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Join us for the 22nd National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, which convenes February 3-6 in Dallas, Texas. Creating Change is where LGBT activists and organizers can make their good work better and their better work the best. How? The Task Force Academy for Leadership and Action offers nearly 30 different top-level training sessions at Creating Change, presented and led by the smartest trainers in political and social justice movements.
Renna Communications’ trainings will be featured in the Task Force’s Academy for Leadership and Action, a leadership development and skill building training program facilitated by top-notch faculty. These high-level courses will be offered by faculty, including those from Renna Communications, with years of know-how.

posted: 3 December 09
Brooke Baldwin | CNN: The Situation Room | November 17, 2009

posted: 17 November 09
The Huffington Post | Gail Binkly, Editor Four Corners Free Press | October 26, 2009
Cortez became the center of a debate that raged on street corners, in coffee shops, and in the pages of the newspaper. Letters to the editor streamed in that variously condemned homosexuality, supported gay rights, questioned the very concept of “hate crimes,” and lamented the brutal death of a gentle and fun-loving boy.

posted: 26 October 09
AFRO Staff | The Afro American | October 14, 2009
African-American religious leaders such as columnist, Rev. Irene Monroe and the Rev. Graylan Hagler participated in the weekend’s events, leading an interfaith service at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ.
“It wasn’t so long ago that this country justified bigotry against African Americans by hiding behind cherry-picked religious texts. It took strong faith leaders like Dr. King to help overcome religion-based bigotry, then,” said Mitchell Gold, founder of Faith In America. “Now, as we struggle for rights as basic as freedom from violence, or the ability to marry, the next generation of faith leaders is playing a key role in gaining civil rights for LGBT Americans.”

posted: 15 October 09
NPR discusses the Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
Eleven years has passed since the death of Matthew Shepard, the young man who was beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyo. Authorities later learned Shepard was targeted because he was gay, the details of which inspired the 2002 HBO film “The Laramie Project” recapturing the killing. That same production group has returned to Laramie, both to mark an anniversary and to explore how life in the Wyoming town has changed since Shepard’s death. Their resulting epilogue, the Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, includes conversations one of Shepard’s convicted killers. Actor Greg Pierotti and Fr. Roger Schmitthe, a priest who organized the interviews, explain their newest project and why they continue to tell the story of Matthew Shepard.

posted: 12 October 09
Cathy Renna | The Bilerico Project | October 6, 2009
As we all wait for this weekend’s events to unfold in Washington, from the National Equality March to the President speaking at the HRC dinner, there are many mixed feelings. Will people show up? What will the President say? How will the media make sense of all the different and often conflicting voices in our community?
As I get ready for the weekend – and as someone who will be at the dinner and the march – I hope that all of us can keep one thing in mind: what we really are up against as we fight for full and equal treatment under the law.

posted: 8 October 09
Support full equality for all LGBT Americans? On October 11th, join Faith In America for the National Equality March and end the harm of religion-based bigotry against LGBT Americans. Contact Brent Childers for more information.

posted: 6 October 09
David Crary | The Associated Press | September 29, 2009
A decade after ‘‘The Laramie Project’‘ became a theatrical phenomenon, its creators are back with an epilogue highlighted by a riveting prison interview with the killer of gay college student Matthew Shepard — depicting him as candid but not remorseful over the murder.

posted: 29 September 09
Will O’Bryan | Metro Weekly | September 24, 2009
Judy Shepard hates October. The sixth day of that month marks the night her son Matthew was tied to a fence in Laramie, Wyo., and brutally beaten. Within a week, on Oct. 12, 1998, he died of those injuries in a Fort Collins, Colo., hospital, surrounded by family.
Just 21 when he was murdered, Shepard’s death shook a country dealing with GLBT equality as a political issue growing more pressing by the day. Matthew Shepard was not the first — nor the last — to be targeted because he was gay. But the circumstances were right for him to become the universal victim of anti-gay violence.

posted: 24 September 09
Andrea Stone | USA TODAY | September 7, 2009
One of the most approachable faces of the gay rights movement may finally see her mission fulfilled this year as Congress moves closer to passing the hate-crimes bill she has lobbied for a decade to pass. The Matthew Shepard Act would extend federal protections to people victimized because of sexual orientation. To give lawmakers an added push, Shepard begins a tour this month to promote her book, The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed.

posted: 10 September 09
By Kathy Belge | About.com
Editor of About.com’s “Lesbian Life” sat down with Portland State University’s women’s basketball head coach, Sherri Murrell to discuss what it’s like to be, as far as we know, the only out lesbian or bisexual coach in NCAA Division One Women’s Basketball.

posted: 9 September 09
PATRICK HEALY | August 4, 2009
The creators of “The Laramie Project,” the acclaimed play about the 1998 murder of a 21-year-old gay man, Matthew Shepard, are finishing work on an 80-minute epilogue to the original work that will be given its debut simultaneously at dozens of theaters across the United States on Oct. 12, the 11th anniversary of Mr. Shepard’s death.

posted: 4 August 09
PFLAG | February 1, 2010 | Washington, D.C.
“This resource can transform the experiences of LGBT people in the
healthcare system.”
—-Jody M. Huckaby, Executive Director, PFLAG National
Washington, D.C. ¬ While affordable healthcare continues to be a major national issue, this is only one of the challenges facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people when it comes to their medical care. Too often, providers’ lack the basic cultural competency on LGBT issues, rely on misinformation or simply do not have access to simple and effective resources, creating barriers to adequate healthcare access for their LGBT patients. The release of Straight for Equality in Healthcare aims to change this trend.

Courage Campaign | January 20, 2010 | Los Angeles
Jacobs: “The Courage Campaign Institute will continue to focus our energy on this historic trial and the rights and protections at stake for loving, committed same-sex couples. ‘ProtectMarriage.com’ can continue to expend time, energy and resources on a logo. Frankly, I think that says a lot about our respective priorities.”
LOS ANGELES, CA – The Courage Campaign Institute responded this morning to a complaint and temporary restraining order delivered yesterday by lawyers for ProtectMarriage.com and announced it will continue to refuse to remove a logo on their Prop 8 Trial Tracker website that parodies the ProtectMarriage.com logo.

National Network for Youth | January 4, 2010 | Los Angeles
Justin Reed Early, author of StreetChild: An Unpaved Passage will be honored at the National Network for Youth’s Annual Awards Dinner on January 26, 2010 with the prestigious organization’s annual Golden Pen Award.

Joe Hanel | The Durango Herald | November 22, 2009
Fred Martinez was anything but simple.
He was, at various moments, a boy, a girl, a Navajo, a Montezuma-Cortez High School student, gay, transgendered, nadleehi.
In June 2001, in a ravine just south of Cortez, he became a murder victim.
Now, he’s the subject of a movie, and, if the filmmakers have their way, he will become a window onto a view of gender that is at once new to American society and older than America itself.

Bao Ong | The New York Times | December 8, 2009
Since 2002, when he opened the Ali Forney Center, which helps homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth, Carl Siciliano says he had regularly heard stories about priests verbally or physically abusing youngsters who had come out to their parents, urging them to suppress their sexuality and telling parents to disown their children. So when the Episcopal Community Services of Long Island contacted Mr. Siciliano about creating a shelter for homeless gay youths, he paused.
