Very sweet video from popular UK vlogger Calum McSwiggan.
“In this Christmas gay love story, a gay teenage couple share an awkward first kiss.”
I so remember my first real kiss. Talk about time stopping 🙂
Video: Young Gay Couple’s First Kiss
10 Ways Obamacare Improved LGBT Access To Health Coverage
Irish President Signs Marriage Equality Constitutional Amendment
Irish President Michael Higgins on Saturday officially signed an amendment to his country’s constitution that extends marriage rights to same-sex couples in his country.
Higgins amended the Irish Constitution roughly three months after Ireland became the first country in the world in which same-sex couples received marriage rights through a popular vote. The Irish Times reported Prime Minister Edna Kenny’s government next month will introduce a bill that would allow the amendment to officially take effect.
“We are all delighted,” Tiernan Brady of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, an Irish advocacy group, told the Washington Blade on Saturday in a statement. “This is a historic moment for LGBT people and everyone in Ireland. After the joyful scenes that followed the resounding yes vote last May it is wonderful that President Higgins has signed the act and made the result official.”
Irish lawmakers in July approved a bill that will allow transgender people to legally change their gender without medical intervention.
Same-sex couples are able to legally marry in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Iceland, Scotland, England, Wales, France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico City and several Mexican states, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba, Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Video: Highlights From NYC Pride
Right on the heels of the historic SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, New York City Pride held the celebration to end all Prides 🙂
This video chronicles the more than 2 million people attending 11 amazing events over 8 days.
My tribe 🙂
Music Video: Priory "Put 'Em Up"
Portland, OR-based group Priory drops the new video for their song ‘Put Em Up’ from the band’s latest album Need To Know.
Pop culture website NYLON calls the video “humanizing, vulnerable, and completely impactful.”
Singer Brandon Rush of Priory shared this about the video:
“I wrote ‘Put Em Up’ a couple of years ago. It’s a personal story about watching my brother struggle with being gay in a conservative and religious family. It didn’t get any better for him when he joined the military.
“I’m happy that in the past couple of weeks our country has made a lot of progress in granting the LBGTQ community equality, but we all know we still have a long way to go.
“When we made the video, we wanted to show regular people doing regular things in an anonymous fashion until they came together in a place of mutual acceptance where everyone had a chance to be free to be whatever they were on the inside or outside.”
Priory has earned wide-spread praise from mainstream outlets like Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Equire, and more; in addition, the band makes the grade on several high-profile lists like:
• USA Today ‘On the Verge’ artist
• SPIN ‘Artist You Must See’
• TIME ‘Artist You Need To Hear’
• MTV ‘Artist To Watch’
• Delta ‘Artist of the Month’
Find more info at the official website here.
From FCKH8: “What’s Our Year?”
The newest spot from FCKH8.com spotlights that despite progress in so many other areas, laws across the country continue to deny gay people basic anti-discrimination protections on the job.
In the video, people from various walks of life – women, blacks, disabled people – each identify major civil rights milestones in America.
Each speaker represents a year when others like them were finally offered legal protection from discrimination in the U.S. – from African Americans becoming citizens in 1866, to people with disabilities getting access to public places through the Americans with Disabilities ACT in 1990. Each is wearing a T-shirt printed with the year they gained a fundamental right.
When the two gay men holding hands who are the video’s final subject are revealed, their T-shirts display question marks. “It’s 2015, and there is still no federal law protecting LGBT people against discrimination. What’s our year?” they plead.
Texas Supreme Court Orders Houston To Repeal LGBT Protections Or Place On Ballot
The Houston Chronicle reports that the Texas Supreme Court has ruled today that Houston City Council must repeal the city’s equal rights ordinance or place it on the November ballot.
The ruling comes three months after a state district judge ruled that opponents of Houston’s contentious non-discrimination ordinance passed last year failed to gather enough valid signatures to force a repeal referendum.
“We agree with the Relators that the City Secretary certified their petition and thereby invoked the City Council’s ministerial duty to reconsider and repeal the ordinance or submit it to popular vote,” the Texas Supreme Court wrote in a per curiam opinion. “The legislative power reserved to the people of Houston is not being honored.”
The city’s equal right ordinance bans discrimination based not just on sexual orientation and gender identity but also, as federal laws do, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy and genetic information, as well as family, marital or military status.
Houston City Council has 30 days to repeal the ordinance or place it on the November ballot.
More from Project Q Houston:
The state’s highest court also ordered the city to immediately halt enforcement of HERO, which prohibits discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing, public accommodations, and city contracting.
“But what of the City Council’s complaints of forgery, false oaths, and the like?” the all-Republican court wrote in its 12-page per curiam opinion. “Although these issues were addressed at trial and are now pending before the court of appeals, we note that the City Secretary never claimed the referendum petition was plagued by forgery or perjury. Yet the City Council decided, of its own accord, not to act, disregarding the City Secretary’s certification that the petition had enough signatures.”
Somehow, these folks twist the truth about an ordinance protecting LGBTs into an attack on religious folks.
Which, I guess, could be true if the concern was really about losing your ability to discriminate.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Covers Sexual Orientation
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued a ruling that acknowledges existing civil rights law – in the form of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – outlaws discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation.
Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed has the details:
“[A]llegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex,” the commission concluded in a decision dated July 15.
The independent commission addressed the question of whether the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars anti-LGB discrimination in a complaint brought by a Florida-based air traffic control specialist against Transportation Sec. Anthony Foxx.
The ruling — issued without objection from any members of the five-person commission — applies to federal employees’ claims directly, but it also applies to the entire EEOC, which includes its offices across the nation that take and investigate claims of discrimination in private employment. And, while only the Supreme Court could issue a definitive ruling on the interpretation, EEOC decisions are given significant deference by federal courts.
This isn’t the Employment Non-Discrimination Act we all would like to see become law, it is a clear decision in the right direction. This decision could very well lead to nationwide protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers in the U.S.
New Book: Matt Baume “Defining Marriage”
Matt Baume, who for years kept LGBTs and their allies up to date on the state of marriage equality with his weekly Marriage News Watch videos, shares the good news that he has published an e-book titled Defining Marriage.
From the description on Amazon:
Defining Marriage traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it. Writer Matt Baume provides an intimate glimpse into the private lives of those who dreamed of marriage in the 1970s, the survivors of the 1980s, the audacious pioneers of the 1990s, the tireless soldiers of the 2000s, and the champions who won marriage today.
Along the way, he explores the individual stories of the people who participated in this revolution, examines what marriage has become, and shows with vivid, compelling personal narratives how the act of defining marriage forever changed the lives and loves of the people who fought to define the institution. As the journey to equality unfolds over the years, Baume finds himself unexpectedly evaluating his own self-contradictory life as a marriage activist with no plans to marry his longtime partner.
From decades past to this moment in history, from halls of power to private bedrooms, from the political to the personal, Defining Marriage is the story of how people from all walks of life fought to change marriage — and how fighting for marriage, in turn, changed them.
You can download the book right now from Amazon, and Baume is making the tome free for this first week of availability.
Click here for more info at Amazon.
Vice-President Biden At Freedom To Marry Celebration: Same-Sex Marriage Decision Was “Inevitable”
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden made a special appearance at a Freedom to Marry event in New York City last night, applauding those in attendance for their efforts to win the freedom to marry in the U.S., following the historic Supreme Court ruling.
Biden spoke of a moment when he was 17 and he and his father saw two men kissing. “He said ‘Joey, they love each other. It’s simple,’” he said, quoting his father. “That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. It’s never been that complicated for me.”
Biden went on to say he always knew the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality was “inevitable.”
Recounting the journey so far in the fight for LGBT rights, Biden added, “I want you younger people here to understand the shoulders you are standing on.”
Biden also made note that much work remains to be done in the LGBT arena for equality: while same-sex couples are now eligible for federal marriage benefits nationwide, 32 states don’t have anti-discrimination employment laws protecting sexual orientation.
Forward.