compiled by Howard Israel
S/he said
"We are showing the world that the people of Illinois believe in equality for all. We look forward to individuals and businesses from across the country choosing to move to Illinois where we believe that everyone is entitled to the same rights."
-Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, after signing the legislation legalizing civil unions in Illinois that took effect on June 1, http://www.articles.cnn.com. Civil unions or their equivalent are now legal in Illinois, California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington and the District of Columbia.
"It began as the gay disease, then it became the poor disease or the drug addict's disease; it is time we recognize that as black people, this is our disease. When we talk about the state of the epidemic, first, you have to accept it for the fact that it is a black problem and it has been for the past decade. In whatever way you chop it up at this point … black people seem to rise to the top of those numbers. We cannot talk about 'who is on the down low'. What we need to do is have conversations about how to get black women and men to take charge of their health so they are safe no matter who they are having sex with."
-Kai Wright, writer and activist, quoted in a column titled "AIDS Turns 30 Years Old Today, Blacks Still Afraid To Talk About It," http://www.theloop21.com, May 17.
"Despite our longstanding knowledge of how HIV is transmitted and prevented, a total of 1,074,364 people have been diagnosed with AIDS nationwide and by the end of 2008 more than half had lost their lives to the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates about 50,000 people are infected each year, more than half are MSM, and almost half are black/African American, and today more than one million people are living with HIV in the U.S.; roughly 20% of whom are undiagnosed."
-Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, in a report titled "Thirty Years of HIV in the United States," http://www.lapublichealth.org, June issue.
"The Center for American Progress survey found that 9 of out 10 voters erroneously think that a federal law is already in place protecting gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. A similar number of voters also did not know whether their state had a gay and transgender workplace discrimination law. These numbers show the huge disconnect between voter perceptions about workplace protections and the realities that gay and transgender people face on the job."
-Jeff Krehely, in a column titled "Polls Show Huge Public Support for Gay and Transgender Workplace Protections," about a new poll from the Center for American Progress of likely 2012 voters in the first and second weeks of April 2011, http://www.americanprogress.org, June 2.
