We’re thisclose to better protection for minorities who have been victims of hate crimes. The Matthew Shepard Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act), a piece of legislation that would lend federal support to prosecution of crimes committed against individuals because of their minority status, has cleared the House and the Senate, as of July 23, 2009. The next step is for the bill to reconciled in a conference committee, then it’s off to the desk of President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign off due to a 2007 statement of support.

Over the last thirty years, with the continuing debate regarding the legal right to marry somebody of the same sex, there has evolved a mass of terms regarding the way in which the law, the government, and society defines the concept of marriage.

Welcome to the second installment of my Gender for Beginners series! In this article, I’m going to explain more on what it means to be transgender.

The first thing most people ask when they find out someone is going to have a child is if they know whether it’s a boy or a girl. The defining characteristic most people use to describe someone is gender, i.e. “That guy over there,” or “That girl in the red shirt,” without so much as a second thought. For the majority of people, that works, but for the minority, those that fall into the T and I letters in the gay alphabet soup, it couldn’t be more wrong.

November 4th, 2008 may have been a sobering, stressful, and disappointing day for many people (Obama’s win aside, of course), but with that day brought a newfound and much-needed interest in the civil rights of gays across the world. And that’s no exaggeration; the next couple of months marked a flurry of activity in the activism world, as people who’d never protested a single cause in their life suddenly took to the streets to voice their opposition to the disturbing election results here in the US.