From Cecilia Chung...
Welcome! My name is Cecilia Chung and I live in San Francisco, California. If you are looking for Cecilia Cheung, the Chinese actress, then you have come to the wrong site. If you are from the media and is looking specifically for information about me, please note that the spelling of my name is C-e-c-i-l-i-a and not Cecelia.
Cecilia - What's in a name?
If you are curious about the origin of my name, here's it's history. Cecilia is the feminine form of Caecilius or Cecil, which was derived from Latin caecus which means "blind". St Cecilia is the patron saint of music and the Celtic name, Sissy, was derived from Cecilia.
Why did I pick the name Cecilia? My first choice was the name Cordelia which often believed to be the feminine form of coeur de lion since I am a Leo. I used to see my relationship with my father like the one shared by Cordelia and King Lear. But as I journeyed into womanhood, I realize in fact that I was the one who's blind and not able to understand and appreciate my father's way of loving his children.
So there you have it. Thanks again for visiting.
Right Wing Activists Attempt to Repeal LGBT Youth Protections
Posted by Cecilia Chung
SACRAMENTO - Conservative, anti-LGBT activists have taken the first step to ask California voters to repeal youth protections recently signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. On Monday, the Capitol Resource Institute in Sacramento started the voter referendum process in an attempt to undo student safeguards the governor recently approved in SB 777, authored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, and sponsored by Equality California. Read more
ENDA is not Over
Posted by Cecilia Chung
H.R. 3685, the water-down version of ENDA, has passed the Committee of Education and Labor this morning and is making its was to the floor. We had Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s committment to ammend the bill and restore the language to include gender-identity.
It is historically unprecedented that Congress would pass a civil rights law that the civil rights community–including those it is meant to protect–do not want.
There is one thing positive that came out of the past two weeks - we have never seen the LGBT community united so strongly and what we’e accomplished in the past two weeks far exceeds the effectiveness of the advocacy effort of any single community.
There will be more calls to action in the next several weeks, stay tuned.
ENDA: One People, One Bill, One Vote
Posted by Cecilia Chung
The recent revisions to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) have left us with a bill that no competent attorney representing the LGBT community would ever support. Over 150 LGBT and other civil rights and community organizations are on record as opposing the new version of ENDA for a number of very compelling reasons as a legal organization our opposition is grounded in the reality of the cases we have seen and stories of clients we have heard over the years.
NCLR, Lambda Legal, the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and the Transgender Law Center are all unified in our opposition to a bill that will leave many lesbian, gay and bisexual, as well as transgender employees with no redress if fired from their jobs. The revised ENDA marks a major step backwards in the development of laws that protect LGBT employees from discrimination.
By dropping “gender identity” from the bill, this enormously important law, completely betrays the transgender community. Our transgender brothers and sisters have stood with this movement from our earliest beginnings. Transgender individuals loose jobs, are rejected from consideration for employment and are passed over for promotion at greater rates than lesbian, gay or bisexual employees. Moreover, under the revised ENDA employers can claim—and we know they will—that a firing was not based on sexual orientation, but rather on the employees failure to act feminine or masculine enough. This kind of sex stereotyping is at the root of much of the discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Yet, this kind of discrimination will be perfectly legal under ENDA.
We have been working with our colleague organizations for years to pass an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that will protect the victims of discrimination we see every day. For years we have also made clear to key leaders in Congress that including gender identity in ENDA is the only way to protect all of us. The loopholes in the new bill are not only based on the removal of gender identity, the section of ENDA which provided a religious exemption to some employers has been broadened to encompass hospitals and universities run by “faith-based” groups. Under the new version employers can refuse to extend health insurance benefits to couples in domestic partnerships, even if they provide such benefits to married couples.
There is no good reason to support this inferior, flawed and unacceptable version of ENDA. Over a dozen states have passed laws that include gender identity. We cannot and should not accept a federal law which is riddled with loopholes when we can and have been successful in passing laws that truly do protect us all from discrimination on the job. NCLR and our colleagues are committed to fighting for everyone in our community. We are committed to fighting not only the best ENDA we can get, but the ENDA we all deserve.
KQED Forum on Employment Non-Discrimination Act
Posted by Cecilia Chung
This was a pre-recorded show from Wednesday, October 3. I was disappointed that Congressman Frank did not make the call. It was, nevertheless, a great discussion on ENDA. Noticed the data presented was on gay and lesbian individuals only. What happened to data on transgender people?
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