Social Movements & the Law

Even well-meaning people may be intimidated by the spectrum of gender identities.

Transgender and non-binary people come from all walks of life. The HRC Foundation has estimated that there are more than two million of us across the United States. We are…

Terms and Definitions

Pronouns Matter Learn More

It's always a good time to brush up on your pronoun etiquette.

Languages that contain only “he” and “she” pronouns pose problems for communicating about gender identity. Here’s how some language teachers are helping.

GLAAD's Media Reference Guide offers education and guidance on telling transgender people's stories in ways that bring out the best in journalism.

This glossary was written to help give people the words and meanings to make conversations about sexual orientation and gender expression easier.

We would like to make clear that although it can be useful to have this kind of structure to introduce folks to some of the language that is used to talk about sexualized violence…

To help you make sense of the alphabet soup, and be as respectful and accurate as possible when using identifying language.

Our last edition contained a review of A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson. As my colleagues noted,...

Flags that help different members of the LGBTQ community feel seen and heard.

In Part 2 of our interview, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio describes in detail the state-level attacks on trans youth, and the intensifying international push to eradicate trans lives.

We speak with Chase Strangio of the ACLU about recent anti-LGBTQ legislation in Florida, Texas, and Idaho, and pending bills in other states. Florida's "Don't Say Gay" education bill aims to ban the mere discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools. A bill in Idaho criminalizes gender-affirming healthcare for transgender children and teens. Meanwhile, welfare officials in Texas have begun to carry out Republican Governor Greg Abbott's directive to launch child abuse investigations against parents who seek gender-affirming care for their transgender children. "What we're seeing is a national, well-funded effort to attack and eradicate trans youth and trans lives specifically," says Strangio, who is also an attorney in the ACLU’s lawsuit against Abbott. #DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today: https://democracynow.org/donate FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: YouTube: http://youtube.com/democracynow Facebook: http://facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: https://twitter.com/democracynow Instagram: http://instagram.com/democracynow SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/democracynow iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/democracy-now!-audio/id73802554 Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

"A renowned legal scholar tells the definitive story of Hollingsworth v. Perry, the trial that will stand as the most potent argument for marriage equality. In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, rescinding the right of same-sex couples to marry in the state. Advocates for marriage equality were outraged. Still, major gay-rights groups opposed a federal challenge to the law, warning that it would be dangerously premature. A loss could set the movement back for decades. A small group of activists, however, refused to wait. They turned to corporate lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies--best known for arguing opposite sides of Bush v. Gore--who filed a groundbreaking federal suit against the law. A distinguished constitutional law scholar, Kenji Yoshino was also a newly married gay man who at first felt ambivalent about the suit. Nonetheless, he recognized that Chief Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to hold a trial in the case was momentous. Boies and Olson rose to the occasion, deftly deploying arguments that LGBT advocates had honed through years of litigation and debate. Reading the 3,000-page transcript, Yoshino discovered a shining civil rights document--the most rigorous and compelling exploration he had seen of the nature of marriage, the political status of gays and lesbians, the ideal circumstances for raising children, and the inability of direct democracy to protect fundamental rights. After that tense twelve-day trial, Walker issued a resounding and historic ruling: California's exclusion of same-sex couples from civil marriage violated the U.S. Constitution. In June 2013, the United States Supreme Court denied the final appeal in Hollingsworth v. Perry, leaving same-sex couples in California free to marry. Drawing on interviews with lawyers and witnesses on both sides of the case, Yoshino takes us deep inside the trial. He brings the legal arguments to life, not only through his account of the case, but also by sharing his own story of finding love, marrying, and having children. Vivid, compassionate, and beautifully written, Speak Now is both a nuanced and authoritative account of a landmark trial, and a testament to how the clash of proofs in our judicial process can force debates to the ultimate level of clarity"--

"We've been together in sickness and in health, through the death of his mother, through the adoption of our children, through four long years of this legal battle," Jason Morgan told reporters of himself and his partner, Chuck Swaggerty. "And if being together through all of that isn't love and commitment or isn't family or isn't marriage, then I don't know what is." Just minutes earlier on that day, April 3, 2009, the justices of the Iowa Supreme Court had agreed. The court's decision in Varnum v. Brien made Iowa only the third state in the nation to permit same-sex couples to wed--moderate, midwestern Iowa, years before such left-leaning coastal states as California and New York. And unlike the earlier decisions in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Varnum v. Brien was unanimous and unequivocal. It catalyzed the unprecedented and rapid shift in law and public opinion that continues today. Equal Before the Law tells the stories behind this critical battle in the fight for marriage equality and traces the decision's impact. The struggle began in 1998 with the easy passage of Iowa's Defense of Marriage Act and took a turn, surprising to many, in 2005, when six ordinary Iowa couples signed on to Lambda Legal's suit against the law. Their triumph in 2009 sparked a conservative backlash against the supreme court justices, three of whom faced tough retention elections that fall. Longtime, award-winning reporters Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen talked with and researched dozens of key figures, including opponent Bob Vander Plaats, proponents Janelle Rettig and Sharon Malheiro, attorneys Roger Kuhle, Dennis Johnson, and Camilla Taylor, and politicians Matt McCoy, Mary Lundby, and Tom Vilsack, who had to weigh their careers against their convictions. Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the decision, explains why the court had to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. At the center of the story are the six couples who sacrificed their privacy to demand public respect for their families. Through these voices, Witosky and Hansen show that no one should have been surprised by the 2009 decision. Iowans have a long history of leadership on civil rights. Just a year after Iowa became a state, its citizens adopted as their motto the phrase, "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain." And they still do today.

A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a statute that denies access to public toilets by gender or transgender identity. Bathroom bills affect access to sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on a determination of their sex as defined in some specific way, such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds to their gender identity.[1] A bathroom bill can either be inclusive or exclusive of transgender individuals, depending on the aforementioned definition of their sex. Unisex public toilets are one option to avoid this controversy.

NCSL tracks the latest state legislative activity relating to bathroom bills.This page has information on all states that have introduced bathroom bill legislation, as well as an overview of recent federal action, including: the May 2016 "Dear Colleague Letter from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

An Arkansas attorney’s contract with the state was terminated because he emailed a legislator and criticized her support of a measure banning gender confirming treatments for transgender youth, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas filed the lawsuit on behalf of Casey Copeland, whose contract with the Administrative Office of the Courts was terminated after he emailed the sponsor of the ban enacted earlier this year.

A Tennessee Senate panel has advanced legislation requiring school districts to alert parents of any instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, allowing them to opt their student out of such instruction.

This article is the first entry in a symposium previewing Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In the past five years, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage and that federal employment discrimination laws protect LGBTQ employees. On Nov. 4, the justi

The Biden Administration spoke out Tuesday against a Florida bill that would limit discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools on the same day the bill passed its first Florida Senate committee.

Arizona politicians passed a vote on a bill that would allow businesses to ban transgendered people from using bathrooms that don't match the gender they were born as.

Florida governor’s action comes at the start of ‘Pride Month’ in the US, officially a time to celebrate LGBTQ rights.

A showdown may be coming on the meaning of religious freedom, and LGBT advocates fear anti-discrimination protections could be weakened as a result.

A federal appeals court ruled North Carolina can be sued over prohibitions on coverage for gender-affirming care in its employee health plan.

Two governors -- one a Republican, one a Democrat -- have stood up to the harmful measures.