On what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 93rd birthday, national LGBTQ groups echoed growing calls for federal voting rights legislation and queer activists held a Times Square demonstration urging the Supreme Court to uphold New York’s gun laws.
The parallel actions coincided with frustration in Washington over the failure to advance a pair of voting rights measures in the Senate as Republican-led State Legislatures scramble to curtail voting access in individual states. Federal voting rights measures have been stymied by bisexual Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who have maintained their opposition to changing Senate rules to bypass the filibuster, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has nonetheless vowed to bring forward legislation combining the two voting rights bills into one legislative package known as the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.”
