Dare To Be A Feminist

This week the effort to make Maryland the 17th state to provide comprehensive gender identity protections in employment, housing and public accommodations made its first public legislative appearance in Annapolis.

by JOHN PARKINSON,

ABC News Blogs

Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wisc., who joined Pelosi in introducing the [Violence Against Women] legislation, said, “Violence against women is as American as apple pie.”

“Domestic violence has been a thread throughout my personal life — up to and including being a child repeatedly sexually assaulted, up to and including being an adult who’s been raped.”

“This law has helped ensure that more victims report domestic violence to the police, that the rate of non-fatal intimate partner violence against women has been decreased by 53 percent, in that period of time,” she said. “Rape crisis centers have been able to keep their doors open [and] law enforcement and victims’ services providers are working together to better meet the needs of victims.”

“Unfortunately violence is not limited to just Democrats or just Republicans or just blacks or just whites,” Moore, the Democratic Co-Chair of the Congressional Women’s Caucus, said. “It’s not limited to heterosexual relationships, but there are relationships of all kinds that are exposed to domestic violence.”

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Huff Post Politics

No Special Rights PAC, a new anti-gay group, has laid down roots in Maine, where its two founders are hoping to combat a pro-equality push that has led to a same-sex marriage ballot initiative being put to a vote in November.

Paul Madore and Mike Heath, longtime opponents of gay rights and pro-gay initiatives who founded the group, made a public push this month at the University of Maine during Pride Week, where they distributed a "truth pledge" that, among other goals, seeks to rebrand gay marriage as "Sodomy-Based Marriage."

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