Civil Rights

Family Equality Council: FEC applauds inclusion of LGBT families in the Housing and Urban Development programs The U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan announced a series of proposals to ensure that HUD programs are open to all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity as well as the first-ever nationwide survey of...
Read more »

Advocate.com: Minorities Make Up Half of DADT Firings While racial minorities account for approximately 29% of active service members, according to the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, about 45% of the 640 men and women discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” in fiscal year 2008 were nonwhite…. Women, who make up 15% of all armed forces,...
Read more »

Advocate.com: DOMA Repeal Bill Coming Next Week …Democratic representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Jared Polis of Colorado will be introducing legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act next Tuesday. Nadler told the Bay Area Reporter in July that the bill would amount to a full repeal of DOMA, including...
Read more »

I’ve joined the Advisory Council of Rainbow Families. Rainbow Families is the Midwest office of Family Equality Council. Previously one of the strongest local LGBT family organizations in the country, Rainbow Families joined the Family Equality Council in June of 2008. Rainbow Families continues to provide local programs to the LGBT families, extended family members...
Read more »

This article originally appeared in the Twin Cities Daily Planet on May 6, 2009. by Rich Broderick | 5/6/09 • Let me start by saying I have no objections whatsoever to the idea of allowing gay and lesbian people to enter into legally recognized marriages. I can think of no reason why two people should...
Read more »

Obama and Gay Marriage or Shut the Hell Up and Let the Man Run the Country By Minnesota expat Brandon Lacy Campos. Obama is doing EXACTLY the right thing by NOT raising the queer marriage issue back into the national spotlight. The Republicans used, quite effectively, the spectre of gays getting married as a successful wedge...
Read more »

Andy Birkey reports on HF 999, a bill introduced in the Minnesota House last week that would change the word “marriage” in state statute to “civil union contract” effectively taking the state out of the religious aspects of marriage. The bill would also change the definition of civil union to mean “two parties, recognized by...
Read more »

Dave Lee asked on Twitter: If I want to give a modest donation to a MN organization working for marriage equality, what’s the most efficient use of my $? I felt like I should have a good answer for this question, but I’m really not sure. I got as far as “it depends on which approach...
Read more »

No-on-8’s white bias: The right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both black gays and black straights. An op-ed in the L.A. Times by Jasmyne Cannick. There’s nothing a white gay person can tell me when it comes to how I as a black lesbian should talk to my community about this...
Read more »

Eva Young at Lloydletta’s Nooz read the same MinnPost article that I read yesterday and came to a different conclusion. Bachmann didn’t even campaign on the gay marriage issue in her congressional campaign – she campaigned on taxes, immigration scares and “drill baby drill”. If campaigning on that issue would have helped Bachmann, she’d have...
Read more »