CNSNews.com – The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) held its first “Creating Change Lobby Day” on Capitol Hill on Thursday, where activists met with lawmakers to call for legislation to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues.

Other groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) also joined the Task Force to advocate for employment nondiscrimination, pay equity, anti-bullying, and safe school laws for the LGBT community.

When approached by CNSNews.com, however, the activists said they could not talk to the media and directed all questions to their communications director. Calls to the press contact were not returned.

As part of the NGLTF’s “24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change,” the activists started with a “training session” in Baltimore, Md., before being bused to the nation’s capitol to lobby Congress.

“Together, we’ll deliver our message loud and clear: it’s time for Congress to advance LGBT legislation!” the Task Force stated on the event’s Web site. “From discrimination in employment to the need for safe schools, we’ll remind these elected officials that they are there to represent all Americans,” the group said.

The organization also said that hundreds of activists would participate in the event.

“We won’t rest until LGBT people attain total equality and truly are full participants in our democracy,” the NGLTF states in its mission. The organization’s think tank arm “provides rapid-response research to counter the extremist messages generated by the right wing,” according to its Web site.

The AFL-CIO, the labor organization headed by Richard Trumka and allied with the Obama administration, supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that would prohibit discrimination for sexual orientation in the workplace.

The Creating Change conference is being hosted at the Hilton Hotel in Baltimore, Md. and will run through Sunday. The Conference will feature speeches by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who is pushing for a same-sex marriage law this year, President and CEO of the NAACP Ben Jealous, and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

Donavan “will discuss federal efforts to advance the rights and well-being of LGBT people and their families at HUD and beyond,” according to the event’s Web site.

Hundreds of sessions to advance the LGBT agenda planned for the five-day event include everything from Transgender Muslims, to aging, to homelessness, to Saran Wrap and to Palestine.

Some of the workshops include the following:

• Language Matters: Why We Should Stop Saying 'Abomination' and 'Sodomy,'
• LGBT Aging Policy
• Organizing Lessons Learned from the Black Panther Party
• How to Become Gay for Pay! Kicking off Your Queer Career
• Why Palestine is an LGBT Issue
• Radical Queer Parenting
• 69 Ways to Use Saran Wrap: Queering Up Your Campus
• Princess Boys, Two Mommies, and You’re So Gay: Current Issues and LGBT Advocacy in Elementary Schools
• The Artifice of the Nuclear Family
• Transgender Muslims: How Orthodox Islam Gets It Right (And Yet So Wrong)

According to NGLTF, over 2,000 people attend the conference every year.

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