A group called the Lavender Effect has announced efforts to fundraise for a “world-class gay and lesbian museum” to be built in Los Angeles.

The brainchild of gay rights activist Ivy Bottini, the museum would promote LA as a center of gay culture and counteract any negative energy that may come from SoCal toward the LGBT community. The article above from the LA Weekly includes a Q&A about the potential of the new museum:

Weekly: What’s your mission or goal for the museum?

Sacher: We want to preserve our past, celebrate our present, and create our future. It’s our overall goal to advance society’s understanding and appreciation of LGBT people, and to educate the public and LGBT community about the important historical contributions of LGBT people to world civilization, as well as to California.

Bottini: We also want to demystify human sexuality and sexual identity, and showcase the full spectrum of LGBT diversity, human sexuality, and identification through immersive exhibits, cultural programs, interactive media, and scholarly research.

It’s also our goal to advance the campaign for full LGBT equality and maintain a sense of community among LGBT People. And we want to provide the resources and forum to help define the 21st century LGBTQ community.

We definitely intend to educate and inspire future generations of gays and lesbians and provide positive role models for LGBT youth.

Would you visit a high-end LGBT museum? What would you want it to offer?

In its second recent act of LGBT-inclusive advertising, retailer JC Penney featured a real gay couple in an ad booklet for Father’s Day. 

Last month for Mother’s Day, the store included a photo of two moms and their kids. Now they’ve done the same kind of spotlight with two dads:

The booklet, being mailed to customers and also available at the JC Penney website, has a picture of gay couple Todd Koch and Cooper Smith with their children, Claire and Mason, and copy reading, “What makes Dad so cool? He’s the swim coach, tent maker, best friend, bike fixer and hug giver — all rolled into one. Or two.”

JC Penney is rapidly becoming my new favorite store. 

Two men from South Wales won one million pounds - roughly $1.5 million - in the lottery this week. They’re believed to be the first gay couple in a civil ceremony to win more than a million dollars in the lottery, though in November 2010 a gay Canadian couple won a $50 million lottery prize.

Ian Pearce and Lyn Sexton have been together for 16 years and bought the lotto ticket on a whim. They entered into a civil ceremony six years ago (the U.K. doesn’t recognize marriage equality) and picked up their check at the same castle where they entered the ceremony.

The couple is grateful for their massive prize but say they are not sure what they’ll do with the money - besides splurge on traveling. Pearce and Sexton plan on taking their families on vacations to Egypt and Jamaica.

“It’s an overwhelming feeling. Ian and I already feel lucky as we have a nice lifestyle and we’ve had the chance to travel the world together,” Sexton said. “We’re both going to go back to work and take a year to decide what we want to do with the money,” he added.

Awesome for them! Maybe one day we’ll all be this lucky. 

Marquise Brown came out as gay to his aunt when he was 16. She kicked him out immediately - he couldn’t take any of his things, and he wasn’t wearing anything but his underwear. 

This is Marquise’s account of how he overcame being homeless on and off and found support at school to ultimately become valedictorian. Sometimes things get really bad, he says, but if you work for it, you can find a way through.

I knew there were consequences for standing up for your beliefs, but I never thought I’d lose the place I’d known as home since sixth grade because of who I am. Full of anger and despair, I walked a few blocks across our neighborhood to my sister’s house. Despite having two children of her own and another baby on the way, my sister welcomed me into her home. It was a relief to finally be able to be myself, but I also had to grow up fast. …

The support of my teachers, school, and peers also helped me stay on track. GCCP supported me not just as an occasionally homeless LGBTQ teen, but as a person and as a student. The school has always been a safe place where my peers and I don’t have to hide who we are. I’ve been able to focus on my academics, and I’ll proudly graduate as the valedictorian. I’m also a senior class representative for student council, a member of my school’s National Honor Society, and one of my school’s first male cheerleaders. In addition to actively recruiting boys for the cheerleading team, this year I helped create GCCP’s student-led Gay Straight Alliance, which organized our first annual National Day of Silence. Both students and staff members chose to remain silent for the day in recognition of LGBTQ individuals who are continuing to live without the ability to express themselves.

Marquise sounds like a pretty inspiring guy. If anyone will be going to Pomona College in the fall, look him up. 

A report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects has found that the number of anti-LGBT murders rose last year - 11 percent higher than the previous year. The Washington Blade outlines the findings pretty clearly:

The NCAVP’s annual report documents 30 anti-LGBT homicides across the county. While it showed that incidents of anti-LGBT hate violence decreased 16 percent from 2010, the number of anti-LGBT murders in 2011 is the highest that the agency has documented since it began to issue it began to issue its annual report in 1996.

NCAVP further noted that 87 percent of the 30 anti-LGBT homicide victims in 2011 were LGBT people of color—trans women comprised 40 percent of those who lost their lives to anti-LGBT bias-motivated crimes.

This is incredibly frightening and entirely too real, particularly in light of the hostile anti-gay messages coming from some churches and organizations all across the country.

How do we address this? What people, groups or policies should be responsible for ending this terrifying trend?

Teen activist Zach Wahls, whose testimony for marriage equality in Iowa went viral, delivered a petition urging the Boy Scouts of America to reinstate a den leader who was forced out of her position when it was discovered she was gay.

Jennifer Tyrrell, the mother of a 7-year-old Cub Scout, started a petition on Change.org in April after being told she couldn’t be a den leader anymore because of her sexual orientation. The petition has more than 275,000 signatures, and Wahls was set to deliver it to the Boy Scouts’ National Annual Meeting today. 

“It is both disappointing and discouraging that the Boy Scouts continue to fixate on the identity of adult leaders instead of the content of their characters,” Wahls said in a statement. “In the Boy Scouts, I learned valuable lessons about bravery, respect, and not passing judgment on others. If only the Boy Scouts would practice what they preach and end this discriminatory policy against families, youth and leaders.”

The petition has also gained support from celebrities including the likes of Josh Hutcherson, Julianne Moore, Fran Drescher, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Martin, Kelly Osbourne, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and more.

“I feel so lucky to have the support of thousands of scouts, scout leaders and former scouts. These are people who know firsthand how valuable scouting can be, but also know how damaging the policy prohibiting gay youth and gay leaders can be for troops and communities,” Tyrrell said in a press statement. “I remain extremely hopeful that this network of current and former scouts and scout leaders can create the type of change within the Boy Scouts organization, and that soon we will see a Boy Scouts that truly values tolerance, diversity, and respect within its membership.”

Zach Wahls is up there on the list of activists I want to meet ASAP. Also props to this mom for standing up for her family. Sometimes people really do shine the most in the worst situations. 

Laura Jane Grace, the singer-guitarist from Against Me! who was formerly known as Tom Gabel, made her debut in her first performance since coming out as transgender. 

Grace and the band performed in San Diego and played six new songs, including one titled “Transgender Dysphoria Blues.” She earned wild applause during a particular line of another song that goes, “If I could have chosen / I would have been born a woman.”

Though Grace says she’s open to having a dialogue about her transition with fans, she kept stage banter to a minimum and never brought up her coming out or new name in between songs. Since many of the concertgoers were Cult fans who weren’t familiar with Against Me!, the show wasn’t exactly ideal for a punk-rock heart-to-heart.

For his part, longtime fan Jimmy Gomez, 23, doesn’t think Grace needs to explain anything.

“She did it for herself, not for anybody else. This is about her,” he said. “She’s doing something she really loves now and she’s really happy – that’s really awesome.”

Good for her. It takes some serious strength to get up there and take center stage like that. Call me corny, but she really is a rock star. 

ExxonMobil shareholders will meet Wednesday to discuss adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the company’s employment nondiscrimination policy.

Some activists are planning to protest outside the hall where the shareholders will be voting. Because Obama hasn’t signed an executive order mandating that companies that do business with the federal government protect their LGBT employees, individual policies are still needed in many cases.

“ExxonMobil’s failure to include sexual orientation and gender identity in its written equal employment policy has made the company an outlier among its peers,” New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told Dallas Voice in an email.

“From a shareholder’s perspective, this policy means that ExxonMobil isn’t able to attract and retain the best talent to come work for the company and puts its reputation in harm’s way. Until it addresses this issue of discrimination, we don’t feel that ExxonMobil will be getting the best performance to benefit our holdings in the company.”

There is no excuse for any company to ever treat its employees differently based on something like sexual orientation or gender identity. I hope the people in charge here do the right thing. 

The government of Nepal has announced that citizens will now have the option of designating “other” as their gender on an official ID, rather than stating “male” or “female.” The change will take effect in a few weeks.

From Advocate.com:

LGBT activists in the nation welcomed the decision, which implements a ruling made by Nepal’s Supreme Court in 2007, reports wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur. It will help transgender people as well as others who suffer discrimination because their appearance does not match the gender listed on their citizenship cards, they said.

“Our community feels we are finally being granted an identity by the state, and my friends have told me they feel proud about it,” said Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal’s first openly gay legislator.

 Little steps like these are helping us break outside binaries. Good for Nepal.