The Latest

by Wes Sanders

AUCTION: Go to the Super Bowl with Football Hall of Famer Ron Mix

Pro Football Hall of Fame Member, Ron Mix, purchased two tickets to the Super Bowl to create an event to benefit the transgender community. Mix said:

“The mistreatment of transgender people is contrary to everything athletics embraces: fair play, equal opportunity and respect and judging people by their character and conduct not by bigoted preconceived perceptions. Family rejection, discrimination and violence cause an estimated 40% of the 1.6 million homeless youth being from the transgender and other LGBQ groups. That horror should be a shock to the conscience of Americans.”

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by Danielle Quesenberry

2019 Legislative Preview

 

It’s always a challenge to predict what will happen in any upcoming legislative session, but the 2019 session is already shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable in decades. While Republicans still have large majorities in both the House and the Senate, Democrats flipped a total of eleven seats in the House and two in the Senate. Perhaps more importantly, there are an additional sixteen seats in the House and six in the Senate that could be competitive in the 2020 election. That fact alone could make for some interesting politics. However, beyond the simple partisan math, due to incumbents who either retired or lost seats in the primary or general elections, there will be some 30 new members of the legislature. While roughly half of them we know to be pro-equality, we don’t know much about the others and how they will vote on issues of concern to Georgia Equality’s members and the LGBTQ community.

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by Wes Sanders

We will not stop fighting.

Over the last few weeks, you’ve heard Chanel, Eric, Shannon, DeMarcus, Amanda, and Michael and Matt talk about Georgia Equality’s work over the past year. I hope you had a chance to read what they had to say. 2018 has indeed been a busy year in the fight for LGBTQ equality in Georgia, and your support is why Georgia Equality has been so successful this year. As we close the final hours of this year, I wanted to ask you to fund Georgia Equality’s fight for 2019.

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by Wes Sanders

December 2 – 8 is the LGBTQ ACA Enrollment Week of Action!

The purpose of this week is to maximize outreach, engagement,  and enrollment of LGBTQ communities ahead of the December 15th enrollment deadline. Our partners at Out2Enroll and organizations across the country will use this week to promote the importance of LGBTQ community engagement and enrollment, educate LGBTQ consumers about their rights under the Affordable Care Act, and help ensure that LGBTQ people are able to access the health coverage and care they need.

 

You can help us spread the word by liking and sharing our posts from Facebook and Twitter all week long. Recent polling data shows that almost 4 out of 5 people who are uninsured or buy their own insurance don’t know the deadline, think it’s a different day, or refused to answer. The number who simply said they didn’t know the deadline increased from 53 percent last October to 61 percent this month.

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by Danielle Quesenberry

Georgia Equality Commemorates World AIDS Day with a Week of Events

Georgia Equality marked the 30th World AIDS Day with a week of events to engage the community. United by the “Know Your Status” theme, we joined our community partners in commemorating World AIDS Day 2018 with events that included a screening of the film Boy Meets Girl followed by a panel conversation led by Georgia Equality’s Gender Inclusion Organizer, Chanel Haley focused on HIV and dating in the trans community. Our partners at Sisterlove led us in a conversation around Black women and HIV. We also partnered with Thrive SS for an evening of spoken word, led by artists living with HIV.

To round out the week, we united with Actor’s Express for a staged reading of the play, Before it Hits Home by Cheryl L. West, directed by True Colors Theatre Company’s incoming Artistic Director, Jamil Jude. The play explored the dynamics of an African-American family dealing with the HIV during the late 1980s. The reading was followed by a panel discussion.

We closed the week with our annual World AIDS Day Policy & Action Luncheon hosted by our Youth HIV Policy Advisors (YHPA). The YHPA cohort is a group of future leaders trained to guide policy around HIV and AIDS, and serve as unofficial policy advisors to elected officials. The event included remarks from Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Other elected officials from all levels of state and local government also attended and heard from program participants about the specific needs and challenges that come with being a young person living with HIV in the metro-Atlanta area.

Georgia Equality would like to thank our community partners, YHPA, and elected leaders who attended our week of programs this year. While much has changed over the past 30 years – HIV is no longer a death sentence but a treatable and manageable chronic disease – we recognize that we still have a long way to go.