The U.S. Supreme Court's decision Monday that employers cannot discriminate in hiring due to a candidate's sexual or gender preference was a surprising revelation for many Americans, including Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD.
"It was groundbreaking. It was historic today," she told Cheddar.
Still, Ellis said this is just a small part of the rights challenges members of the LGBTQ community face.
"We're debating whether or not I can be fired from my job at the Supreme Court simply because I'm gay. It shouldn't even be a discussion," she said.
The historic decision came just days after the Trump administration rolled back healthcare protections for transgender people under the Affordable Care Act -- a move which Ellis said is in line with the president's broader dismissal of LGBTQ people throughout his term.
"This administration has attacked the LGBTQ community 150 times with both policy rollbacks and rhetoric since he's come into power," she said.
As demonstrators across the nation call for social justice and equality this June, Ellis said that it is important for Pride month supporters to remember where it started.
"Pride is a protest, and we need to be on the streets," she stated. "We have to go back to our roots this one. This Pride especially."
She noted that 14 members of the trans community have been violently killed so far this year.
In 2020, a year unlike any other with a pandemic canceling Pride celebrations and calls for social justice amplified throughout the nation, Ellis tasked people to come together now to force real change.
"Our community is our power. Our identity is our power," she said. "We need to be fighting for Black Lives Matter, for our trans community. We have to be standing up for each other right now, and we need to be locking arms as marginalized communities."
This morning on Cheddar Big News: President Trump says a pardon is "not off the table" for his former campaign chairman Paul Mananfort; families of victims of the Santa Fe, Tex. school shooting sue the parents of the gunman; and highlights from the National Tree Lighting in Washington, D.C.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018.
Committees in the New Jersey state Senate and Assembly may have both approved a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana in the state, but the bill's success isn't certain, said Politico New Jersey Reporter Sam Sutton.
Facebook has failed to properly address its “black people problem,” a former employee told Cheddar Wednesday. Earlier this month, former partnerships manager Mark Luckie sent a searing memo criticizing the company’s lack of racial diversity to Facebook employees shortly before he left his post. He recently published the memo, which quickly went viral.
TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie told Cheddar in an interview he decided after the recent shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif., near his home, that it was incumbent on businesses to act where lawmakers could not.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell addressed a luncheon Tuesday with a tone that suggested interest rate hikes may slow. Investors loved what they heard, and markets soared in the wake of Powell's remarks.
Venezuela, once a vibrant economy with some of the richest oil reserves in the world, is now in economic crisis. Brian Price, executive producer of a new documentary "Venezuela: State of Disaster," explores how a country with so much promise devolved into utter economic disaster, where hospital patients are now told to "bring their own lightbulbs" to surgery so the doctor can see.
After General Motors announced it will be closing several plants and reducing its workforce significantly, there was bipartisan criticism from Americans and Congress. Democrat Debbie Dingell, a representative from a small suburb of Detroit, told Cheddar that she was backing out of her support for President Trump's trade policies if they meant GM jobs would be going to Mexico.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Nov. 28. 2018.
Columbus, Ohio, may not have won the bid for Amazon's HQ2, but the city isn't ready to retire its proposal quite yet. Mayor Andrew Ginther said the city's leaders plan to use their application as a road map to transform Columbus from a Midwestern destination into a national one.
