National
Stonewall gives middle finger to oppressive heterosexist ‘normalcy’
Fight against the APA was just as profound
In the Trump era, the massive LGBT parades in New York City and elsewhere on June 28, the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, commemorate more than an annual Pride event: they symbolize an LGBT people intent on joyfully countering white male-dominated heterosexism and the tentacles of hatred it inspires. This counter-culture moment in many ways mirrors the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and early 1970s where hope for full equality and the spirit of freedom and democracy clashed with oppressive hard-core conservatism.
Stonewall was a line of demarcation between passive acceptance and courageous self-empowerment in a culture war that is not yet won.
Violent raids on gay bars were routine until Stonewall, as the Washington Post reported in their review of Howard Mann’s book “Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969.” “The imposition of the notorious Production Code, for example, was accompanied by a crackdown on ‘pansy’ clubs in Los Angeles and elsewhere — all part of a reaction to the liberalization of the raucously roaring ’20s.”
Outside of dark hideouts and clandestine hookups, LGBT people survived by hiding in the closet, passing as straight. Those who couldn’t hide or got caught were often scandalized, humiliated, beaten or killed without repercussions.
Gays like Howard Efland, a nurse who checked into the SRO Dover Hotel in downtown LA on March 9, 1969—roughly four months before Stonewall—hoping to meet someone in those otherwise free-wheeling pre-bathhouse days of the 1960s. But the LAPD didn’t just bust the “faggot” on a trumped-up charge—they dragged him naked by the feet down a flight of stairs where they savagely beat him in front of horrified witnesses as he screamed for help. When he died shortly thereafter, they told his parents he suffered a heart attack. The Coroner called his death an “excusable homicide.”
The LA Advocate found out and reported the murder, prompting the Rev. Troy Perry and gay troublemaker Morris Kight to organize a march and rally at the site. But no one was ever held accountable.
Protest rallies had become common in the 1960s as more people joined civil rights marches and students protested the war in Vietnam. But the 1968 assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King, along with the televised brutality of the Chicago police during the Democratic National Convention, led the country to split asunder debating politics, ethics and morality.
But Stonewall in 1969 and the less celebrated earlier LGBT rebellions against police in Los Angeles at the Cooper Do-Nuts in 1959, Compton’s Cafeteria in 1966, the Black Cat Tavern on Feb. 11, 1967 and at Lee Glaze’s The Patch in Aug. 1968 were significant for another reason, as well. They symbolized an arbitrarily constructed minority fighting back against the prevailing definition of homosexuality as an icky moral perversion worthy of degradation, condemnation—and as the Bible suggests, death.
As a result of the acceptance and promotion of that longstanding belief by society, the state, religion and families, in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder and a “sexual deviation” in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) during the height of the McCarthy era witch hunts.
Many LGBT individuals internalized that hate-based definition of homosexuality as a sin, a crime and a sick perversion, leading to suicide, profound shame, secrecy, and agonizing isolation.
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk in the earth as though I had a right to be here,” gay author James Baldwin once wrote.
“Cures” for homosexuality included lobotomies, electroshock aversion therapy, and chemical castration among other tortures—as well as the perennial “conversion” or “reparative” therapy, still thriving in many states today.
Not all LGBT people were cowed by the danger, however. Edythe Eyde (aka Lisa Ben) started the first known lesbian newsletter Vice Versa in 1947 during off time as a secretary for RKO Pictures. Harry Hay and a few others founded the Mattachine Society and ONE Inc, which published ONE Magazine, in LA in the early 1950s when poet Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” was all the rage. San Francisco drag queen and Army vet Jose Sarria ran for political office in 1961, before founding the Imperial Court System. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon founded the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco in 1955, also publishing The Ladder for lesbians.
But most of the early organizations were clandestine since being discovered to be a homosexual led to instant unemployment, loss of family and friends and a myriad of other personal horrors, including depression, anxiety and other emotional and mental illnesses. Gradually activists such as Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings from the Washington DC chapter of the Mattachine Society publicly protested, promoting the argument that “Gay is Good.”
“The problems of the homosexual stem from discrimination by the heterosexual majority and are much more likely to be employment problems than emotional problems,” Kameny wrote in a letter to Playboy in 1969 in response to a story about “therapeutic methods” for treating gay men, according to the New York Review of Books. Doctors “would be of greater service to the harassed homosexual minority,” Kameny concluded, “if they ceased to reinforce the negative value judgments of society and, instead, adopted a positive approach in which therapy for a homosexual would consist of instilling in him a sense of confident self-acceptance so he could say with pride, ‘Gay is good.’”
Indeed, Dr. Saul Levin, the out gay CEO of the APA, tells the Los Angeles Blade, “LGBTQ folk have always been stereotyped and in some ways derided. There was a stigma to it.” But “as mental illness became more part of the medicalization,” some psychiatrists began to question the data-less assumptions about homosexuality, including Professor Sigmund Freud, a neurologist and psychiatrist.
“A mother bought her son and said that there was something wrong with him. And that’s when [Freud] began to really look at a sort of homosexuality,” Levin says. “In some of his writing, he did not think that this was a mental illness, per se—that in some ways it was a sexual variant. I’m paraphrasing his words….But by the 1970s, it became very clear that some asked why was it a mental illness? Show us that we had a different problem or a mental illness compared to someone who has depression or anxiety.”
That questioning led to an APA panel in 1972 with Kameny and Gittings and a masked “Dr. H. Anonymous,” the only gay psychiatrist who agreed to participate.
“Yes, we are sick—we are sick of your manipulation and exploitation of us,” Kameny said. He demanded that “homosexuality be removed permanently from the psychiatric list of diseases” and called for “treatment of the oppressing society instead of the attempted treatment of us, the oppressed homosexual.”
But, says Levin, it was “Dr. H. Anonymous” who really got them thinking.
“John Fryer, a psychiatrist out of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was a gay man who realized at that time he could lose his job, he could lose this apartment,” who came forward, says Levin. “The gay community was very much beginning to come out of the closet but it was also a time where we were highly discriminated against by legislation. And he eventually said to the APA that it was time for them to either take homosexuality out of the DSM, or they need to show the data of why it’s a mental illness. And the APA leaders at the time heard him, and within a year they had decided that there actually was not data so they took it out of the DSM,” in the 1973 publication.
“Today, we know that it’s not a mental illness. We are just a variant in who we love and who we want, and who we are inside,” Levin says. “And obviously, sometimes whether you’re straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, there may be parts of you that, because of some of the discrimination you may have had when you were younger, that’s the issue that has to be addressed as part of a good mental health, healthcare checkup….The bottom line is that it is a natural variant of the human being and, it does not need curing,” a position the APA continues to strongly advocate.
Though less colorful and public than the Stonewall Rebellion, the fight against the APA’s designation of homosexuality was also a significant resistance to the oppressive heterosexual construct of “normalcy.”
It is also the subject of the upcoming documentary “Cured.”
“We were drawn to this story because it’s such a pivotal but largely unknown moment in LGBT history,” Cured Co-Director Patrick Sammon tells the Los Angeles Blade. “In fact, following the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, the campaign that resulted in the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its manual of mental illnesses marked the first major step on the path to equality for LGBT Americans.”
“At a time when every lesbian and gay man, no matter how well-adjusted, was automatically considered sick and in need of a cure, the diverse group of activists who took on the APA found the courage to stand up and tell the world that they — not psychiatrists — were the experts on their own lives,” says Bennett Singer, co-director of “Cured.” “Their tactics and strategy offer crucial lessons about how to create and sustain social change, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable opposition. And their insistence on speaking truth to power can inspire and guide every LGBTQ American — as well as our allies — who wants to ensure that hard-won progress toward equality is not rolled back.”
National
Biden, other administration officials mark Transgender Day of Remembrance
‘Epidemic of violence towards transgender people’
Democratic officials marked Transgender Day of Remembrance, which took place on Wednesday, honoring the lives lost to anti-trans violence and calling out rising anti-trans rhetoric and discrimination.
President Joe Biden in a statement said “we mourn the transgender Americans whose lives were taken this year in horrific acts of violence.”
“There should be no place for hate in America — and yet too many transgender Americans, including young people, are cruelly targeted and face harassment simply for being themselves. It’s wrong,” he said. “Every American deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and to live free from discrimination. Today, we recommit ourselves to building a country where everyone is afforded that promise.”
U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), as well as U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), all members of the Congressional Equality Caucus, introduced a bicameral resolution commemorating the Transgender Day of Remembrance and “recognizing the epidemic of violence toward transgender people and memorializing the lives lost this year.”
“As anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation has increased in the United States over recent years, unfortunately so has anti-transgender violence,” Jayapal said in a statement announcing the resolution. “On Transgender Day of Remembrance, this resolution stands as a symbol of the strength and resilience of the trans community and honors the lives of the trans people we have lost to horrific violence.”
Jacobs also addressed President-elect Donald Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric.
“Donald Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans agenda will likely fuel this anxiety and violence against queer communities,” Jacobs said. “That makes this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance even more important. Our bicameral resolution is a powerful reminder that anti-trans rhetoric can cost lives.”
A report by the Human Rights Campaign documenting anti-trans violence found at least 36 trans and gender-expansive people in the U.S. lost their lives to violence since last year.
Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1999 by trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith to commemorate the one year anniversary of the murder of Rita Hester, a trans woman who was killed in Boston. The day has since grown into a national and international event.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement honored Transgender Day of Remembrance.
“Transgender individuals exist in every country, every culture, and every faith tradition,” he said. “ The United States recognizes Transgender Day of Remembrance to affirm the dignity and human rights of transgender persons globally.”
In a post on X, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) wrote, “On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, we honor the trans and nonbinary lives lost to violence simply for being who they are. Every American deserves to live their truth and feel safe doing so. Hate has no place here.”
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield noted the Biden-Harris administration’s advocacy for the trans community, which has included issuing a policy that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation under the Title IX federal civil rights law this year.
“On Transgender Day of Remembrance, we reaffirm there is no place for hate in America. The Biden-Harris Administration is proud to advocate for the safety of transgender and all LGBTQI+ Americans, including at the UN,” she said in a post on X.
Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a former independent UN expert on LGBTQ+ and intersex rights, also on X, said trans people’s human rights are questioned “for reasons that have nothing to do with them and a lot with bigotry.”
“Support them actively,” he urged.
Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, seemingly mixed up the day that was being observed, releasing a statement mistakenly commemorating Transgender Day of Visibility, which takes place on March 31.
“We fight so that trans Americans can go to the doctor and receive the same treatment as any other patient … so that they feel welcomed at school and in their community for who they are,” Becerra said.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, issued a proclamation recognizing Transgender Day of Remembrance, continuing the precedent he set last year as the first Maryland governor to issue such a proclamation.
Moore in May signed into law a bill that added gender-affirming care to Maryland’s definition of legally protected health care, affirming its status as a sanctuary state for trans people and their healthcare providers.
National
Reports of hate-filled messages under investigation
Racist, homophobic, messages reported across the U.S. following presidential election
On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation stated they are now investigating a series of racist and offensive messages sent to LGBTQ+ communities and communities of color around the country. At first, text messages were targeted at Black Americans and African Americans, then the wave of hateful digital rhetoric spread to target the LGBTQ+ and Latin American communities.
Earlier this month, the initial text messages were sent out to Black American and African American people regarding a fake work assignment that suggested they were going to be working as slaves in a plantation. College students, high school students, professionals and even children, reported receiving the mass texts from unrecognized phone numbers following the presidential election.
Since then, at least 30 states throughout the nation have reported cases of similar messages containing hate-filled speech, according to CNN.
According to the report issued by the FBI, the texts and emails that target the LGBTQ+ and Latin American communities stated that the receivers of these messages were selected for deportation or to report to re-education camps.
The Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau is investigating the text messages. Chair Jessica Rosenworcel issued a statement regarding the texts.
“These messages are unacceptable,” said Rosenworcel. “That’s why our Enforcement Bureau is already investigating and looking into them alongside federal and state law enforcement. We take this type of targeting very seriously.”
The FBI reports that though they have not received reports of violence related to the messages, they are working with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, to evaluate all reported incidents across the U.S.
Last year, the Leadership Conference Education Fund launched a report stating that hate crimes increase during elections, pointing to white supremacists being particularly active during the past four presidential election cycles.
A portion of the report reads: “The Trump candidacy empowered white nationalists and provided them with a platform — one they had been seeking with renewed intensity since the historic election of America’s first Black president in 2008. Since 2015, communities across the country have experienced some of the most violent and deadliest years for hate in modern history.”
If you have received a similar text or email, you can report it here.
Federal Government
House races could decide Department of Education’s future
Second Trump administration could target transgender students
The Associated Press reports that more than a dozen races for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, including 10 for congressional districts in California, remain too close to call as of Tuesday — a full week after voters cast their ballots on Nov. 5.
Democrats hope that if they can flip the lower chamber, which is now governed by a narrow Republican majority, it might function as a bulwark against President-elect Donald Trump, his incoming administration, and the 53-47 majority in the U.S. Senate that his party secured last week.
If, on the other hand, the GOP retains control of the House, the Republican victory would clear a major roadblock that could otherwise have stymied a major plank of Trump’s education agenda: Plans to permanently shutter the U.S. Department of Education.
Congress ultimately scuttled the former president’s effort to do so during his first administration — though, technically, the proposal then was to merge the agency with the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Wall Street Journal notes that some Republicans, at the time and in the years since, have come out against plans to abolish the 44-year-old agency, in some cases even objecting to major funding cuts proposed by Trump that they understood were likely be unpopular.
However, if the second term plans for DOE as delineated in the Trump campaign’s Agenda47 and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 governing blueprint become a major policy priority once the incoming administration takes over in January, reluctant Republican lawmakers will face tremendous pressure to get out of Trump’s way.
Federal government will remain in schools to advance anti-trans, anti-woke agenda
Among other responsibilities, DOE disburses and manages student loans, enforces the civil rights laws in public schools, and provides funding for students with disabilities. The agency’s programs, such as Title I, offer assistance for low-achieving or high-poverty K-12 schools, while Pell Grants help undergraduates who otherwise would not be able to pay for college.
It is unclear whether or how those functions will continue if the DOE is disbanded.
Trump’s aim, at least in large part, is to give states — rather than the federal government — the ultimate say over how their schools are run. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, the other cornerstone of his education policy agenda is to issue proscriptive rules governing the content, curricula, and classroom discussion that will be permitted in the country’s public schools.
Specifically, this means “critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political” topics or materials are forbidden. Reasonable people are likely to disagree about what is and is not “inappropriate,” and they may well have different, even disparate, definitions for terms like “gender ideology.”
When Florida and other states enacted similar anti-LGBTQ content and curricular restrictions in their public schools, critics warned the ambiguous language in the statute and the resulting confusion would lead to censorship, or perhaps self-censorship, especially for students and staff who, by virtue of their skin color or sexual orientation or gender identity, are more likely to be targeted with targeted or overzealous enforcement in the first place.
DOE plays major role investigating alleged civil rights violations in schools
According to the National Education Association, “federal civil rights laws prohibit school boards and other employers from discriminating against or harassing staff or students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity,” which “means, for example, that a school district may not prohibit only LGBTQ+ educators from answering students’ questions about their families, may not prohibit recognition and discussion in class only of LGBTQ+ families, and may not require that only LGBTQ+ students hide their sexual orientation or gender identity at school.”
However, the NEA warns, “some school districts, administrators, and the Florida Department of Education may nonetheless choose to do so until a court orders otherwise.”
If officials at a public high school allow heterosexual teachers to display family photos in their classrooms but warn the openly gay teacher that he must put his away or be terminated for violating restrictions on in-school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, the manner in which the policy was enforced against him would presumably run afoul of the federal civil rights laws, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The teacher could assume the expense of hiring an attorney to pursue legal remedies, shouldering the burden and the risk that litigation that could drag on for months and conclude with a judgment in favor of his employer. Alternatively, until or unless Trump dissolves the agency, he could file a complaint with DOE’s Office of Civil Rights.
Alternatively, until or unless Trump dissolves the agency, the teacher could file a complaint with DOE. The agency’s Office of Civil Rights would evaluate the information he shared to determine whether there were sufficient grounds to open an investigation and, if so, would deploy “a variety of fact-finding techniques” that can include a review of documentary evidence submitted by both parties, interviews with key witnesses, and site visits.
After the investigation is complete, if a “preponderance of the evidence supports a conclusion that the recipient failed to comply with the law,” OCR will attempt to negotiate a resolution agreement. If the recipient refuses to resolve the matter in this manner, OCR can “suspend, terminate, or refuse to grant or continue federal financial assistance to the recipient, or may refer the case to the Department of Justice.”
According to the DOE’s website, the agency has 11,782 investigations that were open as of Tuesday, with complaints against institutions of all kinds operating in all 50 states, from rural elementary schools in the Deep South to prestigious medical schools, community colleges, and charter schools for students with developmental disabilities. Likewise, the six civil rights laws over which OCR has jurisdiction cover a wide range of conduct, from sexual harassment to discrimination, retaliation, and single-sex athletics scholarships.
Should Trump succeed in abolishing the department, it is not yet clear how those active investigations will be handled, nor how complaints about violations of civil rights law by educational institutions would be reported and investigated moving forward in the agency’s absence.
During his first administration, Trump passed proposed changes to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which retooled the process for reporting sexual assault on college campuses in ways that were widely seen as imbalanced in favor of the accused.
President Joe Biden in April issued new guidelines that featured “significant shifts in how institutions address sexual harassment, and assault allegations while expanding protections for LGBTQ+ and pregnant students,” the American Council on Education wrote. Specifically, the administration provided a “new definition of sexual harassment, extending jurisdiction to off-campus, and international incidents,” while “clarifying protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, and parenting status.”
The regulations sidestepped thornier questions, however, about how schools should approach issues at the intersection of gender identity and competitive sports, specifying only that they should avoid bans that would categorically prohibit transgender athletes from participating.
Shortly after the Biden administration’s guidelines were introduced, Trump vowed they would be “terminated” on his first day in office. He also pledged to enact anti-trans policies that appear to have been modeled after some of the most extreme of the roughly 1,600 anti-trans bills that conservative statehouses have proposed from 2021-2024.
Among other promises Trump made during the campaign were plans to enact a nationwide ban on trans student athletes competing in accordance with their gender identity, a federal law that would recognize only two genders, and the prosecution of health care providers who administer gender affirming care to patients younger than 18.
National
Trump refers to Anderson Cooper as ‘Allison’
Crude insults continue in effort to attract male voters
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump referred repeatedly over the weekend to CNN’s Anderson Cooper as “Allison Cooper.”
Cooper, one of the nation’s most prominent openly gay television anchors, moderated a town hall last week with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump last Friday called Anderson “Allison” in a social media post, then used the moniker again at a Michigan rally.
“If you watched her being interviewed by Allison Cooper the other night, he’s a nice person. You know Allison Cooper? CNN fake news,” Trump said, before adding, “Oh, she said no, his name is Anderson. Oh, no.”
Trump repeated the name during another Michigan rally on Saturday, according to the Associated Pres, then followed it up during a reference in Pennsylvania. “They had a town hall,” Trump said in Michigan. “Even Allison Cooper was embarrassed by it. He was embarrassed by it.”
Describing Anderson Cooper as female plays into offensive and stereotypical depictions of gay men as effeminate as Trump continues to pursue the so-called “bro vote,” amping up crude and vulgar displays in an effort to appeal to male voters.
National
HRC rallies LGBTQ voters in 12 states ahead of Election Day
10 Days of Action campaign targets pro-equality candidate
The Human Rights Campaign said it filled 1,426 new volunteer shifts and held 174 events across key swing states between Oct. 10-20 as part of its 10 Days of Action campaign.
The LGBTQ civil rights advocacy group is working to mobilize and turn out voters in support of pro-equality and LGBTQ candidates, including the Harris-Walz ticket, on Election Day.
HRC reported exceeding its recruitment goals, noting the strong response across the 12 states as a “clear and resounding message” that LGBTQ and allied voters are energized to back the Harris-Walz ticket.
To kick off the 10 Days of Action, Gwen Walz, the spouse of Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, spoke at a Philadelphia event that HRC and the Out for Harris-Walz coalition hosted on Oct. 10.
Walz highlighted her husband’s long-standing support for LGBTQ issues, such as his role in fighting to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in Congress and banning so-called conversion therapy as governor, according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
Other events launched canvassing efforts for Senate candidates, such as U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.), along with House candidates, such as Will Rollins and Mondaire Jones in California and New York respectively.
A virtual organizing call on Oct. 11 that the Out for Harris-Walz coalition hosted featured prominent figures, including actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Andy Cohen, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), and Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who is running for Congress.
To close out the 10 Days of Action, HRC President Kelley Robinson canvassed with LGBTQ organizers in Phoenix on Oct. 20.
In a statement, Robinson said the campaign’s work is “far from over.”
“We plan to spend every day until the election making sure everyone we know is registered to vote and has a plan to vote because no one is going to give us the future we deserve — we have to fight for it and show America that when we show up, equality wins,” she said. “Together, we will elect pro-equality leaders like Vice President Harris and Governor Walz who value our communities and are ready to lead us forward with more freedom and opportunity.”
A September HRC poll found that LGBTQ voters favor Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the presidential race by a nearly 67-point margin.
National
73 percent of LGBTQ community centers face harassment: Report
Findings show threats triggered by ‘anti-LGBTQ politics or rhetoric’
The biennial 2024 LGBTQ Community Center Survey Report, which was released Oct. 16, shows that 73 percent of 199 U.S.-based LGBTQ community centers that participated in the survey reported they had experienced anti-LGBTQ threats or harassment during the past two years.
The survey, which included LGBTQ centers in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, is prepared by the Fort Lauderdale-based CenterLink, which provides services and support for LGBTQ community centers; and the Boulder, Colo.-based Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a research organization that focuses on social justice issues impacting the LGBTQ community.
“The biennial survey series started in 2008 and highlights the crucial role these centers play in the broader LGBTQ movement, offering an invaluable link between LGBTQ people and local, state, and national efforts to advance LGBTQ equality,” a statement released by the two organizations says.
The statement and the findings in the report point out that most of the LGBTQ centers that faced anti-LGBTQ threats or harassment said they were triggered by “anti-LGBTQ politics and rhetoric” that has surfaced across the country in the past several years.
“As attacks on LGBTQ people escalate year after year, we applaud these centers’ ongoing dedication to serving on the front lines – meeting both the immediate and long-term needs of LGBTQ people, their families, and their communities across the country,” Tessa Juste, a Movement Advancement Project official, said in the statement.
“This report illustrates the vital difference these centers make in people’s everyday lives, while also highlighting the urgent need for continued funding and support of these centers and the lifelines they provide,” Juste said.
“A majority of centers said they had experienced these threats or harassment offline (63 percent of centers) as well as online (68 percent),” the report states. “Almost half of centers (47 percent) said they had experienced both online and offline harassment in the past two years,” the report says.
“Numerous centers mentioned in open-ended comments that these threats or harassment were specifically in response to anti-LGBTQ politics or rhetoric (77 percent), transgender-related events or programs (50 percent), and youth-related programming (42 percent), again reflecting the current political environment and its targeted attacks on LGBTQ and specifically transgender youth,” according to the report.
Although the report lists in its appendix the names of each of the 199 LGBTQ community centers that participated in the survey, it does not disclose the names and locations of the LGBTQ centers that reported receiving threats or harassment.
Dana Juniel, director of communications for the Movement Advancement Project, told the Washington Blade in a statement that the two organizations that conducted the survey have a policy of not disclosing the centers’ responses to specific questions in the survey.
“Not identifying the specific centers has been our policy since the inception of this report and it is a typical policy for this type of report,” Juniel said. “It’s important to understand that the goal of the survey is to better understand the landscape and capacity of the movement as a whole, not to identify gaps or challenges for specific organizations,” she said.
The report shows that among the LGBTQ community centers that participated in the 2023-2024 survey were the D.C. Center for the LGBTQ Community; the D.C. LGBTQ youth advocacy group SMYAL, which the report lists as an LGBTQ center; the Delmarva Pride Center in Easton, Md.; the Frederick Center in Frederick, Md.; the CAMP Rehoboth LGBTQ center in Rehoboth Beach, Del.; the Sussex Pride center also in Delaware; and LGBTQ centers in Virginia based in the cities of Richmond, Norfolk, Winchester, Oakton, and Staunton.
Spokespersons for the D.C. Center and CAMP Rehoboth did not immediately respond to a Blade inquiry on whether they were among the centers that experienced threats or harassment. Sussex Pride Executive Director David Mariner told the Blade that his center was among those that had not received anti-LGBTQ threats or harassment in the past two years.
The Blade reported in August of this year that D.C. police were investigating threats made against SMYAL following the publication of an article criticizing SMYAL’s programs supporting LGBTQ youth in the conservative online publication Townhall.com. A D.C. police report said the threats were reported by SMYAL Executive Director Erin Whelan.
The statement released by CenterLink and Movement Advancement Project also points out that the LGBTQ center survey shows LGBTQ community centers in the U.S. serve more than 58,700 people each week, or three million people each year, “with many centers primarily serving people and communities that are historically under-resourced and under-served, including low-income, people of color, transgender people, and those under the age of 18.”
Denise Spivak, CEO of CenterLink, says in the joint statement that the report “is a crucial guidepost for us to see the positive impact of LGBTQ centers across the U.S. as well as what areas need additional resources.” She added, “As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, this report makes clear the importance of LGBTQ centers in our communities.”
Among other things, the report includes these findings:
• 66 percent of LGBTQ community centers directly provide physical health, mental health, and/or anti-violence services or programs
• Half of the centers (50 percent) offer computer resources or services to the public, providing needed tools for job searching, career development, social services, and schoolwork.
• Nearly all centers (92 percent) engage in advocacy, public policy, or civic engagement activities across a wide range of issues and areas.
• While nearly half of all centers remain thinly staffed, 84 percent of responding centers employ paid staff, providing jobs to 3,100 people.
• In 2023, roughly 11,600 people volunteered more than 421,000 hours at responding community centers, helping centers with and without paid staff to significantly expand their reach and impact.
The 2024 LGBTQ Community Center Survey Report can be accessed here.
Federal Government
Pentagon gives honorable discharges to 800+ LGBTQ+ veterans
Administration has committed to remedying harms of anti-LGBTQ military policies
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday announced the Pentagon has upgraded the paperwork of more than 800 veterans who were discharged other than honorably before discriminatory policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” were repealed.
“More than 96 percent of the individuals who were administratively separated under DADT and who served for long enough to receive a merit-based characterization of service now have an honorable characterization of service,” said Christa Specht, director of legal policy at the department’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.
The change will allow veterans to access benefits they had been denied, in areas from health care and college tuition assistance to VA loan programs and some jobs.
Separately, this summer President Joe Biden issued pardons to service members who had been convicted for sodomy before military laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy were lifted.
More than a decade after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the administration has made a priority of helping LGBTQ+ veterans who are eligible to upgrade their discharge papers, directing the department to help them overcome bureaucratic barriers and difficult-to-navigate processes.
However, as noted by CBS News, which documented the challenges faced by these former service members in a comprehensive investigation published last year, these efforts are ongoing.
The department is continuing to review cases beyond the 800+ included in Tuesday’s announcement, with an official telling CBS, “We encourage all veterans who believe they have suffered an error or injustice to request a correction to their military records.”
National
Detroit teen arrested in fatal stabbing of gay man
Prosecutor says defendant targeted victim from online dating app
A 17-year-old Detroit man has been charged with first-degree murder for the Sept. 24 stabbing death of a 64-year-old gay man that prosecutors say he met through an online dating app.
A statement released by the Wayne County, Mich., Prosecutor’s Office says Ahmed Al-Alikhan allegedly fatally stabbed Howard Brisendine inside Brisendine’s home in Detroit before he allegedly took the victim’s car keys and stole the car.
The statement says police arrived on the scene about 4:04 p.m. on Sept. 29 after receiving a call about a deceased person found in their home. Upon arrival police found Brisentine deceased in his living room suffering from multiple stab wounds, the statement says.
“It is alleged that the defendant targeted the victim on an online dating app because he was a member of the LGBTQ community,” according to the prosecutor’s statement.
“It is further alleged that on Sept. 24, 2024, at the victim’s residence in the 6000 block of Minock Street in Detroit, the defendant stabbed the victim multiple times, fatally injuring him, before taking the victim’s car keys and fleeing the scene in his vehicle,” it says.
It further states that Al-Alikhan was first taken into custody by police in Dearborn, Mich., and later turned over to the Detroit police on Oct. 1. The statement doesn’t say how police learned that Al-Alikhan was the suspected perpetrator.
In addition to first-degree murder, Al-Alikhan has been charged with felony murder and unlawful driving away in an automobile.
“It is hard to fathom a more planned series of events in this case,” prosecutor Kym Worthy said in the statement. “Unfortunately, the set of alleged facts are far too common in the LGBTQ community,” Worthy said. “We will bring justice to Mr. Brisendine. The defendant is 17 years and 11 months old – mere weeks away from being an adult offender under the law.”
She added, “As a result of that and the heinous nature of this crime, we will seek to try him as an adult.”
A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office said the office has not designated the incident as a hate crime, but said regardless of that designation, a conviction of first-degree murder could result in a sentence of life in prison. The spokesperson, Maria Lewis, said the prosecutor’s office was not initially disclosing the name of the dating app through which the two men met, but said that would be disclosed in court as the case proceeds.
The NBC affiliate station in Detroit, WDIV TV, reported that Brisendine was found deceased by Luis Mandujano, who lives near where Brisendine lived and who owns the Detroit gay bar Gigi’s, where Brisendine worked as a doorman. The NBC station report says Mandujano said he went to Brisendine’s house on Sept. 29 after Brisendine did not show up for work and his car was not at his house.
Mandujano, who is organizing a GoFundMe fundraising effort for Brisendine, states in his message on the GoFundMe site that Brisendine worked as a beloved doorman at Gigi’s bar.
“We will do what we can to honor Howard’s life as we put him to rest,” Mandujano states in his GoFundMe message. “He left the material world in a volatile manner at the hand of a monster that took his life for being gay. Let’s not allow hate to win!”
In response to a Facebook message from the Washington Blade, a spokesperson for Gigi’s said the money raised from the GoFundMe effort will be used for Brisendine’s funeral expenses and his “remaining bills.” The spokesperson, who didn’t disclose their name, added, “Any leftover money will be donated to local LGBTQ nonprofit groups to combat hate.”
The GoFundMe site can be accessed here.
Congress
Baldwin attacked over LGBTQ rights support as race narrows
Wis. Democrat facing off against Republican Eric Hovde
As her race against Republican challenger Eric Hovde tightens, with Cook Political Report projecting a toss-up in November, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) is fielding attacks over her support for LGBTQ rights.
Two recent ads run by the Senate Leadership Fund, a superPAC that works to elect Republicans to the chamber, take aim at her support for gender affirming care and an LGBTQ center in Wisconsin. Baldwin was the first openly LGBTQ candidate elected to the Senate.
The first ad concerns her statement of support for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’s veto of a Republican-led bill to ban medically necessary healthcare interventions for transgender youth in the state.
Treatments require parental consent for patients younger than 18, and genital surgeries are not performed on minors in Wisconsin.
The second ad concerns funding that Baldwin had earmarked for Briarpatch Youth Services, an organization that provides crucial services for at-risk and homeless young people, with some programming for LGBTQ youth.
Baldwin’s victory is seen as key for Democrats to retain control of the Senate, a tall order that would require them to defend a handful of vulnerable incumbents. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, an Independent who usually votes with the Democrats, is retiring after this term and his replacement is expected to be the state’s Republican Gov. Jim Justice.
National
Supreme Court begins fall term with major gender affirming care case on the docket
Justices rule against Biden admin over emergency abortion question
The U.S. Supreme Court’s fall term began on Monday with major cases on the docket including U.S. v Skrmetti, which could decide the fate of 24 state laws banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors.
First, however, the justices dealt another blow to the Biden-Harris administration and reproductive rights advocates by leaving in place a lower court order that blocked efforts by the federal government to allow hospitals to terminate pregnancies in medical emergencies.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had issued a guidance instructing healthcare providers to offer abortions in such circumstances, per the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which kicked off litigation over whether the law overrides state abortion restrictions.
The U.S. Court of appeals for the 5th Circuit had upheld a decision blocking the federal government from enforcing the law via the HHS guidance, and the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
The justices also declined to hear a free speech case in which parents challenged a DOJ memo instructing officials to look into threats against public school officials, which sparked false claims that parents were being labeled “domestic terrorists” for raising objections at school board meetings over, especially, COVID policies and curricula and educational materials addressing matters of race, sexuality, and gender.
Looking to the cases ahead, U.S. v. Skrmetti is “obviously the blockbuster case of the term,” a Supreme Court practitioner and lecturer at the Harvard law school litigation clinic told NPR.
The attorney, Deepak Gupta, said the litigation “presents fundamental questions about the scope of state power to regulate medical care for minors, and the rights of parents to make medical decisions for your children.”
The ACLU, which represents parties in the case, argues that Tennessee’s gender affirming care ban violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by allowing puberty blockers and hormone treatments for cisgender patients younger than 18 while prohibiting these interventions for their transgender counterparts.
The organization notes that “leading medical experts and organizations — such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics — oppose these restrictions, which have already forced thousands of families across the country to travel to maintain access to medical care or watch their child suffer without it.”
When passing their bans on gender affirming care, conservative states have cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned constitutional protections for abortion that were in place since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.
The ACLU notes “U.S. v. Skrmetti will be a major test of how far the court is willing to stretch Dobbs to allow states to ban other health care” including other types of reproductive care like IVF and birth control.
Also on the docket in the months ahead are cases that will decide core questions about the government’s ability to regulate “ghost guns,” firearms that are made with build-it-yourself kits available online, and the constitutionality of a Texas law requiring age verification to access pornography.
The latter case drew opposition from liberal and conservative groups that argue it will have a chilling effect on adults who, as NPR wrote, “would realistically fear extortion, identity theft and even tracking of their habits by the government and others.”
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