Camille is a twentysomething working in the LGBT nonprofit industry. She runs an LGBT news blog at gaywrites.org.
Another Catholic school teacher has been fired from a job he loved because he married his same-sex partner. Except this person isn’t afraid to dole out the b-word when talking about the church he grew up in. Lonnie Billard (below), 68, was an English and drama teacher at Charlotte Catholic High School for 13 years and a follower of the Catholic faith for his entire life. He and his boyfriend, Rich Donham, have been together for over a decade. Billard says he had always introduced Donham to colleagues as his partner, and there had never been a problem. Read more
A Kentucky legislator has proposed a bill that would single out, marginalize, and humiliate transgender students who use school bathrooms — and with practically no media fanfare. On January 9, Republican Senator C.B. Embry Jr. (below) introduced the Kentucky Student Privacy Act (SB 76), which would force transgender students in public schools to use the bathrooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Here’s the bill overview: Read more
LGBT advocates are still grieving — will long be grieving — the loss of Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender girl who committed suicide partly because of her religious parents’ rejection of her identity. Her death has reignited a national conversation about the struggles transgender youth face, and the devastating effects that can result when they aren’t met with love and support. But all sensitivity is lost on the religious right, who are jumping to prove that Leelah’s death was the result of her own selfish “disorder.” For example, in a blog post last week, the Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins asked, “is theologically orthodox Christianity to blame for Josh [sic] Alcorn’s suicide?” We don’t even need to point out that the entire post misgenders Leelah, using male pronouns and her birth name. That’s par for the course when it comes to conservative Christian “analysis” of trans issues. But even having the common decency to use her name wouldn’t make up for how Higgins tries to break down the circumstances of Leelah’s death. Here’s a list of possible explanations she offers for Leelah’s suicide, as well as the despair suffered by so many other LGBT teenagers, particularly those who are trans: Read more
TLC’s weird upcoming show My Husband’s Not Gay has sparked a wave of a new kind of coming-out: Christian men who are open about their same-sex attraction, despite being married to women. NPR recently featured one of these stories, about a Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania who has experienced same-sex attraction since he was a kid. His name is Allan Edwards, he’s married to Leeanne Edwards, and they’re expecting a baby in July. In the NPR story, he talks about how his faith has shaped his identity: Read more
The Duggar family will not shut up about how much they hate LGBT people, but they’re not brave enough to admit it. While guest-hosting a program put on by the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, Pastor Richard Land spoke with Josh Duggar (below), one of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” darlings and now an FRC employee. Duggar and his family recently spearheaded a movement to overturn a nondiscrimination bill in Fayetteville, Arkansas, which would have protected LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing and public affairs. Since before the measure was even introduced, his family has served as the face of the anti-equality movement in Arkansas, perhaps best characterized by a robocall from matriarch Michelle Duggar comparing transgender people to sexual predators. Here’s the clip of Land interviewing Duggar: Read more
