Best of Neighborhood News 12/23: MN cities score well for LGBTQ equality

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Twin Cities score 100 for LGBTQ equality

The Column reports that Minneapolis and St. Paul received the highest possible scores for LGBTQ equality, according to data from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). In Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul each scored 100 points, the highest possible score. The average score for U.S. Cities was 56; all Minnesota cities scored above average. Continue Reading

Andrea Jenkins, Grand Marshal of 2015 Twin Cities Pride uplifts trans voices [Photos]

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Andrea Jenkins is a writer, poet, performance artist and activist. Other than serving as Grand Marshal for Twin Cities Pride this weekend, she recently became the oral historian for the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota, among many other roles in the community. She will be documenting the stories and voices of the LGBTQ community in Minnesota. As she said in an interview with Intermedia Arts, “Art serves many purposes; it can heal, educate, entertain, and challenge. Art is a tool for speaking out because it has the ability to transform people. Continue Reading

MN GOP introduces bill to allow discrimination against same-sex couples

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At a press conference on Thursday morning, Sen. Paul Gazelka, a Republican from Nisswa, unveiled a Freedom of Conscience bill aimed at allowing businesses and individuals to discriminate against same-sex couples. According to the Pioneer Press, Gazelka is promoting the bill, in part, because a business in his district was fined after it refused service to a same-sex couple. “I was one of the legislators who opposed gay marriage but even then I said that gays and lesbians should be able to live as they choose,” Gazelka said. “I’m simply asking that Christians and people of faith be allowed to live as they choose without… threat of punishment.”

The bill has not yet been introduced in the Minnesota Legislature but is expected to drop in the next few days. It likely won’t receive any action with only days left in the legislative session, but because it was introduced in the first year of the biennium, it will be in play in 2016. Continue Reading

McCollum, Ellison cosponsor resolution calling for end to conversion therapy

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Reps. Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison are cosponsors of a resolution in the U.S. House that calls on states to ban conversion therapy for minors. The Stop Harming Our Kids Resolution was introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California. McCollum and Ellison are among 34 co-sponsors of the resolution.The SHOK resolution states, in part:It is the sense of Congress that sexual orientation and gender identity or expression change efforts directed at minors are discredited and ineffective, have no legitimate therapeutic purpose, and are dangerous and harmful.Congress encourages each State to take steps to protect minors from efforts that promote or promise to change sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, based on the premise that homosexuality is a mental illness or developmental disorder that can or should be cured.“It’s time to end this abusive quackery masquerading as medicine,” Speier said in statement. “Being transgender, gay, lesbian, or bisexual is not a disease to be cured or a mental illness that requires treatment. Continue Reading