Social Movements & the Law

June is Pride Month and all of this month we have been highlighting resources to learn more about the history behind Pride Month and LGBTQ+ issues. Below we recap those resources. About Pride Month Pride Month is commemorated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City.

Here’s our guide on what pronouns are, why they matter, and how to use new ones and support your trans friends! http://minus18.org.au/pronouns When you come out as trans, people sometimes take a while to adjust to your new pronouns, or don’t quite understand. So we launched a new campaign to help! An article that introduces the topic, a video with a rundown from trans young people, and a web app where you can learn and practice pronouns! Filmed Marco Fink Jess Panczel Edited Marco Fink --- Minus18 is Australia's largest youth-led organisation for same-sex attracted and gender diverse young people. This is where we belong. Website https://minus18.org.au Facebook https://www.facebook.com/minus18youth Twitter https://twitter.com/minus18youth Tumblr http://minus18.tumblr.com Instagram http://instagram.com/minus18youth

Asking for and using correct pronouns is a way to respect those around you and create an inclusive environment for people of all genders and gender expressions. Here is a short primer on pronoun use at Columbia, with some quick suggestions for how to be an ally to queer and transgender members of our University community. Students can now opt to list the pronouns they use in CourseWorks. For more information on pronouns in use and for additional resources, visit: https://universitylife.columbia.edu/pronouns Want another way to show your support? Add this video to your e-mail signature. How to add a link to your signature in Gmail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFo5yFKUwwA How to add a link to your signature in Outlook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fte6DcugtNo

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,...

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

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…

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

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

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

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

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

"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.

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.

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

State lawmakers will unveil updated legislation to try to stop discrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community.

In Tarrant County College District v. Sims, No. 05-20-00351 (March 10, 2021), the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas held that "claim[s] of discrimination based on sexual orientation...

In the short term, supporters of the Equality Act have momentum. However, the Supreme Court justices’ comments in Monday’s landmark gay rights decision left some Fairness for All advocates feeling hopeful.

A case in which the Court found that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.

A case in which the Court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's conduct in evaluating a cake shop owner's reasons for declining to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple violated the Free Exercise Clause.

A case in which the Court found that a Texas statute banning consenting homosexual adults from engaging in sexual acts violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.

A case in which the Court held that there was no constitutional protection for sodomy, and that states could outlaw its practice.

Democracy Now! stories, posts and pages that relate to Defense of Marriage Act.