In the News

"Camilla Taylor, a lawyer with Lambda Legal in Chicago, a group that helped draft the legislation, said businesses in Illinois that provide spousal benefits will have to treat same-sex couples who have entered into a civil union the same as heterosexual couples.

"'The civil unions bill makes especially clear that businesses aren't acting in good faith if they continue to treat same-sex couples differently with regard to spousal benefits,' Taylor said.

"When we get counted, we count. Our visibility can yield power. Lambda Legal and our sister civil rights organizations are supporting efforts to get lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people counted in the United States Census. (In earlier population counts, if a same-sex couple checked the box that said "married," the federal government actually assumed they'd mismarked their form, changed one partner's gender identity, and "straightened" them for the count.) We therefore have painfully little in terms of governmental statistics on what's needed to serve the LGBT community.

11/09/2010

"Lambda Legal has also been working on fighting DOMA and on Monday filed a brief in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in the case of Golinski v. United States Office of Personnel Management.

11/4/2010

"In response to a series of gay teen suicides across the nation, the Dallas Independent School District is moving forward with a policy that provides specific protections against bullying for LGBT students.

"...Roger Poindexter, director of Lambda Legal’s South Central Region, warned that gay students who’ve been bullied have won large monetary settlements from districts in other parts of the nation.

"Poindexter said while a general policy might give adults 'a warm fuzzy feeling,' it wouldn’t accomplish its goal.

11/3/2010

"Opponents of an April 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that made Iowa the first state in the Midwest to sanction same-sex marriage celebrated on Wednesday after the ouster of three Iowa Supreme Court justices involved in the ruling.

"...Kevin Cathcart, executive director of gay rights group Lambda Legal, which backed the six couples in the case, called the campaign 'a wake-up call to future voters who must resist attempts to politicize the courts.'

11/3/2010

"Perhaps most sobering for gay activists was the removal of the three Iowa judges after a campaign intended to punish them for joining a unanimous ruling last year that the state's ban on same-sex marriage violated Iowa's constitution.

"That ruling, making Iowa one of five states to legalize gay marriage, still stands. But gay marriage foes said they plan to press Iowa Republicans who took over the governor's office and the state House to work toward a new ban.

A safe haven of invisibility rarely if ever exists for LGBT people. Prizing invisibility causes damage in and of itself, and subsequent incomplete or "failed" invisibility becomes a frank invitation for oppression.

11/1/2010

"Joshua Vandiver, a Colorado native who is earning his Ph.D. in politics at Princeton University, said he is the studious type who has rarely embraced activism. But now, just months into his legal marriage to Venezuelan Henry Velandia, he is fighting to save his husband from being deported.

"...The Constitutional problem with DOMA is that states have historically controlled family law in issues of marriage, parenting and inheritance, according to Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel at Lambda Legal and director of the National Marriage Project.

An elderly man evicted from a North Little Rock assisted-living center because he had the virus that causes AIDS is scheduled to attend a White House conference on HIV and aging this week.

And what do we think of unknown people? The monsters emerge: Myths of gay men as sexual predators, transgender people as inherently deceptive and dangerous. The city commissioners in my hometown dared to pass an ordinance barring discrimination based on gender identity. Extremists put the ordinance up for majority vote. To promote their campaign they papered people's parked cars with cartoons showing men lurking in women's bathrooms to attack young girls. They added racism into the attack by broadcasting staged video scenes of dark men sneaking into playground restrooms following blonde little girls.