Tag Archives: Lesbians in the U.S.

USA: man charged with hate crimes after attacking lesbian couple

Posted on 12/09/2025 by | Leave a comment

A Texas man is facing assault and hate crime charges after authorities say he brutally attacked a lesbian couple celebrating with family in Detroit on 13 July 2025.

Prosecutors allege 26-year-old William Wilson targeted the women after seeing the two same sex couples holding hands, taunting them with homophobic slurs before turning violent. Chelsi Way’s wife was knocked unconscious and later needed 20 stitches. She continues to struggle with memory loss and sleep problems from the assault.

According to witnesses, Wilson put his arms around the women while recording them on his phone and mocking their gender non conformity. When the group sought help from casino security, they say staff did nothing. The situation escalated when Wilson began throwing punches.

After the attack, Wilson and another man fled but were followed by Way for three miles, as she called police. Wilson was arrested and charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm, two counts of assault and battery, aggrevated assault, and hate crime charges. If convicted, he could face a decade or more behind bars. His alleged accomplice remains at large.

Source: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/07/bigot-assaults-lesbian-couple-outside-casino-in-birthday-celebration-gone-wrong/

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USA: Black lesbian couple brutally attacked

Posted on 09/09/2025 by | Leave a comment

July 2025: Chased and threatened at gunpoint, a married Black lesbian couple in Spotsylvania County, Va., was nearly killed in a potentially racially motivated hate crime around 6:30 p.m. on July 20. … 

On the day of the attack, Amylah Majors and Jamaria Gaskins were driving on Partlow Road when they hit debris and checked out the damage. Soon after, Majors said three white people, two men and one woman, appeared from their home and began threatening them with firearms and shouting racial slurs. 

“Two of them physically attacked my wife while brandishing a gun and shouting threats,” Majors said in a public GoFundMe post, which has raised just over $5,000. “They called us the (‘N-word’), told us we didn’t belong there, and one of them even exposed himself while screaming hate and slurs at us.”

While trying to leave, Majors said the three attackers got into their cars and chased Majors and Gaskins down the road. Driving side by side, Majors said one of them pointed a gun directly at her head.  

“In that moment, we truly believed we weren’t going to make it out alive,” Majors said. 

During their escape, the couple ended up crashing their car, with Majors ejecting from the vehicle. She was in the hospital soon after with a fractured spine, broken clavicle, a severe concussion, a broken rib, and multiple head injuries. 

“I am beyond grateful to be alive,” Majors said. “But we were both assaulted, traumatized, and nearly killed. This was not just an accident — this was an attempted act of violence meant to harm and silence us. We will not be silent.”

Two of the attackers, Mark Goodman and Elizabeth Wolfrey, have been charged with misdemeanor charges after the incident.

Continue reading this article at: https://watermarkonline.com/2025/08/08/black-lesbian-couple-brutally-attacked-in-spotsylvania-county/ (Source)

Please also share the couple’s GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/survived-a-hate-crime-now-were-fighting-to-heal

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U.S: man on trial for threatening lesbian neighbours

Posted on 29/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

A jury trial has been scheduled for Mark Stinson, an Elk River man accused of threatening his lesbian neighbors. …
Kayla Lindenfelser and Corrine Pfoser were allegedly threatened by their Elk River neighbor with a gun, leading up to a police standoff Sunday afternoon into Monday morning, Nov. 18.
The woman, Corinne Pfoser, was bagging up leaves with one of her foster children on a Sunday afternoon in November. Stinson allegedly confronted the child about Pfoser’s same-sex relationship, calling the child fat and using defamatory remarks about his mothers, including to “get out of Sherburne County.”

Continue reading at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trial-set-man-allegedly-told-080322250.html (Source)

More information: November 2024 – Police standoff: Man points gun at same-sex couple, says ‘get out of Sherburne County’

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LVD: how Edythe Eyde started the first lesbian magazine in 1947

Posted on 26/04/2025 by | Leave a comment
Courtesy of NBC News and ONE Archive at USC Libraries

In 1947, Edythe Eyde was a secretary working at RKO Radio Pictures in Los Angeles. A speedy typist who often completed work ahead of schedule, her boss told her: “Well, I don’t care what you do if you get through with your work, but … don’t sit and read a magazine or knit. I want you to look busy.” 

The literary-minded lesbian saw an opportunity. Gay culture was largely underground, and it was difficult for “the third sex” to meet like-minded others. Using a Royal manual typewriter and carbon paper, making six copies at a time, the 25-year-old launched Vice Versa — “a magazine dedicated, in all seriousness, to those of us who will never quite be able to adapt ourselves to the iron-bound rules of Convention.”

“During those days I didn’t really know many girls,” she told the lesbian magazine Visibilities in a 1990 interview. “But I thought, well, I’ll just keep turning out these magazines and maybe I’ll meet some!” 

Continue reading at: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/nbc-out-proud/vice-versa-first-lesbian-magazine-edythe-eyde-rcna201863 (Source)

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U.S.: Pastor campaigns to prevent lesbian school district superintendent

Posted on 23/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

A gay Texas school administrator has been confirmed as superintendent of a Houston area school district, despite a weeks-long smear campaign led by a local conservative pastor.

Tiffany Regan, 52, was offered the post overseeing 1,865 teachers and staff and 12,800 students by the Deer Park Independent School District board of trustees at a meeting Monday night. The appointment was applauded by supporters and trustees.

“There’s nobody as passionate as she is about helping the kids be successful, and she’s proved to herself time after time they don’t have anything to worry about. This district is going to be in great shape for the future,” outgoing Superintendent Stephen Harrell told the Houston Chronicle.

Regan, a Deer Park ISD native, comes to the job after serving as former assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in the district. After graduating high school, she returned as a college student teaching assistant. Her son graduated from the district and her daughter attends middle school there.

The board announced Regan was their choice for the job in March and invited public comment before offering her the post.

The next day, local Pastor Douglas Harris began a smear campaign directed at Regan’s sexuality, vowing to be the “tip of the spear” resisting her appointment.

“When you live a lifestyle of sexual immorality and that is your corrupted worldview, everything that you do stems out of the worldview of which you have,” Harris said in a Sunday sermon at Central Baptist Church in Deer Park.

Continue reading at: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/hate-pastor-campaigned-to-stop-lesbian-from-becoming-school-superintendent-he-lost/ (Source)

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U.S.: mother arrested for threatening lesbian teacher and firearms charges

Posted on 22/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

An angry Indiana mother faces multiple charges after she was accused of taking a gun to her sixth grade daughter’s elementary school and threatening her lesbian teacher to “kiss ur kids goodbye” after she gave an assignment about flags, officials said Tuesday.

Carrie Rivers, 48, was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm on school property and harassment in connection with the incident at Valley Mills Elementary School in Indianapolis.

Rivers threatened her daughter’s teacher over “a work assignment that had to do with same-sexuality relationships,” an affidavit supporting the woman’s arrest said.

Decatur Township school police officers answered a call last Wednesday about an “irate parent” on campus. When they arrived, officers noticed Rivers had something on her waistband that looked like a firearm, the affidavit says.

“Carrie Rivers stated that she did have a gun as I was removing it from her person,” responding officer Tabetha Emenaker wrote in the affidavit. “I advised Carrie Rivers on the law in regard to having a firearm on school premises and that it was an arrestable offense. She understood and stated that she didn’t even realize that she had it on because she is so used to wearing it and has been on school property with it before.”

Rivers then said she was taking her daughter out of Valley Mills Elementary and opting for home-schooling, police said. She also called her daughter’s teacher a slur disparaging to lesbians, the affidavit says.

Police let Rivers go, but then she sent a threatening message to her daughter’s teacher 25 minutes later, the affidavit says.

Continue reading at: https://www.aol.com/mom-arrested-bringing-gun-school-171053212.html (Source)

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U.S.: cops harass butch lesbian in bathroom over gender non conformity

Posted on 20/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

Kalaya Morton, 19, of Phoenix, says she and her ex-girlfriend were using adjacent stalls in the store’s women’s restroom when two male sheriff’s deputies entered. “They were flashing lights on our feet and saying, ‘You have to get out of here. You have to come out. We need to talk to you,’” Morton told Advocate.

Morton, who identifies as a stud — queer slang for a Black masculine-presenting lesbian — says she believes a store employee who had been eyeing her earlier reported her to the cops believing she was a man. As the Advocate notes, Arizona law does not dictate that people use public restrooms that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth.

In social media videos and in her interview with the outlet, Morton said that when she exited the bathroom stall, she lifted her shirt to prove to the deputies that she was a woman. But, she said, one of the deputies continued to insist she “looked like a man.”

On February 19, Morton posted a brief video of the encounter, showing the two deputies in the women’s bathroom. “They came in here in the girls’ restroom because I’m a girl and they didn’t think I was a girl, so they tried to come take me away,” Morton can be heard saying off camera.

Continue reading at: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/cops-burst-into-womens-restroom-to-remove-butch-lesbian-accusing-her-of-being-a-man/ (Source)

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U.S.: Lesbian firefighter wins second case after ongoing retaliation

Posted on 16/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — After a years long battle in court, a federal jury ruled Friday in favor of a former Providence firefighter who sued the city for denying her accidental disability benefits, awarding $1.75 million in compensatory damages.

The jury in U.S. District Court also ruled that city officials retaliated against Lori Franchina when they denied those benefits, because she filed a gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit in 2012, which she won in 2016.

Franchina previously said she was targeted because she’s a woman and a lesbian, and moved up the ranks of the department quickly. She said she endured years of harassment, lewd nicknames, insubordination and discrimination.

Franchina was initially awarded $806,000 in the 2016 lawsuit, a decision that the city appealed and lost two years later.

Court documents show that in April 2013, the city applied for Franchina to be “involuntarily retired” with ordinary disability benefits instead of with accidental disability benefits, “despite previously rejecting her retirement application entirely just two years earlier.”

Continue reading at: https://www.wpri.com/target-12/former-providence-firefighter-wins-1-75-million-in-retaliation-lawsuit/ (Source)

Original article: U.S: Lesbian Firefighter Prevails in Court After Having Brain Matter Flung at Her

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USA: lesbian ex cop awarded $10 million in sexual harassment case

Posted on 10/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

A lesbian former officer with the National City Police Department (NCPD) in Southern California has been awarded $10 million in damages over her lawsuit against the department for the harassment and discrimination that she endured there.

Ashley Cummins, who is now a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter who fights under the name “Smashley,” sued the police department in 2022 with allegations that she had to put up with harassment and discrimination from her coworkers for about a year as she worked in the department, both because she is gay and because she is a woman.

Her lawsuit, which was filed with the Superior Court of California in San Diego County, said, “Many of the male officers and supervisors indicated that if female officers wanted to fit in at NCPD, they either needed to be submissive to the male officers or sleep with them.”

Continue reading at: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/lesbian-cop-told-she-needed-to-be-submissive-to-men-or-sleep-with-them-she-just-won-10m/ (Source)

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USA: longitudinal study of lesbians’ children debunks myths

Posted on 04/04/2025 by | Leave a comment

A comprehensive 38-year longitudinal study, The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, is the longest-running prospective study on offspring conceived via donor insemination (DI), beginning in 1986 when it was first made available to lesbian women.

Nanette Gartrell, a visiting distinguished scholar at Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, launched the study without grant support. At the time, national grants were unavailable for any studies related to LGBT subjects. This study tracked the development from birth through adulthood for the offspring of 75 lesbian-parent families.

Q&A with Esther Rothblum – What prompted the study?

In the 1980s, there were significant prejudices against lesbian mothers. People often assumed that the children would face identity confusion, mental health issues, and be more likely to identify as gay or lesbian. … Historically, lesbian mothers frequently lost custody battles against their heterosexual male partners or husbands. When DI became accessible in the mid-1980s, many lesbians opted for anonymous donors to secure their parental rights.

Continue reading at: https://www.sdsu.edu/news/2024/06/groundbreaking-38-year-study-offers-rare-perspective-on-children-of-lesbian-parents (Source)

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USA: Lesbian couple win sales discrimination case

Posted on 12/03/2025 by | Leave a comment

A California appeals court has ruled in favor of a lesbian couple, finding that a baker discriminated against them when she refused to sell them a generic wedding cake. The case deals with an exception to a loophole that many conservatives believe they had carved out, enabling them to openly discriminate against LGBTQ people in the provision of public goods or services. … In this case, involving Tastries Bakery in Bakersfield, California, the appeals court drew distinctions between custom-made goods and generic goods that are offered to all customers, regardless of background or personal characteristics.

Continue reading at: https://www.metroweekly.com/2025/02/baker-discriminated-against-lesbian-couple-court-rules/ (Source)

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U.S.: lesbian applicant refused for empty post

Posted on 06/03/2025 by | Leave a comment

A San Francisco lesbian’s application to the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force appears to be in jeopardy after Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman said Monday that he could not support the nominee because he disagrees with her. A motion from the Rules Committee to forward Cynthia Dai’s name to the full board with a positive recommendation failed, and the panel continued the item until next week.

Dai, a former member of the San Francisco Elections Commission, first spoke at the committee’s February 10 meeting, where she was the only applicant for the sunshine task force. … The seat on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force has been open for a year. It is for the unexpired portion of a term that ends April 27, 2026. 

Continue reading at: https://www.ebar.com/story.php?ch=News&sc=News&id=338116&title=lesbians_application_to_sf_open_government_panel_appears_in_jeopardy (source)

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Senegal: lesbian activists fighting for visibility in a hostile nation

Posted on 26/02/2025 by | Leave a comment

“Homosexuality has once again become a focus of debate among the political classes in Senegal, where newly appointed Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko has alternately claimed that homosexuality is tolerated in the nation, and advocated for harsher criminalization of same-sex intimacy.

Senegal lesbians and gays already face penalties for same-sex intimacy, with up to 5 years’ imprisonment and fines of 1.5 million CFA francs (approximately U.S $2,500), making advocacy for LGBTQ rights extremely difficult.”

Awa (pseudonym): I’m the president of a women’s association [Editor’s note: for security reasons, the name of the organisation is being withheld] in Dakar and I can say that in the current political and social climate in Senegal, lesbians, although invisible in the public debate, are often exposed to corrective rape at an early age.

Very often, when a family suspects that a young girl is a lesbian, she is taken by force to a marabout who, far from giving her a religious education, will rape her. This does not happen all the time, or in all social contexts, but in rural Senegal it is far from rare.

Then there is the psychological reconstruction work that needs to be undertaken, with a lot of listening, tact and solidarity towards young women who arrive in Dakar weakened and traumatised when they have managed to escape from their family environment, after several years of forced marriages. In that sense, nothing has changed, despite the passing years.”

Continue reading: https://76crimes.com/2024/06/26/two-senegal-lesbians-fight-for-visibility/ (Source)

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U.S.: Lesbian cop wins sexual harassment lawsuit

Posted on 18/02/2025 by | Leave a comment

“A former New Jersey lieutenant has been awarded $750,000 in her lawsuit against her former boss, who she claimed sexually harassed her and discriminated against her for being a lesbian.

The lawsuit, first reported by Transparency NJ, was brought by now retired Lt. Constance Crea, who was hired in 1996 and promoted to lieutenant in 2019, against the town of Piscataway and former Police Chief Thomas Mosier. Crea accused Mosier of “a pattern and practice of behavior of sexual harassment, discrimination, hostile work environment, preferential treatment and failing to comply with his own policies.”

Crea accused Mosier of frequently yelling at her and making degrading comments, such as telling her to “doll herself up” or asking “approximately every other month, ‘Who’s mowing the grass?’” which Crea believed to be a reference to her sex life with her wife.”

Continue reading: Lesbian cop wins $750k in sexual harassment lawsuit against former chief (source)

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U.S: Lesbian slurs used by Grant County staff to describe job applicant

Posted on 24/02/2022 by | Leave a comment
Image courtesy of Sarah Ward

A Mount Vernon woman is suing Grant County and its director of community corrections, claiming she was called a “bad lesbian,” among other derogatory terms, by staff members while under consideration for a job in 2013 and was eventually passed over because of her sexual orientation.
 
Terry Hanson, 54, contends county staff discriminated against her and violated her civil rights. In the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Pendleton, Hanson claims Grant County has a “custom, policy or practice of engaging in sexual orientation discrimination.”

The claims come after another federal suit filed against Grant County in September by James Gravley, a former county parole and probation officer. Gravley claimed to have heard the comments made about Hanson, spoke out about what was said, filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and was later fired in retaliation.
 
In an answer filed in November to Gravley’s federal complaint, Grant County admitted an employee called Hanson one lesbian slur during a staff meeting to discuss job candidates, but it denies anyone called her a “bad lesbian” and other derogatory terms.
 
Both lawsuits ask for jury trials and an undisclosed amount of financial damages.

Continue reading: https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2014/12/lesbian_slurs_used_by_grant_co.html (source)

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U.S: Tesla Sued by Lesbian for Racism and Homophobia

Posted on 08/02/2022 by | Leave a comment
Image courtesy of Sarah Ward

A Black gay woman who worked at a Tesla Inc. factory accused the electric-vehicle maker in a lawsuit of “festering” racism by ignoring the racial and homophobic slurs and physical harm she endured.

Kaylen Barker, a former contract worker who inspected brake parts, is the latest to complain that Tesla ignores discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and gender at its plants. According to her complaint, her abuse occurred even as Tesla defended another contract worker’s discrimination case in court — which the company lost and was ordered to pay $137 million in damages.

Continue reading: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-02/tesla-sued-by-black-gay-worker-over-unchecked-racism-at-plant (source)

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U.S: Lesbian National Guard member sues for discrimination

Posted on 01/01/2022 by | Leave a comment

Fairness West Virginia reported that Technical Sergeant Kristin Kingery has filed a lawsuit alleging ongoing discrimination based on her sexual orientation and gender expression in the Air National Guard.

According to the complaint filed, Kingery was allegedly told by supervisors that her career would “suffer” unless she began wearing makeup and growing her hair long.

Documents say that the alleged harassment based on her sexual orientation and gender expression included Kingery being forced to try on a woman’s Honor Guard jacket in front of others to, “confirm that none of the women’s sizes would fit.” It also says that rumors of her “transitioning from female to male” were perpetrated by both colleagues and supervisors.

Continue reading: https://www.wboy.com/news/lesbian-west-virginia-national-guard-member-sues-for-discrimination/ (source)

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U.S: Lesbian couple gunned down trying to protect pregnant daughter

Posted on 09/11/2021 by | 1 comment

The Young Terrace community in Norfolk, Virginia is in devastation after a mass shooting on November 3 left three women dead, two injured, and several children traumatized from witnessing the murders first-hand — some seeing their own mothers gunned down in broad daylight — right outside their home.

Police report that Detra R. “Dee” Brown, 42, and Nicole Lovewine, 45, who were partners, came home as Lovewine’s pregnant, 19 year-old daughter, got into an argument with her boyfriend. He pulled out a gun and shot her at approximately 6:00 pm. When Brown and Lovewine came out to help, the shooter turned the gun to them and reportedly fired at both “point-blank” in the head.

Another women who was outside with her three children, Sa’idah E. Costine, 44, then ran to try and help them. The assailant shot her as well, leaving her dead. Another women was shot and wounded before the rampage came to an end.

Police have arrested Ziontay Palmer, 19, and charged him with the entire shooting after apprehending him hours after. He was dating Lovewine’s daughter, who is five months pregnant, and authorities believe a domestic dispute set off the violence, according to the Virginian-Pilot.

Palmer is facing three second-degree murder charges, two malicious wounding charges, and multiple firearm charges. He is being held in Norfolk General District Court without bond.

Lovewine’s sister, Tina McPherson, told the Virginian-Pilot, “That man… put a stain on this family that can never be washed — he hurt us to the core.”

A neighbor and witness told local reporter Andy Fox that there was “nothing they could do” for Brown and Lovewine. “They were shot execution-style. They had just come home from work,” the witness said.

Continue reading: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/11/lesbian-couple-among-heroes-gunned-trying-protect-pregnant-teen-mass-shooting/ (source)

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U.S: Man punches woman in lesbophobic attack

Posted on 12/10/2021 by | Leave a comment
Image courtesy of Sarah Ward

The NYPD is asking for help in its search for the man who attacked a young woman in the East Village because she was holding hands with her girlfriend.

On September 15, the 21-year-old woman was walking with her girlfriend near the corner of East 14th St. and 3rd avenue when the suspect  began yelling anti-gay slurs at them, amNY reported. 

The couple continued walking, but the suspect did not relent. Continuing to spout slurs, he approached the victim and punched her in the face before fleeing the scene. The victim was not seriously injured.

Nearly a month later, the attacker has still not been found. The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force continues to investigate the incident and on Sunday, released camera footage of the suspect walking down the street.

Continue reading: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/10/attacker-punched-woman-face-holding-hands-girlfriend/ (source)

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U.S: Lesbian couple win damages after company refused to rent to them

Posted on 11/10/2021 by | Leave a comment
Image courtesy of Sarah Ward

A same-sex couple who were denied rental housing in Evansville because of their sexual orientation won their complaint this week against a company that says God, not government, is the final authority.

The Evansville-Vanderburgh County Human Relations Commission ruled in favor of Kimberly and Chasity Scott in their 2020 filing, while Myers Family Rentals, the subject of the Scotts’ complaint, was hit with $41,000 in civil penalties and damages.

While being shown the home in May 2020, the Scotts said they were asked by a Myers family member if they were “together, together” or “lesbian.”

“Yes, ma’am, we are. She (Chasity) is my wife,” Kimberly Scott responded.

After hearing this, Myers Family Rentals refused to make the home available to the Scotts, according to the couple’s complaint. It was filed a few days after the Scotts toured the home.

The Scotts said they moved to Henderson after being denied the rental property in Vanderburgh County.

According to the Human Relations Commission’s findings, Myers Family Rentals admitted that they “do not rent to people who choose to live as boyfriend and girlfriend, fiancés, male or female homosexuals, polygamous, polyamorous, or any other relationship that denies God’s requirement … that marriage be between one man and one woman.”

The Scotts said they were discriminated against based on Vanderburgh County’s Fair Housing Ordinance, which is a companion to federal and Indiana fair housing laws.

Continue reading: https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/2021/10/07/lgbtq-couple-wins-discrimination-lawsuit-home-rental-christianity-feligion/6018911001/ (source)

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