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.”
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!
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.
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.”
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.
PFLAG Boulder County meets on the third Thursday of every month at the First United Methodist Church of Boulder, at 1421 Spruce Street. Programs begin at 7:00pm and support groups follow at 8:30pm.
First PFLAG Meeting? Need directions or more info?
E-mail Melissa Druckman at: mellowhellow@googlemail.com
Or contact her at her cellphone number: (720) 299-1453.
Join us at 7pm this Thursday, March 18th, for our PFLAG Program with Dylan Scholinski. See pflagboulder.org for more info. http://www.twitter.com/pflagboulder
Join us at Noon Today (March 3rd) for the Faith Communities Luncheon. See pflagboulder.org for more info... http://www.twitter.com/pflagboulder
Join us for the Feb 18th PFLAG Program: "Dude You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in Adolescence" See pflagboulder.org for more info. http://www.twitter.com/pflagboulder
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