News & Commentary

Today is the 25th Annual National Coming Out Day, a day to celebrate and support people who are coming out and people who already have come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, allied with LGBT people, or otherwise having an expansive notion of gender and sexuality. The theme of this year's National Coming Out Day is "Coming Out Still Matters." No matter how you characterize your own gender or sexual orientation, coming out still matters for you or someone you know, and it still matters a great deal for the movement for LGBT rights.

When children under 12 engage in exploitative sexual behavior, it is often a result of abuse or exposure to sex acts that they themselves have experienced. These children need mental health treatment and family interventions, not probation and blacklists.

Should the police be required to get a warrant in order to monitor our location via our cell phones?

This week the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations released a report about the crackdown on peaceful protests in democracies around the world – the tactics include excessive (sometimes deadly) police force and the criminalization of dissent. This is the introduction to the study, "Take Back the Streets," which details cases of suppression in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Israel, Egypt, Argentina, South Africa, Kenya, and Hungary.

It took a while, but earlier this year, Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, which expanded important housing protections for survivors of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault. As we reported earlier, previous VAWA protections only applied to public housing and Section 8 programs, leaving many survivors vulnerable to eviction.

Today we’re releasing our policy recommendations on police “body cameras” (also called “on-officer recording systems” or “cop cams”), small cameras that clip on to an officer’s uniform and record audio and video of the officer’s interactions with the public.

Frankie Barton's son has Hepatitis C. It's treatable, but she says the for-profit Corizon Prison Health Management has skimped on giving him the proper treatment while he's incarcerated. If he goes without care, he'll develop sclerosis of the liver—a condition that can lead to death.

In a wide-ranging interview with Salon’s Josh Eidelson, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the first openly LGBT member of the U.S. Senate, was asked several questions about efforts to protect LGBT people from workplace discrimination, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  Sen. Baldwin was also asked for her views on the scope of ENDA’s sweeping religious exemption. Her answer:

I'm often asked why the gay rights movement is so focused on marriage, and it's a good question.  Part of the answer is that our society has made marriage the gateway to many protections and obligations – from health care to retirement protections to green cards – and committed same-sex couples are harmed in serious ways when they are excluded from marriage and the protections and social status that comes with it.