Charleston Photojournalism: Campaign for Southern Equality
Charleston was positively buzzing with political activity last week thanks to the arrival of all the Democratic candidates and President Donald Trump. Among all the activity, I got a call from the Campaign for Southern Equality to capture a press release outside the Charleston County Courthouse.
The Campaign for Southern Equality works to build a South where LGBTQ people are equal in every sphere of life, and as their website recalls, “In 2011, we launched our work from a church basement in the mountains of North Carolina. In the first chapter of our work, CSE was on the front lines of efforts to win marriage equality in the South. We led the WE DO Campaign, which involved LGBTQ couples requesting – and being denied – marriage licenses in their Southern hometowns. More than 200 couples took action, with thousands of friends, family members and neighbors standing in support of them.”
The National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal, along with private counsel Womble Bond Dickinson, Brazil & Burke, and law professor Clifford Rosky, filed a federal lawsuit challenging a South Carolina statute that prohibits public school health education from including any discussion of same-sex relationships except in the context of sexually transmitted diseases. The lawsuit is filed on behalf of the student organization Gender and Sexuality Alliance, as well as the Campaign for Southern Equality and South Carolina Equality Coalition, including their members who are public school students in the state.
Speakers included Jeff Ayers, the Executive Director of South Carolina Equality, Julie Wilensky, the Senior Staff Attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Peter Renn, Counsel for Lambda Legal, Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, the Executive Director at the Campaign for Southern Equality, and Kevin Hall, the office managing partner at Womble Bond Dickinson.