It’s an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread… So, this is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob have been looking at since our last This & That post. • CSPAN‘s Senators Hold Hearing on Gender Discrimination Bill: The Senate Health and Labor Committee holds a hearing on [...]

Specifically, the Texas Congressman seems to be very worried about gender norms in his tiny world view. He was asked by hate group maestro Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council about Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), discussed in a Senate hearing today. It featured the first-ever testimony from openly transgender person in such a hearing, [...]

Watch it live: Tuesday, June 12 2012, 10:00 AM 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building Panel I M. V. Lee Badgett , Research Director of the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA and Director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA Kylar [...]

MassEquality passed along this great news — Joe Kennedy III, who is running for the seat Barney Frank is vacating, announced in Bay Windows (Boston’s LGBT newspaper) supporting full LGBT equality – including a trans-inclusive ENDA as well as SNDA, SSIA, UAFA, ECDF, DOMA repeal, and a national strategy for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Here [...]

I expect that the professional anti-LGBTs will not like what head of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, had to say about employment nondiscrimination and the LGBT community Sunday on Meet the Press. Host David Gregory managed to get a pretty clear declaration that Priebus won’t be about to weasel out of once Bryan Fischer [...]

Today GetEQUAL, the headline-making, pro-equality social justice advocates staged a peaceful, ardent protest near the White House to urge President Obama to sign an Executive Order to ban workplace discrimination by fed contractors. Fifteen activists came from around the country to participate in the demonstration, staged the day after the President declared his support for [...]

“On May 8, just over 20 percent of North Carolina’s registered voters cast a ballot in support of the amendment — the lowest support of any amendment that’s passed in Southern states. To put it another way, 14 percent of North Carolina’s population decided the fate of all of the state’s families.” – the sad [...]

A reminder: this is what happens when you live in a flyover state without anti-discrimination laws on the books — you can be fired simply for being LGBT. Veda Renfrow said she lost her job as a broadcast technician responsible for recording Wake County commission meetings one day after coming out to co-workers. (NBC 17): “For [...]

I haven’t seen such complete #FAIL at the podium for the White House Press Secretary since Robert Gibbs was up there bobbing and weaving over “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” questions from Kerry Eleveld, formerly of The Advocate. Now it was Jay Carney’s turn to look like a jack@ss trying to explain why the President refused [...]

But his people said that he’s 100% behind the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Not exactly a profile in courage, but really — has this President, whose administration has a history rife with political homophobia — ever been on the cutting edge of any LGBT rights initiatives? So the LGBT establishment had a closed-door meeting with White House [...]