Civil Rights

AUSTIN, Texas — Former President Jimmy Carter will be the keynote speaker on the first day of the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Celebrating one of his personal heroes, President Barack Obama on Tuesday praised Nelson Mandela as the last great liberator of the 20th century, urging the world to carry on his legacy by fighting inequality, poverty and discrimination.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Barack Obama is telling gay rights activists and other Russian civil leaders that they are strengthening their country.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama led civil rights pioneers Wednesday in a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech roused the 250,000 people who rallied there decades ago for racial equality.

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people marched to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and down the National Mall on Saturday, commemorating the 50th anniversary of King’s famous speech and pledging that his dream includes equality for gays, Latinos, the poor and the disabled.

The chief strategist for the 1963 March on Washington was gay in an era when same-sex relations were widely reviled in American society.

Today is “Harvey Milk Day,” a day of honor for the slain gay rights activist, which is officially recognized by the State of California and celebrated worldwide.

A new poll finds that the majority of Americans believe that marriage equality is a civil rights issue, and that it will inevitably become legal – whether they support it or not.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — LGBT advocates and civil rights groups have joined with the American Civil Liberities Union (ACLU) in calling on Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear to veto a religious freedom bill approved in the state Senate last week.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that marriage equality for gays and lesbians is the next big civil rights issue.

A Wyoming lawmaker on Monday testified that she is tired of hearing gays and lesbians equate their struggle for civil rights to the efforts of mixed-race couples to secure the legal right to marry in the late 1960s.

Presidential inauguration days are often filled with pomp, circumstance, cheering crowds, and moments to remember, but rarely do they so perfectly illustrate a dramatic shift in our country’s understanding and acceptance of cultural changes. The second inauguration of President Barack Obama did just that. … To be sure, having our President call for full equality for gay Americans in what is one of the biggest and most viewed speeches of his Presidency is monumental.

Vice President Joseph Biden apparently called LGBT discrimination the “civil rights issue of our time” before an Obama campaign office in Florida, according to a pool report.

Democracy is about participation — it’s about caring about an issue so much that you’ll go door-to-door in your neighborhood talking to voters about marriage equality. Heck, you might not even be in your neighborhood. We’re so quick to judge when we lose an amendment or a referendum, but how quick are we to be out knocking on doors and making calls for equality?

Since the national ascendancy of Barack Obama, many commentators have tried to make hay out of an alleged rift between gay and black communities in the United States – from conservative groups or commentators hoping to drive a wedge between two typically-Democratic voting blocs, to well-intentioned activists across the spectrum citing racism in gay culture or homophobia in black communities.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday said that he supports “dignity and respect” for all Americans, including gays and lesbians, but doesn’t agree that applies to same-sex marriage.

Perhaps you’ve already heard about the “2012 Worldwide LGBT Civil Rights March,” slated for Saturday, April 21, and are eagerly making plans to attend. Odds are, though, that you haven’t.

Maine, Washington, and Maryland are all closer than ever to marriage equality, but the Governor of New Jersey thinks that civil rights should be put to a popular vote — whether it’s marriage today, or school desegregation in the 1950s. This week’s Marriage News Watch report is here…

I have always believed that once you recognize a wrong you become an accessory to injustice if you continue to live in a way that accommodates that wrong … Yet, many of us — gay, transgender and allies — are choosing silence when our voices and actions could be a part of a movement forward.

Not only has Rick Snatorum used the lackluster comparison of napkins and paper towels as a justification to denying gay couples marriage rights, he is now comparing the 10th amendments guarantee that a state can enact marriage equality if it wants too, to states having the authority to legalize slavery.