Gender/GLBT

Friday’s sunny skies and relatively warm temperatures made the annual Planned Parenthood Good Friday Solidarity Day easier for the several hundred people who attended. This was the first time the event, to support abortion rights, birth control and women’s health, was held at the new Planned Parenthood flagship health center in St. Paul.

Back in 1998, after working as a manager at Goodyear Rubber for 19 years, Lilly Ledbetter got an anonymous note in her mailbox. The note told her how much her three fellow managers — all male — were paid. They were paid 40 percent more than she was. After her shift, she went home and told her husband and he drove her to the EEOC office to file a discrimination charge, starting on a path that led, eventually, to the U.S. Supreme Court and to the White House.

Labor unions and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-equality groups are pushing transgender-inclusive health care as part of the first-of-its-kind national Transgender Month of Action.

It’s rare when Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and Pro-Choice Minnesota support the same legislative proposal. But after their shared testimony Tuesday, a House committee approved repealing a 2003 law that freezes welfare payments when an additional child is born to a family receiving cash benefits.