Act On Principles has created new tools to make sure you can find out where your Senators and Representatives stand on ALL of the LGBT legislation as designated by the Equality Caucus. We are currently in the process to ensure all 535 voting members of Congress receive a survey directly from Act On Principles. However, we need your help to ensure that the various offices in the House and Senate complete the survey, and provide the information that we need.
Public Whip Count Tools:
Instructions for Contacting Congress
1. Contact the Congressional offices that you want to get information from. Call the District or Washington office using information from www.house.gov or www.senate.gov. Let them know that you are sending them a survey on LGBT legislation.
2. Provide the appropriate survey for the office that you are contacting. Use the US House of Representatives survey for Representatives. Use the US Senate Survey for Senators.
4. Ask the staffer or Member “Hi, I would like to know if you can fill out a survey on where you stand on all pieces of LGBT specific legislation as designated by the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. I am asking that you provide the position based on the accepted whip count terminology.”
5. Collect survey(s) from the Congressional office(s) you have contacted. You might have to do follow-up calls and emails.
6. Share the information that you collected with Act On Principles in one of the following three ways: a.) Enter information into appropriate Public Whip Count for Act on Principles at www.actonprinciples.org. B.) Email or scan responses to whipcount@actonprinciples.com. c.) Fax to 305-723-0299.
Your encouragement and persistence to get your Representatives to fill out the survey will be helpful in gathering information for our Public Whip Count. Act On Principles will be creating special webpage to list all of the members who have completed the survey as requested. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact us.
From Civil Right leader and LGBT activist David Mixner. You can read the entire piece here.
First and foremost, the LGBT struggle is one of the great civil rights movement of our times. Given that, quite honestly, there is simply no logical personal or political reason for President Obama to be against marriage equality. At this stage there can only be two conclusions: that he is a political coward or that he does indeed hold prejudice against LGBT citizens. Nothing else fits at this stage. No one can make any more excuses and no one can justify his position any longer. Looking at the facts, the statistics, the political reality and at the President’s current position one can only
say “Shame on you, Mr. President. Shame on you.”
This weekend two factors forced me to focus on his lack of leadership on this issue. One was a brilliant article in the New Republic by Richard Just entitled simply “Disgrace” and the other was a chart published in The New York Timesshowing the massive change in support across the country for marriage equality. Combine that with a recent CNN poll that showed 52% of Americans believe now that marriage equality is a Constitutional Right and you see how ridiculous his position has become before the public.
From GetEqual:
We’re heading into the end of summer, and there has been both an eerie silence from Congress and whispers of surrender from the White House about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Despite these challenges from our elected leaders, GetEQUAL is determined to pull out all the stops to get ENDA passed in 2010.
We’ve heard promises for 40 years that this legislation will be passed — but we have a moral obligation to speak out while it is still perfectly legal for employers in 29 states to fire someone for their sexual orientation and in 38 states to fire someone for their gender identity or expression.
Our elected leaders tell us that this legislation is “complicated” and we should continue waiting.
But while Members of Congress are back in their home districts trying to save their jobs, we are left waiting for legislation that would safeguard ours. There are millions of LGBTQ Americans who are at risk of losing their jobs, at a moment’s notice, because there are no federal job protections in place.
Join the “ENDA Summer” campaign today: http://www.getequal.org/endasummer
This isn’t a legislative issue — this is a moral issue. And we’re targeting legislators in specific states who have not yet shown the moral courage to support this legislation.
We’re tired of legislators telling us that basic job protections for LGBTQ Americans are politically inconvenient — that some are more concerned with securing their own jobs than those of their constituents. We’re tired of being asked to wait — we’ve been waiting for 40 years.
GetEQUAL has created a targeted list of legislators who we think need to hear from you in order to pass this legislation in 2010, as promised. [1] Every day that this legislation is not passed, there are LGBTQ Americans scared to be “out” at work, fearful of losing work stability, discriminated against for not conforming to gender stereotypes, or fired for acting “too gay.”
Join the “ENDA Summer” campaign today: http://www.getequal.org/endasummer
We appreciate your ongoing commitment to taking bold action to secure LGBTQ equality, and we look forward to connecting you with our local organizers on the ground in your state!
Get Out! Get Active! GetEQUAL!
Robin McGehee
Co-Founder and Director, GetEQUAL
Another great civil disobedience day exposing injustice. Read full article here.
On the day hundreds of gay and lesbian couples statewide planned to obtain their long-awaited marriage licenses, a crowd of about 50 people gathered at the county clerk’s office Thursday to protest a federal judge’s stay of a federal ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
Three people were taken away in plastic handcuffs by sheriff’s deputies early in the demonstration and an additional six people were removed later. A deputy said they were detained for blocking access to a county office.
“It is not enough to look back in wonder at how far we have come; those who came before us did not strike a blow against injustice only so that we would allow injustice to fester in our time. That means removing the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding that still exist in America.” -
