Using data from the 2015–2017 Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the Trevor Project released a new report about the health of bisexual youth in the United States.
On the whole, they found bisexual youth reported higher rates of suicide ideation, bullying, and other negative experiences.
In the CDC’s data, as re-stated in the report, 7% of youth identified as bisexual, compared to 2% as gay or lesbian and 4% as not sure.
Between their fellow peers in the LGBTI community, and heterosexual peers, there exists a disparity. Researchers found this both in mental health and victimization.
What they experience
Overall, bisexual youth reported higher rates of various mental health struggles than all their peers.
When asked if they felt sad or hopeless, ever seriously considered suicide, or attempted suicide, bisexual youth had the highest affirmative responses.
A majority of bisexual youth (66%) reported feeling hopeless or sad. In comparison, 27% of straight youth reported this, as well as 49% of gay/lesbian youth.
When it comes to suicide ideation, 48% of bisexual youth have ‘seriously considered it’. 27% have actually attempted suicide.
Among gay and lesbian youth, these numbers are 37% and 19%.
Further, bisexual youth also have the highest rates of reporting bullying (on school and online). They also report the highest rates of experiencing ‘forced’ sexual intercourse.
21% say they’ve been forced into sexual intercourse, and another 36% and 30% say they’ve been bullied at school and online, respectively.
Stigma around bisexuality
As Amy Green, Director of Research for The Trevor Project, noted, bisexual youth are ‘more likely to experience victimization, depressed mood, and suicide attempts than their straight, lesbian, and gay peers’.
‘These disparities are likely related to increased minority stress faced by bisexual youth who may be stigmatized by both straight and gay/lesbian communities,’ she continued.
There is stigma surrounding the bisexual community based on negative stereotypes and myths. Some of these myths include bisexual people not being able to make up their mind or being promiscuous.
Green said: ‘Enhancing youth coping skills and social support can mitigate the link between stigmatization and negative outcomes, which is why The Trevor Project’s crisis services operates 24/7 to provide that support to bisexual youth as well as all LGBTQ youth in crisis.’
If you or someone you know is feeling hopeless or suicidal, contact The Trevor Project’s TrevorLifeline 24/7/365 at 1-866-488-7386. Counseling is also available via chat every day atTheTrevorProject.org/Help, or by texting 678-678.
Survivors of Chechnya’s homophobic purge are, with very few exceptions, always anonymous.
Many people have fled for their lives. Officers could catch them and send them back to a concentration camp.
People are tortured, humiliated, beaten and electrocuted and murdered.
Very few can bear the pain without breaking.
Some former detainees have revealed what happened to them to Human Rights Watch.
The following survivors have all been given pseudonyms to protect their identities.
Survivors of Chechnya’s homophobic purge reveal what happened
One remembers a torture named the ‘carousel’. Security officials put you face down on the floor and beat you with pipes.
Officers, when they’re tired, also force other prisoners to carry on with the beating.
‘You literally turn black and blue from waist to toes,’ one survivor said.
Other survivors remembered the homemade electric chairs.
One said: ‘They turn the knob, electric current hits you, and you start shaking. And they keep turning the hellish machine, and the pain is just insane, you scream, and scream, and you no longer know who you are…
‘Finally, you faint, it all goes dark, but when you come to your senses, they start all over again.
‘And once they’re done with you and you get your bearings, you hear other inmates screaming, and the sounds of torture are just there all day, and at some point, you start losing your mind.’
Zurab
Zurab, 32, spent a week in the detention facility.
On 1 March, he was arrested at his home. Quickly, he deleted his cell phone of all evidence of his communications with other gay men.
The police officer drove Zurab to a security compound. The officials dragged him into a room where he saw two gay acquaintances. One of them was bloodied and bruised from a recent beating.
The security official demanded to know who he was and his relationship with them. Zurab claimed they were just business contacts.
‘They beat me, they gave me electric shocks attaching wires to my ear-lobes,’ he said.
‘I would not give in. I insisted those two lied about me.’
He also said: ‘But the humiliation was the worst part of it.
‘They called me a ‘woman,’ a ‘fag,’ an ‘ass-bugger’… the most offensive things one can call a man. They mocked me, taunted me. I could not stand it. I wished they just killed me.’
Zurab was also not fed in seven days he spent there locked in a cage, losing 22 pounds in a week. He was given water in accordance with Muslim ritual and only after prayers.
Security officials released Zurab after finding no evidence he was gay. Two weeks later, a friend told him security officials had rounded up an ex-lover who had pictures of him on his phone.
‘I could not face another detention…’ he said, who fled to southern Europe.
He also said: ‘If they showed [it] to my relatives… If my father doesn’t kill me, my uncle will.’
Khasan
A placard at a Chechnya protest in London, April 2017, targeting Russian President Putin for his inaction (Photo: David Hudson)
Khasan, a 20-year-old university student, was lured by an officer posing as a potential date.
The two met and the officer said there was an apartment outside the city limits.
After driving for 30 minutes, the officer posing as a gay man drove off the road into a field.
‘Three security officials in black uniforms were waiting for us there,’ Khasan said.
‘I understood everything as soon as I saw them, I begged him to turn back, I cried–but he pushed me out of the car.
‘They beat me, kicked me, and punched me in the face. They stripped me naked and filmed me on a cell phone, as they gave a running commentary about having caught a “faggot”.
The officials found Khasan’s phone and found intimate photographs and messages with other gay men.
Khasan was left with a broken jaw and bruises.
They said he had a month to deliver several thousand dollars or he would be outed to his family.
Khasan sold all his valuable electronic equipment, borrowed money and came up with the sum.
‘I did not have a choice. If my relatives found out about me being gay, the shame for the family would be unbearable,’ he said.
After he paid the ransom, he fled to join other survivors. He later learned that friends of his had been abducted – likely with information gathered from his phone. A friend’s mother called him in tears saying police had dragged her son away.
Magomed
Magomed, 35, spent 11 days in the detention facility in Argun.
Three security officials accosted Magomed in a public place in Grozny. With them, a gay acquaintance was in handcuffs.
When the officials asked Magomed what they were after, he said no. One of the men then hit Magomed on the head.
Handcuffed, dragged into a car, he was driven to the camp. He was held there with around 40 to 50 people.
‘Every day it was torture, torture, and more torture,’ he said.
On his release, family members of many detainees had assembled in an official facility.
The officials shouted abuse while family members were forced to stand and listen.
Each detainee had to step forward, face his family and also ‘confess’ his sexual orientation.
‘Our relatives were in tears and they [officials] were telling them, “You know what to do now.”
‘They didn’t say “kill” but it was all crystal clear,’ Magomed said.
One of the detainees refused to ‘confess’ and security officials refused to release him to his relatives. Several other detainees were not released because their family members did not show up.
While officials ordered Magomed to not leave Chechnya, he kept hearing about detentions of gay people.
He immediately fled Chechnya for a neighboring region without even stopping to pack a bag, and from there went to central Russia.
‘My life is ruined. I cannot go back. And it’s not safe here [in central Russia] either,’ Magomed said.
Chechnya Crisis Appeal
As well as using our investigative journalism to keep you informed about what’s happening on-the-ground as it happens; we’re inviting you to make a difference today by donating to the Chechyna Crisis Appeal.
Every dollar, euro and pound you give will help evacuate LGBTI people in the most danger. And to pressure the Chechen authorities to stop this persecution.
Please also share our appeal with your followers, friends and family; ensuring we raise awareness and apply pressure to permanently end this abuse.
A legendary trans bar and nightclub in San Francisco will be closing up shop at the end of the month.
Divas bar and nightclub in the city’s Polk Gulch neighborhood will be throwing a final goodbye party on March 30 before closing for good.
Divas has billed itself as ‘the largest bar and nightclub in the United States devoted to the TS/TV community,’ and is one of the few trans-focused nightclubs in the US.
The three-story venue has been a cornerstone for many in San Francisco’s trans community since 1998.
Divas’ previous incarnation was as The Motherlode, which had been situated down the street from its current location.
It had been one of the few remaining LGBTI venues to survive in Polk Gulch, as property prices continue to skyrocket in San Francisco.
‘I’ve been the manager here for 31 years,’ Alexis Miranda told SFGate. ‘It’s depressing. It’s the only transgender club in California, one of three in the country.
‘We will find another place in the city. I’m working on it,’ Miranda added.
Divas in San Francisco’s Polk Gulch neighborhood | Photo: Google Maps
‘This is a nightmare that has been coming for a long time’
While the news will be upsetting for many of its regulars, it is unlikely Divas’ closure will come as surprise.
The building has been on the market since at least 2014 with a reported price-tag of $3.8 million.
Many of its fans had hoped the iconic venue would remain a space for the trans community.
Divas featured prominently in photography book ‘Divas of San Francisco: Portraits of Transsexual Women’, by photographer David Steinberg.
In a heartfelt Facebook post, alongside photos he had taken in Divas over the years, Steinberg wrote about his sadness in seeing the club go.
‘This is a nightmare that has been coming for a long time, but is nevertheless a real tragedy, for the community, for the city, and for me personally,’ Steinberg wrote.
‘Divas has been a unique and wonderful place for so long that it’s hard for me to even wrap my mind around the reality that, very soon, it will no longer exist.
‘Stories from Divas could fill a dozen mind-dazzling books, and an equal number of films. Beautiful stories, ugly stories, crazy stories, wonderful stories, amazing stories all.’
Steinberg added that the owners are planning on converting the bottom floor into a coffee house, and the top floors into offices and condos.
Divas’ goodbye party will take place between 10pm and 2am on 30 March.
Divas is far from the first LGBTI venue to fall victim to San Francisco’s high-priced property market.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Blow Buddies, the city’s largest gay sex club, was facing the prospect of closure as the building’s owners are looking to sell.
The U.S. House voted Thursday morning to rebuke President Trump’s transgender military ban by approving a non-binding resolution with bipartisan support.
The resolution, which was introduced by Rep. Joseph Kennedy III (D-Mass.), was approved by a vote of 238-185 after an hour of debate on the House floor in which lawmakers denounced the Trump administration’s policy as discriminatory.
On the House floor, Kennedy said his resolution reinforces the American idea that “equal has always been our nation’s North Star” despite a history that has included slavery and racial segregation.
“Today, this House has a chance to not repeat the mistakes of our past, to move one step closer to that sacred promise, by telling brave trans men and women in uniform that they cannot be banned from military service because of who they are,” Kennedy said.
Five Republicans voted for the resolution against the transgender military ban: Reps. Will Hurd (Texas), John Katko (N.Y.), Trey Hollingsworth (Indiana), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa) and Tom Reed (N.Y.). Another Republican — Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) — voted present.
(Initially, as the vote was being tallied, a total of six Republicans were recorded as having voted in favor of the resolution. But, just before the vote was made final, that number dropped to five. It’s unclear which Republican switched his or her vote before it was recorded.)
The House approves the resolution shortly after the Defense Department unveiled its plan to begin the transgender military ban on April 12. Although federal courts had initially blocked the administration from enacting the policy, the orders were lifted in the accordance with guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court effectively green-lighting the ban as litigation proceeds against it.
Also speaking out in favor of the resolution was House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who last week announced he would bring the measure to a House floor vote.
“The Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in our military is discriminatory, that it denigrates the service of patriotic Americans,” Hoyer said. “That is the facet of their character, they are patriotic and they want to serve, and the service judges them able to do so. The resolution, millions of Americans understand, undermines our national defense at a time of serious global threats, and the this resolution rightfully calls on the Trump administration not to implement such a ban on April 12.”
A significant source of ire for the lawmakers speaking out against the measure was President Trump’s tweets in 2017 declaring he’d seek to ban transgender people from military service “in any capacity.”
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said before that tweet “there was no problem” allowing openly transgender people in the military — a practice that started during the final year of the Obama administration.
“He sent out a tweet saying we should ban transgender people from the military, and the military has had to backfill that tweet with a policy, and I feel bad for members of the military who have had to do that, who have to waste their time for the last year trying to accommodate the ignorance and bigotry of this presidential policy,” Smith said.
The number of lawmakers — all Democrats — who spoke out on the House floor in favor of the resolution by far exceeded the two lawmakers — both Republicans — who spoke out against against it.
Among them was Rep. Vicky Hartlzer (R-Mo.), who has a notoriously anti-LGBT record and two years ago introduced an amendment to the House floor seeking to ban the U.S. military from paying for transition-related care, including gender reassignment surgery. Even though Republicans at the time controlled the House, lawmakers voted down the amendment.
On the House floor, Hartzler said the transgender ban is justified because the military has broad exclusions on service based on a variety of medical conditions. (That ignores the conclusions from the American Medical Association that being transgender isn’t an impediment to military service.)
“Our all voluntary military is the greatest military force in the world and we must allow it…to make the best medical and military judgment about what medical conditions should qualify or disqualify an individual from serving,” Hartlzer said. “We should not carve out exceptions for an entire population. Military service is a privilege, not a right.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers were “rather consumed by presidential tweets” and urged fellow House members to remember the six-month long study that began at the time of Trump’s tweets and resulted in the transgender military policy.
“Well before any presidential tweet, Secretary of Defense Mattis had put a delay on implementation of the policy that had previously been announced so there could be a six-month review,” Thornberry said. “And there was a six-month review with experts, with uniform, civilian people, from all the services, with medical experts, a whole variety of folks, and it is serious and thoughtful despite some of the characterizations that have been made from time to time.”
The vote in resolution comes in the same week that top defense officials spoke out on the transgender policy before Congress. During a House hearing on the annual defense Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the policy “applies standards uniformly.”
Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford — who said on transgender service anyone who meets the standards of service should be able to serve — spoke about the process that led to the current policy.
“The secretary included the leadership and medical experts, then based on the definition of physically, mentally, psychologically capable of deploying, performing in our occupational fields, with the caveat, without special accommodations, he proposed a revision to the 2017 policy,” Dunford said. “That was the process that was used to be able to do that.”
According to numbers first reported by USA Today and verified by the Pentagon, the U.S. military since 2016 has spent nearly $8 million for transition-related care for 1,500 transgender troops, which includes 161 surgical procedures. That’s a small fraction of the Pentagon’s annual budget of around $600 billion.
During testimony last month before Congress, five transgender service members said the time they needed to transition during service was minimal and took as little as a few weeks. Many said they transitioned on vacation or personal time.
The non-binding resolution approved the by the House doesn’t have the force for legislation. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have introduced bills in their respective chambers of Congress that would bar the U.S. military from discharging qualified individuals on the basis of transgender status. Speier has said she’d seek to amend the annual defense authorization bill with her measure.
Police raided a LGBTI center in Arkhangelsk, Russia today (28 March).
Officers arrived at the community center, Rakurs (meaning Angle), after an alleged ‘complaint’.
A Rakurs spokesperson told Gay Star News the incident is still ongoing at the time of publishing.
Officers arrived to the center, which provides advice to the LGBTI community, and demanded to inspect the office.
Volunteers, lawyers, and five visitors were also all prevented from leaving.
Officers are inspecting and withdrawing materials from the center.
Ivan Rasputin, the head of the Information Relations department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Arkhangelsk region, declined to comment.
Authorities have seven days to respond to comment.
Gay propaganda in Russia
Sources suggest Russia’s government may wish to fine or ban the organization for conflating rules on ‘gay propaganda’.
In 2013 Russian president, Vladimir Putin, passed the ‘gay propaganda law’ which banned ‘information promoting the denial of traditional family values’ and ‘propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations’.
Activists have also argued the law censored the LGBTI community.
Its introduction has also led to a vast increase of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic attacks.
The group works to protect the rights of LGBTI people in the northern region.
In December 2014, the court recognized the organization as a foreign agent.
Earlier this month, police interrogated an organizer of a youth festival.
Yulia Tsvetkova was receiving death threats for her part in organizing the Color of Saffron festival in the far eastern town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
Due to run this weekend, local authorities canceled the event over concerns one of the plays in the festival promoted a ‘LGBTI agenda’.
The play called Blue and Pink featured teenage actors and discussed gender. The colors blue and pink are often represent the gay and lesbian community in Russia.
Authorities told festival organisers it would not be going ahead. They also accused Tsvetkova of importing ‘corruption and persecution’ from Europe.
US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refused to directly answer a question about whether she opposed LGBT discrimination in schools at a House hearing on Tuesday (26 March).
Representative Mark Pocan asked notoriously anti-LGBTI DeVos: ‘Do you think it’s all right for a school to discriminate based on someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity?’
‘We have laws that cover … discriminatory efforts and our office for civil rights has continued to be very diligent in investigating any allegation of discrimination and will continue to do so’ DeVos replied.
When pushed for a ‘yes or no answer’ by Pocan, DeVos finally said ‘we follow the law’.
He asked whether schools that receive funding from the federal government would be punished if they allowed discrimination against LGBT students to occur.
‘Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law,’ DeVos said.
DeVos’ family also has a long-standing history of supporting anti-LGBTI causes.
Through family foundations, they funded anti-LGBTI campaigns and organizations.
The benefactors include Focus On the Family. The organization’s website states ‘homosexual strugglers can and do change their sexual behavior and identity’.
They received a $10 million (€9.34 million, £7.98 million) donation from the DeVos family.
A school suspended two teachers after they mocked a 14-year-old boy by implying he is gay.
The child’s mother, Jean Mott, claims the teachers, from Shiloh Middle School in Snellville, Georgia, made inappropriate comments about the student’s sexuality in front of his entire class.
Speaking to WSB-TV, Mott says her son came home in tears in December 2018 because his teachers made comments that made him appear to be gay. His classmates have teased him ever since.
One teacher implied another child was the boy’s ‘boyfriend’ and made fun of him after he was absent from school for a few days.
Homophobic bullying from the teachers
Mott told the news channel: ‘The teacher said to my son, “Your boyfriend was cheating on you while you were away. Oh, you two make a really good couple”‘.
She also says one of the teachers accused her son of chasing boys around the school. This was after another classmate pushed him.
Mott continued: ‘Help me understand why, as an adult, you would do this to a child? Why would you bully my child, or any child?
‘I cannot allow these teachers to go out and do this to anybody else’s child. They initiated the bullying. As a result, my son has been bullied by his peers and it’s something he’ll never live down.’
The teachers apologized to the mother in a meeting. The school suspended them for two days.
School officials released a statement: ‘Both investigations found that the teachers comments were inappropriate. As a result, disciplinary action was taken against both teachers.’
The Georgia Professional Standards Commission are investigating. They will decide whether the teacher’s keep their education certificates.
A man will be charged for allegedly sending out nearly 50 threatening letters to people, including an LGBTI center.
Federal officials took Darnell Ray Owens, 32 from Sacramento, into custody on Friday (22 March).
Officials claim he mailed dozens of letters, some containing white powder, to police, churches and an LGBTI center.
Sacramento LGBTQ Community Center received two letters on 19 March 2018. Along with hate speech directed at the LGBTI community, he also threatened to ‘murder every fag or queer, lesbian, transsexuals, transgenders in Sacramento.’
He also sent fake threats to the center in June 2018 from a number of individuals. They all have family or other connections to Owens.
Owens could face up to five years in prison for each count in the complaint.
36-page complaint
After Owens was arrested in Oklahoma, officials filed a 36-page criminal complaint charging him with conducting a hoax involving biological weapons and interstate threats.
Officials say he wanted the recipients to think the white powder was a biological weapon. He also sent threatening messages to ‘white people’ to try to incite a race war, according to the letters themselves.
The last letter sent was to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office. It contained a threat to kill the district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert.
According to the affidavit attached to the complaint, Owens wrote: ‘You have failed this city and the people.
‘So I am making a threat on your Life, I will assassinate you with a bullet to your head, you will not survive I will watch your body shake as the life in you leaves.’
The complaint says Federal officials tied Owens to the threats using DNA evidence, including evidence he used computers to send hoax threats from other people.
Staff at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in New Mexico allegedly subjected gay and trans people to ‘rampant’ abuse.
Advocates and lawyers claimed in a letter yesterday (25 March) that 12 queer migrants at the Otero County Processing Center were threatened and subjected to solitary confinement after complaining about conditions. Or punished for simply sharing coffee.
Staff allegedly reassigned the trans women to barracks with heterosexual men – some of whom previously sexually harassed them – as a form of retaliation.
What happened?
The letter documents the experiences of 12 LGBTI asylum seekers who fled persecution in their home countries.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico sent the letter to immigration authorities and the warden of Otero County Processing Center.
Moreover, it demanded a response by 29 March.
NBC reported a news release accompanying the letter detailed a man repeatedly groped. Guards asked him to perform sexual favors in exchange for food.
‘When I complained, I was thrown into solitary confinement for five days and threatened with further punishment if I complained again,’ he said, according to the release.
‘Rampant sexual harassment’
Guards allegedly interrupted showers and offered to help trans women bathe. Medical staff refused to provide hormones for three trans women.
Furthermore, guards subjected the people to ‘rampant sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse,’ according to the letter.
It said the guards barked ‘transphobic commands like “Walk like a man! You better sit like a man!”
‘They force transgender women to bathe and sleep in units with men who sexually harass and threaten them.’
In addition, the guards do not ‘address’ the homophobic and transphobic ‘slurs from other detained people.’
Gay Star News contacted the ICE for comment.
‘Not aware’
However, a spokerperson for Management & Training Corporation, the private company that operates Otero, told NBC they are ‘not aware’ of these incidents.
‘Any implication that management was aware of any harassment or discrimination against transgender individuals or any other individuals is not true.
‘We have no evidence of rampant sexual harassment, discrimination, abuse, denying proper medical care to transgender detainees.
There is, ‘no evidence of retaliation and improper use of solitary confinement.’
The 1,000 bed facility 30 miles north of the border city is the only remaining immigration detention center in New Mexico.
While there used to be a detention facility in Albuquerque, it is no longer in use of the ICE.
Human Rights Campaign launched its new campaign “Americans for the Equality Act,” a video series which features celebrities who support the Equality Act, on Monday. The proposed bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The video series, filmed by award-winning directors Dustin Lance Black and Paris Barclay, kicked off with actress and LGBTQ advocate Sally Field and her gay son, Sam Greisman, as they have a video conference conversation on why the Equality Act is instrumental in ensuring that the LGBTQ community has equal rights across state lines.
Other celebrities who will give their input in upcoming videos include Black, Barclay and his husband Christopher, Adam Rippon, Shea Diamond, Alexandra Billings, Blossom Brown, Charlie and Max Carver, Gloria Calderon Kellett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Justin Mikita, Justina Machado, Karamo Brown, Marcia Gay Harden and Nyle DiMarco. The series will continue as the legislation is under review in Congress.
“This is an exceptionally important effort, and I’m so proud to have had the opportunity to both direct this series and participate with my family,” Barclay praised the campaign in a statement. “So much of the progress of the LGBTQ movement has hinged on our ability to tell our stories and move people — and that’s the same spirit with which we’ve approached this compelling project. I was moved by the stories from the talented people participated in this campaign. We join them in working to make history again by passing the Equality Act.”
Black added: “Every American deserves a fair shot at a job to support themselves and their family, and the security of a roof over their head. These are key ingredients in what we’ve long cherished as our ‘American Dream.’ But until the Equality Act is signed into law, this dream may not be a reality for far too many Americans in many areas of our wild and wonderful country. I believe we must all share our personal stories and struggles with our fellow Americans in order to help this great dream become a reality for more of our loved ones, coworkers, and neighbors.”
50 percent of LGBTQ Americans currently live in one of the 30 states that do not provide statewide legal non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people in the areas of employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally-funded programs or jury service.
In a recent survey by PRRI, poll findings determined that seven out of 10 Americans support laws that prohibit LGBTQ discrimination. This includes the majority of every state’s population and the majority of Republicans, Independents and Democrats.
“The advocates and artists featured in HRC’s ‘Americans for the Equality Act’ video series amplify the chorus of voices urging Congress to pass the Equality Act,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “The harsh reality is that LGBTQ Americans still face real and persistent discrimination in their everyday lives, and Congress must pass the Equality Act to protect them.
Watch the first video in the “Americans for the Equality Act” campaign below.
