A transgender woman charged with murder in Hennepin County is currently being held in solitary confinement in the county jail, local LGBT rights activists say. The activists are attacking the county for using a measure criticized by many national transgender rights organizations as a flawed attempt to keep the accused safe while she awaits trial.
In a move that is being hailed by LGBT advocates and derided by the religious right, President Obama made his first appointment of a transgender person to a federal post this week. Amanda Simpson will be the new…
The National Center for Transgender Equality (NTCE) slammed Gov. Pawlenty last week for his telling Newsweek that Minnesota’s laws protecting transgender people from employment discrimination should be changed. Pawlenty called the 1993 Minnesota Human Rights Act “overbaked” because…
In his interview with Newsweek (mentioned earlier by Chris Steller), Gov. Pawlenty said he regretted a 1993 vote to expand the state’s anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity and that they law should…
In a speech Monday, Pope Benedict XVI asserted that saving mankind from gays and transgenderism was as important as saving the rainforest.
“We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way,” said the pontiff. “The…
When she was five, Amy Johnson’s mom took her to a counter-protest at the then-new Planned Parenthood clinic on Ford Parkway in St. Paul. Her mom gave her a placard to hold, she recalls, and with three words — “Come on, honey!” — “an activist was born.” Ever since, she’s been active in the reproductive rights movement. After months of searching, OutFront Minnesota has hired Johnson, a longtime lawyer who’s helped countless GLBT families navigate the confusing world of family law, as executive director of the state’s largest public policy and advocacy group for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. I recently met with Johnson at her office in the fittingly named Rainbow Building in Minneapolis to talk about the future of the GLBT movement in Minnesota, the sense of grief and urgency California’s Proposition 8 has evoked in the community and how technology might impact OutFront’s future.
KTLK radio’s Chris Baker followed up his Nov. 14 comments about a transgender person being a “mutilated lesbian” with a tirade in which he blames the media — and transgender people themselves — for the murder of Latiesha Green in Syracuse, New York. He says “a majority of the blame does not lie with” the killer, but with the media who “enable people who need serious psychological counseling.” Now activists from Soulforce Q are trying to get on Baker’s show to discuss the issues.
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