Tags Share Today, Uganda’s Constitutional Court announced its verdict on a legal challenge against the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), which was signed into law by President Museveni in May 2023. The AHA is one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Rather than strike it down, the Court unanimously ruled that only certain provisions are nullified…
Tags Share WASHINGTON, D.C., March 31, 2024 – Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights today announced Arely Westley, an LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights activist, as the recipient of its 41st annual RFK Human Rights Award. A ceremony honoring Westley is scheduled for the first week of June in Washington, D.C. A longtime advocate for immigrant, Latinx,…
Tags Share In 2009, 26-year-old trans woman and LGBTQ+ rights activist Vicky Hernández was murdered in Honduras during a coup d’etat perpetrated by a right-wing sector of society. For years, the legal team at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights fought for accountability in Vicky’s case. In 2021, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a…
Tags Share Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Human Rights Campaign made history this spring, as the organizations partnered to release a free classroom resource aimed at making students better allies of the LGBTQ+ community in their everyday lives. Laura Osterndorf, training manager for RFK Human Rights’ Speak Truth to Power program, was a…
Jamie Nabozny was born in 1975 in Ashland, Wisconsin, a small town on the south shore of Lake Superior. From a young age, he knew he was gay and confided in his family, but he didn’t come out to friends and classmates. Nonetheless, in middle school he was the object of physical violence and degradation,…
Mugisha knew he was gay when he was a young teenager, but his Catholic faith told him to pray those feelings away. When he finally came out to his family, they tried many times to “cure” him. And though they were eventually accepting, they continued to wish he would not be so open with others.…
Born in 1961, Andrea Jenkins was raised on Chicago’s West Side by a single mother from a working-class community. Her father battled addiction and was incarcerated through much of her childhood, but her mother was loving and emphasized the importance of a good education. Jenkins discovered literature and poetry at a young age, along with…
Gavin Grimm grew up in Gloucester, Virginia. He came out as transgender in 2014 during his sophomore year at Gloucester High School. With his principal’s permission, he used the boys’ restrooms at school for several months without any problems, before a handful of parents went to the school board to complain. A public meeting was…
Laverne Cox was born in 1972 in Mobile, Alabama, and she and her identical twin brother were raised by a single mother and grandmother. At age 11, Cox attempted suicide—she was developing feelings for her male classmates and being bullied for not acting “the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act.” Cox…
Jacob Tobia (they/them) was born in 1991 and raised by a Methodist family in Raleigh, North Carolina. In high school, Tobia was president of the Gay-Straight Alliance and participated in student government. They applied and were accepted to Harvard but chose to attend Duke University, where they graduated summa cum laude with a degree in…
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