After differing versions of Mississippi’s so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” passed the House and Senate, yesterday a conference committee reported out a final bill that fails to prohibit discrimination against customers based on business owners’ personal religious beliefs. Tonight the final bill passed both houses of the Mississippi legislature and now heads to the desk of Gov….
After the announcement last week that Brendan Eich would take over the helm of Mozilla as their CEO, news reports quickly surfaced that the inventor of Java Script had made a $1,000 contribution to the Prop. 8 campaign which, for a short time, banned people of the same gender from getting married in the state…
Despite a 28-year effort to get Taiwan to recognize same-sex marriage, Chi Chia-wei and his husband in all but name, have failed to persuade a Taiwanese court to strike down a ban preventing a government agency from registering their marriage. The decision, the ManilaTimes.net reports, is “a major setback for equal rights.” Taiwan, an outlier…
Today, March 31, is International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV), a day dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide. Rachel Crandall, the head of Transgender Michigan, created in TDoV in 2010 to celebrate the trans community in a positive light. According to transstudent.org, “TDoV is a day…
Following the controversy surrounding Mozilla’s new CEO Brendan Eich’s support of Prop. 8, a measure that, for a time, banned same-sex couples from getting married in the state of California, Mozilla have issued a statement stating their unequivocal support of marriage equality. Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, and Mark Surman, Mozilla Foundation executive…
Dronenburg San Diego County Clerk Ernest Dronenburg Jr. is back in the news, particularly with the LGBT community. Why? Many in the community have broken with District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis because she endorsed Dronenburg. Dronenburg asked the state Supreme Court to halt same-sex weddings after the federal court ruled Prop. 8 unconstitutional. He said the…
Boy George needs little introduction. With a career spanning more than 30 years, he first shot to international stardom in the 1980s as the front man of one of the U.K.’s biggest exports of the 20th century, Culture Club. A multi-racial band, with an openly gay front-man, Culture Club was ahead of the curve and…
In response to “Tiring of Nicole’s abrasive views” (LGBT Weekly March 13, issue 142) Dear Editor, I have always seen Nicole to be an exceptionally talented social person and many a person should learn how you should always have something positive to say/observe about someone in public. Hint. I had the pleasure of serving with…
North or south, always a dichotomy! Each possesses attributes that are polar opposites. Wherever you look around the world there is always a split between the two. Northern and Southern Europe; North and South Korea, Vietnam … The Northeast and the South in the U.S.A., Northern and Southern Italian cuisine! I have heard it explained…
I’ve had a back-and-forth with Nicole Murray Ramirez at LGBT Weekly over RuPaul’s promotion of the term tra**y. We disagree on the pejorative nature of the term, but it says something that the former Tra**y Awards has changed the name of the event to the Transgender Erotic Awards. “When we named the show the ‘Tranny…
