Wail away.
Posted on 12/12/2018 10:56:38 AM PST by yesthatjallen
The following letter was drafted after a closed-door convening of LGBTQ elected officials at LGBTQ Victory Institute’s International LGBTQ Leaders Conference on Thursday, December 6, 2018.
Dear Members of Congress:
We are writing to you as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) elected officials. We serve our communities as Members of Congress, Governors, State Legislators, Mayors, City Councilmembers and School Board Members. We represent diverse communities throughout our great nation.
We are writing to request that you move forward with four key initiatives to further advance the rights of LGBTQI Americans:
1. Passage of The Equality Act
The Equality Act would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation in places of public accommodation.
Despite significant steps forward, many LGBTQI Americans continue to lack non-discrimination protections where they live. The patchwork nature of current laws leaves millions of people subject to uncertainty and potential discrimination that impacts their safety, their families, and their day-to-day lives.
Thirty states still lack fully-inclusive non-discrimination protections for LGBTQI people, meaning that LGBTQI people are at risk of being fired, denied housing, and denied services for who they are or whom they love. Nearly two-thirds of self-identified LGBTQI Americans reported experiencing discrimination in their personal lives. Examples of this discrimination include the teacher who was fired after her principal discovered she was planning to have a child with her partner or the lesbian couple asked to leave a park while shooting maternity photos.
The Equality Act will provide non-discrimination protections for LGBTQI people in employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services and all federally funded programs.
We call on Members of Congress to pass The Equality Act in order to give explicit protection to people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
2. Reducing HIV/AIDS
The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) was created in 1995 by President Bill Clinton with the intent of developing appropriate responses to the AIDS epidemic. On December 28, 2017, President Trump dismissed all remaining members of PACHA, basically dismantling the Council.
Today, after decades of direct action, political organizing, and strategic prevention and programmatic efforts, we have the bio-medical interventions to stop new HIV infections, and help those who are HIV-positive reduce their viral loads to undetectable. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) adopted a transformative agenda for the global HIV response, which aims to get zero new infections, zero AIDS-related deaths, and zero discrimination or stigma.
Despite the progress that has been made, nearly 40,000 people are newly diagnosed with HIV each year in the United States and racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented. Almost 3 out of 4 new HIV diagnoses are among racial and ethnic minorities. If current HIV diagnoses rates persist, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predict about 1 in 2 black gay men and 1 in 4 Latino gay men will be diagnosed with HIV during their lifetime. This alarming lifetime risk is a call to action to increase prevention and care strategies now.
We call on Members of Congress to:
Establish a Congressional Advisory Commission on HIV/AIDS.
Advocate for a goal of “Getting to Zero” to bring an end to this disease.
Take proactive measures to address the continuing disparities in HIV diagnoses and treatment in communities of color.
3. Protecting Transgender People
The Trump Administration has threatened to make several changes to strip away rights from transgender and intersex people. Soon after taking office, President Trump announced that he would institute a ban on enlisting and retaining transgender military personnel because the military should not be “burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” The Trump Administration revoked federal guidelines specifying that transgender students have the right to use public school restrooms that match their gender identity. And recently, the Administration announced plans to change federal civil-rights law to include a definition of sex as “a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.”
These actions eradicate federal recognition of some 1.4 million transgender Americans. The proposed changes can have a traumatic effect, leaving people exposed and their rights revoked.
We call on Members of Congress to oppose all efforts to discriminate against transgender people or to limit the definition of gender identity and expression to mere biology.
4. Improving Our Commitment to LGBTQI Rights Globally
LGBTQI people of all ages and in all regions of the world suffer from violations of their human rights. They are physically attacked, kidnapped, raped and murdered. In more than a third of the world’s countries, people may be arrested and jailed (and in at least five countries executed) for engaging in private, consensual, same sex relationships. Transgender people are often denied identity papers that reflect their preferred gender, without which they cannot work, travel, open a bank account or access services. LGBTQI children and adolescents face bullying and discrimination in school. Young people may also be thrown out of their homes by their parents, forced into psychiatric institutions or forced to marry based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
LGBTQI asylum seekers may flee their countries due to persecution based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, or for the same reasons as any other refugee – such as ethnic conflict, political unrest, or the lack of religious freedom. The U.S. Department of Justice has announced plans to restructure the current asylum system to make it more difficult for people to apply for asylum. These proposals will have a serious impact on numerous people, especially LGBTQI people from Central America who are already living in this country.
We call on Members of Congress to:
Oppose efforts to change the asylum system in ways which would make it more difficult for LGBTQI people who are facing persecution and violence in their home countries from seeking asylum in the United States.
Ensure LGBTQI Rights are a cornerstone of our foreign policy at the United Nations and throughout the world.
Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to working with you on these issues and all other issues impacting the rights of LGBTQI Americans.
(List of names of supporters at link)
1. No.
2. No.
3. No.
4. No.
Anything else?
They should have insisted on mental health access to people who think this way...they are mentally ill.
Lefty, Communist Dem House in 2019:
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
Count on it.
The Senate is our first Bulwark, followed by Trump.
I demand my right to be protected from the LGBTQI community. And I want my children protected from them, especially in our schools.
Wail away.
“four key initiatives’
(1.) end all State/Federal legislation that protect queers under the guise of inclusion/tolerance for the ‘victims’ of homophobia.
(2.) end all government programs intended to give the queers MORE rights than you or I.
(3.) end all hiring preferences for queers/transfreaks in the name of diversity and affirmative action programs.
(4.) end all ‘gay pride’ events due to their intrinsic, and offensive nature.
The perpetually offended groups always offend me - homosexuals, stupidity, propaganda, [many other things] also offend me, but I have learned to tolerate them - the homos at one time demanded tolerance, now they demand we celebrate their ‘alternative lifestyles’...
No more, enough!
Communist identity politics.
Let’s see - many companies/insurance companies give ‘discounts” to those who don’t smoke or quit smoking...maybe they should offer the same to those who don’t practice risky sexual behavior....that would be making them more “equal” and also raise a howl...maybe smokers can start getting the same deal as non-smokers when the.....smoke....clears.
LGBTQI people from Central America need to be chucked back to the sh*tholes they slithered out from. No mas ! Build the wall.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.