The 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality—Creating Change—convenes next week in Denver, Colorado (January 28-February 1) and NSRC once again plans to be there in support of placing sexual literacy at the very heart of the movement where it has been conspicuously downplayed or disappeared altogether in recent years.
So what does sexuality literacy have to do with achieving LGBT equality?
Everything. And the grassroots LGBT movement is now beginning to recognize and act on it.
This year, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s commitment to bringing sex back into the movement is absolutely evident: the conference program boasts over 20 workshops, daylong institutes and events that feature sexuality and intersexional movement building as an important core component in achieving equality. Many of the sessions will explore activist strategies for creating lifelong sexuality education that actually includes LGBT people while also examining why sexuality has become such a challenging thing to include and discuss within many social justice movements.
The sooner we bring sexuality out of the LGBT closet and back into dialogue and action around marriage equality, a united employment non-discrimination act, queer racial and economic justice, hate crime, and HIV and lgbt health the closer we will actually get to liberation.
Check back next week for reports from the conference itself. NSRC is leading 3 of the trainings: The Sexual Freedom and Sexual Literacy Institute: New Movement Messages and Strategies (in partnership with the Woodhull Foundation, Center for Sex and Culture and Renna Communications), Sexuality Education as a Tool for the Movement, and Interse(x)ctions of Faith, Intergeneration and Ability.
So as the Task Force says, "Come and Get It, Baby!"
Join the conversation with us in Denver and/or right here on Dialogues. Our activism is about to get hotter than ever.
