District meetings with targeted members of Congress are a critical part of our field work as they’re an opportunity to show members of Congress that we as a community mean business. We recently met with Sonia Barnes, the district representative for U.S. Representative Bob Etheridge.

Last week, members of the Charlotte community and I met with the Legislative Correspondent of U.S. Representative Larry Kissell from the 8th District of North Carolina to talk about supporting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Kissell voted in favor of the Matthew Shepard Act, which passed last year, and voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

I’m in North Carolina working to build constituent support for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. This is my first time in North Carolina and people here are very friendly! I love their southern drawl and appreciate their hospitality. Everyone I pass on the street seems to greet me with a smile—even when I’m wearing my “legalize gay” t-shirt (okay, some give me a sideways glance with that).

Frustrated with the pace of progress? Today we’re launching a grassroots campaign to urge action on an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repeal of the discriminatory “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” law. LGBT people and our allies can make a real difference by making our voices heard face-to-face and in the districts where we live.

On July 8th, five members of the HRC Utah Steering Committee and two members of the Utah Log Cabin Republicans had an in-district meeting in Salt Lake City with Senator Robert F. Bennett. Though Bennett was defeated at his party’s convetion by a Tea Party candidate, he will serve out his term through January — and this window of time may provide the three-term Senator an opportunity to go down on the right side of history.

Members of the New Orleans Political Action and Steering Committees recently had the opportunity to meet with our 2nd Congressional District Rep. Joseph Cao. We thanked him for his support and co-sponsorship of Hate Crimes legislation that passed last year, discussed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), which he also co-sponsored, and asked for his support and co-sponsorship of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). He was very well informed and educated on all of our issues. He gets discrimination.

In Orlando, Florida last week, thousands of LGBT people from around the world descended on Disney World and participated in a week-long series of LGBT activities known as “Gay Days.” HRC’s field team partnered with volunteers from HRC’s outstanding Orlando Steering Committee to staff HRC tables at the Gay Days Expo.

Earlier this week, just days after terminating a decades-long membership in the respected civil rights coalition the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the U.S. Conference of [Roman] Catholic Bishops made public a letter to Capitol Hill opposing, for the first time, basic workplace protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. In 2007, the last time Congress considered the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), the Conference remained neutral on the bill as a whole, but sent a letter to the House Education and Labor Committee specifically praising the bill’s religious exemption as “an indispensable protection for the free exercise rights of religious organizations.” This week, they abandoned that position, characterizing the religious exemption as insufficient and arguing that the bill serves only to “legally affirm and specially protect” sexual conduct outside of marriage and threatens their traditional understanding of marriage.

“We were aware that the Congressman is ok with ‘sexual orientation’ but has a hard time with the ‘gender identity’ part of the bill. I shared a couple of stories about friends that have lost their jobs in Central NY due to their gender identity and asked him to please remember my face and please make our country a place where all people can work without being fired because of who they are.”

Those opposed to equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have been working hard to push the lie that LGBT people — and particularly transgender folks — suffer from “mental illness” are are therefore unworthy of basic employment protections. In an incredibly offensive editorial last month, the Washington Times argued that “discrimination is necessary” or else children would be subjected to “weirdos.” They also cite the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a basis for their argument.

In response, the President of the APA wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Times to correct the record and rebut their distortion of the DSM. The paper refused to publish the letter but the APA has given us permission to print it here: