civil rights

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Police Shut Down 'Mr. Gay China' Pageant

Police say organizers didn't apply 'according to procedures'

(Newser) - Chinese police shut down the “Mr. Gay China” pageant an hour before it was set to start, saying the organizers didn’t apply for permissions “according to the procedures.” The event was seen as a symbol of China’s newfound acceptance of homosexuality, which was illegal in...

First Gay Couples Marry in NH

New year brings new law for same-sex unions

(Newser) - The New Year brought a new law to New Hampshire, where midnight ceremonies took advantage of the fact that gay marriage is now legal in the state. As 2010 dawned, a bill signed last June became law, and the Granite State joined Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Vermont in recognizing same-sex...

Percy Sutton, Malcolm X Lawyer, Dies

Civil rights activist was also savior of the Apollo Theater

(Newser) - Percy Sutton, the pioneering civil rights attorney who represented Malcolm X before launching successful careers as a political power broker and media mogul, has died at age 89. A spokeswoman for Gov. David Paterson confirmed Sutton died yesterday, but didn't know the cause. His daughter, Cheryl Sutton, declined comment. The...

Straight Woman Offers Her Right to Marry on eBay
Straight Woman Offers Her Right to Marry on eBay
SOLIDARITY DEPT

Straight Woman Offers Her Right to Marry on eBay

She can't actually do that, but the bids are real, and going to charity

(Newser) - A straight woman is auctioning off her right to marry on eBay in response to the New York state senate's rejection of a gay marriage bill. Alas, Jamie Frevele can’t actually auction off the right guaranteed her by way of her heterosexual birth, The Frisky notes. But the money...

NY Senator Diane Savino Wins Over Internet

 NY Senator 
 Diane Savino 
 Wins Over 
 Internet  
gay marriage debate

NY Senator Diane Savino Wins Over Internet

She may be on gay marriage's losing side, but she's a viral video sensation

(Newser) - The New York state senate voted down gay marriage yesterday, but the debate created a big winner on the losing side: viral video darling Diane Savino, who's taking the blogosphere by storm. "Savino for President 2016!" Lindsay Robertson writes for Jezebel . In just over 7 minutes, the Staten...

King's Daughter to Head SCLC
 King's Daughter to Head SCLC 

King's Daughter to Head SCLC

Bernice King to be first woman to head group

(Newser) - Bernice King was elected to lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference today, becoming the first woman to helm the civil rights organization her father, Martin Luther King Jr., co-founded. King wasn’t there for the board vote, which she won 23-15 over an Arkansas judge, so interim president Byron Clay...

Calif. Will Honor Harvey Milk

'Day of significance' commemorates gay rights pioneer

(Newser) - Reversing his position on a bill he vetoed a year ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed off on bill making May 22 an annual day of recognition in  honor of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk. The San Francisco supervisor, who was assassinated in 1978, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Reporter: Obama Dismissed Gay Marchers as 'Fringe'

White House takes comedians more seriously, Harwood says

(Newser) - Barack Obama isn’t exactly quaking in his boots over the gay rights protesters that marched on Washington yesterday. The administration views the advocates as “part of the Internet left fringe,” CNBC correspondent John Harwood said on NBC last night. “One adviser told me, ‘those bloggers...

Gay Rights Rally Draws Tens of Thousands to DC

Energized by Obama's vow on 'don't ask, don't tell,' activists demand equality

(Newser) - Thousands of gay and lesbian activists marched from the White House to the Capitol today, demanding that President Obama keep his promises to end "don't ask, don't tell" and work to end discrimination against gays. Rainbow flags and homemade signs abounded as participants chanted "Hey, Obama, let mama...

Garrido: Cops Trampling Dugard's Civil Rights

Kidnap victim denied free speech, access to attorney, suspect writes to local TV reporter

(Newser) - Phillip Garrido says the woman he’s accused of abducting as a child and holding captive for 18 years is being denied civil rights as part of the ongoing investigation, he writes in a letter to Sacramento’s KRCA-TV. Jaycee Dugard’s “free speach [sic] rights are being violated,...

Meet This Year's MacArthur 'Geniuses'

Journalists, scientists, artists among 24 awarded $500K grants

(Newser) - A newspaper reporter who refuses to forget decades-old murders is among 24 recipients of this year's $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grants." As in previous years, a wide variety of fields are represented on the list of recipients: There is a novelist and an applied physicist, a photojournalist...

Holder to Crank Up Civil Rights Enforcement

Holder restoring Civil Rights Division to pre-Bush status

(Newser) - The Obama administration plans to revitalize the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and beef up efforts against racial discrimination, the New York Times reports. Attorney General Eric Holder has been working to redirect the focus to tackling discrimination in high-impact areas like housing, voting rights, employment, and bank lending, where...

Chinese Police Beat, Detain Artist at Earthquake Trial

(Newser) - Ai Weiwei, China's leading artist and a prominent critic of the country's government, said yesterday he was beaten and detained when he tried to testify at a civil rights advocate's trial. Ai told the New York Times that dozens of police officers barged into his hotel room in Chengdu, the...

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Unsung 'Civil Rights Hero'

(Newser) - Not too long ago the mentally disabled—or "retarded" people, as we called them then—were often hidden away in medical institutions, neglected by their families, and subjected to horrific policies such as forced sterilization. Eunice Kennedy Shriver changed all that with the Special Olympics, which started in her...

Medals of Freedom Will Go to Milk, Kennedy, Poitier

(Newser) - This year's Medal of Freedom recipients share a capacity to change the world, President Obama said today in naming the eclectic group. Among the 16 honorees are Sen. Ted Kennedy, slain gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, actor Sidney Poitier, tennis great Billie Jean King, and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day...

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Will Get Senate Hearing

Senate committee to examine consequences of military's gay policy

(Newser) - The Senate Armed Services Committee will convene a fall hearing to examine the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy governing gay service members, the Albany Times Union reports. Chairman Carl Levin agreed to hold the hearings at the encouragement of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,...

Obama: 'No Excuses' for Black Kids in US

(Newser) - President Obama made his most direct appeal yet to black America with a rousing speech that sounded more like a sermon, the New York Times reports. Addressing the NAACP on its 100th anniversary, Obama said the "pain of discrimination" still exists in America, but he told black parents they...

Pool Accused of Racism Will Ask Campers Back

(Newser) - The suburban Philadelphia swim club at the center of a racism controversy will ask the day campers it disinvited to return, the local ABC affiliate reports. "We are very very sorry that this had to happen," the club president tells WPVI-TV. He had sparked the incident by saying...

Pool Bans Black Kids? What Decade Is It?
 Pool Bans Black Kids?  
 What Decade Is It? 
OPINION

Pool Bans Black Kids? What Decade Is It?

Racial discrimination sends us back to the 1950s

(Newser) - A largely white suburban Philadelphia swim club’s barring of black and Latino campers was so backward “I thought I had fallen into a time warp,” writes Annette John-Hall in the Inquirer. Things like this happened in the 1950s—when singer Dorothy Dandridge booked a room in a...

Emmett Till's Casket Found 'Rusted, Battered'

Locals search for loved ones' graves at desecrated cemetery

(Newser) - As Chicagoans mourned the desecration of a historic cemetery, the casket of civil rights icon Emmett Till was found rusted in a shack amid garbage and gravestones, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. “When we opened it up trying to find what we have, a family of possums ran out,”...

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