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Founded | 2007 |
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Focus | "Fight OUT Loud is a national non-profit organization dedicated to empowering GLBT individuals and their allies to fight discrimination and hate." |
Location | |
Area served | United States |
Method | Activism |
Website | fightoutloud.org |
Fight OUT Loud is a non-profit organization in the United States aimed to empower LGBT individuals. Fight OUT Loud was established in 2007.
Fight OUT Loud is a United States 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established in 2007 to empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, and their allies to fight discrimination and hate.[1][2] The organization also works to raise awareness of hate crimes as in the cases of E.O. Green School shooting of Lawrence King.[3] The group also advocates for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).[4]
Fight OUT Loud was founded by Waymon Hudson and Anthony Niedwiecki as a result of a 2007 incident where an employee at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport played an anti-gay death threat over the intercom quoting a Bible verse from Leviticus reading "men that lie with men as with women should be put to death."[5] The couple complained but no action was taken until they alerted local and national media outlets.[6] According to Hudson, the incident became an international news story.[6] According to the group they had over 5,000 members in less than four months of doing their free online action alerts.[2]
Their first cause after the airport incident was supporting two 14-year-old lesbians in Portland, Oregon who were verbally abused by the bus driver as he was kicking them off the bus for kissing.[5] The group worked with the teens and their mothers, the Portland transit department issued an apology in response to the concerns.[5]
In 2007 Fight OUT Loud became a leader in the effort to address Fort Lauderdale, Florida Mayor Jim Naugle's comments about the gay community.[7][8][9][unreliable source?] Comments Naugle made about alleged use of a planned $250,000 robotic toilet in Fort Lauderdale's beach to prevent sexual encounters between men caused protests from the local community.[10] In a press release and in public rallies they tied his official public statements to violent anti-gay incidents.[11][12] The protests and campaign led to Naugle's removal from Broward County's Tourism Board, and the proposed toilet was eliminated from the budget.[7][13]
In 2008 the group announce the first four members of their newly formed national board of advisors including: Chip Arndt (activist and winner of The Amazing Race - season 4); Matt Foreman (Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force); David Mixner (political strategist, civil rights activist and public affairs advisor); and Pam Spaulding (Editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend).[14]
In 2010 Hudson and Niedwiecki moved to Chicago and continue to coordinate the group's work from there online.[1][15]
In 2011 the organization was the beneficiary of "Rock Out Loud", a music concert and anti hate crimes rally at Nova Southeastern University.[16]
A law professor and administrator at Broward County's Shepard Broad law school, Niedwiecki and his husband Waymon Hudson were co-founders of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lobby group Fight OUT Loud,[17] and led an activist campaign against former Fort Lauderdale mayor Jim Naugle after Naugle made a number of anti-gay statements.[18] The couple also lobbied the Florida State Senate to overturn the state's ban on gay adoption, after taking in a foster child who had been abandoned as "unadoptable" by the state because of the child's HIV status.[19] The couple wed in California in before Proposition 8 passed in June 2008[20] and remain legally married as one of 18,000 couples still wed after the anti-gay marriage proposition passed.[21]