils said. ‘Both Lee and Mark have been some of the most active, if not the most active, LGBTQ people in the state. Their losses mean that some of the rest of us probably have to pick up the slack.’”
“In the media, being queer and Muslim often seems to amount to being a victim. In articles on violence against LGBTQ people in Muslim-majority countries, or pieces on the challenges of coming out, the queer person’s connection to Islam is often used to imply that these cultures are especially intolerant. With this narrow focus on tragedy, it can be hard to understand the day-to-day lived experiences of queer people who identify religiously or culturally with Islam—particularly the difficulty they face in trying to find communities that embrace their multiple identities.”
“Across the country, queer Muslims have formed groups, trying to offset feelings of isolation and provide support to those who don’t “fit” into other communities. Participants share some parts of their identities, but come from different races, cultures, and class backgrounds; they’re of all ages, and some are longtime Americans, while others are immigrants. People also vary in their relationship to Islam. They may come for communal iftars (the fast-breaking meal at the end of each day of Ramadan), to study the Koran, or to take part in secular gatherings about everything from family violence to the latest gender-studies books.”
Editor’s note:Registration has officially opened for the 2016 LGBT* in the South conference, taking place March 18-20 in Asheville, North Carolina.
In this weekly newsletter, the Campaign for Southern Equality highlights the voices and experiences of LGBT people living in the South. Send feedback and story tips to felicia@southernequality.org
