Camille is a twentysomething working in the LGBT nonprofit industry. She runs an LGBT news blog at gaywrites.org.
At a press conference in Salt Lake City today, Mormon church officials requested a truce with the LGBT community. The Mormon church will support nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people in matters of housing, employment, and public services, one elder said, as long as those laws carve out protections for the expression of “religious freedom,” too. Essentially, they’re saying discrimination against LGBT people isn’t okay, unless it’s done in the name of religion. Read more
Oklahoma State Rep. Todd Russ (below) has a solution to the pesky problem of gays trying to get married: outlawing secular marriage altogether. Russ says he wants to “protect” court clerks from doing their jobs and providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which they’ve been legally able to do since October. Under his proposal, marriage certificates could be signed only by a religious official, who would then pass the certificate along to the clerk. Judges could no longer perform legal marriages. While couples who didn’t have a religious official handy could still qualify for a common law marriage, this still means only church-sanctioned relationships could be legally, formally recognized. Read more
Last night’s State of the Union address brought a long list of tweetworthy moments, from President Barack Obama’s wink at the crowd during a recap of the progress his administration has made to a snappy, unscripted comeback about winning his last two campaigns that silenced fussy Republicans. But the 2015 speech also gave us a few truly pivotal moments, even if they only spanned a few words. Among them: the first time any president has ever used the words “lesbian,” “bisexual” or “transgender” in that address. Here’s what Obama said (the full speech is available at Medium): Read more
The Indian state of Goa has announced plans for a governmental program to help LGBT youth “get over same-sex feelings.” The minister of Goa, Ramesh Tawadkar (below), told the New York Times that homosexuality is a “big problem” in India, and that the new program will help young people learn to live a “normal life.” The law would consider LGBT youth as a “problem group” in need of governmental intervention, in line with “drug addicts, dropouts and migrants.” Read more
