If you’ve been reading these reviews for a while, you’ll notice I love me some context. Especially surrounding William Shakespeare’s plays. One of my favorite things about the existence of Richmond Shakespeare is that they’ve forced me to go back to the English Lit...
The bill, introduced by Del. Mark Levine, would have protected citizens against bias-based profiling on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as requiring police to provide aid to the injured and report misconduct by other officers. A Senate committee recently killed a bill intended to minimize police misconduct and...
In this month's Amazon Trail, Lee Lynch recounts her experience getting her first of two COVID vaccines, and recalls her childhood experience of receiving an experimental dose of Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine. Now that President Biden and Vice President Harris are in office, I’ve been able to have my first COVID-19 vaccine shot. It was no big...
Richard Shelby is the fourth Republican Senator to announce his retirement since Joe Biden was elected president. His longtime opposition to LGBTQ rights makes his retirement something to be grateful for. The mass exodus of Republicans from the U.S. Senate continues, with Richard Shelby of Alabama announcing Monday his retirement at the...
Roger Severino, the anti-LGBTQ right-wing Christian activist who made things difficult for LGBTQ Americans during his time running HHS's Office Of Civil Rights for Trump, is suing the Biden administration for firing him. Roger Severino, a former Trump appointee at the Dept. of Health and Human Services who targeted LGBTQ Americans in his...
Sen. Ghazala Hashmi's bill to expand hate crimes to include crimes based on perception -- which would have had the effect of protecting gender expression, not covered under current hate crime statutes -- failed in the Virginia state Senate after backlash from both parties. Legislators attempted to pass a bill that would expand the definition of a...
This court decision pushes Alabama one step closer to the modern age, whether they like it or not. (Sure enough, the state's attorney general plans to appeal.) Alabama is one of the eight remaining U.S. states that require transgender people to undergo gender-affirmation surgery before they can get a state-issued identification that lists their...
Who led the original push for the now-repealed transgender military ban? Suspects include a Congressman, a Vice President, the head of a hate group, and the wife of a Supreme Court justice. It was July 26, 2017. Three and a half years ago, almost to the day, when President Donald Trump shocked the nation with a series of tweets that seemed to...
The Biden Executive Order allows "all qualified persons to serve in the military." President Joe Biden has just signed an executive order reversing President Trump’s total ban on transgender service members. The order “sets the policy that all Americans who are qualified to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States should be able to serve....
President Joe Biden has nominated Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine to become the Assistant Secretary of Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, which will make her the first openly trans presidential cabinet official in United States history. Incoming President Joe Biden will officially nominate Pennsylvania Secretary...
