Blog of Rights

Chris
Hampton

Why Fred Phelps's Free Speech Rights Should Matter to Us All

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 3:22pm

The first time I saw those signs, with their vivid neon colors and crude images of stick figures, was 16 years ago. "Fags Die, God Laughs." "No Tears for Queers." "God Hates Fags." Like most people seeing a Westboro Baptist Church picket for the first time, I was shocked, then outraged. It happened at the funeral of a friend who had died of AIDS. Seeing those signs left me in tears.

"Protecting" LGBT Youth by Putting Them in Harm’s Way

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 4:19pm

Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield is well known for such antics as claiming AIDS resulted from “one guy screwing a monkey” and trying to weasel his way into the state’s Black Legislative Caucus.  But perhaps Campfield’s greatest source of notoriety is the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a nasty proposed law he’s introduced and reintroduced every chance he’s gotten during his nine years in the legislature.  In its earlier incarnations, the bill would have banned any discussion of sexuality except for heterosexuality in public schools up through the eighth grade.  This week, Campfield has brought “Don’t Say Gay” back yet again, with a misleading new name (the “Classroom Protection Act”) and a particularly disturbing new addition: The bill now seeks to require school nurses and guidance professionals to notify the parents of any student they work with who identifies as gay or questioning.

Don't Filter Me!

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 1:13pm

If you’re a public high school student and would like to know more about your school’s web filter, read the story of what one kid found and check out this video showing how to test whether your school is illegally filtering content and how to report censorship.

Ban Censorship, Not Websites!

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 6:13pm

Today is Banned Websites Awareness Day – a designated day within Banned Books Week – which is sponsored by our friends at the American Association of School Librarians and designed to raise awareness of the overly restrictive blocking of legitimate, educational websites and academically useful social networking tools in schools and school libraries.  At the ACLU LGBT Project, this is a subject near and dear to our hearts, and today we’re releasing a new report about our work to fight back against banned websites. 

In Memory of a Social Justice Warrior: LGBT Rights Champion Carolyn Wagner

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 11:50am

Last week, the ACLU mourned the death of Carolyn Wagner, who died on January 18 after a long battle with cancer, hepatitis, and liver failure.

Carolyn and her husband Bill are the parents of a gay son who was brutally harassed and assaulted by other students while attending school in northwest Arkansas in 1996. Soon after an incident that left their son with lasting injuries, the couple filed a complaint with the United States Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against the Fayetteville School District under Title IX, which prohibits sexual harassment and discrimination. After a federal investigation, the school was ordered to address anti-gay sexual harassment — the first time that Title IX was used to address the bullying of gay and lesbian students.

A Gleeful Thought About School Clubs

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 5:46pm

"My two gay dads have a very close relationship with our local branch of the ACLU!"

When the overachieving show choir diva Rachel Berry delivered that line during last night's episode of Glee, I perked up a bit on the sofa. It's the second time the ACLU has gotten something of a shout-out from Rachel, invoking our name to threaten lawsuits. The first time was a few weeks ago during the "Wheels" episode, in which she dropped our name to a restaurant manager to pressure him to hire her friend Finn, sitting next to her in a wheelchair, with the veiled threat of a disability discrimination case. Fighting disability discrimination in employment is something we actually do care about a lot, except that in this case Finn was faking his disability.

New LGBT Prom Resource for Students

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 3:56pm

Prom season is in full swing, and we at the ACLU are seeing an uptick in calls and emails from students whose schools have either tried to stop them from bringing same-sex dates or tried to enforce rigidly gender-stereotyped dress codes. Both are illegal. As Deb Price of the Detroit News pointed out in her column today, the ACLU affiliates in both Ohio and Mississippi have recently gotten schools to back down from discriminatory prom policies. Now the ACLU LGBT Project has created a new resource to help LGBT students take fight for their legal right to enjoy prom into their own hands.

"Don't Filter Me" at Six Months

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project & Joshua Block, LGBT Project at 6:00pm

Last February, the ACLU LGBT Project launched the "Don't Filter Me" campaign to take on the problem of public schools censoring LGBT-friendly content on the web. Today — which just happens to also be Banned Websites Awareness Day — we released a report describing the enormous progress we have made in a little over six months. The "Don't Filter Me" campaign has been responsible for instituting major changes in school policy nationwide, and has influenced major web software filtering companies to change their products so that they do not block positive LGBT materials.

Four Things You Should Know about Student Rights and Day of Silence

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 12:00am

Today is the Day of Silence, an annual, student-led day of action involving hundreds of thousands of students around the country.The students who participate take a day-long vow of silence to reflect the bullying, harassment and discrimination — in effect, the silencing — of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students in America’s schools.

Why ENDA Matters: True Stories of Anti-LGBT Employment Discrimination from the ACLU

By Chris Hampton, ACLU LGBT Project at 10:45am

Why ENDA Matters: True Stories of Anti-LGBT Employment Discrimination from the ACLU

(This post originally appeared on The Bilerico Project.)

To illustrate why Congress must pass the Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA), a federal law that would ban discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the workplace, we will be posting the firsthand accounts of people from across the nation who have been fired, refused a job, or harassed in the workplace because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This summer the ACLU put out a call for stories, and these are just a fraction of stories we received.

Statistics image