Happy Valentine’s Day! We love each and every one of you. Consider this edition of our weekly LGBTQ+ newsletter to be Basic Rights Oregon’s
Basic Rights Oregon, which has been working since the 1990s to end discrimination against LGBTQ2SIA+ people, is running a weekly newsletter with an emphasis on counter-actions and reasons to hope. Each issue contains a measured evaluation of how immediate a given threat is, a round-up of what is being done about it, and how we can best protect each other in the meanwhile.
I highly recommend it as an antidote to the panic and anxiety so many of us are feeling right now.
Items are a mix of national and Oregon news. Highlights from this issue on national topics:
Court rulings that have blocked Trump's executive order on gender-affirming care and returned LGBTQ+ information to CDC websites.
Protests supporting queer art at the Kennedy Center
ACLU lawsuit challenging the anti-trans passport policy
A notice about the removal of trans history from the National Park Service's Stonewall materials.
Info about how to support the Trans Youth Emergency Project, which assists trans youth in the 26 states that DON'T protect trans rights.
And about stuff happening in Oregon:
Bills currently before the Oregon legislature, how to support the good ones and the unlikelihood of the bad ones passing.
Local fundraising events, including a trivia night and a movie showing.
In short, if you want to stay informed about queer news but are trying to keep from getting burned out by the news-cycle rollercoaster, this is a good resource. I particularly commend it to people in Oregon who are looking for constructive ways to protect queer rights from this administration.
