An Interesting Day

I attended a panel discussion called Striking A Balance - A conversation on balancing civil rights and religious freedom.  It was held at the Center for Civil and Human Rights sponsored by their LGBT Institute.  A couple of the speakers were Wade Henderson, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights along with Richard Cohen CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  There was a discussion on the fact that many of the bills in the Georgia Legislature are supposedly about religious rights and the fact that some of these bills if they became law would protect the KKK because it claims it's a Christian organization.  Mr. Cohen pointed out that the most danger though was not from hate groups like the KKK, it was from the haters in business suits in the legislature.  The second panel consisted of state leaders including Jerry Gonzalez of Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, Monica Simpson of Sister Song, Stephanie Cho of Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Francys Johnson, the state president of the GA chapter of the NAACP.  Probably the most significant remarks came from Mr. Johnson that combining interests of many groups helps fight bigotry more than opposing as individual groups.  As he said, "We were never interested in saving just one room in the house.  We are interested in saving the whole house."

I was privileged to meet three local transwomen, a local transman with HRC and of course my friend Rev. Dr. Erin was there.  It was a great day.