On December 21st, 2004 the DC Center for the LGBT Community Board of Directors voted to sign the pledge of Commitment to Causes in Common. Causes in Common was an initiative of the LGBT Community in New York City to bring together the reproductive rights movement and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liberation movement to identify common issues and build stronger alliances. The common ground for these two movements has a long and rich history.
The DC Center was proud to join many LGBT Community Centers around the country, and other LGBT and Reproductive Justice Organizations, in committing to the following principles:
- We affirm the right to individual autonomy in all matters related to consensual sexuality and reproduction.
- We affirm the rights of individuals to control over their own bodies and to intimate engagement with members of their own sex as fundamental to the liberation of LGBT people.
- We are dedicated to effecting positive social change for the purpose of eradicating all forms of homophobia in our society and for the full attainment of the right to choose to reproduce.
- Governmental intervention in the reproductive lives of women and men limits not only their ability to make a choice about abortion; it also limits their access to safe and affordable reproductive assistance. We affirm the right of all women
to safe and affordable abortions and the right of all people to safe and affordable reproductive technologies and assistance. - The conflation of immorality and sex engaged in for purposes of pleasure or outside heterosexual civil marriage lead to the creation of policies that serve to undermine our democracy, our right to privacy and our freedom to choose the direction of our reproductive and sexual lives. It also serves to weaken what should be an unbridgeable divide between church and state as mandated by the Constitution. We affirm the necessity of a secular state to the preservation of
democratic principles. - We acknowledge the detrimental impact that U.S. policy has had on the reproductive and sexual freedoms of peoples throughout the world and we situate our alliance in a global context.
To learn more about this historic initiative, click below to download the full report: