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Volume 128 Issue 78
Kansan.com
Monday, February 16, 2015
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The student voice since 1904
Surveys help to create
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ABBY WALSH
abby_walsh@aol.com
When Chrissie Noriega joined Queers and Allies last year, she was already contemplating a name change for the campus LGBT group. To her, it was limiting. Not every transgender person is gay. She knew the name would keep some people, including other on-campus groups, away.
"The word queer was seen as divisive, and some people didn't take that on as an identity," Noriegia said.
--and make lunches. He even taught her to sew. She didn't realize that was unusual until she had a conversation with her friend's mother in fourth grade.
At her urging, the group renamed itself Spectrum and is working to engage a wider audience that truly lives up to the name. In the past year, the group has led discussions about LGBT Muslims and violence in
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LGBT communities and hosted a viewing of the film "Pariah" with the Black Student Union. It also encourages attendance for other organizations' activities, such as The Center for Sexuality and Gender Diversity's Trans+ Remembrance Day Candlelight Vigil.
"We have to be working together, because a lot of times social justice organizations are working towards the same goal, but with their own means," Noriega said. "I don't want anyone to feel left out of what we're doing, so I work with other people and try to bring them into our community."
Noriega said she was raised to believe everyone was equal. In her Queens, New York, home, she watched her father do the laundry
"I think I had a hole in my clothes, so her mom took it and was going to fix it and I was like 'Oh, my dad does that!' and they were like 'What? Your father can't do that, that's women's work,'" she said.
Noriega said being raised in an egalitarian family motivates her to change the perception of gender norms here in Kansas.
Mitchell Cota, Spectrum's
"I'm a feminist and an activist, a lesbian [and a] social justice advocate," she said.
SEE RIGHTS PAGE 2
Statehouse for LBGT rights
LJAMES HOYT
PUZZLES 6
SPORTS 14
On Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered on the south lawn of the Kansas Statehouse to protest Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's Executive Order 15-02. The rally was organized by
@jamesjhoyt
Wichita-based LGBT rights coalition Equality Kansas and featured state representative John Carmichael (D-Wichita) as a keynote speaker.
The Valentine's Day rally was organized in response to an executive order Brownback declared Feb. 10, which revoked workplace protections given to state employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This makes it legal for state employees
Equality Kansas Chairwoman Sandra Meade drew comparisons to past instances of discrimination in American history to criticize Brownback's policy in front of the crowd.
"This Executive Order ensures that state employees enjoy the same civil rights as all Kansans without creating additional 'protected classes' as the previous order did. Any such expansion of 'protected classes' should be done by the legislature and not through unilateral action," Brownback said in a statement last Tuesday.
Carmichael expressed his support for the demonstrator's cause and informed them of his plans to advocate for the LGBT community in the legislature through his sponsorship of House Bill 2323, which aims to reinstate the protected classes.
Catholics were banned from the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies Catholic clergymen could be put to death in Massachusetts by law in 1647. Gov Brownback, that's your adopted religion," Meade said.
Daisy Tackett, a University freshman from Jacksonville. Fla., said she attended the rally because she has friends who identify as LGBT.
Index
to be discriminated against if they identify as LGBT. The order reverses protections that former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius put in place in August 2007.
"We heard about this protest and we all just wanted to come and support equality," Tackett said.
OPINION 4
A&F 5
CLASSIFIEDS 12
MBB REWIND 13
— Edited by Samantha Darling
Don't Forget
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