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The Delaware Division of Libraries recently
entered into an agreement with the database company EBSCO to provide a
free public trial of their LGBT Life databases through our statewide
shared database resources. Library card holders throughout Delaware can
now access this database through the end of June through their library
homepage’s database link.
LGBT Life with full text is offered for
more than 70 of the most important and historically significant LGBT
journals, magazines and regional newspapers, as well as more than 100
full-text monographs/books. Full text content available in LGBT Life with
Full Text includes The Advocate, Gay Parent Magazine, Girlfriends, GLQ: A
Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies, James White Review, ISNA News,
Ladder, Lesbian Tide, New York Blade, ONE, Tangents, Washington Blade, and
many more.
Richard James
Administrative Librarian
Delaware Division of Libraries
It was breathtaking how quickly the bill
permitting same-gender charter schools in Delaware sailed through both
chambers of the General Assembly. Introduced on Jan. 10, it was passed in
the House by Jan. 22 and in the Senate by March 19, in both cases by
overwhelming majorities. This whirlwind happened despite the mixed
findings on the efficacy of same-gender learning environments, and the
disturbing separate-but-equal civil liberties implications.
Compare that movement with the decade-long
effort to protect gay Delawareans from workplace discrimination. A bill
outlawing anti-gay employment discrimination was first introduced in 1998
and was quickly defeated, even though a Newsweek poll at the time showed
84% of Americans opposed workplace sexual orientation discrimination. In
2001, 2003 and 2005 sexual orientation antidiscrimination bills passed the
House but each time died in a senator’s desk drawer. Last year Senate
Bill 141 was introduced but cannot get out of a Senate committee.
Our lawmakers took only two months to pass
a bill ensuring that a charter school may discriminate on the basis of
gender. They have now begun their second decade of dithering over
workplace fairness for the many thousands of Delaware’s gay employees.
Douglas Marshall-Steele
Letters to Letters should be addressed
to Editor@camprehoboth.com or mailed to Editor, 37 Baltimore Ave.,
Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971.
Please include your name and phone number for verification. Anonymous
letters will not be printed. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
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