A day after U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina over its laws discriminating against transgender people, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake joined in the fight.
Tag: lgbt
Baltimore Gets a Perfect Score for LGBT Equality
The Human Rights Campaign is the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy organization, and every year they evaluate cities to see whether their laws, policies, and services are inclusive of the LGBT community. Baltimore got some good news on that front this year.
LGBT Org Equality Maryland Isn’t Closing, After All
Despite dwindling finances that caused Equality Maryland’s board to consider whether they should keep the organization up and running, the LGBT advocacy organization isn’t shutting down. This week, the organization’s board voted to reorganize with a much slimmer staff.
A Maryland LGBT Advocacy Org Was So Successful That it Might Shut Down
To hear Equality Maryland’s board tell it, the LGBT advocacy organization was so successful that they advocated themselves out of a job.
It’s Lights, Camera, Action This Month at the 2015 Annapolis Film Festival
A day at the movies sounds nice, doesn’t it? How about a long weekend?
Local film lovers can indulge in just that later this month, when the Annapolis Film Festival (AFF) returns for its third year in the state capital. From Thursday, March 26th through Sunday the 29th, more than seventy independent films, from documentaries and shorts to full-length features, will be shown in venues around Annapolis.
Larry Hogan Reverses Anti-Discrimination Order to Include LGBT Protections
Larry Hogan started off his term as governor by making a lot of people mad last Thursday. But it’s a new week in Maryland, and besides, executive orders can always be revised.
LGBT Equality Advocates Give High Marks to Baltimore Companies
When it comes to LGBT equality in the workplace, Baltimore, and Maryland in general, both get high marks from an influential group.
LGBT Film Festival at the Creative Alliance
If this year’s Maryland Film Festival is already seeming like a distant memory, and you’ve begun to crave another hit of off-beat, independent films, the Creative Alliance has your number. This weekend, they run the 3rd annual Charm City LGBT Film Festival, which promises a variety of unique and riveting films. The selections all feature LGBT themes, of course, but represent stellar film-making and make for excellent entertainment for audiences of all stripes. Each day of the festival features non-film activities, like a gallery talk or a happy hour, too—so you can get your cinema, your cocktail, and a little extra culture on the side.
Md. Attorney General Candidate Takes on Ex-Gay Therapy Organization
In one corner we have Del. Jon Cardin, Democrat and candidate for Maryland Attorney General. In the other corner we have Christopher Doyle, director of the Bowie-based International Healing Foundation, a non-profit organization practicing “gay conversion therapy” since 1990. Cardin introduced a bill banning mental health professionals from engaging in “sexual orientation change efforts” with minors before withdrawing it in favor of using regulatory oversight to attack the practice. Cardin specifically maligned the efforts of the IHF to, in their words, help “minor clients who seek to resolve unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA).”
On March 25, Doyle accused Cardin of “defamation” and promised to launch “an investigation into Cardin’s activities with Equality Maryland and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.” Doyle said his attacks on the practice as lacking scientific basis and even amount to discrimination “against children and families who are simply trying to live out their sincerely held values and beliefs.”
My Dear Boys
Even before I was old enough to drink, I was desperate to get into the El Moroccan Room. I didn’t know why I thought I would feel more at home in a gay bar with a drag show than I did in the straight teenaged world of my New Jersey high school, nor did the bouncer at the door. When I produced a fake ID, he invoked No Open-Toed Shoes to keep me out.
I switched to saddle shoes and returned with a couple of swishy senior boys from the Drama Club. Success. I saw my first Tallulah, my first Judy, my first Liza. They were outrageous — husky-voiced, garishly painted, gleefully lewd. Threading my way to a spot beside the runway, I stared up in admiration.
I had been having a rocky coming-of-age as a young woman; femininity felt like a put-on. All around me, girls seemed to be magically metamorphosing into silky, alluring creatures; I was still looking for the teen magazine that would tell me how. Vamping down the runway in their clodhopper high heels, those reckless, ironic drag queens appeared as beacons to me, fur-coat aunties from somewhere in my spiritual family tree. What a little pioneer of gender dysphoria I was.
