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GLAA joins Reel Affirmations for film screening Oct. 25 10/21/02 |
Rosendall discusses GLAA at Reel Affirmations
Good evening.
The Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance has been fighting for equal rights in DC since 1971. We are all-volunteer and nonpartisan.
We educate and rate candidates, lobby elected officials, monitor DC agencies, and organize coalitions to protect our equal rights.
We have fought the Marines (in hand-to-hand combat), the Park Police, the Boy Scouts, Big Brothers, the Metro System, and Georgetown University. We also fought Woodward & Lothrop. They are gone and we are still here, so that tells you something. We have won victories on hate crimes, condom availability, domestic partners, and sodomy law repeal. We worked with HRC and others to defend gay adoptions. We continue fighting anti-transgender discrimination.
In 1972 we helped the DC School Board become the first in the nation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. The following year, the DC Human Rights Act became one of the strongest gay-inclusive civil rights laws in the nation. The only one that has us beat is South Africa, which has us in their constitution, but they had a revolution more recently than we did.
We joined with the NAACP to fight police abuses. We fought harassment of gay businesses, and defended nude dancing entertainment.
Our website makes a wealth of information available online for citizens, public officials, and reporters. After 31 years, we are still working as advocates and watchdogs for our community. We use email like crazy, but we still meet twice a month. Visit glaa.org and click on Meetings to see our schedule. Help us keep DC one of the gay-friendliest places on earth. And please join me in supporting One In Ten and our independent filmmakers.
Thank you.