Happy Coming Out Day!

Today is National Coming Out Day, an internationally celebrated holiday of sorts set aside for LGBT folks and their allies to foster discussions about issues surrounding the LGBT community and the difficulty some people face in coming out to their friends and families. It's also a day that some people use to actually come out.

Fair Wisconsin is taking the day to call for pressuring law makers into including transgendered people in the likely soon-to-be-passed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The original draft of the law included "gender identity" in its list of things that would be illegal for employers to discriminate against. For various reasons, none of them good, that language has since been removed from the bill, and the Fair Wisconsin campaign is seeking to rectify that. Click over to their site for more information on how you can help support their efforts.

While we've still a long, long way to go in ensuring equal treatment of homosexuals, awareness and treatment of transgendered people is even worse off. They suffer prejudices and discrimination from even within the LGBT community, but especially from the world at large, which remains woefully uneducated about their lives and even their very existence. It is a complicated issue, but regardless of what your opinions are on the minutia of transgenderism, the right of all people in this country (not to mention world) to be treated fairly is not up for debate.

For more festive events, check out the the listings at the UW-Madison's LGBT Campus Center. Tonight they've got "Queer Games," which I won't even begin to speculate what that includes, but sounds fun.

Most importantly, be sure that you're supportive of your LGBT friends, especially the ones who may still be struggling with being open and honest about their sexuality. And if you're already out and proud, treat yourself to something fun today. You deserve it.