As part of the Wood River Reads programming series join Nicole LeFavour for a talk on Civil Rights, Civil Disobedience, the Church, and the Idaho Legislature. Nicole is a former Idaho State Senator who served four years in the Idaho House of Representatives and four years in the Idaho State Senate. She has worked on issues from consumer protection, fair tax policy and prison sentencing reform to protecting the rights of people with disabilities and immigrants, opposing English only laws, and laws which would erode the rights of women.
She has spent two decades working to advance civil rights for LGBT people in Idaho, working on campaigns and educating the public as well as lobbying and negotiating with law makers for a decade to get them to “add the words” to include gay and transgender people in Idaho’s existing non discrimination laws. After over 200 arrests, finally in January of 2015 they held their first public hearing to listen to the stories of people impacted by discrimination. After two days of testimony, they failed to act and so, to this day, it remains legal to discriminate against gay and transgender people in Idaho. The issue will be before the legislature again next year and thousands of people will be pushing to have lawmakers do what’s right for their sons, daughters and loved ones and “add the words.”
