User:Tif Fernandez

THE AMERICAN EQUALITY BILL

The American Equality Bill is a proposed piece of legislation that will insert "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" along side "race, color, sex, national origin and religion" into the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Articles 2, 3, 6, 7 & 8), The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, The Government Employees Act of 1991, and The Equal Credit Opportunity Act."

In so doing, the American Equality Bill (AEB) will end legal discrimination on the basis of anyone's "sexual orientation," and anyone's "gender identity" in vast areas of public life already covered by America's civil rights/non-discrimination laws.

Currently, these laws outlaw discrimination in: 1. public and private employment, 2. housing, 3. all public places (i.e., restaurants, hotels), 4. all state and local government buildings (i.e., schools), 5. all programs funded by the federal government (i.e., health, HIV, homeless youth, adoption), 6. access to credit (i.e., home loans), and 7. against people with disabilities.

Beyond law, the 1964 Civil Rights Act represents the official policy statement of the United States government against discrimination and sets the ethical civic standard for mutual respect. Its passage rebuked racism, and later sexism and religious-based discrimination, and the inclusion of "sexual orientation and gender identity" is intended to have a similar impact on homophobia and transphobia.

In practice, inclusion of "sexual orientation and gender identity" in the CRA will invoke protection from discrimination for all Americans, including the 30 million LGBTQ Americans, by the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. Doing so will finally fulfill the duty of our Government under the United States Constitution (Article 14), and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights to protect the human dignity of all people from discrimination based on who they are.

The AEB PROJECT

To advance the AEB toward filing and passage, the American Equality Bill (AEB) Project was established, as a project of Equality Giving, a group of major donors in the LGBT community.

Spearheading that effort as the AEB Project's Campaign Facilitator is J. Todd (Tif) Fernandez, a former General Counsel and Legislative Director for the Executive Office of Economic Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Ombudsman for the Governor's Office for Brownfield Revitalization, under Governors William Weld and Paul Cellucci. Mr. Fernandez also holds a Masters of Law in Human Rights and Democratization in Africa, from the University of Pretoria, Center for Human Rights, South Africa.

Since its launch on June 4th, 2010, the AEB Project's first priority has been to secure a lead sponsor to file the bill, while also raising awareness of the exclusion of LGBT people from the fundamental civil rights non-discrimination protections afforded other Americans.

Toward this, the AEB Project has conducted two major actions.

1. The "Homophobia Kills Die-In" in Grand Central Terminal" - a civil disobedience by hundreds who defied police to lay down on the Grand Concourse in NYC's busiest commuter station in flash-mob style at 6 p.m. on a Friday. Names were read of those killed by homophobia and transphobia and then the masses chanted a ringing demand for "Civil Rights Now. Civil Rights Now".

2. The "QUEER SOS" - a daily vigil outside of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's campaign office that began on September 27, 2010 and is on-going through November 2nd, at which point individual activists will commence a fast. The demand is that Senator Gillibrand file the American Equality Bill.

The AEB Project is intentionally all grassroots and all volunteer, and is designed to empower the grassroots to directly act for their liberation from the insidious human rights abuse of discrimination based on transphobia and homophobia, which Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu equates to apartheid in America.

The AEB Project encourages local activists to conceive and take action for their own strategies designed to secure initial sponsorship of the AEB, and to form groups to target local officials, such as those now formed in AEB San Francisco, CA and AEB Columbus, OH.

For this, the AEB Project provides the AEB draft language, state specific AEB listserves for open use, and coordinates on local facebook pages designed to create local AEB teams. While teams are encouraged, every individual is also urged to act according to their own desires.

The AEB Project also champions general campaign strategy and initiates outreach to potential important allies such as the NAACP, NOW and ACLU and others critical to ultimate passage of this historic piece of legislation.

The AEB is also supported by Act On Principles, a LGBTQ community political website that hosts public Whip Counts listing the positions of every elected official on all LGBT legislation, as well as the proposed American Equality Bill.

HISTORY

The content of the AEB was originally found in The Equality & Religious Freedom Act (Omnibus Equality Bill), drafted by Karen Doering, former Senior Counsel for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, as a project of Equality Giving, working with its co-founder Juan Ahonen-Jover, Ph.D., former Board member of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Created in 2009, the effort was designed to expand the scope of the legislative agenda for the modern gay rights movement.

In 2010, the base content of the Omnibus bill was edited slightly and renamed as The American Equality Bill by J. Todd Fernandez, JD, LLM.

The LGBT Community has not sought inclusion in the Civil Rights Act since 1974, when U.S. Representative Bella Abzug first filed a bill dubbed "The Gay Civil Rights Bill" to add "sexual orientation" and other traits.