About SC United for Justice & Equality
SC United for Justice and Equality envisions a South Carolina where everyone can thrive, with a focus on the lived and legal equality of LGBTQ+ people. The coalition advocates for the passage of legislation to protect LGBTQ+ community members and opposes anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
The coalition also works on intersecting issues of social justice, including racial justice, reproductive justice, voting rights, and health care access. Our work centers and amplifies the voices and experiences of those most impacted. We build the political power and voice of LGBTQ+ people in SC through both rapid response and long-term organizing and advocacy.
Legislative Priorities
Opposing and Defeating Anti-Transgender Bills
Anti-transgender legislation – like bills that would ban trans youth from accesing healthcare or those that complicate identity documents – must be stopped.
Protecting LGBTQ+ Youth from Discrimination and Censorship
Coalition members are rallying against the state’s continued attacks on truth, education, and identity.
Advocating for LGBTQ Nondiscrimination
Lawmakers in South Carolina should listen to their constituents and move forward on LGBTQ equality: 58% of South Carolinians support nondiscrimination protections.
Coalition Members
864 Pride
Amaryllis Counseling
American Civil Liberties Union of SC
Alliance for Full Acceptance
Campaign for Southern Equality
Charleston Area Transgender Support
Columbia NOW
Gender Benders
Grand Strand Pride
Harriet Hancock LGBT Center
Human Rights Campaign
Lambda Legal
Miskonception, LLC
PFLAG Aiken
PFLAG Greenville
PFLAG Spartanburg
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic
Pride Link
Richland County Public Education Partners
SC Equality
The Agape Table
Transgender Awareness Alliance
The Trevor Project
Tri-County Gender Benders
UpLift Outreach Center
Upstate SC LGBT+ Chamber
We Are Family
Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN)
Coalition Values
Justice
Equality
Equity
Transparency
Centering Queer Joy
We live into these values through the following guidelines and practices, which inform how we function internally as a coalition and our public facing work:
The coalition centers the needs, leadership, and lived experiences of the South Carolina LGBTQ+ community, especially those who have the least access to structural power.
We will work to build a South Carolina, and a world, in which people experience legal and lived equality and do not experience discrimination or animus on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, race, natural hair or hairstyles, ethnicity, creed, color, sex, genetic diversity, national origin or ancestry, marital or familial status, pregnancy, veteran status, religious belief or non-belief, age, or disability.
We are committed to addressing sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, adultism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of oppression in ourselves and in our work, in South Carolina, and in the larger LGBTQ+ movement.
We are committed to examining and dismantling white supremacy within individuals and in our coalition work, addressing racism, and interrogating anti-Blackness in South Carolina and in the LGBTQ+ movement as a whole. White supremacy is a system whose core principle is that white people are superior to people of color. It is both a personal belief system and a political, social, cultural, and economic system where white people control the power, resources and cultural narratives that reinforce the idea of the superiority of whiteness.
The labor of dismantling white supremacy will fall on the white members of the coalition, not the Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) members. We exist in systems which give power to some while causing harm to others. We will address the root causes of this systemic oppression by having those closer to power help repair and redress the harm experienced by those farther from it.
Those who are closest to the trauma are closest to the solution. I.e.: cisgender coalition members will defer to the experience and expertise of transgender coalition members in matters that concern transgender people; white coalition members will defer to the experience and expertise of BIPOC coalition members in matters that concern BIPOC, etc.