EQNM News:

Equality New Mexico (EQNM), statewide LGBTQ advocacy and liberation organization, is beginning its year-long 30th anniversary celebration.

The organization, founded in 1993, has been working through public education, political advocacy and culture change to achieve LGBTQ equality across New Mexico.

The organization announced that it would kick off this year of celebration with a robust and ambitious LGBTQ-protections legislative agenda, which includes democracy expansion and protections, modernizing anti-discrimination laws, and proactively protecting LGBTQ young people.

“We are New Mexico’s LGBTQ community, and we will protect us,” Executive Director Marshall Martinez said. “LGBTQ people have seen our safety, our dignity, and our lives at increased risk over the past few years. We expect our state legislature and governor to act this session, to increase protections for Queer and Trans New Mexicans across the state.”

Legislative policy proposals brought forward by the organization include:

• Requiring affirmative consent education for all students and giving 16-year-olds the right to vote in state, local and school board elections;
• Updating the Human Rights Act (New Mexico’s anti-discrimination law);
• Removing publication requirements for New Mexicans legally changing their names; and
• Automatically registering New Mexicans to vote.

“We have been here in New Mexico fighting—at the intersections of complex identities—to protect and uplift LGBTQ New Mexicans for 30 years,” EQNM Board Chair Monet Silva said. “It is time for the legislature and governor to act on this unfinished business. It is not enough to simply protect LGBTQ people from political attacks; it is time to fight forward on behalf of Queer and Trans New Mexicans in all 33 counties.”

The organization said it plans on a year of celebrations that will increase its visibility, uplift the struggles of LGBTQ New Mexicans, and renew its commitment to working across New Mexico’s vast diversity of geography, racial and ethnic identities, and various cultural communities.

“I am excited that we can take this year to celebrate a historic marker in the movement for LGBTQ people in New Mexico,” EQNM Foundation Board Chair Kat Sanchez said. “Thirty years of work, education in communities, organizing and mobilizing, and losing and winning small battles for equality is worth a full year of celebration! We expect to be in every corner of the state, honoring this work that we have done, not just as an organization, but as a community, which includes generations of leaders and activists in all 33 of our counties.”