Our Rights, Our Future

NCRCR Recognizes the Next Generation of Civil Rights Leaders

The National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR) has announced the winners of its 2010 Written Essay and Visual Image Contest. The contest entitled “What Does Equality Mean to You?” asked youth ages 14-18 across the United States to define equality from their unique perspectives by submitting either a written entry or a visual image such as a drawing, cartoon or photograph. Winners were selected by a panel of high-profile judges, including singer and songwriter Alicia Keys, comedian Margaret Cho, Congressman Keith Ellison (MN), Congressman Gregory Meeks (NY) and NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.

Naomi Lattanzi, 16, of Los Altos, California won for her courageous personal essay entitled “Are You?” in which she discusses how she feels when a schoolmate asks whether she is a lesbian. As the nation continues to struggle with issues affecting the rights and everyday lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (“LGBTQQ”) communities such as marriage equality, bias attacks and bullying, Naomi’s answer seems fitting: “I don’t know, but you can’t take away what sense of self I have. As long as I have people who accept me you can’t make me feel inferior. You’ll eventually have to accept the truth: We are equals.”

18-year-old Misra Walker from the Bronx, New York is the winner in the visual image category. Misra’s powerful image of a Latino man standing in front of an American flag with his arms crossed over his chest and eyes downcast evokes the conflicting feelings of frustration and hope experienced by many immigrants across this country as they seek to realize the “American Dream.” This image seems particularly appropriate given the debates about immigration and citizenship happening across the country.

Finally, 18-year-old Abisola Barbara Williams from Brooklyn, New York was the first runner-up in the visual entry category. Abisola’s piece, a collage of three images featuring a young woman wearing a Muslim headscarf, another without head covering, and someone wearing a bracelet with the word “peace,” spoke to her sense of how the various aspects of race, gender and religion interact to form a complex pattern of discrimination that has resulted in her Muslim peers experiencing violence and harassment on the streets of New York. Again, this image addressed a timely and important topic given the recent rise in anti-Islamic sentiment across the country.

The National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights invited winners and finalists to New York City this week in order to recognize their leadership efforts. Naomi and Abisola participated in a training session on how to speak about civil rights issues and met with a variety of civil rights advocates.

Young people have always played an important role in the struggle for civil rights and social justice. Despite the accusations of laziness and indifference leveled at them, youth political involvement over the past few years has broken every stereotype about the apathy of young people in America. During the 2008 presidential campaign we saw first-hand that this ‘Millennial Generation’ is thinking about and playing an active role in civil rights, politics and social issues. Naomi, Misra and Abisola represent a new generation of leaders whose activism and innovation will continue to shape the landscape of civil rights and social justice in the 21st century.

Guest Blogger: Fighting For and With Our LGBTQ Young People

By Richael Faithful

I “came out” when I was 14, about eleven years ago, as a teenager living in Northern Virginia. For the most part I was left alone by classmates, rarely at the other end of taunting or verbal abuse, and never at the other end of targeted violence. I had, and continue to have, very proud parents and friends—proud of whom I am, not necessarily of my “queer” identity. But I am aware that my affirmative experience as a LGBTQ person is relatively uncommon.

America has been recently awakened to this reality. Though minimized by stories of extreme gay and lesbian persecution overseas, the truth is that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified or perceived young people in the U.S. face tremendous harassment, bigotry, and discrimination. And despite recent attention to this issue, there is another sad reality, particularly for young people: there is no federal law against bullying or harassment, even though the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 provided support for school safety, generally. In other words, LGBTQ identified or perceived students currently have no real protection against bullying under federal law.

Federal or state laws are not triggered until bullying or harassment leads to a criminal act, such as battery, assault, or stalking. Bullying may also rise to the level of racial, sexual, or disability harassment prohibited by civil rights laws that can be enforced by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.  However, bullying in general, especially LGBTQ bullying, has traditionally been treated as a school administrative matter, in which too many administrators were either indifferent or ill-equipped to address mistreatment. A variety of national and local LGBTQ organizations have long-focused on this issue by offering supportive resources and fighting for protective legislation. At the forefront is Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) which has been working with federal agencies and Congress for over a year, prior to recent tragedies, to pass two pieces of legislation: the Safe Schools Improvement Act and Student Non-Discrimination Act. Both bills are designed to require school districts receiving federal funds to prohibit LGBTQ bullying, and adopt LGBTQ non-discrimination policies.  Although such laws cannot dictate progressive thinking about LGBTQ people, they can bring federal power to bear to create safe, even affirming school environments for young LGBTQ people.

The law’s power cannot be under-estimated. During my senior year in high school, I and several friends founded a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), with the help of a regional safe schools organization. GSAs are student organizations intended to create comfortable LGBTQ spaces and build positive relationships among students along the sexuality and gender continuum. GLSEN provided important resources for us to organize the organization against strong parental opposition, including our legal rights under the Equal Access Act, which guarantees free speech and non-discrimination rights in public school extra-curricular activities. Protective laws can translate into meaningful quality-of-life changes for LGBTQ young people. That is why young LGBTQ people and their supporters are working toward this goal.

Any person who has been shocked and heartbroken about the recent, high-profile cases of LGBTQ suicides and violence against young people should share these resources in your communities. As one of my favorite LGBTQ organizations, Southerners on New Ground, pointed out, all young people, especially marginalized LGBTQ young people, need us to fight for them, and fight with them.  Equally important, we need to help them make things better by creating a culture of acceptance, honesty, and integrity.

Please share these resources today.

•    GLSEN, What Can You Do To Make a Positive Difference

•    The Trevor Project, Suicide Prevention Resources

•    Parents, Families, and Friends for Gays and Lesbians (PFLAG), Open letter to Youth

•    Safe Schools Coalition, Resources for LGBTQ Youth of Color

 

Richael Faithful is a third-year student at American University Washington College of Law. She is Editor-In-Chief of The Modern American, a legal publication dedicated to diversity and the law. She is also a former community organizer with the Virginia Organizing Project. As a law student she continues organize and advocate for radical, transformative change.

(Photo by quixoticlife.)

NCRCR Interview Series: Perry v. Schwarzenegger

Tricia Perry of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights spoke with Chris Stoll of the National Center for Lesbian Rights about the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case challenging California's Proposition 8. Listen in as Stoll discusses recent developments in the court battle for marriage equality.

What’s in the Best Interest of the Child? The Role of the Courts When Bias Gets in the Way.

In 2004, the state of Florida took custody of two young boys, brothers ages 4 years and 4 months, whose parents were seriously neglecting them. While the four-year-old had taught himself to feed his baby brother and to change diapers, both boys were sorely in need of loving, capable adults to care for and guide them. They found this care in Martin Gill and his long-term domestic partner, who took the boys in as foster children.

The boys flourished socially and otherwise during two years they lived with Gill as a family, and Gill sought to adopt them. He could not do so, however, because the state of Florida does not allow people who are gay or lesbian to adopt children. In 1977, the state passed a law banning adoption by gays and lesbians, which has yet to be repealed.

According to federal statistics, there are currently 123,000 children in foster care in the United States, in temporary placements, waiting to be adopted. Doesn’t every child deserve a permanent home?  And isn’t it the role of courts in this country to ensure that prejudice doesn’t bias our laws and cause harm to our citizens?

Gill could not bear the thought that the boys might be separated and taken from the only home they had ever known, and so he challenged the adoption ban in court. In 2008, a Miami circuit court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional. The state’s appeal is still pending, however. The boys, now 5 and 9 years old, do not fully understand what adoption means -- but they eagerly await the day they can share a last name with their doting father.

For years, courts across the nation have decided custody issues in terms of the “best interest of the child.” The courts have a role to play in adoption cases as well, to ensure that no child is deprived of a family and permanent home because of prejudice and baseless myths about gay people.

Florida families such as Martin Gill’s are not the only ones whose rights are at risk. In Arkansas, a law was passed by referendum in 2008 that bans all unmarried people living with an unmarried partner from adopting or fostering children. A challenge to that law, Cole v. Arkansas, expected to go to trial in May 2010, was brought on behalf of “20 individuals from nine different families, including a lesbian who lives with her partner of nine years and is the only relative able and willing to adopt her grandchild who is now in Arkansas state care, several married heterosexual couples who have relatives or friends disqualified by Act 1 who they want to adopt their children if they die, and a heterosexual woman who wants to be a foster or adoptive parent but can’t because she lives with her partner of five years.”

The battle to ensure the rights of LGBT individuals has been labeled by many as “the civil rights struggle of our generation.”  As the Gill family’s story shows, discrimination against LGBT people has collateral consequences for others, including vulnerable children.  Let’s hope, over the years to come, that the courts help to dismantle all manner of institutionalized discrimination and to protect the civil and human rights of all people -- especially our nation’s children.

(Photo by twodolla.)

States Stand Up For Same-Sex Equality

Vermont, New York, and Iowa have all handed impressive victories in recent weeks to the same-sex equality movement. Vermont gave legislative approval to same-sex marriages, while New York Governor David Paterson announced his intention to introduce and lobby for a similar measure. In Iowa, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, paving the way for same-sex marriages to begin this month. Saying "we have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law," the seven-member panel—including two Republican nominees—struck down a 1998 Iowa statute limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

The decisions are remarkable for several reasons...

Proposition 8 Belongs Before California's Supreme Court

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post.

We are a nation of laws. Lawmaking belongs to legislatures, but occasionally, the people write laws of their own through ballot initiatives. Regardless of their origin, all laws are subject to judicial review, something a small band of zealots in California would like you to forget.

Beyond the core issues surrounding Proposition 8, which reversed a landmark ruling from California's Supreme Court allowing gay couples to marry, lies a far deeper question affecting the very nature of our democracy: can the court review laws?

Getting that Piece of Paper from the City Hall...

The best comment I heard outside of San Francisco’s City Hall on the first day marriage equality was law came from an older gentleman, who truly did seem a bit perplexed. “Didn’t we already do this a few years ago,” he asked.

Indeed sir, we did! We were here, in this same location, with the same screaming crowds, bursting into applause each time a new couple emerged from the glass doors, the same protesters shouting hate and driving in circles with their posters on the topic of sin. (A favorite sign in the crowd yesterday: “Eating lobster is a sin as well!”)

This time, the marriages will most definitely last a few months, rather than a few days, and, dependent on the voters in the state of California, they may just last as long as the couples keep them lasting.

The Lesson And Legacy Of California's Gay Marriage Case

By Stephanie Zúñiga
For members of the gay community as well as supporters of civil rights, a huge step forward was taken when on February 12, 2004 the city of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- that's right, marriage licenses, not civil unions (marriages grant couples over 1,000 benefits that civil unions do not). This didn't last long, however, as it was struck down months later by the state's supreme court which held that the city lacked authority to issue such marriage licenses, thus invalidating the marriages of more than 4,000 couples. At the time, the court conveniently declined to rule on whether the statutory exclusion of these couples from marriage violates the state's constitution.

H&R Block To Gay Couple: You Can't File Your Taxes Online

H&R block wants to charge gay couples in Connecticut an additional $150 to file their tax returns. Jason Smith and his partner of six years, Settimo Piso, were told by H&R Block—which strives to "[provide] the best experience for ALL customers."—"We don't support Connecticut civil union returns." The tax preparer is willing to help the couple fill out the form, but only if they pay an extra $150 and visit one of H&R's offices. The slight led our partner group, the ACLU, to fire off an angry letter to H&R Block demanding equal treatment for the couple.