Interacting with law enforcement can be stressful for anyone. This is especially true of transgender individuals who all too often face discrimination, inappropriate comments, and hostility. While most law enforcement personnel want to do what is right, we hear from many transgender people about the demeaning and degrading experiences they have had while under police custody. That’s why the National Center for Lesbian Rights, along with several other national and local LGBTQ groups, worked...
Our Voices
No child should ever be hurt because of who they are. That’s why we started the #BornPerfect campaign to end conversion therapy across the country over the next five years. We need your financial support to make it happen. All attempts to change their sexual orientation or gender identity through conversion therapy damage LGBTQ youth, causing depression, substance abuse, and even suicide. Conversion therapy has been condemned by every major medical and mental health organization in the...
There we were. Around the illustrious circular United Nations briefing tables at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, among the 70 human rights advocates from across the United States, the largest delegation in the history of the U.N.’s Committee Against Torture (CAT). Together, as a leader of the National Center for Lesbian Right’s (NCLR) #BornPerfect campaign, I had spent a sleepless few days working around the clock to make Committee members aware of the dangers of convention therapy,...
This Tuesday, I will walk into the historic Palais de Nations in Geneva, Switzerland to meet with representatives of the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State as part of the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ #BornPerfect campaign to protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy, the dangerous and discredited practice of attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity through everything from talk therapy to exorcism to “orgasmic reconditioning.” Under the...
Now that the midterms are over, President Obama has an opportunity to further his legacy as a strong supporter of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans and as a leader who understands that making U.S. armed forces more equal makes them stronger. President Obama should ask Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to review the rules governing military service by transgender people with the ultimate goal of removing the current provisions that require their discharge. ...
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to voting rights by allowing Texas to enforce one of the most restrictive voter identification laws in the country. The new law will not only subject Texas voters to a highly restrictive identification process, but it will also have a devastating impact on the right to vote for many nationalized immigrants, people of color, and thousands of young voters. The law, passed in 2011, requires voters to present one of seven potential forms of...
A groundbreaking new report released by Services and Advocacy Group for LGBTQ Elders (SAGE) is giving us a better understanding of the needs and concerns of this community. The new report, Out and Visible: The Experiences and Attitudes of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Older Adults, Ages, 45-75, is a uniquely comprehensive qualitative study based on a national survey of more than 1,800 LGBTQ older adults that measures the challenges this community continues to face. The report...
We often hear the figure that women still earn 78 cents to a man’s dollar. However, what that figure fails to capture is how many other factors contribute to an even more significant disparity for some women. Women of color face even more pay inequity, with black women earning 64 cents to the dollar and Latina women earning 55 cents to the dollar of their white male counterparts. Other marginalized identities likewise impact the pay gap such as immigrant women or women in the lesbian, gay,...
Over the last week, the LGBTQ community has experienced historic victories in the fight for marriage equality. But amidst these game-changing victories, it’s important to remember the many ways that LGBTQ people and families remain especially vulnerable. October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, which provides the opportunity to focus on the need to address the often-ignored issue of domestic violence and intimate partner violence (IPV) in the LGBTQ community. A 2013 report published by...
Today, on National Coming Out Day, countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people around the world will find the courage, through one another, to tell the world who they really are. But this day is more than a just a celebration of the freedom to be ourselves. It commemorates the 1987 National March on Washington, a grass roots protest against the Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick upholding criminal sodomy laws, and the Reagan administration’s refusal to...
