As your constituent, I am writing to urge you make lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Virginians a priority in policy-making. Equality Virginia has identified the following key bills that would impact Virginia's LGBTQ community.

I ask that you SUPPORT these bills that will help make a Virginia that is a safe, welcoming, and equal place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and their families:

SB 1138 (Locke): Modernizes laws that currently criminalize people living with HIV

SB 1321 (Boysko): Expands the stepparent adoption provisions to allow a person who is not the child's stepparent to file a joint petition for adoption with the child's birth parent or parent by adoption.

HB 1848 (Sickles): Adds discrimination on the basis of disability as an unlawful employment practice under the Virginia Human Rights Act

HB 1932 (Levine): Repeals provisions that allow child-placing agencies to deny services on the basis of the agency's written religious policies

HB 1948 (Levine): The definition of biased-based profiling is expanded to include gender identity and sexual orientation

HB 2130 (Lopez): Establishes a Virginia LGBTQ+ Advisory Board to advise the Governor

HB 2132 (Roem): Provides that the discovery of, perception of, or belief about another person's actual or perceived sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, do not constitute defenses

SB 1100 (Howell) and HB 1800 (Torian): Budget bills that include items related to transgender-affirming Medicaid coverage and a statewide study of the state's current Family Life Education curriculum

SB 1310 (McClellan) and HB 1864 (Price): Updates employee protection laws to include domestic workers

SB 1360 (McClellan) and HB 2155 (Watts): Clarifies what qualifies as unlawful employment practices by defining sexual and workplace harassment

SB 1366 (G. Barker) and HB 1805 (D. Adams): Provides that the Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services will prioritize services to older persons with significant social needs caused by non-economic factors, including gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or HIV status.

SJ 3 (Ebbin), SJ 7 (Edwards), SJ 270 (Ebbin), HJ 113 (Sickles), HJ 539 (Levine), HJ 557 (Lopez): Proposes to repeal the Virginia constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a "union between one man and one woman."

These issues are important to me because I believe everyone in the Commonwealth deserves to feel safe and to contribute to their community. Your support would show that Virginia is a welcoming place for all. Thank you for your time.