After Milton Hershey School denied admission last year to an HIV-positive 13-year-old, his parents filed a lawsuit alleging the school violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by discriminating against their son based on his HIV status. The private boarding school reversed its decision last month, pledging to amend their policies to be more inclusive of HIV issues, and reached a settlement in the lawsuit today that awards the student’s family $700,000 in damages for HIV-based discrimination.

Thomas E. Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, applauded the settlement for reaffirming the importance of addressing HIV stigma:

PEREZ: Children should not be denied educational opportunities simply because they have HIV. This settlement sends a clear message that unlawful discrimination against persons with HIV or AIDS will not be tolerated.

The 13-year-old student has lived with HIV his whole life. After he was denied admission to Milton Hershey School based on concerns that his HIV status would “pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others,” national protests erupted, prompting the boarding school’s president to announce updates to the institution’s anti-discrimination policies to ensure it “treats applicants with HIV no differently than any other applicants.” Today’s settlement with the Justice Department also requires the school to provide staff and administrators with further training on the requirements of the ADA.

A new report from the Movement Advancement Project, with support from several other LGBT organizations, outlines all the primary challenges still facing LGBT Americans to help allies understand what support is still needed. The guide provides a broad overview of what LGBT equality would look like: having “the same chance as everyone else to pursue health and happiness, earn a living, be safe in their communities, serve their country, and take care of the ones they love.” Here’s what that includes:

• Fair and inclusive workplaces, with equal access to employment benefits.
• Access to competent and welcoming health care providers, as well as the insurance to cover those costs.
• Access to identity documents for transgender and gender non-conforming people.
• The legal protections of marriage equality at the state and federal levels.
• Secure recognition of ties between parents and children.
• Safe communities, bully-free schools, welcoming faith communities, and an inclusive military.

No doubt, LGBT rights have come a long way, but the effort for full equality is far from over. The community cannot achieve that goal alone, and making sure allies understand the struggles still faces is essential overcoming them.

Our guest blogger is Jeff Krehely, Vice President for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force encourages LGBT people to identify themselves to the Census Bureau.

Today the U.S. Census Bureau released data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage estimates for households in our country. As was the case last week when Census released the August unemployment numbers, which are also based on the CPS, people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) were invisible in the data and related findings and analysis.

There is a simple reason for this omission: The CPS does not collect sexual orientation or gender identity information from survey respondents, despite asking a wide range of other demographic questions, including questions on age, gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, and Vietnam veteran status. The answers to these questions allow the CPS to report its data for several different subpopulations in the U.S., including adult men and women, teenagers, African Americans, and Latinos.

But it is impossible for the Census Bureau to report anything on LGBT people, which has real consequences for this population. As the Bureau puts it, “The [CPS] statistics are used by government policymakers as important indicators of our nation’s economy and for planning and evaluating many government programs.”

In other words, the government uses this data to direct critical government dollars to people who are most struggling in the economy. It is impossible for the government to even consider LGBT people in this analysis, so the population inevitably loses out on important government support that could make the difference between economically sinking or staying afloat.

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Suicide has become a major source of concern for LGBT communities over the last several years. In the new 2012 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, the Surgeon General and the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention highlight the disproportionately heavy impact of suicide on the LGBT population:

The prevalence of suicide attempts among gay and bisexual men is 4 times greater than among straight men.

The prevalence of suicide attempts among lesbian and bisexual women is almost twice that of straight women.

LGB teens and adults are almost twice as likely as heterosexuals to report a suicide attempt in the last year.

41 percent of transgender people report making a suicide attempt — a rate 25 times higher than the general population.

12 to 19 percent of LGB adults report suicide attempts, compared with less than 5 percent of all U.S. adults.

1 in 3 LGBT adolescents report suicide attempts, compared to 1 in 10 straight adolescents.

Especially high rates of suicide attempts have been reported among LGBT African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.

This version of the strategy marks a major departure from the 2001 version, which mentioned only LGB youth. Thanks to the work of the LGBT Task Force that forms part of the National Action Alliance, the new strategy notes that adolescence isn’t the only time that suicide can affect LGBT people. In fact, LGBT people may struggle with suicidal despair and suicide attempts at different points in their lives.

The reasons that suicide is a lifelong concern for many LGBT people are complex. In particular, the strategy reflects growing understandings of how “minority stress” arising from discrimination and prejudice against minority sexual orientation and gender identity contributes to concerns about LGBT suicide. Drivers of LGBT minority stress include:

Family rejection and social isolation.

Bullying, violence, and harassment.

Providers refusing to offer respectful mental and behavioral health care services to LGBT people.

Laws and public policies denying LGBT people benefits and protections provided to others.

Media messages encouraging suicide contagion by portraying suicide as a normal response to anti-LGBT bullying or other experiences of discrimination.

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ThinkProgress reported Tuesday evening that former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) apologized for the gay-baiting email and tweet sent by his political director Brian Nemoir targeting his Senate opponent Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D). But video of Thompson addressing the situation suggests that his concern over the incident is minimal, and he apparently feels he has to take no responsibility for Nemoir’s comments:

REPORTER: Does [Nemoir] remain with the campaign?

THOMPSON: Uhhh… yes, but in sort of a different role.

REPORTER: What is the change for Brian?

THOMPSON: Somebody else has taken over communications with the press.

Watch it:

Even though Thompson says he was “very upset,” he apparently was not upset enough to actually remove Nemoir from his campaign team, instead keeping him on for strategy. Thompson also claimed that Nemoir has apologized, but he hasn’t; in fact, Nemoir said he has no regrets, suggesting Baldwin’s sexual orientation is one of many “significant issues” in the campaign.

Baldwin spokesperson John Kraus reacted that “this was a test and Tommy Thompson failed the test,” referring to the five days it took him to respond and his apparent attempt to cover up the incident without holding Nemoir accountable.