Dear Friends of Radiant Futures,

It’s PRIDE Month!

The month of June was chosen for Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which happened in the late ’60s. Since then, Pride festivals have become special occasions for folks to be proud and to celebrate the progress the LGBTQ community has made. It’s also a time to reflect and recognize the distance we still have to go to achieve full equality.

Through countless studies, we know that domestic violence occurs in the LGBTQ community with the same–and in some cases higher–frequency as cisgender, heterosexual couples. However, our society’s long history of deep racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia have prevented LGBTQ and other minority survivors from seeking help from service providers, law enforcement agencies, and other systems of support.

In fact, there are still places like North Carolina that exclude same-sex survivors of domestic violence from legal protections under current laws; and just this past week, a change has been proposed to the 2012 Equal Access Rule that would allow HUD-funded shelters to refuse services to transgender individuals or disregard their gender identities when determining shelter placements.

With this understanding, we believe that we must be responsive to the needs of everyone in the community who may need our services, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation. We are committed to supporting survivors of all gender identities and sexual orientations throughout our programs.

Specifically, we provide: