1. Ding dong, the bill is dead! Which old bill? The anti-transgender Texas bathroom bill, that is. 2. In Alabama,...
Civil rights icon Julian Bond and the Human Rights Campaign this week released a video featuring Bond in the “Americans for Marriage Equality” series, calling for same-sex couples to have the right to marry.
The HRC calls the series a public engagement campaign.
“The issue of marriage equality is at a critical time as it moves through electoral, legislative and judicial arenas,” reads the HRC website.
Eddie Long, founder of the megachurch New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, issued a statement today on the church's website saying he will abide by the confidentiality agreement reached in a settlement with four men who sued him for sexual coercion. Two of the men recently spoke to Atlanta reporters, apparently defying the agreement.
The complete statement from Long posted on New Birth's website today:
CNN anchor Don Lemon, who recently came out as gay, moderated a panel discussion on black LGBT issues during the annual National Association for the Advancement of Colored People conference in Los Angeles over the weekend. Panel participants included out comedian Wanda Sykes, civil rights activist Julian Bond and other leaders in the black gay community and focused on a wide variety of topics from homophobia and hypocrisy in the black church to reaching out to allies in the community.
The two hour discussion was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center during the organization's 102nd annual conference.
There were contentious moments during the discussion, when NAACP CEO Benjamin Jealous was asked how the NAACP could be taken seriously as an advocate for LGBT equality when members of its board have made public anti-gay statements in the recent past.
Is the Bishop Eddie Long sexual coercion scandal good for gay rights?
Rev. Kathi Martin remembers sitting down with Bishop Eddie Long in 2008 in a conference room at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church to talk about his virulently anti-gay views in an attempt to educate him about LGBT people. Martin and the other Atlanta gay pastors who attended wanted him to meet face-to-face some of the people he has said “deserve death.”
“He actually seemed very engaged,” said Martin, associate minister of The Victory Church in Stone Mountain. “We first met with other leadership of the church and then he came in and listened to our stories of how his church and its anti-gay messages set a tone for the rest of the church, which then sets a tone for the people in the church and the families — that there’s a ripple effect. People are either having their prejudices confirmed or that prejudice is spread.”