News & Commentary

On Saturday, we're celebrating Bisexual Pride in West Hollywood. Featuring a Bi Visibility Walk, an info fair, and of course a party, WeHo Bi Pride is believed to be the first event of its kind ever officially sponsored by a U.S. city and coincides with global observances of Bisexual Awareness Week. The ACLU SoCal is proud to co-sponsor WeHo Bi Pride 2018, alongside amBi and the Human Rights Campaign. Here are five reasons why we're showing up for Bi Pride:

June is Pride month, a month to celebrate the strength and activism of LGBTQ people. Communities across California honor the spirit of Pride every year with parades, marches, and other events. But as we celebrate, it’s also important to remember that even in California, we still have work to do to secure true, lived equality, particularly for LGBTQ people who are also part of other historically marginalized groups. That’s why we at the ACLU of California are excited to be working on three LGBTQ-related bills this year that will make life better for students, youth in foster care, and people in jail or prison.

The LGBTQ Rights movement burst into the American public consciousness more than 50 years ago, when people living at the intersections of race, poverty, and criminalization fought back against police brutality – not only at the Stonewall Inn, but also here in California at the Black Cat Café and Compton Cafeteria. Many of those pioneering activists were women working in the sex trade, including movement mothers Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Today, LGBTQ people have made tremendous progress toward formal legal equality, but our liberation is far from complete. Police treatment of people selling sex or perceived as doing so continues to be a major problem for our community.

Yesterday, the Departments of Justice and Education rescinded Obama-era guidance clarifying that transgender students are protected from discrimination by Title IX, the federal law that bars gender discrimination. Here are five important things you should know:

Fear has always been a fixture in my life. As a transgender woman of color, like so many other trans and nonconforming people around the world, I’ve encountered hate speech, aggression and very real threats of violence on the daily.

Like countless other young women, Monica Jones fixed her hair, applied her make-up, put on a dress and set out on foot for an evening at a neighborhood bar in Phoenix. Along the way, Monica, a social work student, attracted the attention of two men in a car. They pulled over, flirted with her and offered her a ride to the bar. She accepted.

Meet Pau and his family. See more videos and learn more about TRANSFORM California.

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The following article was first published in The Hill.