“Today, the House Judiciary Committee marked up the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, legislation that enhances federal involvement against hate crimes where necessary and authorizes the prosecution of hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.” (www.hrc.org). This is great news, [...]

Since the murder of Matthew Shepard ten years ago, in one of the most notorious hate crimes of our time, we have tried to get legislation passed to expand the federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation and gender as a bias motivation. This legislation is critical for local law enforcement, prosecutors, and everyone [...]

How ironic on the 10th year observance of the Columbine High School incident that my college would experience its very first “lock down” ever when two armed bank robbers fled their get-away vehicle and ran into our campus while still armed. The suspects hid in our library and changed clothes in our bathroom. As soon [...]

In my last podcast I talked about how the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is co-sponsoring the 13th Annual GLBT Public Safety Conference this year in Palm Springs on September 2 through 4, 2009. This is an amazing event on so many levels. First of all, it’s an incredible opportunity to meet fellow GLBT public [...]

A student asked me today if gay police officers really have to keep themselves hidden in this day and age. The answer is, unfortunately, still “yes.” Homophobia is still alive and well in many law enforcement agencies in California and throughout the United States. In this month’s podcast, we challenge you to give up your [...]

On April 17, 2009, thousands of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people will be silent for the entire day to symbolize the silence they are forced to maintain every day because of who they are. This silence is imposed by the hatred that exists in our society as expressed in words and by violence against [...]

This weekend Tony and I traveled to Laramie, Wyoming for the Elton John concert benefiting the Matthew Shepard Foundation. 10 years ago, months after Matthew’s murder, Elton John came to Wyoming to do a benefit concert. He returned this weekend and raised another $550,000 for the Foundation. We were fortunate to have seats in the [...]