We’re less than a week away from the start of the 2018 legislative session, and it’s already shaping up to be an unpredictable one.

A bipartisan majority of lawmakers are eager to steer clear of a fifth-year fight over an anti-LGBT License to Discriminate. The economic consequences, especially Amazon looking to locate its second HQ in Atlanta, seem to be pushing most lawmakers in the right direction.

But there is still a threat. It’s an election year, and with that could come legislative attempts to placate opponents of LGBT equality.

A groundswell of opposition to anti-LGBT bills is again going to be critical in 2018. That’s why Georgia Equality and Georgia Unites Against Discrimination are teaming up to provide advocates with the tools they need to reach out to lawmakers.

Keeping anti-LGBT bills at bay is only one item on our agenda. Equally important will be moving lawmakers to action on 2017’s unfinished business—namely, passing much-needed reforms to our adoption and foster care system, and making headway on a comprehensive, LGBT-inclusive civil rights bill.

In fact, three bills from last session—SB 119, HB 488 and HR 404—that would bring us closer to ensuring all Georgians are protected from discrimination are still active and ready for lawmakers to begin considering them immediately.

We want to make these proactive bills a priority this year, but we can’t do that without marshaling the same grassroots support we’ve had in years past.

Join us at our January 13th advocacy training and be a part of making 2018 a year of progress in Georgia.

As 2017 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the successes we’ve had this year, and also remind ourselves to keep our momentum going as we enter the new year. We can’t afford to rest on our laurels, and we have to keep pushing to make sure that the people of Georgia stand up for comprehensive civil rights, and stand against anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Here, a list of our 2017 accomplishments to motivate us into an even stronger 2018!

First Ever Comprehensive LGBTQ Civil Rights Bills Filed

In February, history was made in the Peach State when the first-ever civil rights bill specifically addressing non-discrimination for LGBTQ people was filed at the State House. Senate Bill 119 would ensure that no LGBTQ person could be fired, evicted, or denied service in public accommodations simply because of who they are. This bill was introduced by State Senator Lester Jackson.

In late February, two companion bills were filed — House Resolution 404 and House Bill 488. The former would create a commission to hear testimony and study the need for updated civil rights laws, while the latter would follow the spirit of SB 119 in preventing discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

All three pieces of legislation remain up for consideration heading into the 2018 legislative session. Click here to email your lawmaker and show your support for these important pieces of legislation that would protect all LGBTQ people in Georgia!

Local Activism Has Lasting Impact

Beyond the Capitol, Georgians showed up in impressive numbers and mobilized to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination across the state. In May, the Macon-Bibb county commission became the 63rd municipal entity in the state to extend non-discrimination protections to LGBTQ people.

In Decatur, when faced with an action that would weaken protections for transgender students, over 1,000 people submitted letters of support, successfully defending the existing policy. The people of Georgia have continued to work in support of LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination protections, and there is no doubt these efforts will reap more successes in 2018.

Bennett’s Project Gives Hope and Support to Transgender Georgians

In October, Georgia Unites Against Discrimination began a collaboration with a Roswell, Georgia student named Bennett. Bennett had heard some hurtful things about transgender people from local and national conversations, and wanted to start a project to let his transgender friends know that they were loved, valued, and supported.

The result was #BennettsProject, a statewide campaign dedicated to sending messages of love and support to transgender youth. These messages have been displayed at community events around the state, and have been used to further educate people about transgender issues, and why non-discrimination is so important.

If you’d like to send your own message of support, click here, and be sure to share on Twitter with the hashtag #BennettsProject.

Looking Ahead to 2018

In 2018, the fight for comprehensive civil rights protections will continue like never before. Currently, all three pieces of legislation regarding LGBTQ non-discrimination remain up for consideration heading into the legislative session. One of our major priorities this coming year is to get one of these pieces of legislation heard in the House or Senate. Click here to email your lawmaker and show your support for these important pieces of legislation that would protect all LGBTQ people in Georgia!

In early 2017, a Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) bill was introduced that would have allowed people to claim broad religious exemptions for refusing LGBTQ people housing, employment, or access to public places like restaurants, retail shops and medical care.

Luckily, we were able to defeat it with the help of many supporters inside and outside the legislature. However, a similar bill may be introduced again, and we must be ready to move against it with the same spirit we’ve previously showed. Very important in this fight will be the support of businesses at all levels — local, state, and national. Atlanta is likely a top contender for Amazon to locate its second world headquarters, and could prove a major factor in determining whether or not legislation is heard, as the company cites diversity and inclusion in its mission statement.

If we want to keep securing victories, we need your help. If you haven’t yet, sign our pledge now to support comprehensive civil rights protections, and be sure to share with your friends and followers on social media. Read the stories of Georgians who support and would be impacted by the passage of protections.

We can’t win this fight without you. Join us.

This holiday season, Georgians of faith are working hard to ensure everyone feels welcome celebrating with them, including LGBT Georgians.

Two of those faith leaders are Rev. Kim Sorrells and Rev. Melanie Vaughn-West. Both serve communities in the Atlanta metro area: Kim as an ordained United Church of Christ minister with the Reconciling Ministries Network, and Melanie as the Pastor for Worship, Pastoral Care and Administration at Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur.

Both Kim and Melanie say it’s important during the holiday season for inclusive faith communities like theirs to work even harder at being welcoming, as it can be a difficult time of year for people who may not feel accepted by their families or existing faith community.

For LGBT people in that situation, chosen family are key—and that’s what the Church provides, according to Kim.

“One thing that is a strength within the LGBT community is the concept of ‘chosen family.’ Really lean into that during this time. Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean we have to be with people who don’t love and accept us.”

“One thing that is a strength within the LGBT community is the concept of ‘chosen family.’ Really lean into that during this time. Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean we have to be with people who don’t love and accept us.” —Rev. Kim Sorrells, United Church of Christ

And Kim says the concept of chosen family is not just for LGBT people.

“That gift of chosen family is really great, and I think people outside the LGBT community can really learn. I think it’s something we have as a gift we can share.”

That’s one of the reasons why Melanie and the other Church leaders at Oakhurst work overtime around the holidays—to ensure they can be that chosen family for their congregants who need an extra dose of fellowship.

On the second Sunday of Advent Oakhurst hosts its Moravian Love Feast, a special joint service with its sister church Friendship Baptist. Congregation members make special Moravian Love Buns and special sweetened Moravian coffee that is served during the service.  

Then there’s a Christmas Eve service that includes candles, caroling, and coffee. It always ends with congregants forming a circle of candlelight around the sanctuary and singing Silent Night.

“The families we’re naturally born into are not always the people who can affirm who we are. [The Church is] where an individual can find their chosen family—the people who can celebrate who you are, who can travel alongside you on your journey.” —Rev. Melanie Vaughn-West, Oakhurst Baptist Church

And on Christmas Day they have a Church dinner that anyone can attend, to “offer a space to people who for whatever reason don’t have a place to be that day, where they can be part of a family of faith.”

“The families we’re naturally born into are not always the people who can affirm who we are,” she says, and a healthy faith community makes up for that.

These are only a few of the ways that our faith communities are helping LGBT Georgians feel welcome this holiday season.

If you’re a person of faith whose congregation is working to foster this kind of open and affirming atmosphere, let us know and someone from our campaign may reach out to talk with you more about it.

Rev. Kim Sorrells preaches an affirming, LGBT-inclusive message as part of their ministry  within the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. That message is important to Kim as a matter of faith, and because Kim is transgender.

But Kim didn’t always have such an open mind. Even though Kim started questioning their sexual orientation at a young age, they grew up in a conservative community in Alabama, and had an encounter at church one day that indicated being gay was unacceptable.

“It was a dramatic experience. The speaker talked about gay people, and how that wasn’t OK,” Kim says. “I thought that meant God wanted me to change, that I was clearly the only person there dealing with that.

Kim’s parents might have provided some guidance, but Kim worked hard to hide their doubt, as well as the “ex-gay” culture Kim was being drawn into.

“[My parents] said, ‘We’re sorry it took us a little while to understand when you were younger. This is just how you were born.’ It took them a minute to understand that.” —Rev. Kim Sorrells, UCC & UMC

“They knew something was up, but I wasn’t telling them. By the time I came out though, my parents were pretty aware and OK with it.” Kim says they were even more understanding when Kim came out as transgender.

“They said, ‘We’re sorry it took us a little while to understand when you were younger. This is just how you were born.’ It took them a minute to understand that.”

***

It wasn’t until studying psychology and religion in college that Kim realized many of the anti-gay thoughts and beliefs they had internalized were wrong.

“It was a gradual process, a way of looking and learning and educating, about how Christianity came to the place it is now,” Kim says. “How these ideas are not supported by both science and the scripture. The ones launched at gay people are misapplied.”

Kim attended Berry College, a small liberal arts institution in Georgia that adheres to conservative religious principles, so coming to terms with being LGBT in that atmosphere wasn’t always easy. But classes helped, as did Kim’s friends.

“A friend of mine, a soccer teammate, just said ‘I know that God loves you,’ and the heart piece of it clicked. This Jesus that I follow is about love. This person I follow isn’t out to make me someone I’m not.”

“A friend of mine, a soccer teammate, just said ‘I know that God loves you,’ and the heart piece of it clicked. This Jesus that I follow is about love. This person I follow isn’t out to make me someone I’m not.”

Kim still didn’t have much awareness of gender identity at that point, though they knew being gay didn’t explain all of what they was feeling. That change didn’t come until Kim had entered seminary.

“When I started meeting and hearing stories of trans people, I thought, ‘that sounds a lot like me.’”

Once Kim was on staff at St. Mark United Methodist Church in Atlanta, they made the decision to live openly as a transgender person. It was a wonderful congregation, full of supportive and affirming clergy and lay people, Kim says. The timing felt right.

***

Kim is now an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and works as an organizer for the Reconciling Ministries Network, an organization dedicated to fostering LGBT inclusion within the Methodist Church.

For Kim, advent season—a time of preparation and waiting for the birth of Jesus—is a time not only for Christians to celebrate their faith, but also to re-commit themselves to working against injustice, in all its forms.

“Advent can be a really good time to—especially in a climate of a lot of oppression and darkness—hold on to those moments of light. That’s what I look for during this season, knowing that even one light in the darkness is still light.”

“Advent can be a really good time to—especially in a climate of a lot of oppression and darkness—hold on to those moments of light. That’s what I look for during this season, knowing that even one light in the darkness is still light.”

Kim knows though, that Christmas can be a rough time for LGBT people who may not be able to rely on their family or faith community for that spark of light. For LGBT people in that situation, chosen family are key.

“One thing that is a strength within the LGBT community is the concept of ‘chosen family’: People who love us unconditionally, and those families may look like a lot of different things. Really lean into that during this time. Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean we have to be with people who don’t love and accept us.”

“That gift of chosen family is really great, and I think people outside the LGBT community can really learn. I think it’s something we have as a gift we can share.”

And Kim says it’s not just LGBT people who can benefit from relying on their chosen family this holiday season.

“That gift of chosen family is really great, and I think people outside the LGBT community can really learn. I think it’s something we have as a gift we can share.”

Growing up, LGBT issues just weren’t discussed in Rev. Melanie Vaughn-West’s moderate Baptist faith community. No one would preach anything negative, but they also would never make strong appeals for LGBT rights as a social justice issue.

That changed when Melanie came to Decatur’s Oakhurst Baptist Church in 1999, during her second year of seminary at Emory University. She says Oakhurst was at the forefront of advocating for human rights on a broad scale, and there were openly LGBT leaders within the church.

“I was really formed by that, seeing the health of that community, people of different orientations. It seemed naturally very right.”

“I was really formed by that, seeing the health of that community, people of different orientations. It seemed naturally very right.” —Rev. Melanie Vaughn-West, Oakhurst Baptist Church

She soon knew this was a faith community that she could make a home.   

“This is the kind of Christian that I want to be. It’s a Christianity that is about affirming the dignity of every person, working toward that, and being proactive in the world in terms of all kinds of issues of justice.”

***

During the holidays, Oakhurst works overtime on events that embody this welcoming spirit for all of its members.

On the second Sunday of Advent Oakhurst hosts its Moravian Love Feast, a special joint service with its sister church Friendship Baptist early in the month. Congregation members make special Moravian Love Buns based on a Moravian recipe and special sweetened Moravian coffee that is served during the service.  

Then there’s a Christmas Eve service that includes candles, caroling, and coffee. It always ends with congregants forming a circle of candlelight around the sanctuary and singing Silent Night.

Melanie says the holiday season is a time during which many members of the congregation need an extra dose of fellowship. That includes LGBT members who may not be totally at ease with celebrating the holidays with their families.

“The families we’re naturally born into are not always the people who can affirm who we are,” she says, and a healthy faith community is one that makes up for that.

“The families we’re naturally born into are not always the people who can affirm who we are. [The church should be a place] where an individual can find their chosen family—the people who can celebrate who you are, who can travel alongside you on your journey.”

“[It is] where an individual can find their chosen family—the people who can celebrate who you are, who can travel alongside you on your journey.”

That’s why on Christmas Day they have a Church dinner that anyone can attend, to “offer a space to people who for whatever reason don’t have a place to be that day, where they can be part of a family of faith.”

***

When Melanie first came to Oakhurst in the late 1990s, it wasn’t just a formative time for her—it was a formative time for the church too.

In 1997, Chris Copeland became the Church’s first openly gay pastor. That same year, the Church officially changed its covenant to welcome people regardless of their sexual orientation.

Melanie says opposing discrimination of all kinds—including opposing attempts to use religion as an excuse to write discrimination into Georgia’s laws—is what the original Baptist tradition calls for.

Baptists have “a strong belief in the freedom of the individual,” according to the Church’s website, and Melanie says it is this founding principle that leads their work for social justice, including their advocacy for LGBT rights.

“The state should be concerned with passing good legislation that is not favoring religion in any way. We don’t want our faith to oppress anyone, as we wouldn’t want anyone else’s to oppress us.”

“The state should be concerned with passing good legislation that is not favoring religion in any way.” That, she says, not only offers the best government for all people, it also allows religious communities to thrive.

“We don’t want our faith to oppress anyone, as we wouldn’t want anyone else’s to oppress us.”

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not hear the case of Jameka Evans, a Savannah security guard who was discriminated against at work because she’s lesbian, meaning the Court has effectively put off the chance to recognize that federal law already prohibits anti-LGBTQ employment discrimination.

Jameka’s lawyers at Lamda Legal had petitioned the Court in September to take the case. There was a high likelihood that they would: In April 2017—less than a month after a 3-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit ruled against Jameka—the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals came to the opposite conclusion in the case of an Indiana woman who was discriminated against at her work because of her sexual orientation. This set up a split decision in the appellate courts, something the Supreme Court is usually eager to resolve.

Now, some advocates are thinking the Court may be waiting for a similar case to make its way through the system before making a definitive ruling.

But until then, LGBTQ people in Georgia and the majority of other states that offer no explicit statewide non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ workers will continue to be unprotected. Employees like Jameka who find themselves harassed and denied equal work because of who they are will have little legal recourse.

But there is something we can do in Georgia to fix this right now: Pass an LGBTQ-inclusive civil rights law that would ensure no Georgian can be discriminated against in employment, housing or public accommodations because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And the good news is that in Georgia, we are closer than ever to getting it done. Last year, for the first time in the history of our state, lawmakers introduced bills in both the House and Senate that would add these comprehensive, LGBTQ-inclusive protections to state law.

In fact, there were a record number of pieces of legislation introduced last year that addressed the problem of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Currently, three of these bills are still active and ready for consideration during the next legislative session. It’s up to us right now to ensure that these bills are at the top of lawmakers’ to-do list when they reconvene next year.

You can help grow our coalition of support for these bills now by signing our pledge saying you support passing LGBTQ-inclusive civil rights legislation during the 2018 legislative session.