CPR Scholars Call for 'Vigilant Advocacy' to Protect LGBTQ Gains
The Center for Progressive Reform stands with all who are working to advance equity and equality for LGBTQ Americans. To commemorate Pride Month, we asked three CPR leaders to weigh in on progress in this area. Below, Board Member Laurie Ristino and Member Scholars Victor Flatt and Steph Tai offer their perspectives on progress made and work to do, as well as misperceptions about the LGBTQ community and lessons learned from past victories.
Laurie Ristino
“Over the last several decades, LGBTQ rights have made serious progress, gains that require vigilant advocacy to retain and further equal justice for all LGBTQ people.
“At the same time, the struggle for BIPOC rights continues. In America, we have simply failed to address racial injustice and inequity. What can we learn from the advocacy successes of the LGBTQ experience to move the dial forward so all Americans may enjoy the same rights, protections, and considerations?”
Ristino is a CPR Board member and Member Scholar. She is also founder of Strategies for a Sustainable Future, an environmental consulting firm.
Victor Flatt
“The rights of LGBTQ folks have come further and faster in the last 10 years than I could have anticipated in the late ‘80s …
In 1972, the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) created a permit system for point source discharges to navigable waters of the United States – rivers, lakes, and coastal waters – with the goal of restoring and protecting their water quality. Typically, these permits are issued by the U.S. EPA or through state agencies to dischargers of wastewater, e.g., from urban and industrial wastewater treatment plants and to other dischargers of potentially contaminated water that reach streams by a pipe or similar conveyance. The goal was to provide some degree of regulatory oversight over such discharges. In California, the State Water Resources Control Board implements the federal Clean Water Act using its authority under the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act (Water Code, §13000 et seq.). Under the CWA, neither EPA nor the states are required to …
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