The LGBTQ student empowerment organizations Campus Pride and Point Foundation have partnered up to create an online resource for LGBTQ students looking for financial aid for school. 

The National LGBTQ Scholarship Database is a catalog of scholarships, grants and fellowships available to LGBTQ undergraduates and graduate students alike. The creators’ goal is to show LGBTQ students that there are ways to fund a college education, even if you think it’s outside your means.

“Everyone has a fundamental right to education,” Shane Windmeyer said in a statement. “For our LGBT youth, especially those who are first generation college students and those from low to middle income backgrounds, the dream of going to college is still a dream. This national database is another step toward creating greater accessibility to higher education for LGBT youth. There is much more work to be done.”

Jorge Valencia, the executive director of Point Foundation, which provides many LGBT and ally students with financial assistance, believes this initiative will raise awareness of options these students may have otherwise not knew existed.

“Every year we receive thousands of applications for our Point Foundation scholarships. These are young people hungry to invest in their future and help society by getting a college degree, but are in great need of financial assistance,” Valencia stated. “While Point is able to help some individuals, we are eager to raise awareness of other diverse higher education scholarships.”

Man, I wish this had existed when I was still in school. Spread the word! 

Today we honor those who’ve been lost to violence and discrimination with the international Transgender Day of Remembrance. Lucas McCahill of the LGBTQ Humanist Council of Baltimore shares the history of this day and explains why all humanists should participate in supporting Trans rights.

There’s a new app on the market that brings you LGBT history one day at a time. 

Quist launched in July for iOS and Android. The app uses a “today in LGBT history" model to share lesser-known events that still influenced the development of the queer movement. The creator, Sarah Prager, says the app has an educational youth-based focus so it can reach young people in an accessible way.

"I came out as a lesbian when I was 14, and I read LGBT history books in high school," Prager said. “Even though I was the only out person in my school, hearing these stories of people before me made me feel like I wasn’t alone, and that other people had gone through this. … That was a feeling I hope to bring the next 14-year-olds coming out."

Still, Quist’s youth focus doesn’t preclude it from offering a fuller picture of the push for LGBT equality. Sodomy-related news, references to male harems and mentions of sexual liaisons are all sprinkled through the app’s database of roughly 750 events.

Similarly, in response to recent complaints that the LGBT movement’s mainstreaming has whitewashed its flamboyant and rebellious beginnings, Prager said she made a “conscious effort to keep the drag queens and leather daddies in." Also included are queer people of color, the transgender rights movement and bisexuality, which many accounts of LGBT history often subsume.

Coolest thing I’ve heard in a long time. I’ll definitely be downloading this. Anyone use it yet?

The San Antonio City Council voted this week to add sexual orientation and gender identity to its existing non-discrimination policy, effective immediately. This means LGBT people will be protected against discrimination in matters of public accommodations, housing, employment and contracting.

San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the country, and it’s now one of the nearly 180 cities with an LGBT-inclusive anti-discrimination law in place.

San Antonio mayor Julian Castro, a Democrat who was an outspoken supporter of the LGBT-inclusive ordinance, called today’s vote a victory for fairness. 

"This ordinance is about saying there are no second-class citizens in San Antonio," Castro told the AP. 

Woohoo! Yeah, San Antonio! 

The City Council of Fayetteville, Arkansas this week passed an ordinance protecting LGBT people from discrimination.

Passed with a vote of 6-2, the ordinance bans discrimination motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. It applies to matters of housing, employment and public accommodations. 

Oh, and fun fact: 19 Kids and Counting’s Michelle Duggar has already made this ordinance famous.

The ordinance became the subject of national news after TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting matriarch Michelle Duggar recorded a robocall in opposition to the ordinance, using a number of debunked talking points about transgender individuals generally used as scare tactics.

Duggar’s call played on the “bathroom predator” line of argument, equating transgender people to sex offenders and pedophiles, and suggesting that men will simply pretend to be trans as a means to assault women and children in private facilities. These talking points play on the public’s fears, and ignore the fact that transgender individuals are far more likely to be the victim of physical or sexual assault in a place of public accommodation than they are to be the aggressor.

Sorry not sorry, Michelle! Congrats, Fayetteville. This is probably much needed and a huge, huge step for Arkansas. 

This weekend, the Human Rights Campaign announced Project One America, a three-year, $8.5 million initiative to bring LGBT equality to one of the places it’s most desperately needed: the Deep South.

The campaign will specifically target three states with no marriage, housing OR workplace protections — Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. HRC will open an office in each location and commit a total of 20 staff members to working with folks on the ground. 

It appears to be a cultural campaign as well as a political one; HRC says the goals include “changing hearts and minds, advancing enduring legal protections, and building more inclusive institutions for LGBT people from the church pew to the workplace.” Their strategy is based on the idea that face-to-face, personal interactions are more effective in changing a person’s views than most anything else, an idea that has recently been confirmed with regards to marriage equality. 

With no legal protections, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama have substantial rates of discrimination against the LGBT community. A survey by the polling firm Anzalone Liszt Grove found that 65 percent of LGBT people living in the states experienced verbal abuse, and 20 percent experienced physical violence. Moreover, 25 percent reported discrimination in either the workplace or a “public accommodation.”

The launch of Project One America coincides with a larger progressive movement gaining traction in the South. Since its origin in North Carolina last year, Moral Monday protests have slammed the right-wing agendas of conservative leaders and tied today’s fights with the South’s history of civil rights activism. Specifically, cuts to unemployment benefits, refusals to expand Medicaid, and the implementation of voting rights restrictions have resulted in the protests’ movement throughout the region. Democrats are also pushing to turn deep-red states “purple”, as black, Latino and Asian American communities grow in the South.

It’s incredibly important to remember that queer folks everywhere need representation, resources and support — not just those who live in big metropolitan areas. I’m not sure if HRC is the right organization to carry out this mission — lots of money, sure, but questionable politics and policies — so we have to look to the people living in these areas to make change happen. Go forth and conquer!