On August 29, 2011, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware will hear arguments about whether to unseal the video recordings of the historic trial in Perry v. Brown, the federal court challenge to Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that stripped the freedom to marry from same-sex couples in California. After a three-week trial in January 2010, now-retired Chief District Judge Vaughan Walker issued a decision in August 2010, holding that Prop 8 was based on anti-gay animus and blatantly...
Our Voices
I cannot imagine the searing pain of losing a partner. I hope, of course, that I live my whole life never knowing such loss. In our work at NCLR, we have represented a number of men and women living through that almost unbearable tragedy, and in every case, their loss is compounded and the injury magnified by the fact that others or the government treat the couple as legal strangers. In our 2001 case on behalf of Sharon Smith, the horror was unmatched. Sharon’s partner of seven years, Diane...
History will be made in the State of New York tomorrow, Sunday, July 24, 2011, when it becomes the seventh and largest jurisdiction in the country in which same-sex couples can legally marry. A huge, heartfelt thank you and congratulations to all of our New York colleagues, who worked so hard to win marriage equality. I am definitely in a New York state of mind, as you can see in my video below In solidarity,
My birthday is April 15. No one ever forgets my birthday, which is great of course, but it is also a sometimes bittersweet date since April 15 is always—until this year’s anomaly—tax day. Every year, I, like most other Americans, have dutifully filed my taxes by April 15. I’ve signed my tax return without giving it much thought, until this year. This year, Sandy and I signed our tax return together. And we filed our federal return as married. Why? Well, because we ARE married. After 15 years...
Without traditional support systems in place, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender elders end up relying on nursing homes or other institutions providing long-term care. Today, the National Senior Citizens Law Center—along with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE)—released a report showing that LGBTQ elders are often not safe in these...
Being a teenager in the juvenile justice system is challenging for any young person, but as Cyryna can attest, being transgender adds an additional layer of fear. Cyryna, a transgender girl, experienced the dark reality that most people don’t talk about while being housed in a juvenile correction facility for boys, where she was the victim of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse by many of the boys she was housed with. Some of her abuse was witnessed by, and sometimes encouraged by, the...
The Family Acceptance Project of San Francisco State University collaborated with Proyecto Poderoso, a joint project of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and California Rural Legal Assistance, and Radio Bilingüe to develop a Spanish-language radio soap opera to reach the Latino community with stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender acceptance. The three-part series—called “Bienvenidos a Casa” or “Welcome Home”—is airing through March 31, 2011 on Radio Bilingüe Stations across...
It started when we were at Sundance last year. Sandy and I heard the buzz about “The Kids Are All Right” and were happy to hear that the very talented Lisa Cholodenko had made a new film with three of our favorite actors—Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo. It had all the makings of a mainstream hit, which we were thrilled about. Then we heard a bit more of the premise of the film mainly revolving around the tired cliché of a lesbian sleeping with a guy (who saw that...
Today brings momentous news from President Barack Obama and the federal Department of Justice about the discriminatory and offensive so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” or DOMA. This morning, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that, at the urging of the President, as well as based upon Mr. Holder’s own assessment, the Department of Justice will no longer defend Section 3 of DOMA—the section that prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal marriages between same-sex couples....
Sitting in the White House last night for a truly “once in a lifetime moment”—a movie screening of “Thurgood” with President Barack Obama—I was moved by how far justice and equality has really come in our nation, and how much further we have to go to finish the promise of “equality and justice for all.” Just a few feet from me, President Obama sat in one of the plush, red seats in the White House’s movie theater to watch the biopic about Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney and key architect...
