Jo Yurcaba

A Tennessee woman is suing the Department of Health and Human Services after a federally funded foster care agency rejected her application because she is a lesbian. Kelly Easter, who is from Nashville, wanted to apply to become a foster parent of an unaccompanied refugee children, according to her lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement directed her to Bethany Christian Services, the only entity participating in the program in her area and a sub-grantee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which receives federal funds to provide […]

Two Omaha women and their teenage sons have sued Nebraska’s health department for rejecting their request that both women be listed as legal parents on their sons’ birth certificates. Erin Porterfield and Kristin Williams started their family in 2002 using assisted reproductive technology and each gave birth to one of their sons, who are now 16 and 18, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, which is representing the couple with the Omaha law firm Koenig-Dunne. Porterfield and Williams were never married and are now no longer together, but they both have a court order that establishes an […]

Multiple North Carolina state representatives are demanding that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican, resign after a video surfaced showing him describing the LGBTQ community as “filth.” The video, first shared by Right Wing Watch, a project of the progressive advocacy group People For the American Way, shows Robinson speaking at the Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove during a visit in June, local NBC affiliate WRAL reported.  “I’m saying this now, and I’ve been saying it, and I don’t care who likes it: Those issues have no place in a school. There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child […]

President Joe Biden on Monday recognized the 10-year anniversary of the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy that forced gay, lesbian and bisexual military service members to hide their sexuality.  Then-President Bill Clinton signed the policy into law in 1993 as a compromise to end the existing ban on gay people serving. In total, over the 17 years the policy was in effect, an estimated 13,000 service members were discharged, according to data the military provided to The Associated Press. In December 2010, then-President Barack Obama signed a repeal bill, but it didn’t take effect until Sept. 20, 2011. “Ten years ago today, […]

Hate crimes based on sexual orientation dipped slightly last year, but crimes based on bias against trans and gender-nonconforming people continued to increase, new FBI data suggest.  The Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s Hate Crime Statistics 2020 report found that 7,759 hate crime incidents were reported last year, up by 6 percent from 7,314 incidents in 2019.  Although reports of hate crime incidents based on anti-LGBTQ bias were down overall, from 1,393 in 2019 to 1,287 in 2020, reports of incidents motivated by gender-identity bias jumped by nearly 20 percent for the second year in a row.  Law enforcement agencies reported 1,051 hate crime […]

Some LGBTQ renters report not being caught up on rent and fear losing their homes in the next few months, according to a new report published just after the the Supreme Court struck down an extended eviction moratorium last week. Nearly one-fifth (19 percent) of LGBTQ renters report not being caught up on rent, compared to 14 percent of non-LGBTQ renters, according to the report by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law.  Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer renters who are behind on rent are slightly more likely than non-LGBTQ renters who are behind on payments to […]