Listening to President Obama speak yesterday on the need for comprehensive immigration reform in San Francisco’s Chinatown made me realize how my own relationship as an immigrant in this country has come full circle. I grew up in the small border town of McAllen, Texas, located in the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Only eight miles from the Mexican border, it is a predominantly Mexican, Spanish-speaking, rural, farm worker community. I was born in Mexico, but lived in McAllen since...
Date
Month: November 2013
November is National Adoption Month, and there are currently more LGBTQ parents waiting to adopt than there are children in the foster system. Unfortunately, some LGBTQ couples are denied the right to parent—and children are denied a home—because of discriminatory state policies governing same-sex adoption, and policies that allow adoption agencies to give preference to different-sex couples. Anti-LGBTQ bias and discrimination in the courts further leads to LGBTQ parents being denied custody...
A new report released today shows that LGBTQ workers of color are among the most disadvantaged in the country, facing high rates of unemployment and poverty due to workplace discrimination, unequal job benefits and taxation, and unsafe and under-resourced U.S. schools. The report—A Broken Bargain for LGBTQ Workers of Color—examines how LGBTQ workers of color face unique types of discrimination based both on their race and sexual orientation/gender identity. The report is co-authored by the...
After a long battle with a rare form of brain cancer, Jennifer Neuman-Roper, a client of NCLR and bold advocate for marriage equality, passed away on November 8. Jen and Angelique Neuman-Roper joined Griego v. Oliver—a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of New Mexico and the National Center for Lesbian Rights—in August, and played a pivotal role in the struggle to win the freedom to marry for same-sex couples in New Mexico. Because Jen suffered from Stage 4 brain cancer, the couple of more than 20...
