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Activists Fight Back on Discriminatory Adoption Bill
LGBT groups have not been standing still since a House committee voted an anti-LGBT amendment into a bill this week.
www.advocate.com/politics/2018/7/13/activists-fight-back-discriminatory-adoption-bill
The LGBT Community Celebrates ScarJo Pulling Out From ‘Rub & Tug’
Her departure may create a great opportunity for a trans actor to play a trans role.
www.advocate.com/film/2018/7/13/lgbt-community-celebrates-scarjo-pulling-out-rub-tug
HRC Foundation Youth Ambassador Spotlight: Makayla Humphrey
Post submitted by Sula Malina, HRC Foundation Children, Youth & Families Program Coordinator
The 2018 HRC Youth Ambassadors are a group of 16 inspiring young people, ages 15 to 22, from across the country who show courage in sharing their stories and demonstrate a commitment to speaking out about issues facing LGBTQ youth. As Youth Ambassadors, they represent HRC Foundation, using their voices to raise awareness about HRC’s youth-focused programs.
HRC recently sat down with Makayla Humphrey (she/her/hers), a Youth Ambassador from Lancaster, Texas, to learn more about her story. Humphrey, 17, is the president of the Jobs for America’s Graduates Program at her Texas high school. The program works to ensure that children with special needs feel full a part of their high school community. Humphrey also organizes her school’s Special Olympics events every year, and is also involved in both Sister 2 Sister and Kolorblok, non-profit organizations that help inner city youth.
Humphrey came out to her parents when she was just 10, the same age she began to play basketball. Despite being treated differently by coaches and teammates because of her sexual orientation, Humphrey’s passion for basketball deepened and she now uses her experiences as an openly lesbian athlete to encourage people to talk about their own LGBTQ identities, helping many of her friends come out to their families.
What inspired you to become an HRC Youth Ambassador?
What inspired me to become an HRC Youth Ambassador was the mistreatment I received from my coaches and teammates for confidently expressing my sexual orientation.
What’s been one highlight of your experience as an HRC Youth Ambassador?
One of the highlights as an ambassador has been meeting all the incredible people and hearing their stories — knowing that I had people who were like me, who were supportive and who didn’t judge. I love the fact that they are different, and the love they share is amazing.
What part of HRC’s work do you connect with the most?
I connect most with the sports and social media side of HRC’s work. I think that social media is a great way to raise awareness because of the wide audience. Most people who are connected to social media are young people. This will help make a difference by letting young adults know what we are doing, and the difference we are making.
What’s your message to LGBTQ youth?
Be yourself! Absolutely no one can be you or be like you. Love yourself because you are important. Embrace yourself confidently and know that you were put in this world to shine — so shine on!
Despite the growing visibility of LGBTQ athletes, coaches and officials, too many LGBTQ youth report that they have witnessed or been the targets of anti-LGBTQ treatment or exclusion in sports. Read HRC’s “Play to Win: Improving the Lives of LGBTQ Youth in Sports” here.
To learn more about the experiences of LGBTQ youth in the U.S., check out HRC’s 2018 LGBTQ Youth Report at hrc.im/YouthReport.
To explore more of HRC Foundation’s work with LGBTQ youth, visit our Children, Youth and Families program, our Campus and Young Adult program and our Youth Ambassador resource page.
Trump Baby Blimp Hits Skies Over London: WATCH
A blimp depicting Donald Trump as a baby wearing a diaper took off into the skies over London on Friday to protest the U.S. president’s visit to the U.K..
Crowds Cheered as it took off over the Houses of Parliament on its first journey, The Guardian reports: “About 15 minutes earlier there was excitement on the ground as two military helicopters passed overhead; the blimp was fully inflated but moored to the ground. “Quick, turn him around,” a cry went up, but organisers said he was not allowed to take to the air before 9.30am. If Trump had been in the helicopter and looking out of the window, he might have caught a glance of Baby Blimp’s behind. ”
The Hill adds: ‘The president’s schedule will keep him in more rural areas to potentially avoid the large-scale protests planned in London. However, residents in the countryside are still coming up with ways to protest the president’s presence. One group created a crop circle with the phrase “F—- Trump” written in Russian along his helicopter path during his visit in Chequers. The 2004 Green Day hit song “American Idiot” has also climbed to the top of the U.K.’s music charts ahead of Trump’s visit, egged on in part by a social media campaign meant to protest Trump.’
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87% of Singles Are More Likely to Send You A Message When You Have THIS On Your Dating Profile!
If you guessed “selfie,” you’re a clever one! Plenty of Fish surveyed over 1,800 singles from the United States to find out how a self-portrait can make or break your dating game – turns out singles are welcoming selfies with open arms. 87% of singles say they are more likely to message someone on a […]
The post 87% of Singles Are More Likely to Send You A Message When You Have THIS On Your Dating Profile! appeared first on PlentyOfFish Blog.
87% of Singles Are More Likely to Send You A Message When You Have THIS On Your Dating Profile!
Outfest’s 2018 Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival kicks off with several GLAAD-sponsored events
Outfest’s 2018 Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival kicks off Thursday with several GLAAD-sponsored events worth checking out.
This year’s festival will include eleven days of not-to-be-missed world-class films, panels, and parties. Each summer Outfest Los Angeles screens more than 150 feature and short films to an audience of more than 40,000 people. Outfest Los Angeles is the oldest film festival in Los Angeles and is considered the preeminent LGBTQ film festival in the world.
This year’s Opening Night Gala on Thursday, July 12th will feature Matt Tyrnauer’s vibrantly nostalgic documentary, Studio 54, featuring interviews with many of the legendary nightclub’s famous patrons, as well as those who worked behind the scenes during its heyday. The Achievement Award Ceremony will take place first at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown LA, followed by the screening of the film.
On Saturday, July 14th, GLAAD will co-sponsor a special Outfest screening of TransMilitary, the first film ever funded by the GLAAD Media Institute. The full-length feature documentary chronicles the lives of four American transgender troops defending their country’s freedom while fighting for their own, and the larger efforts to help rescind the military ban on transgender service members serving openly. You can purchase tickets to the screening here.
Later that evening, Megan Townsend, GLAAD’s Director of Entertainment Research & Analysis, will participate in a panel titled Bi in the Biz, presented by SAG-AFTRA’s National LGBT Committee, SAGindie in conjunction with Outfest LA, at the Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles. Additional panelists will include Stephanie Beatriz (actor, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Travon Free (writer, The Daily Show, Him or Her), Zelda Williams (actor, Dark/Web, The Legend of Korra), Dalila Ali Rajah (actor, Cherry Bomb), and Jen Richards (actor, writer, Her Story). The panel is a ticketed event. Tickets can be purchased at the DGA Box office or online by clicking here.
On Monday, July 16th, GLAAD and Outfest LA present The New AIDS Narrative Panel taking place at 5 pm at the Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, moderated by journalist Marc Malkin. Panelists will include Our Lady J (producer/writer, Transparent, Pose), Twiggy Pucci Garcon (Kiki, Pose; Outfest), Yen Tan (director, 1985, Pit Stop), Jazzmun Crayton (actress, When We Rise, Glee), and Alonso Duralde (film critic, TheWrap/Outfest). The panel is a ticketed event. Reception to follow. Tickets can be purchased at the DGA Box office or online by clicking here.
Nearly 30 years since the first films about the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit the big screen, a new wave of scripted dramas is emerging. Join Outfest and GLAAD for a discussion of the history of HIV/AIDS representation in cinema, and what the arrival of films like BPM (Beats Per Minute), 1985, and Bohemian Rhapsody mean with regards to telling HIV/AIDS stories to a new generation. The panel will discuss all of these topics and more.
The 2018 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival will close on July 22nd at The Theatre at the Ace Hotel with Desiree Akhavan’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, an unapologetically bold take on the topic of conversion therapy, starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Jennifer Ehle, Sasha Lane, John Gallagher Jr., and Forrest Goodluck.
For more information about Outfest Los Angeles, head here. And for a complete listing of screenings and events, head here or download the PDF guide here.
Trump is stealing money from HIV programs to pay for migrant kids snatched from parents
SCOTUS Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s Other Radical Views
Brett Kavanaugh / PD-USGov
Judge Brett Kavanaugh is not only a threat to a woman’s right to choose and to LGBTQ equality. He is a danger to the government’s ability to regulate pretty much anything.
Judge Kavanaugh (not to mention Justices Thomas and Alito) has questioned the legitimacy of what lawyers call the Chevron doctrine. Chevron is a 1984 Supreme Court case that established a doctrine of court deference to administrative agencies. The case itself concerned a rule made by the EPA; in fact, the EPA, which was run at the time by Anne Gorsuch, Neil Gorsuch’s mother, had weakened a Jimmy Carter-era rule based on the Clean Air Act.
When the Natural Resources Defense Council sued, the Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the EPA, arguing that a court should give deference to an administrative agency tasked with interpreting the words of a statute. The scientists at the EPA, after all, are the experts. A federal judge is not. This doctrine, which to some extent clarified a federal court approach, is at the backbone of the modern administrative state. It allows federal administrative agencies to make rules and regulations passed by Congress. As such, it has been in conservatives’ cross hairs for years. They see Chevron deference as a tool of regulation and they want to get rid of it so their conservative judges in the federal judiciary can declare regulations void.
Judge Kavanaugh has also staked out a radically conservative approach to gun rights. Kavanaugh believes that the Second Amendment confers a right on every individual to not just own a gun, but to brandish it in public. In Heller v. D.C., he wrote a dissent in which he argued that neither Congress nor the states can pass a law that bans semi-automatic rifles.
Nor does he believe that the federal government has any power to regulate the environment. In EME Homer City Generation v. EPA, he argued that because individual states experience the effects of pollution differently, they should have the power to make environmental rules on their own. The EPA could set general standards, he said, but states should have the ultimate authority to determine how to meet those standards within their states.
Not only was that decision later overturned by the Supreme Court, but it is also remarkably unsound. The environment is the most public of public goods. A person in one state can be downwind of a factory in a neighboring state and experience negative effects if the plant is unregulated. That Kavanaugh cannot even recognize the cross-border nature of the natural environment shows how radical he really is.
As a judge on the DC Circuit, Kavanaugh has written or dissented in many cases involving the EPA. In almost all of them, he has sought to reign in the power of the Obama-era EPA.
Kavanaugh also has a broad view of executive power. When Congress drafted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it did so in a way that protected it from the president and Congressional meddling. Congress wanted to keep politics out of it. This was too much for Kavanaugh. It was too independent, he wrote in PHH Corp. v. CFPB. He preferred more presidential power, probably so conservative presidents could weaken it.
He doesn’t believe that companies, even non-religious ones, should have to provide birth control to their employees. Nor did he feel that an undocumented teen should be allowed to terminate her pregnancy.
In labor and employment law cases, Kavanaugh favors big business. In 2016, in Verizon New England v. NLRB, he reigned in pro-union expression. In National Association of Federal Employees v. Vilsack, he argued that the government needs no individualized suspicion to subject its employees to drug testing.
That may also speak to his dim view of privacy. Kavanaugh had no issues with the NSA’s dragnet surveillance program that gathered telephone metadata on millions of Americans and some foreign nationals. Such activities, he argued, did not raise Fourth Amendment concerns because the numbers we dial are freely handed over to the phone company and, therefore, not private. This doctrine, known as the Third Party Doctrine, still remains in Fourth Amendment law. But it was recently curtailed with respect to long term dragnet location-based tracking in Carpenter v. US.
Kavanaugh is at the extreme right of the legal community, and he is about to cement an extreme right majority on the Supreme Court.
The post SCOTUS Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s Other Radical Views appeared first on Towleroad.
Larry Kramer, Croatia, Kathy Griffin, RuPaul, Arizona, Colton Haynes, Papa Johns, Hawaii, Asbestos: HOT LINKS
FIRST VIDEO. Thai boys rescued from cave recovering in hospital.
PILOT TIME. RuPaul explores daytime talk show.
LARRY KRAMER. For gays, the worst is yet to come, again: “We’ve come a certain distance from such a blanket suffocation. But by the time a modicum of acceptance by the outside world starts to arrive, we are visited with a plague. It is a plague of disease, and with our new president it continues to be a plague of hate. There is not one cabinet member who has supportive or welcoming words for us. Every week, it seems, Mr. Trump appoints another judge who is on record as hating us. They will serve for many years. A new Supreme Court will further echo this disdain.”
CARCINOGEN. Russian mining company puts Trump’s face on pallets of asbestos. ‘Uralasbest, one of the world’s largest producers and sellers of asbestos, has taken to adorning pallets of its product with a seal of Trump’s face, along with the words “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States”.’
ARIZONA. Christian extremist law firm challenges Phoenix nondiscrimination ordinance: ‘In new legal filings, attorneys for Alliance Defending Freedom are telling the Arizona Supreme Court that the U.S. Constitution protects not only the right of individuals to speak but also their right to not be compelled to say things they do not believe. In this case, they contend that a Phoenix anti-discrimination ordinance is effectively telling Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski, the owners of Brush & Nib Studio, that they have to design wedding invitations for customers that “celebrate” same-sex marriages. And that, the legal papers argue, violates the religious beliefs of the “Christian artists.”’
OH CANADA. Colton Haynes has arrived in Vancouver.
PAPA JOHNS. Founder used N-word in conference call: ‘John Schnatter—the founder, chairman and public face of pizza chain Papa John’s—used the N-word on a conference call in May, a source with knowledge of the event told Forbes. The call was arranged between Papa John’s executives and marketing agency Laundry Service. It was designed as a role-playing exercise for Schnatter in an effort to prevent future public-relations snafus. Schnatter caused an uproar in November 2017 when he waded into the debate over national anthem protests in the NFL and partly blamed the league for slowing sales at Papa John’s.’
I JUST WON’T GO DOWN. Nightline interviews Kathy Griffin.
WORLD CUP VIDEO OF THE DAY. Croatian firefighters can’t watch last penalty.
HUMP DAY HOTTIE. Eddie Cheng.
The post Larry Kramer, Croatia, Kathy Griffin, RuPaul, Arizona, Colton Haynes, Papa Johns, Hawaii, Asbestos: HOT LINKS appeared first on Towleroad.
BREAKING: House Appropriations Republicans Adopt “License to Discriminate” Amendment
Today, HRC blasted House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee for adopting a discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ amendment to a funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. If it remains in the final bill, the amendment would grant a “license to discriminate” in the provision of child welfare services, allowing child welfare placing agencies that receive federal government funding to turn away qualified prospective parents based on the agency’s religious beliefs. The vote in the committee was 29-23, along party lines, with Rep. Scott Taylor (R-VA) the lone Republican to vote against the amendment.
This amendment, introduced by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), would have a sweeping, harmful impact in child welfare services by enabling discrimination against LGBTQ people, same-sex couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other qualified parents to whom an agency has an objection. The biggest barrier to placing children with families is a lack of qualified prospective parents; having the government give contractors and subcontractors a license to discriminate, thereby limiting the pool of prospective parents for no legitimate reason, is unconscionable and an unacceptable use of taxpayer dollars.
“Any Member of Congress who supports this amendment is clearly stating that it is more important to them to discriminate than it is to find loving homes for children in need,” said David Stacy, director of government affairs at the Human Rights Campaign. “Congress should be focusing on ways to help children in the child welfare system find homes rather than creating needless obstacles for prospective parents, effectively shrinking the pool of qualified folks who want to provide children with a loving home. HRC urges Congress to reject this discriminatory amendment in the final appropriations bill.”
HRC recently released a report, titled Disregarding the Best Interest of the Child: License to Discriminate In Child Welfare Services, detailing the harms of efforts to write anti-LGBTQ discrimination by child welfare agencies into law. Statistics suggest that an estimated two million LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are interested in adoption, but the LGBTQ community often remains an untapped resource when it comes to finding families for children and youth in foster care.
Research consistently shows that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system, as many have been rejected by their families of origin because of their LGBTQ status, and are especially vulnerable to discrimination and mistreatment while in foster care. This type of amendment will only exacerbate these challenges faced by LGBTQ young people.
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