The following post was written by Jessica Beasley (she/they), a Senior Manager of User Experience Design at a tech company and longtime resident of Michigan. She lives in Ypsilanti Township with her spouse and an inadvisable number of cats, and mostly uses Twitter to tweet about trans stuff at @JessicleCats. The topic of Jessica’s essay is personal for me. My […]

Margaret Atwood has been quite clear that there is nothing in her book A Handmaid’s Tale that hasn’t actually happened somewhere in the world at some point. Watching the astonishing recent television series The Underground Railroad, you quickly come to realize that some of these things happened right here in America not all that long ago. We know these things […]

I have taken the past couple of days to reflect on how Mike Shirkey and the Republicans in the Michigan State Legislature have contributed to the culture of misogyny and support of the insurrectionist militias that have attacked the U.S. Capitol. But these are not their only sins. They have also victimized and persecuted members of the LGBTQ+ community through […]

On Sunday, Eli Savit posted an essay here at Eclectablog outlining why Bill Schuette — Michigan’s own version of the odious Ken Cuccinelli — was out of line telling the state’s Civil Rights Commission that they couldn’t enforce their policy of including gender identity and sexual orientation as a protected class of citizens. Yesterday, the Civil Rights Commission met to […]

The following essay was written by my good friend Eli Savit. Eli is an attorney and an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School. His areas of expertise include appellate and Supreme Court litigation; civil rights, education law, environmental law, and public-interest litigation. He writes regularly about legal issues on the Take Care Blog and elsewhere. Follow him […]

Most governors with a history of poisoning an entire city of Black people, an administration full of corruption and ineptitude, and with a laundry list of pro-corporate policies that have harmed the state in myriad ways would probably spend their final months in office being as non-controversial and quiet as possible. Not so with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Despite his […]

Anne and I are friends with Nikki Joly from my hometown of Jackson, Michigan. On Thursday of this week, the home she shares with her partner, Chris Moore, was destroyed by a fire, killing their two German Shepherds and three cats. In addition to being a nurse and a veteran, Joly is the director of the Jackson Pride Center and […]

Earlier this year, the City Council of Jackson, Michigan passed a non-discrimination ordinance (NDO) that prohibits discrimination against anyone for housing, employment, or public accommodation based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The vote was 5-2. Shortly thereafter, a local group of Jackson residents, supported by clergy in local Catholic churches, started to circulate petitions to rescind the NDO and […]

In early February of this year, the City Council in Jackson, Michigan approved a non-discrimination ordinance (NDO) that prohibits discrimination against anyone for housing, employment, or public accommodation based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s essentially a move that extends basic civil rights provided to most Michiganders under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to Michigan citizens in the LGBTQ […]

Less than a year ago, the administration of President Barack Obama issued an historic guidance document instructing school administrators that anti-transgender rules, regulations, and laws are in violation of federal law including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This guidance was received the full-throated support of U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr., Attorney General Loretta E. […]

When her youngest child came out as transgender, this woman recognized her own truth. This is part of a story series about the lives of transgender people. Read the introduction here. From the time she was young, Jacqui Leaonna Turner didn’t understand why the males were prettier than the females in every species in the animal kingdom except for humans. […]