Rev. Irene Monroe: “The Stonewall turbulence started on the backs of working-class African American and Latinx queers who patronized the bar. Those brown and black LGBTQ people are not only absent from the photos of that night, but they have been bleached from its written history.”
Loving a Church That Doesn’t Love Us
Irene Mornoe: The UMC continues to be contradictory in its policies concerning LGBTQ worshippers, and the church’s contentious views reared their ugly head at the 2016 meeting of global delegates.
Arcing Toward Equality in 2017
Steve Hochstadt: Backlash against the movement toward racial and sexual equality may have helped him win election, but even the power of the presidency has not been sufficient to stop it.
The New Jim Crow Targets LGBTQ Americans, Too
Irene Monroe: As a black lesbian in this Trump administration, I now feel like I am moving into a new Jim Crow era reestablishing discriminatory laws targeting LGBTQ Americans.
LGBT Community Invisible Again?
Carl Matthes: While the biggest issues of recent debates have been the size of candidate’s hands and whose pants are on fire, hardly mentioned, in many of the debates, are LGBT issues.
Where Would Martin Have Stood on Marriage Equality?
Rev. Irene Monroe: As I comb through numerous books and essays learning more about King’s philandering, sexist attitude about women at home and in the movement, and his relationship with Bayard Rustin, I, too, wonder would King today be a public advocate for LGBTQ rights.
What Should White LGBTQ Organizations Do Post-Marriage Equality?
Irene Monroe: While many LGBTQ communities of color will embraced the larger LGBTQ community’s offers to be inclusive, others feel that the white queer community, in 2015, is coming a day late and a dollar short.
Gay Rights, Black Lives
Brent Budowsky: What was striking in Indiana and Arkansas — and across America — was how the business community joined rights advocates and many Main Street voters supporting the simple justice of equal rights for gays.
Statutory Is Statutory, Same Sex, Opposite Sex
Julie Driscoll: Call me crazy, but I believe firmly that the statutory laws are in place for a reason – to prevent the exploitation of young men and women who don’t have the ability to make informed decisions, who don’t have the ability to “consent.”
Tipping Points
Steve Hochstadt: TThe shifts away from conservative positions on gay and interracial marriage and immigration signal the decline in the attractiveness of major elements in traditional Republican ideology.
Rob Portman’s New Tune on Gay Rights
Julie Driscoll: He’s a hypocrite and a coward, and if he had any integrity at all, he’d tell his son, “Sorry, kid, just like everybody else, you don’t deserve the same rights as the man-on-top/woman-on-bottom crowd get.
Gay Rights: What the Supreme Court’s Decision Portends
Carl Matthes: For those of us who grew up when homosexuality was a crime, the United States Supreme Court deciding to take up the Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) cases for review is astonishing.
Nothing New in GOP’s Anti-Woman, Anti-Gay Platform
Rev. Irene Monroe: the GOP is also signaling that it neither wants nor cares about the safety and full rights and protections of its citizens—especially their female, LGBTQ Republicans and Republican families.
