lgbt rights

The time has come to amend the Arizona Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity

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The Arizona legislature is about to be consumed by the sexual harassment ethics complaint filed by Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita against Rep. Don Shooter. Unbelievably, there was no formal, written policy in the House of Representatives available to legislators detailing how to respond to sexual harassment claims. Rules, enforcement lacking to prevent sexual harassment among lawmakers.

So the House has now drafted its first sexual harassment policy ex post facto to address the sexual harassment ethics complaint against Rep. Don Shooter. But that draft policy does not go far enough. No LGBT protections in Arizona Legislature’s new harassment rules:

When Arizona House Speaker J.D. Mesnard released a new harassment policy this week, members of the Legislature’s LGBT caucus felt something was missing.

The policy prohibits workplace discrimination in the Arizona House of Representatives based on someone’s race, age, national origin, religion, sex, disability or veteran status, among others.

Not included in that lengthy list: protections for House members or their staffers who might face discrimination for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

NOTE: The Arizona Civil Rights Act does not provide for express protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. A bill has been introduced in the Arizona legislature every year since at least 1994 to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Arizona Civil Rights Act but only once, to the best of my recollection, has a bill ever received a committee hearing. It has always been opposed by GOP leadership, because it is opposed by the religious right Center for Arizona Policy.

State Rep. Daniel Hernandez, D-Tucson, said he and other members of the recently formed LGBT caucus are going to push to change that.

Hernandez said while the policy allows anyone to report instances of sexual harassment, the portion dealing with discrimination should be amended to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

“I would like to see that it gets spelled out,” he said, “just so there isn’t confusion or issues later on.”

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Where Pride Began – “Stonewall” at the Loft

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STONEWALL STARTS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. Tucson Check website for show times: www.loftcinema.com Director Roland Emmerich’s passionate drama tells the incredible true story of the 1969 Stonewall riots that started America’s modern LGBT rights movement. Stonewall centers on the fictional Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine, War Horse), who is forced to leave … Read more

Gay is the new abortion?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

This remarkable item has gone viral:

Columnist Dan Savage calls it a “new variation on the “straight people are terrible” argument against marriage equality.”

Religious conservatives have already argued that straight people will stop getting married if gay people can and that marriage must be reserved for straight people because only straights can get pregnant by accident, and without the special inducements of marriage (a big party, a special cake, a honeymoon), straight people won’t take care of all those babies they’re having by accident. Now they’re arguing that straight people will abort their babies if gay people get married.

Man, straight people are terrible—why were they ever allowed to get married in the first place?

The anti-choice movement is an entire parallel bizarro world of crackpot bullshit so it would be easy to dismiss this as yet another weird myth, like the belief that abortions can be reversed, that has taken hold there. But there is an important context for this. The argument is being put forth in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court as it considers the latest challenge to same sex marriage.

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