Author Archives: Orelia Busch

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Orelia Busch

News from The Frontlines of Equality

Yesterday, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (HR 1283) was introduced by Representative Ellen Tauscher from California. This bill enhances the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces, referred to as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Click here and search for “HR 1283” to see a summary of the bill and to find out if your representative is among the 121 cosponsors.

For more information on how you can support this bill by asking your representatives to cosponsor and/or vote for it, please see the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) website. SLDN is organizing a rally and lobby day on March 13th in Washington DC in order to gather support for this important piece of legislation. Please come if you are able and stay tuned to our social justice web pages for updated opportunities for action!

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BGLT Equality

Freedom to Marry Week

We are officially kicking off Freedom to Marry Week, February 8th through 14th! “7 Conversations in 7 Days,” sponsored by Freedom to Marry, focuses on the reality that having a conversation with another individual, with your faith community, with your legislator, helps effectively promote marriage equality in your community and nationwide.

From February 8th through 14th, the UUA will celebrate Freedom to Marry Week by posting stories and essays written by prominent Unitarian Universalist ministers and marriage equality activists. If you haven’t already, we invite you to visit the UUA’s Action of the Month website and pledge to take action, including lobbying your elected representatives to promote BGLT equality.

There are so many ways for you to be involved in this event! Visit the Freedom to Marry website for videos about marriage equality, conversation starters, and ideas on how you can make a difference. Start conversations about marriage equality at home or at church, write about marriage equality in your own blog or post your own short video on youtube. Donate your facebook status for the day or week to marriage equality, and invite your friends on facebook to participate in Freedom to Marry Week.
“Standing on the Side of Love,” a video produced by the Unitarian Universalist Association, makes clear that we as people of faith support marriage equality. This video uses images, gathered from Unitarian Universalists across North America who have advocated for marriage equality, been joined in equal marriage, and/or had their marriage officated by Unitarian Universalist clergy.

Check out the video below and please share it with others! The conversations we start this week can create a spiral of influence — encouraging everyone who is touched to stand on the side of love.

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BGLT Equality

Obama Ensures Equal Pay for Equal Work

In a solid victory for workers in the United States, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act into law yesterday. After winning enough votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate to be passed on to the President’s desk, it became the first piece of legislation to bear his signature. Civil rights movements, the Unitarian Universalist denomination, and countless dedicated individuals have been fighting wage discrimination for decades.

The Fair Pay Restoration Act removes restrictions on the length of time a worker has to file a wage discrimination lawsuit against an employer. Lilly Ledbetter, for whom the new law is named, had worked at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsden, Alabama for 20 years before she realized that although she had the same skills and training, she was being paid up to 40% less than her male colleagues. Many employees don’t learn about pay disparities and their rights to claim equal pay for the work that they have done until well into their careers. The Lilly Ledbetter Act makes it possible for those who may have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to wage discrimination based on age, gender, ethnicity, religion or disability to seek and win legal recourse no matter how much time has gone by.

Seventy-year-old Lilly Ledbetter has been working selflessly towards the passage of this law since the Supreme Court ruling two years ago that denied her rights to the money she lost. Speaking to First Lady Michelle Obama Lilly says, “I will never see a cent from my case. But with the passage and the president’s signature today, I have an even richer reward. I know my daughters and granddaughters and your daughters and your granddaughters will have a better deal.”

The First Lady’s comments at the reception she held for Ms Ledbetter expressed her solidarity with “women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, older women, younger women, women with disabilities and their families” by recognizing the new law as a “cornerstone of a broader commitment to address the needs of working women who are looking to … not only ensure that they’re treated fairly, but also to ensure that there are policies in place that help women and men balance their work and family obligations without putting their jobs or their economic security at risk”. The President stated, “Signing this bill today is sending a clear message: that making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone.”

On a personal level, I couldn’t be happier, and I couldn’t agree more. I think I’ll take a walk by the White House this evening in a silent expression of gratitude.

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Economic and Racial Justice

Thank You, President Obama

Following yesterday’s anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, President Barack Obama prepares today to rescind what has been known as the “global gag rule.” The regulation, in place for 17 of the past 25 years, prohibits health organizations receiving US foreign aid dollars from discussing abortion in any way. In an article on British news website guardian.co.uk, Dr. Gill Greer, director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation affirms:

The gag rule has done immense harm and caused untold suffering to millions around the world …. It has undermined health systems and endangered the lives and health of the poorest and most vulnerable women on the planet by denying access to life saving family planning, sexual and reproductive health and HIV services and exposing them to the dangers of unsafe abortion.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

I hope that this victory is the first of many that women all over the world can expect in the coming weeks, months and years of the Obama administration. For easy and effective ways that you can get involved in working for reproductive choice and justice, take a moment to visit the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice Action Center. A letter or phone call to your representative could make a difference in passing important legislation that supports reproductive health and education.

President Obama’s statement from yesterday. I feel proud and blessed that he is the leader of my country.

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Reproductive Justice

The 36th Anniversary of Roe v Wade

Today marks the anniversary of the historic supreme court decision that allowed women access to safe and legal abortion. It is a day to celebrate the success of women such as Dottie Doyle, a former state representative from Maine and a Unitarian Universalist who worked with so many others to help decriminalize abortion in the United States. Read her story here on the UUA website. After learning about Dorothy and her compatriots, I was struck but not surprised to learn that activism surrounding a woman’s right to choose was spurred on and supported by a resolution adopted at the 1968 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly to repeal laws restricting or criminalizing abortion. UUs all over the U.S. and Canada acted on this resolution. In Michigan, for example, many women worked tirelessly circulating petitions and collecting signatures in the face of threats, verbal abuse and ostracism. Without a doubt, Unitarian Universalist efforts contributed to the right to choose when to bear children being upheld as a constitutional right of women in the United States of America.

If a resolution adopted at General Assembly can make such a contribution, I have no doubt in my mind that, with the inauguration of a new administration and a new day dawning in Washinton, our voices as people of faith can and will be heard. As the new Legislative Assistant for Women’s Issues at the Washington Office for Advocacy I am grateful to those who have worked for justice before me. Together we can have faith that we can help to change the laws of our country so that they reflect our values to uphold the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. I can have faith that I will see such changes not in some far-off dreamed future, but in the next year or two. I draw joy and strength and courage from that faith.

While celebrating and anticipating successes, however, I remain cautious, and I feel compelled to point out that Roe v Wade still needs our support and protection on all fronts. In most states, access to abortion is still restricted by mandates for parental notification and/or consent. In many states, women can barely seek information about abortion due to legal bans on counseling, biased counseling, and mandatory delays for abortion care. In all but the three states of Alabama, New Hampshire, and Vermont, health care providers can refuse care entirely to a woman seeking an abortion (see naral.org). These barriers to access continue to disproportionately affect poor women and women of color who have long struggled not only to gain access to quality and affordable health care but to be allowed to make informed choices about their own fertility. A woman living in a rural, northern county of my home state of Wisconsin would probably have to pay for her own abortion as well as travel for 6 to 8 hours, if she had access to a car and could drive, in order to reach a clinic that would perform the procedure.

In short, we still have a lot of work to do. True reproductive justice means that our societies protect girls and women from rape and sexual assault by teaching all children and adults that each person the right to make decisions about the sacred boundaries of their bodies. Reproductive justice means that no woman anywhere in the world is forced or coerced into bearing children when she does not choose to do so. Reproductive justice means that all women have access to safe and legal means of birth control and accurate information about possible side-effects and how to use them. Reproductive justice means that women and men undergo medical procedures that may affect their ability to have children only after giving their full and informed consent. Reproductive justice means that poor women and women of color are not denied or restricted from accessing any form of reproductive health care, nor from making an informed decision about any medication or procedure.

Access to safe, legal, confidential and affordable abortion is a right and a milestone along to path to achieving Reproductive Justice for all. I am proud to be part of an organization that has been working to this end for over 40 years, and I hope to do my best to continue in the footsteps of those who have walked this path before me.

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Reproductive Justice