WASHINGTON – Buzzfeed reports that House Speaker John Boehner today secured meeting space for the top American supporters of Russia’s anti-LGBT laws. The news comes after Sen. Mark Kirk withdrew their original meeting space with a spokesperson saying, “Senator Kirk will not host groups that advance a hateful agenda.” The World Congress of Families –…
WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner has again offered a false and factually inaccurate explanation for why he won’t support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) – which passed the Senate one week ago with bipartisan support from 10 Republicans. Boehner re-iterated his opposition to the legislation that would simply protect hardworking lesbian, gay, bisexual and…
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has demanded that the La Feria Independent School District allow Jeydon Loredo, a transgender student and senior at La Feria High School, to appear in his high school yearbook wearing a tuxedo or risk a federal lawsuit against the Texas school district. The demand was made…
WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Senate voted 64 to 32 to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) for the first time in the legislation’s two-decade history. All Senate Democrats joined 10 Senate Republicans to approve the bill. Following passage of the act President Barack Obama issued the following statement: “For more than two centuries, the…
With the news that pro-equality Democrat Terry McAuliffe defeated vehemently anti-LGBT Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor’s race, Americans got yet another indication that anti-LGBT politics are in full retreat in 2013. Cuccinelli, who had been one of the most vocally anti-LGBT elected officials in the country and who was once widely…
Today LGBT equality advocates heralded the passage of marriage equality legislation in the Illinois House of Representatives. The legislation now heads back to the state Senate in order to accept minor House amendments before proceeding to the desk of Gov. Pat Quinn for signature. Illinois will become the 15th state, plus the District of Columbia, to…
Today the U.S. Senate voted 61 to 30 to consider the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) with strong bipartisan support including the entire Democratic caucus and Republican Sens. Kirk, Collins, Hatch, Heller, Ayotte, Toomey and Portman. The procedural move sets up a historic vote later this week, where the Senate will likely pass ENDA for first…
WASHINGTON – With the Sochi Olympic Games just a few months away, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today launched its “Love Conquers Hate” campaign to support the members of Russia’s LGBT community, who are being targeted by a hateful “anti-propaganda” law that prohibits…
WASHINGTON – No Republican state legislator who has voted for LGBT workplace non-discrimination protections has lost re-election because of that vote. Over the course of 31 different votes in 21 states over the past 30 years, 451 Republican state legislators have voted in favor of workplace non-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)…
In April of 2011 the Williams Center, released a brief entitled “How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender?” It was a brief that, compiling, weighting and aggregating data from several studies estimated the size of the LGBT population in the United States. Among the key findings was that “an estimated 3.5 percent of…
