PFLAG and PrideFest in Denver! PFLAG is the Grand Marshal!

Come Join PFLAG for the PrideFest Parade in Denver on June 28!

Join PFLAG Boulder County for the largest and most exciting pride event of the year, in Denver, on June 27 and 28. We will step off from Cheesman Park at 9:30 a.m. and lead the parade to Civic Center Park and Broadway and Colfax Avenues in Denver. Everyone is invited to attend, and march, with us! Join all the PFLAG chapters in the state of Colorado for this exciting event.

If you wish to carpool, a party of vehicles will meet at the Table Mesa Park-n-Ride at 8:00 a.m. Let Jean Hodges know if you want to carpool. Contact her at 303-444-4580, or email her at JeanInBldr@comcast.net.

Bring your water bottle, sunscreen, and your own sign–or you can get one in Denver! Wear a solid shirt in a bright rainbow color if you can. Balloons will be provided by Denver PFLAG.

After the parade, join us at the PFLAG booth on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. We need volunteers to help staff the booth on Saturday and Sunday, so put your PFLAG on and come on down!

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PFLAG Program for July – Book Reading and Discussion

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Join PFLAG for our July program when we inaugurate our new book reading program! We plan to read two books per year and discuss each at a PFLAG meeting. For July, we will read Julia Serano’s book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist. Her writings have appeared in queer, feminist, and pop culture magazines and anthologies, been excerpted on National Public Radio and in The Believer and the San Francisco Chronicle, and been used as teaching materials in college-level gender studies courses across the United States. She has a PhD in Biochemistry from Columbia University and is currently a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in the field of evolutionary and developmental biology.

From the cover:

In this provocative manifesto, biologist and transsexual woman Julia Serano shares her experiences pre-and post-transition and reveals the ways that fear, contempt, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape society’s attitudes towards trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole. Whipping Girl is a personal, analytical, gripping account that debunks popular misconceptions about transsexuality, while exposing the cultural belief that femininity is frivolous, weak, and inherently inferior to maleness and masculinity.

Join us for a provocative discussion about this book and the issues it raises. You don’t have to read the book to participate. We will provide information to make it easy for you to join the discussion, or if you’d rather, just listen in!  To purchase the book, visit Left Hand Books, at 1200 Pearl Street, Suite 10, Boulder, or call 303-443-8252.

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New Protections for Transgender Federal Workers

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees, officials said Tuesday.

The guidelines will be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors to be distributed and posted online in the next couple of months, and they could also be included in other materials for managers. They will list transgender people — those who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates — as among several groups protected by antidiscrimination laws.

Though transgender men and women are not believed to make up more than a fraction of a percent of the federal work force, their inclusion in the discrimination guidelines is seen as a breakthrough by transgender and gay rights advocates.

“The president is making a very clear statement that transgender people won’t be discriminated against,” said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a group that has been talking with the White House about the new provisions.

The provisions will help give transgender workers avenues within the federal government to protest a job action as discriminatory, though Ms. Keisling added, “There is also a very important symbolic value to that, from our point of view.”

Read more >>  New Protections for Transgender Federal Workers – NYTimes.com.

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Posted in ENDA, Equal Rights, Transgender Issues | Leave a comment

A Fair to Remember: PFLAG Boulder County June Program

Join PFLAG and Boulder Pride as we host an LGBTQ Organizations Fair and Ice Cream Social at the First United Methodist Church in Boulder. Visit and chat, network and socialize with groups as diverse as the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans (GLS), Rainbow Elders, Colorado Queer Straight Alliance (CQSA), CU GLBT Resource Center, CU GLBT Alumni Association, Bent Lens Cinema, Boulder Pride, Women’s Group, Ile Ori Ogbe Egun (Two Spirit GLBT Native Americans), OASOS, Mountain Pride Connections, and others. Meet and greet your local LGBTQ organizations!

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NY exhibit on gay rights hits amid marriage debate

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As exhibitions go, the New York Public Library’s “1969: The Year of Gay Liberation” could hardly have chosen better timing.

With debate raging over same-sex marriage across the United States, the library in midtown Manhattan opened the exhibit on Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the so-called Stonewall riots that triggered the modern U.S. gay rights movement.

Photos, documents, clippings from the gay media and other artifacts illustrate what was a shocking development at the time: homosexual men and women coming out of the closet to demonstrate for their civil rights, often at great risk.

The free exhibit will run at the main branch all of June.

NY exhibit on gay rights hits amid marriage debate | Reuters .

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New England economy could see gay-marriage boost

From Reuters:

BOSTON (Reuters) – The expansion of legal gay marriage across New England could deliver an economic windfall by attracting a youthful “creative class” of workers to a region with an aging population.

In the past year, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have joined Massachusetts, which in 2004 became the first U.S. state to allow same-sex weddings, in blessing gay and lesbian weddings.

That makes the region the first in the United States where same-sex couples can move from one state to another while retaining marriage benefits.

New arrivals include John Visser and Nick Keffer, who recently moved to Hartford, Connecticut, from Raleigh, North Carolina. They plan to wed later this month.

“The sole, only reason why we moved was because it was now legal for us to get married here,” said Visser, 42. “No other reason whatsoever other than marriage equality. We were perfectly happy in North Carolina.”

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New Hampshire Legislature Approves Gay Marriage

From the New York Times: 

BOSTON — The New Hampshire Senate approved revisions to a same-sex marriage bill on Wednesday morning, paving the way for an afternoon vote in the less-predictable House of Representatives.

Lawmakers have been working on the bill for months; gay-rights supporters hope the latest changes will ensure it becomes law. The changes further emphasize that by legalizing gay marriage, the state will not impinge on the religious freedom of those who do not believe in it.

Read more >> 

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Kate Kendell of NCLR on Prop 8: Now What?

Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, speaks about Proposition 8, and what to do next. 

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California Supreme Court Upholds Proposition 8

From the New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The state Supreme Court has upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, but also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed.

The decision Tuesday rejected an argument from gay rights activists that the ban revised the California constitution’s equal protection clause to such a dramatic degree that it first needed the Legislature’s approval.

The announcement of the decision caused outcry among a sea of demonstrators who gathered in front of the San Francisco courthouse awaiting the ruling.

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Both Sides Await Court Decision on Same-Sex Marriage in California

From the New York Times: 

SAN FRANCISCO — After more than 30 years together, Brent Lok and Wade French have accumulated more than a few possessions, including a hilltop home, an impressive collection of Asian art and, alongside their diplomas, vacation photos and family portraits, a framed marriage license, dated June 17, 2008.

Wade French and Brent Lok, holding an invalid marriage license from 2004 and a valid one from 2008, are awaiting the California Supreme Court’s decision on their marriage and more than 18,000 others.

On Tuesday, Mr. Lok and Mr. French will discover what that license means in the eyes of the law, as the California Supreme Court hands down its decision on Proposition 8, the voter initiative passed in November that outlawed same-sex marriage. Previously, in May 2008, the court legalized same-sex marriage, and since the election, several groups have sued, saying the proposition’s revocation of that right was unconstitutional.

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