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Hate disguised as ‘parental rights’: A California anti-LGBT bill fails (for now)
Reading Time: 3 minutes This week, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, the head of the Assembly’s Education Committee, refused to schedule a hearing for AB1314, a bill that would have required school officials to notify parents when a child identified as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. Muratsuchi slammed the bill for being “bad policy” and potentially harmful to the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ students. Days before, the Chino Valley…
The Black Girls’ Guide to Humanism: On mental health and social justice
Reading Time: 5 minutes Late last year, I surveyed Black youth between the ages of 15-24 about their views on Black humanism, media representations of Black and women of color atheists, respectability politics, and the connection between religion, misogynoir, and homophobia. The majority of them were from South Los Angeles. I followed up with a podcast featuring four of my young Black women and gender-expansive Women’s Leadership Project mentees who range in age from…
Abortion is not a luxury: Reproductive freedom and the midterms
Reading Time: 3 minutes This morning, I listened to an abortion procedure on NPR, and it was a powerful thing. A patient at a Michigan clinic consented to having her procedure recorded. She wanted to underscore its life-or-death importance in a climate where Michigan citizens will vote next week for an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution in rebuke of a 1931 law whose enforcement would impose a total ban.…
Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic on stage: Black women and liberation
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s “Black Music Month,” and, in a parallel Juneteenth universe, Black folks would be given reparations for the looted labor of all the Black artists whose musical innovation powered the multi-billion-dollar empires of white rock icons like Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. From blues to rock, R&B, and beyond, early 20th-century working-class southern Black musicians were the backbone of the modern American music industry, yet…
How South LA BIPOC youth are shutting down ‘Don’t Say Gay’
Reading Time: 3 minutes Nationwide, escalating homophobic and transphobic right-wing attacks are threatening the mental health and wellness of queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming youth. This spring, Women’s Leadership Project 9th and 10th graders led presentations on LGBTQI+ school climate, identity, and allyship in South L.A. classrooms and during WLP’s annual LGBTQI+ Youth of Color Institute. Utilizing GLSEN’s (Gay and Lesbian Student Education Network) school climate survey, they focused on the power of pronouns, respecting…
