Herland Sister Resources

A broad coalition of national LGBT and ally social justice groups are  working together on the final push towards what is expected this year to be the passage of two major pieces of federal legislation protecting LGBT people in the United States.  The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, more commonly known as Hate Crimes legislation, calls for giving the federal government authority to prosecute hate crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
A second bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), would provide basic protections against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and is expected to pass after more than a decade of work, particularly in regard to the inclusion of people of transgender experience.  According to the Human Rights Campaign, “Currently, Americans can still be denied job opportunities, fired or otherwise be discriminated against just because of their sexual orientation in 33 states and because of their gender identity in 42 states.”   Ensure your voice is heard by calling, writing and e-mailing members of Congress and the Senate to encourage your representatives to vote in favor of ENDA and Hate Crimes legislation.

Openly lesbian U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) have introduced House Resolution 431 on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision legalizing interracial marriages.   HR 431, passed in the House by a voice vote,  commemorates the legacy of Loving v. Virginia in ending the ban on interracial marriage in the United States and in recognizing that marriage is one of the `basic civil rights of man’ at the heart of the 14th Amendment protections. 
“The Loving decision marked an historic turning point in our nation’s history,” said Congresswoman Baldwin.  “In affirming that marriage is a basic civil right, it brought an end to the statutes that criminalized interracial marriage.  Today, once again, we are debating the marriage laws in this nation as same-sex couples seek the right to marry.  I believe the Loving case informs this debate,” Baldwin said.  The Freedom to Marry coalition of activist organizations is running full-color ads in magazines and newspapers to compare the legalization of interracial marriage to the effort by gays to have same-sex marriages legalized.  And, in California, the legislature is again pushing for gay marriage after the people of California passed Proposition 22 in 2000 that bans such marriages.  The California State Assembly voted to pass Assembly Bill 43, sponsored by gay legislator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). AB 43 will strike references to male and female in the marriage code and substitute the words “two persons.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that many spots on women’s college sports teams are going unfilled as colleges struggle to fill women’s team.  Even though Title IX effectively banned sex discrimination  in college athletics, many colleges can’t get enough athletes to fill mandated roster spots.  Some say there isn’t enough demand but others say it is a lack of recruiting budgets that’s the real problem. 
Title IX legislation uses a three-prong test for equality in women’s and men’s college sports teams.  But the main test used is called proportionality—there must be the same athletic opportunity proportionate to the enrollment of females and males in the student population.  That means if 3% of the male students at a school are on college athletic teams, then 3% of the female students should have the opportunity to be on athletic teams. 
And in other sports news, it was recently announced that both Wimbledon and the French Open will afford equal prize money to male and female winners.

In an effort to keep roughly the same percentage of male and female students, colleges are now admitting women applicants at a lower rate than similarly-qualified male applicants.  US News and World Report found that college admissions rates for women are dropping because they have closed the gender gap and then exceeded it.  The authors found that over the past 10 years many schools are maintaining their gender balance by admitting men and women at sometimes drastically different rates.  Men had an admittance rate an average of 12 percentage points higher than similarly-qualified female counterparts had.
The percentage of women in higher education has been steadily growing: From rough parity in 1980, women now make up 57 percent of the 16.6 million American college-goers. By 2010, the Department of Education expects the ratio to be around 60 to 40.
Some of the reasons for the higher number of women in college are that females graduate from high school at a slightly higher rate than men and are more likely to forgo the workforce for an advanced degree.  From the early grades on up, girls tend to be better students. By the time college admissions come into the picture, many watchers of the “boy gap” agree, it’s too late for males to catch up on their own. Indeed, beginning in those formative K-12 years, girls watch less television, spend less time playing sports, and are far less likely to find themselves in detention. They are more likely to participate in extracurricular drama, art, and music classes. Across the board, girls study more, score better, and are less likely to be placed in special education classes.
The academic success of women should be good news, especially considering the fact that just a generation ago women were barred from some of the country’s best universities: Boston College, Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, Brown, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, and Harvard weren’t fully coeducational until the 1970s. Men, meanwhile, were barred from a few women’s schools such as Radcliffe, Barnard, and Smith, among others.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in collaboration with the National Coalition for the Homeless, has released LGBT Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness, a report which reveals that a staggering 42% of homeless youth (perhaps as high as 670,000 young people) identify as lesbian or gay, a disproportionate number given that only 3 to 5 percent of the entire U.S. population identifies as such.
The report answers some basic questions, including why so many LGBT youth are becoming and remaining homeless, citing the fact that 50% of gay teens experience negative reactions when coming out to their parents and 26% are told they must leave home because of their disclosure. In addition, the report addresses the harassment and violence that many of these youth experience in existing public shelter
systems and summarizes research on critical problems faced by these young people, including mental health issues, substance issues and risky sexual behavior.