How do we stop the ignorance, hate, & violence directed against people just trying to live their lives in peace (& in theory, equality)? A simple question. One answer from a post on my Facebook wall: We all have to start standing up to the everyday bigotry we see and hear in our lives. When [...]

To hear of human rights abuses of Uganda’s LGBTQ population is not new, sadly. Gay activist David Kato was the father of the Uganda’s LGBTQ rights movement. To many of his fellow countrymen Kato was a dead man walking once his homosexuality became public. The country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill dubbed “Kill the Gays bill” criminalizes same-sex [...]

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released its report, Hate Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2011 on Thursday, and the statistic that jumped out is the rise in anti-LGBT murders, up 11%. The report is a result of data collected from 16 anti-violence programs in 16 states across the country including: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, [...]

Wow. It’s hard to fathom that Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi’s tragic death means so little when you hear this verdict. Dharun Ravi, who used a remote webcam in the dorm room he shared with Clementi to capture Tyler’s sexual encounter with another man, has been sentenced to a mere 30 days in jail. You’ll recall [...]

As word spread — and shocked outage grew — that North Carolina Pastor Sean Harris has been instructing parents to beat their children if the children seem homosexual and/or non-gender conforming, Harris and his Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina are too stupid to get their damage control straight. Harris the baby beater told [...]

Out gay student Luke Herbert — now 17 — suffered a blazing, screaming hell of abuses in the Flagler County, Florida public schools between 2008 – 2011. Gay-bashing bullies jeered “Fag!” and “Cock sucker!” at him during his bus rides. Though Flagler policy requires drivers to report such incidents, with offenders disciplined — none of [...]

This is urgent, folks. Public hearings on the proposed revisions of the penal code are scheduled to take place today (Thursday) and Friday. Read Joe’s article below, then click this link and follow Ricky Martin’s lead by signing the petition. ~~Laurel Advocates Tell Puerto Rico: Do Not Eliminate Hate Crimes Protections Guest post by Joe [...]

Almost a fourth of our 2010 civil rights caseload involved crimes motivated by a particular bias against the victim.” – Eric Thomas, chief of the FBI’s Civil Rights Unit in Washington, DC Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its Hate Crime Statistics report for 2010. In what I suppose we can say is “good news,” the data [...]

As many of you remember Crissy Lee Polis — the young adult trans woman beaten at a Rosedale, Maryland McDonalds by Teona Marie Brown. Sentence was handed down to Brown — from the Baltimore Sun‘s In transgender beating a just (and necessary) sentence: The five year prison sentence Baltimore County Circuit Judge John Turnbull II [...]

Oh crap — I originally wrote the subject date as “Monday” for this post, when I posted it on a Tuesday! D’oh! ~~Autumn~~ 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 [...]