Equality Federation won’t stop until all LGBTQ+ people are fully empowered and represented in their communities, experiencing full equality in their lives.
Executive Director Betsy Smith has been leading EqualityMaine for fourteen years. After securing many incredible wins for LGBT Mainers, she has announced that she will soon step down from her position. Before Betsy officially leaves the Federation family (though we'll always count her as one of our own), we wanted to learn everything we could from her work and experience. So we caught up with her to talk about her successful tenure at EqualityMaine.
Every day, the momentum for full marriage equality across this country builds. And our members are right in the thick of this critical work, achieving some major victories. Just look at what’s been happening these past ten months.
For years, our members have requested assistance and guidance in the area of communications. And although we have always been able to connect state groups with resources and provide some useful advice, we simply weren’t equipped to offer comprehensive communications support.
Our final FEDtalk given at the Summer Meeting 2013 is from John Smallwood, Advocacy & Organizing Director at Fair Wisconsin.
Our ninth FEDtalk given at the Summer Meeting 2013 is from Shannon McCann, Intern at Equality Utah.
The State Equality Fund (SEF) has announced its new guidelines for 2014 and issued an invitation for letters of inquiry (LOI).For the past eight years, Federation members have used support from SEF to make huge policy advances that improve the lives of LGBT people in their state. And at the Federation, we're eager to help even more of our state groups take advantage of this critical funding stream.
Here at the Equality Federation Institute, we know that local and incremental work matters. That’s why we began an investigation into the impact these campaigns have on our movement.
We have a unique role that is fundamentally the Finance and Administration Director, which plays a critical role in partnering with other members of the organization in strategic decision making and operations as OutFront Minnesota continues to live out its mission and vision.
Today, our partners at the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) released a new report revealing that a shocking 70% of the geographic area of the United States lacks any city, county, or state employment protections for LGBT people, with comprehensive employment protections concentrated in just 30% of the country geographically.
Equality Federation congratulates two of our staff members for recently being awarded for their work to win equality!
Equality Federation applauds New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who announced tonight at Federation member Empire State Pride Agenda’s gala that he will issue regulations to protect transgender people from discrimination in housing, employment, credit, education, and public accommodations. Governor Cuomo will direct the State Division of Human Rights to issue regulations that would extend existing protections against discrimination in New york’s Human Rights Law so that protections based on sex are defined to include gender identity, gender expression, and gender dysphoria
Nicole Maines told ABC News in a fantastic new report, "I knew that I was trans when I was 3 years old," she said. "Well, I didn't know trans because I didn't know there was a word for it, but I just knew that in my head and my heart that I was supposed to be a girl."
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With your support, we'll be able to continue our work to build the leaders of today and tomorrow, strengthen state-based LGBTQ+ organizations, and make critical progress on the issues that matter most—like protecting transgender people, ending HIV criminalization and ensuring access to care, and banning conversion therapy across the country.
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