Fri 5/17: Thank our legislators for supporting H.R.5 – the Equality Act. They do George proud!

Action #1 – Thank our legislators for supporting HR. 5 – the Equality Act!

We are so lucky! Please take a moment to thank all of our elected officials (Brownly, Carbajal, Feinstein and Harris) for being cosponsors of the Equality Act [H.R. 5/S. 788], a bill that would clarify existing civil rights legislation to specifically ban discrimination against our LGBTQ citizens in employment, housing, public accommodations, jury service, education, federal programs, adoption programs and credit. It would also provide additional protection for women and POC from common forms of discrimination. This measure has unprecedented support from nearly 70 percent of Americans, more than 280 members of Congress, 165 major businesses and 288 statewide and national organizations. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has made passing the Equality Act a top priority for the new Congress, and it’s in the House today.

Minimal email script: I want to thank you for standing up for our LGBTQ friends, family and neighbors and supporting [Rep. = H.R. 5/Sen. = S. 788] the Equality Act.

Contact Information

Rep. Julia Brownley: email
or Rep. Salud Carbajal: email.
Senator Feinstein: email,
and Senator Harris: email,
Who’s my representative/senator?: https://whoismyrepresentative.com

Action #2 – Petition for all people of faith to endorse equality for all.

Sign the Faith in Public Life “We are all Equal” Petition here. Continue reading “Fri 5/17: Thank our legislators for supporting H.R.5 – the Equality Act. They do George proud!” →

Wed 5/15: CA is not immune from forced-birther madness & LGBTQ discrimination. It’s just taking the “side door” into our UC medical campuses. Urgent call/email!

Action – Write an email/letter opposing any UC-system university affiliation with any religious, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ hospital.

The University of California regents are deciding if they should solve a bed-space issue at UC San Francisco Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading teaching hospitals, by “affiliating” with Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital chain that uses religious directives to openly discriminate against women and LGBTQ patients. If this goes through, it could be the beginning of other UC-Catholic hospital “affiliations,” spreading intolerance into our public hospitals with our own tax dollars as fuel. All the rights and values Californians are rightly proud of mean nothing if, in our most vulnerable moment as a patient, they are not respected.

The regents are meeting May 14-16. Our Governor, Lt. Governor and Assembly Speaker are voting members. This issue is NOT on the agenda but they will be voting on it soon. Call them, and write them an email or letter to tell them that this discussion of whether or not to allow this trojan horse into our health system should be an easy “NO”. Make it as personal as you can.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want [__] to know that it would be unforgivable to tie UCSF Medical Center or any taxpayer-supported hospital with Dignity Health, or any other system that discriminates and harms women, the poor, minorities and our LGBTQ community.

More script if you want it: If religious hospitals refused to treat non-white people, we would shut them down. Why do we tolerate the verifiable harm these hospitals cause women and LGBTQ people?

Continue reading “Wed 5/15: CA is not immune from forced-birther madness & LGBTQ discrimination. It’s just taking the “side door” into our UC medical campuses. Urgent call/email!” →

Wed. 10/24: The GOP would like y’all to use the restroom that matches your birth certificate…Sure. No problem.

This is a photo of Jake Miller, better known by his stage name Buck Angel. He is an transgender American adult film producer and amazing motivational speaker. Because he started out life as a baby named “Susan“, proposed federal regulations might soon force him to use women’s restrooms and suffer various other indignities. All because the GOP, the party of “smaller, less intrusive government”, just released this inhumane and unscientific pronouncement…

“The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
– Department of Health and Human Services memo, according to the New York Times.

Not only does this effectively erase the existence of the 1.4 MILLION transgender American citizens, who, often from early childhood, have struggled with being born into the “wrong” body, but it’s going to make the lives of the 1-in-1500 babies born with intersex conditions much more complicated too. Twenty-first century, people!

Continue reading “Wed. 10/24: The GOP would like y’all to use the restroom that matches your birth certificate…Sure. No problem.” →

Thurs – 9/27: Last day to comment! – Tell our CA Attorney General we don’t want these guys in the middle of our most private medical decisions.

Action #1 – Write/call our Attorney General by 9/27 and say “NO”

Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) want to merge into one huge Catholic church-controlled conglomerate whose religious strictures threaten women’s lives and access to reproductive health care, along with gender-affirming care, and services for low-income communities. In Ventura County, this “Ministry Alignment Agreement” would effect St. John’s Regional Medical Center and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, removing what little leeway they have left in providing services within religious strictures. The two Catholic hospital systems have to get approval from our state attorney general before they can proceed with the merger. Let’s say “NO”.

Continue reading “Thurs – 9/27: Last day to comment! – Tell our CA Attorney General we don’t want these guys in the middle of our most private medical decisions.” →

Thurs – 9/20: Meeting today at 1:00 pm! – Tell our CA Attorney General to prevent a huge Catholic hospital merger that will further endanger health care to women.

Photo: A hanger featuring a picture of Indian woman Savita Halappanavar, 31, who died of blood poisoning in a Catholic hospital in Ireland in 2012 after being refused a termination of her pregnancy, even after diagnosis of miscarriage. Ireland just overturned their anti-abortion law.

Action #1 – Go to the meeting today at 1:00 pm at Oxnard College and just say “NO” to our attorney general.

Ventura County’s public meeting is today, Thursday, September 20, 2018, beginning at 1:00 p.m., at Oxnard College, Performing Arts Building Conference Center, 4000 S. Rose Avenue, Oxnard, CA 93033. Spanish notice here. RSVP here.

Continue reading “Thurs – 9/20: Meeting today at 1:00 pm! – Tell our CA Attorney General to prevent a huge Catholic hospital merger that will further endanger health care to women.” →

Stand Indivisible with our LGBTQ youth. Deadline to help them is tomorrow, June 13th.

Today marks two-years since the shooting at #Pulse that took the lives of 49 people celebrating Latin Night during #PRIDEMonth. Join @EqualityFL and others by using #HonorThemWithAction to share how you are challenging anti-#LGBTQ harassment, discrimination, and violence.

Today’s action is focused on the manipulation of a questionaire from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that particularly addresses the needs of #LGBTQ youth.

Currently, they must ask if children left home because of “family conflict related to child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

Trump’s HHS would like to “streamline” their data reporting requirements, and “reduce burden on title IV-E agencies, by allowing them to stop asking this question. They would like to downgrade the information chain for Native American children as well, which tribes are fighting back with letters in the comments section describing how the placing of Indian children in foster care is both a failure to follow the rule of law and to protect children from identified and preventable harm. Continue reading “Stand Indivisible with our LGBTQ youth. Deadline to help them is tomorrow, June 13th.” →

Fri 6/8: Come to Plaza Park tomorrow for “A Gathering to Disarm Hate”!

Between 12:00 pm and 2:00, there will be a peaceful community gathering at Plaza Park to commemorate the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, and to educate ourselves and discuss how gun violence affects the LGBTQ+ community and other minority communities. All are welcome!

Facebook event listing here for more information.

In the spirit of “information, then action”, Indivisible Ventura, Indivisible Ojai Valley and others will be there to register voters for the November election.

Mon. – 5/7: Our judges are the last barrier we have against injustice. Tell your senator that this matters to you.

#1 – Protest the End of the “Blue Slip” Process.

Trump is packing the courts with anti-labor, anti-women’s rights, anti-workers’ rights, anti-civil rights and anti-LGBTQ rights, right-wing judges. This week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley aim to confirm multiple federal judges as quickly as possible. They have set up a week of votes and hearings starting May 7.

To speed the process, Grassley has abandoned the “blue slip” process whereby a Senator from a nominee’s state may block an appointment. The Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, strongly opposed this move in the case of Seventh Circuit nominee Michael Brennan, which is being pushed forward over the objection of his home-state senator Tammy Baldwin. Feinstein has noted that if Brennan is confirmed it would be the first time in more than 30 years that a circuit court nominee was confirmed over a home-state senator’s objections. Brennan’s is one of six circuit court nominations that could be voted on during the week. Meanwhile, there are reports that a hearing will be held Wednesday for Ninth Circuit (which includes California) nominee Ryan Bounds of Oregon, for whom neither Oregon senator has returned a blue slip signaling approval for the process to advance. This action on Bounds is “an unprecedented affront to the advise-and-consent role of senators”; no circuit court nominee has ever been confirmed over objections of both home-state senators.

Minimum Script: I’m calling from [zip code] to ask Senator Feinstein to voice my outrage that Senators Grassley and McConnell are destroying the time-honored blue slip system. Continue reading “Mon. – 5/7: Our judges are the last barrier we have against injustice. Tell your senator that this matters to you.” →

Monday 3/26 – “This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are.” Deadline to comment tomorrow!

Quote from Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

You are sitting in one of those horrible backless gowns on a paper-covered table, waiting…

You are sick, or hurt, or need a legal medical procedure. This is not where you want to be right now, but you need help.

If you can’t imagine for yourself, do so for your child, or grandchild…

The door opens. A scrubs-covered medical professional comes in, reading a file.

A moment of silence.

“Treating you would violate my sincerely-held religious beliefs. You’ll have to wait until we can find someone else to deal with you.”

Door closes.

A new HHS rule would allow physicians and health care workers to opt out of procedures that conflict with their religious teachings…We need to send in comments today and tomorrow to stop this.

You do not need to be a woman to feel the importance of this.
You do not need to be part of the LGBTQ community.
You just need to do what we say we do.
Stand INDIVISIBLE with vulnerable Americans, who are, even now, being traumatized by these types of behavior. This proposal just lets offenders off without consequences.

We really like this gif-filled explanation guide from the National Women’s Law Center. Lots of information in here to use in your comments.

1. This rule is definitely NOT about patients.

Continue reading “Monday 3/26 – “This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are.” Deadline to comment tomorrow!” →

Friday 3/16 – A walk down 3 dark alleys…

Action #1 – “This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are.”

– Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Part 1 – Written comments – Comments Due March 27th
Public comments are due on March 27th regarding these new HHS rules that would allow physicians and health care workers to opt out of procedures that conflict with their religious teachings. This will have a significant impact on women’s and LGBTQ rights, which are already not fully protected by the current system. In fact, according to the Center for American Progress, 29% of transgender people reported that “a doctor or other health care provider refused to see them because of their actual or perceived gender identity.” We can submit our public comments here (DUE MARCH 27).

Part 2 – Contact your legislators

Stop this hard-right religious bullying now. Make sure your legislators are co-sponsoring The Equality Act, H.R.2282/S. 1006, which amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect against discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Rep./Sen. to support {Rep.- H.R. 2282/Sen. – S. 1006} the Equality Act. (Click on the links to see how your legislator voted.
Thank Rep. Brownley and Sens. Feinstein and Harris for their support.)

Legislator Contact Info. Continue reading “Friday 3/16 – A walk down 3 dark alleys…” →