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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently proposed new regulations to ensure that its housing programs are open to all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The regulations clarify that the term "family" as HUD uses it includes LGBT individuals and couples and requires HUD grantees and participants in HUD programs to comply with local and state non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity. The regulations specify that any mortgage loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration must be based only on credit-worthiness and not on unrelated identity factors.

The department also plans to authorize the first national study of discrimination of the LGBT community in the rental and sale of housing.  Although there have been no national studies of housing discrimination against LGBT people, state and local studies show significant evidence of discrimination.

"The evidence is clear that some are denied the opportunity to make housing choices in our nation based on who they are and that must end. President Obama and I are determined that a qualified individual and family will not be denied housing choice based on sexual orientation or gender identity," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said.

On October 11, 1987, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed in its entirety for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.  The display was part of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights to memorialize AIDS victims and to represent the extent of the disease.

The quilt was the idea of Cleve Jones, a San Francisco gay rights activist who developed the concept in late 1985 after viewing a patchwork-like display of name placards of AIDS victims he had helped organize and set up on the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building.  Over the following months, Jones and friends teamed up to create the NAMES Project Foundation and to plan the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The quilt is made up of three-by–six-foot panels, most of which memorialize the life of an individual victim of the AIDS pandemic. When first displayed that weekend, it was larger than a football field with almost 2,000 panels and was visited by more than half a million people. The foundation toured the country with the quilt in the spring of 1988 visiting 20 cities and raising nearly half a million dollars for AIDS service organizations.

Today, the Senate introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in all states across the country. ENDA would extend the same federal employment discrimination protections currently given to race, religion, gender, national origin, age, and disability.

"The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights strongly supports ENDA.  We believe that civil rights should be measured by a single yardstick, which means that workers should be hired or fired based on performance and qualifications, not on immutable characteristics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.  For too many Americans, this principle has little meaning, and this long overdue legislation will finally close a major gap in our nation's civil rights laws," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).

The House of Representatives introduced its version of the bill in June.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, in which the Court held that the Constitution protects the fundamental right of consenting adults to make decisions about their private, consensual sexual activity without interference from the government, and invalidated a Texas law criminalizing private, adult, consensual sodomy.  

Writing for the majority of the Court, in an opinion joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens, Justice Kennedy explained that the state cannot demean the existence of gay people or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.  

The decision overturned Bowers v. Hardwick, which had permitted laws criminalizing same-sex conduct.  In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said: "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled."

"This is an historic day for fair-minded Americans everywhere," said Elizabeth Birch, then-executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, at the time the decision was handed down. "We are elated and gratified that the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has seen discriminatory state sodomy laws for what they are - divisive, mean-spirited laws that were designed to single out and marginalize an entire group of Americans for unequal treatment."

This Sunday, June 28, will mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the event largely regarded as a catalyst for the LGBT movement for civil rights in the United States.

At the time, there were not many places where people could be openly gay. New York had laws prohibiting homosexuality in public, and private businesses and gay establishments were regularly raided and shut down. 

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a group of gay customers at a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn, who had grown angry at the harassment by police, took a stand and a riot broke out.  As word spread throughout the city about the demonstration, the customers of the inn were soon joined by other gay men and women who started throwing objects at the policemen, shouting "gay power."