Matt Comer
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice is spoke out on one city’s local ordinances that target sleeping in public spaces. According to The Washington Post, the DOJ last month filed a statement weighing in on a Boise, Idaho, ordinance that prohibits sleeping in public spaces. The DOJ says, as quoted by the Post: When […]
All four magistrates in McDowell County, N.C., have opted to take advantage of North Carolina’s anti-LGBT magistrate refusal bill, citing their religious beliefs against same-gender marriage, according to a report today from WLOS.
I know. You’re tired of hearing about Kim Davis. I am, too. But this one bit of overlooked news has a bit of an interesting local angle. Among the throngs of people who amassed in Kentucky to support the law-breaking court clerk were several of the Charlotte-area’s own homegrown anti-LGBT extremists. Flip Benham, his twin […]
You might not think there’s any LGBT interest in boring city zoning regulations. But there is, and Charlotte’s zoning laws have in the past been detrimental to and discriminatory toward the LGBT community. It’s all part of a larger picture wherein local laws and ordinances — zoning, licensing, policing and more — have a direct effect on the lives of LGBT residents and business owners.
No news or commentary this weekend, friends. Happy Labor Day! I did want to take the time to offer a personal note of reflection on these last two weeks of transition for me. I’m looking back fondly on the nearly eight years of writing I did at the newspaper, hopeful that those voluminous archives helped […]
An incident of anti-transgender discrimination at Central Piedmont Community College last year is cited in a new short documentary produced in collaboration with the Chronicle of Higher Education and Campus Pride.
Mailers for the TurnOUT Charlotte! get-out-the-vote campaign began arriving in local voters’ mailboxes on Thursday.
Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis is in jail for repeatedly disobeying a court order to do her job. In North Carolina, her actions are completely legal.
Today begins early voting in Charlotte’s upcoming primary election. The LGBT vote turnout could be significant election changer.
This year’s failed LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination effort was among the questions asked of voters in a Charlotte Observer poll — and the responses highlight and confirm the contention and division we saw over the effort earlier this year.
Representatives of three LGBT advocacy groups announced their endorsements of City Council candidates at a press conference Wednesday morning, throwing their weight — and money — behind four at-large Democratic candidates and several candidates in contested district races.
Three LGBT advocacy groups will launch a new electoral campaign in Charlotte at a joint press conference on Wednesday morning. Leaders with the effort say they’re confident they’ll be able to turn out the support and votes to sway this year’s Charlotte City Council election — all in the aftermath of March’s failed LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance vote.
Note to readers: The commentary that follows below was originally published at QNotes on Aug. 19. Per the instruction of publisher Jim Yarbrough, it was unpublished from QNotes’ website on Aug. 23. I have re-published it here. Though the commentary was clearly labeled as commentary and a personal reflection — adequately distinguishing it from news […]
“CHARLOTTE SUCKS” Of course, not really. But let me explain. That phrase — scrawled into a cement sidewalk along Rozelles Ferry Rd. long ago when it was first poured — immediately jumped out at me when I saw it. I wasn’t having the best of days. It was a Sunday, more than a week after […]
For many of us — white people born and raised in the South and descended from southern families with long histories in this land — recent conversations resulting from Dylann Roof’s act of fatally racist terrorism in Charleston have been difficult. Specifically, given Roof’s self-admitted affinity for the Confederacy and its symbols, much debate has turned to […]
