ROTC. What is it? It is the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. ROTC is known for creating leaders, that is, if you fit the demographics. It is in our universities and is allowed to openly discriminate against LGBTQ persons and because of the national law if a university tries to get rid of this blatant discrimination they will lose federal funding. With the economy as it is, a university can’t afford to lose any more funding than they have already lost.
This is tied to scholarships and student life on campus. It is just another way that an LGBTQ person is being shown that they are “different” from the rest of society. The government puts the universities in a tight spot because they either stand up for LGBTQ persons or they keep their funding so they can keep educating students. Something about that choice just doesn’t seem to make sense. It doesn’t make sense, because it shouldn’t have to be a choice. Universities should be able to receive funding and show support of their students, regardless of their sexual orientation.

The story of Aeryn Gillern here: http://www.aeryngillern.com/Aeryn_Gillern/Home.html .

It is unbelievable to me that things like this are still occurring. Here is a man who worked hard to accomplish three master’s degrees and go on to live in Vienna, only to disappear unexpectedly and have police refuse to look for him because of his sexual orientation. Not only did they refuse to go looking for him but upon his partner trying to go and get the missing persons report filled out he had to be met with homophobic remarks at the police station.

It angers me to know that people are being treated like this, as well as frightens me to that the potential for this happening could be any day of the week. Aeryn Gillern was living his life and accomplishing above and beyond the average person only to be ripped away. My heart goes out to his family.

This hatred needs to stop.

Washington has become the first state to approve expansive domestic partnership benefits into law. The bill is said to include everything that falls under marriage without the label “marriage.” I think that this is fantastic news. Though I realize that for many this will not suffice and that in due time is still expected to be changed to recognize homosexual couples as married. But this is still great news. This is still another huge step forward on the road to full marriage equality. To think that I could move to Washington and have complete rights as a lesbian just blows my mind. I live in a state that offers domestic partnership benefits but that does not include “complete” partner benefits. Benefits are coming slowly and complete marriage equality is even slower but equality is on its way and there’s no stopping it.

“Hope will never be silent.” - Harvey Milk

Newest update of American Airlines (AA): providing your gender when you are purchasing tickets online or through an AA Representative. Now, to the average American not concerned with LGBTQ issues this may not seem like a big deal but for those of us whom are, this is a bigger deal than it seems at first glance. Why’s that? Well, when going to fill out “gender” on the forms the only choices are…male and female.
I feel that this is not inclusive of all Americans and even more so, the LGBT community. For people whose gender expression does not match their so called gender as it is being labeled on the form, this has the potential to create a great inconvenience. I think that is where more education needs to occur. There is a huge difference between gender expression, gender identity, and gender role. In simple terms: expression is what is seen on the outside i.e. clothing, haircut, make-up, etc. Identity is the innermost concept of self as “male” or “female,” which matches the biological sex for many people but not all, and role being what is recognized as masculine or feminine.
So unless AA is specifically asking for biological sex there should be more possible answers than just male or female. Yet, even with that, what about people who are F to M or M to F in which many times their biological sex won’t match the sex on their driver’s license. Which leads me to say that if this is going to turn into a norm, it needs to be made easier for people who have transitioned to change their paperwork to match what they recognize themselves as, not what society says.
My point, more education needs to occur on every level (grassroots to national)…including big name companies.