civil rights

Homophobia Is Killing Our Youth

Today is a significant day for silence, youth, and our schools. Today, across the country schools will participate in a National Day of Silence to protest the homophobic bullying that is killing teenagers and honor those whose lives have been taken by the barbaric hands of hatred.

Posted in civil rights, lgbt

US Muslims Still Under Siege

As President Barack Obama made his public appearance with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Monday as part of his first trip to a Muslim country, U.S. federal agents were preparing to arrest Youssef Megahed in Tampa, Fla. Just three days earlier, on Friday, a jury in a U.S.

Posted in civil rights, discrimination

Right to a Decent Job Is a Principal Civil Right

"I Am a Man" was the slogan of 1,300 striking black sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. Their grievances were many, but chief among them was that their wages were so meager they lived below the poverty line.

On April 4, 41 years ago last evening, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. He was in town to help the strikers gain recognition of their union, and his epic "I've been to the mountaintop" speech was a labor rally.

Posted in civil rights, labor

America's Inhumane Immigration Inequality

The Washington Post Editorial Page today urges support for a pending bill that would grant gay American citizens the right to have a permanent visa issued to their foreign national spouses (a right which, thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, only heterosexual Americans currently enjoy):

Posted in civil rights, gay marriage, immigrant rights, lgbt

Fight for Marriage, Family is New Protest Focus

The crowd in front of City Hall on Thursday had a different vibe. It was there to watch the arguments before the state Supreme Court on the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. There was a big screen television, and the usual cast of characters showed up - the sign-holders, the costumed and the guys yelling out the windows of pickup trucks.

But there were others. Kids, couples, families. This debate is moving, quicker than a lot of people realize, away from political posturing.

Posted in civil rights, gay marriage

Gay Couples Hold Vigils Urging Justices to End Prop. 8

As rain fell and the song "Fidelity" blasted through the sound system, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa presided Wednesday night over the "recommitment ceremonies" of half a dozen gay couples who married during the five-month period that such weddings were legal in California.

It was one of dozens of vigils held across California hours before the state Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the legal challenges to Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage.

Posted in civil rights, lgbt, prop8

Prop. 8: A Case About Justice

This case is not about just us. It's about justice.

My wife, Diane, and I will never say, "Please don't divorce us."

There is a very moving public service announcement all over the Internet in which same-sex couples are holding up a sign or saying, "Please don't divorce us." The music in the background is compelling, and the announcement, which collects thousands of names for the organization that produced it, should have made Diane and me very happy, especially because there is a clip of our wedding in it. But it didn't.

Posted in civil rights, lgbt, prop8

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 16, 2009
11:00 AM

CONTACT: Human Rights First
Brenda Bowser Soder
bowsersoderb@humanrightsfirst.org
O -202/370-3323, C – 301/906-4460

Rights Groups Welcome US Engagement in Durban Review Process

NEW YORK - February 16 - Human Rights First and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, leading U.S. rights organizations, welcome the Obama administration's decision to engage in the Durban Review Conference in order to try to change the direction in which the conference is heading. We urge the administration to work to ensure that the conference advances rather than undermines the protection of fundamental rights, and to engage with others to press for that outcome.

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Human Rights First is a non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization based in New York and Washington D.C. Human Rights First believes that building respect for human rights and the rule of law will help ensure the dignity to which every individual is entitled and will stem tyranny, extremism, intolerance, and violence.

Human Rights First Links:

Posted in civil rights, Human Rights

New Report Released on Valentine's Day Eve: Chocolate and Heartache?

For many, Valentine's Day is a celebration of love. For others, Valentine's Day is about pain, heartache, and longing...but it doesn't have to be that way.

Valentine's Day and chocolate go hand-in-hand, but for parents of children trafficked into the cocoa fields and kept there as slaves, our hunger for chocolate is a nightmare of heartache for their stolen children.

Posted in child labor, civil rights, fair trade, inequality, poverty, slave trade

Gay Woman Fights over Hospital Visitation Rights in Miami court

MIAMI - As her partner of 17 years slipped into a coma, Janice Langbehn pleaded with doctors and anyone who would listen to let her into the woman's hospital room.

Eight anguishing hours passed before Langbehn would be allowed into Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center. By then, she could only say her final farewell as a priest performed the last rites on 39-year-old Lisa Marie Pond.

Posted in civil rights, gay marriage, lgbt