The United States has issued its first passport with an “X” gender marker, which denotes that someone is neither exclusively male nor female, the State Department said Wednesday.
This marks a milestone for nonbinary and intersex Americans, who make up an estimated 1.2 million and 4 million Americans, respectively, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, and interACT, an intersex advocacy group. An increasing number of intersex, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people have come out in recent years, but most of them have been unable to obtain IDs that accurately reflect who they are due to a patchwork of state laws across the country.
The State Department said that it expects to be able to offer the “X” designation to more people early next year.
The U.S.’ special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights, Jessica Stern, called the moves historic and celebratory, saying they bring the government documents in line with the “lived reality” that there is a wider spectrum of human sex characteristics than is reflected in the previous two designations.
“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” Stern said.
The department did not announce to whom the passport was issued. A department official declined to say whether it was for Dana Zzyym, an intersex Colorado resident who has been in a legal battle with the department since 2015, saying the department does not usually discuss individual passport applications because of privacy concerns.
Zzyym (pronounced Zimm) was denied a passport for failing to check male or female on an application. According to court documents, Zzyym wrote “intersex” above the boxes marked “M” and “F” and requested an “X” gender marker instead in a separate letter.
Zzyym was born with ambiguous physical sexual characteristics but was raised as a boy, according to court filings. Zzyym later came out as intersex while working and studying at Colorado State University, and uses gender-neutral pronouns. The department’s denial of Zzyym’s passport prevented them from being able to travel to a meeting of Organization Intersex International in Mexico.
The State Department announced in June that it was moving toward adding a third gender marker but said it would take time because it required extensive updates to its computer systems. A department official said the passport application and system update with the “X” designation option still need to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all government forms, before they can be issued.
The department now also allows applicants to self-select their gender as male or female, no longer requiring them to provide medical certification if their gender does not match that listed on their other identification documents.
The United States joins a handful of countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Nepal and New Zealand in allowing its citizens to designate a gender other than male or female on their passports.
Stern said her office planned to talk about the U.S.′ experience with the change in its interactions around the world and she hopes that might help inspire other governments to offer the option.
“We see this as a way of affirming and uplifting the human rights of trans and intersex and gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people everywhere,” she said.
It’s unclear how the policy change will affect state laws that do not recognize “X” gender markers. Twenty states and D.C. allow residents to use an “X” marker on their driver’s licenses, according tothe Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank.
States also have a mix of laws that regulate how someone can request a gender marker change on an ID. Twenty-two states allow people to decide what gender markers are appropriate for them — which is now the policy that the State Department will use — according to MAP.
That process, known as self-attestation, allows trans and nonbinary people to keep themselves safe, said Arli Christian, a campaign strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been pressuring the Biden administration to allow “X” gender markers on passports and advocates for laws that allow people to attest to their own gender.
“That is hands down the best policy for ensuring that all people have the most accurate gender marker on their ID,” Christian said.
The remaining states either require medical provider certification in order to update a gender marker, a court order and proof of genital surgery or they have an unclear law.
This summer, a Texas judge declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program unlawful. But President Biden’s administration is moving swiftly to respond and protect undocumented young people. He must, for so much more is at stake for LGBTQ+ Asian Dreamers.
President Obama created DACA in 2012, which has helped thousands of undocumented young people to work, study, and improve their lives in this country, without the fear of deportation. Many of them are LGBTQ+. And many come from Asian counties.
To address this disastrous court decision from this summer, Biden is looking to shore up the program with new rules. Still, only Congress can permanently safeguard DACA recipients and grant them, along with the rest of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., a pathway to citizenship.
Estimates say that 267,000 undocumented immigrants are LGBTQ+, of which a disproportionate share is Asian and Pacific Islander. More than 169,000 people who are API are eligible for DACA. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, over 16,000 people from South Korea, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and China have already benefitted from DACA. The court’s ruling will subject 800,000 potential DACA beneficiaries to again live in fear of deportation.
On Biden’s first day in office, he announced the Citizenship Act of 2021 (HR 1177/S.348), which will give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship (including 1.5 million Asians and a quarter million LGBTQ+ immigrants), keep LGBTQ+ Asian immigrant families together, reduce visa backlogs, and expand visas and green cards for workers.
Absent congressional action, thousands of talented LGBTQ+ and Asian young people could be deported, many of them to countries where they cannot live their authentic lives and reach their fullest potential.
For LGBTQ+ people, the stakes are even higher than those who are not LGBTQ+. Many countries in Asia and the Pacific prohibit same-sex relations, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga. In Indonesia, police shaved the heads of trans women and publicly caned a gay couple for having consensual sex. In most Asian and Oceania countries, transgender people cannot legally change their gender on their IDs, and LGBTQ+ people are not protected by anti-discrimination laws.
The programs supporting undocumented youth have real-world consequences for real people. Tony Choi is a 32-year-old gay Korean DACA beneficiary from New Jersey. In 2010, his options were taking care of his mother with cancer in the U.S. or returning to Korea where his LGBTQ+ identity would subject him to harsh hazing for two years in the mandatory military service. The Korean military penal law also criminalizes homosexuality. Because of DACA, he’s been able to serve his community. Bupendra Ram is a South Asian Dreamer from Fiji who came to the U.S. when he was only 2 years old. He is the first person in his family to earn a college degree, but he had to save every extra dollar from his minimum wage job in order to afford tuition. His undocumented status at the time meant he couldn’t receive financial aid.
DACA has provided LGBTQ+ undocumented young people employment opportunities and educational opportunities. Asian Americans, South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Pacific Islanders are the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S. today and the largest segment of new immigrants. Undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ+ Dreamers, and DACA recipients are the ones who are making our country great and they deserve an opportunity for a pathway to citizenship.
Glenn D. Magpantay has been an advocate for the LGBTQ+, AAPI, and immigrant communities for over 30 years. He is a longtime civil rights attorney, professor of law and Asian-American Studies, and LGBTQ+ rights activist.
Anxiety. Depression. Stress. These are some of the emotions LGBTQ Americans experienced during the Trump administration, according to two recent studies. The reports, conducted independently, both landed on the same conclusion: There was a significant decline in the mental well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people while Donald Trump was president.
“Everybody’s worst fears came into reality,” Adrienne Grzenda, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA and lead author of one of the studies, told NBC News. “We were noticing this undercurrent of despair and hopelessness among our clients,” many of whom are LGBTQ.
While Trump is no longer in the White House, the ongoing introduction of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the states continues to expose LGBTQ people, especially children, to the risk of significant mental health consequences, according to some advocates and researchers.
‘Extreme’ and ‘frequent’ mental distress
A study scheduled to be published in the December issue of the journal Economics and Human Biology found that “extreme mental distress” — defined as reporting poor mental health every day for the past 30 days — increased among LGBTQ people during Trump’s rise and presidency.
The report, written by Masanori Kuroki, an associate professor of economics at Arkansas Tech University, compared the likelihood of extreme mental distress among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people by using data on more than 1 million people interviewed from 2014 to 2020 for the government’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/9TzYQA1?app=1
This study found that the “extreme mental distress gap” between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people “increased from 1.8 percentage points during 2014–2015 to 3.8 percentage points after Trump’s presidency became a real possibility in early 2016.” Even seemingly small increases in extreme distress are important, the study notes, because such distress is not common.
While Trump was not the first president to advocate and enforce policies widely considered anti-LGBTQ, his tenure followed the relatively pro-LGBTQ Obama presidency. The possibility of removing recently gained rights and protections “might be more damaging to LGBT people’s mental well-being than simply not having equal rights in the first place,” the study states.
While Kuroki’s report does include a cautionary note about attributing the increase in mental distress among LGBTQ people to the rise and presidency of Trump, he does note that “the findings do suggest that the Biden administration may have inherited higher rates of mental distress among LGBT people” than they would have “if Trump had not run and won the 2016 election.”
In his conclusion, Kuroki suggests that future research examine LGBTQ mental health under the Biden administration, which has already implemented measures to advance LGBTQ rights and protections.
“If presidents affect LGBT people’s mental health, then we should expect that the extreme mental distress gap between LGBT people and non-LGBT people to narrow under the Biden presidency,” he stated in his report’s conclusion.
Grzenda’s study used data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to measure whether the 2016 election and transition to the Trump administration led to a change in the number of sexual and gender minority (SGM) adults reporting “frequent mental distress” compared to cisgender, heterosexual respondents (frequent mental distress is defined as feeling depressed, stressed or unable to control one’s emotions during at least 14 of the last 30 days). Between 2015 and 2018, LGBTQ respondents reporting frequent mental distress increased by 6.1 percentage points, from 15.4 percent to 21.5 percent, while non-LGBTQ respondents reported a 1.1 percentage point increase, from 10.4 percent to 11.5 percent.
“A clear association exists between the 2016 election and the changeover to a decisively anti-LGBT administration and the worsening mental health of SGM adults, although a completely causal relationship cannot be fully established,” the report, published this year in the journal LGBT Health, states.
The effects, however, were not seen evenly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
“We’ve got to start looking at sub-populations more,” Grzenda said. “When we break it down, it was bisexual individuals and especially transgender individuals who were really hit the hardest.”
Grzenda said the differential impact on gender minority adults may be because of the Trump administration’s targeting of transgender rights and protections in military service, health care and access to public facilities. At the same time, the focus on lesbian, gay and transgender rights may have “exacerbated feelings of bisexual invisibilty/erasure,” and compounded existing stress for bisexual respondents.
The study, which had a sample size of nearly 270,000 adults, approximately 5 percent of them LGBTQ, states in its conclusion that its findings provide “data-driven support for advocacy efforts toward the implementation of unequivocal antidiscrimination protects on the basis of [sexual orientation and gender identity] across all domains of daily living, immutable to sudden political realignment.”
Grzenda, like Kuroki, notes that a definitive causal link cannot be drawn between the Trump administration and the decline in LGBTQ mental health with existing data, though both studies controlled for likely competing factors.
‘Bullying by legislation’
The effect of politics on LGBTQ mental health is not just relegated to the federal government and national policies. The spate of anti-LGBTQ legislation in statehouses raises concerns about other sources of mental health strain, particularly for young people.
From 2015 to 2019, 42 states introduced more than 200 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, according to a recent study by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research institute, and the introduction of these measures were found to have negative mental health consequences on LGBTQ minors.
The report notes that Crisis Text Line, a global nonprofit that provides free mental health texting services, saw an uptick in messages from LGBTQ youths in the four weeks after their respective states proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation.
“This suggests the bills are harmful whether or not they are passed,” Dominique Parris, director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Child Trends and lead author on the study, told NBC News. “We need to understand the full scope of what these laws do to young people.”
Among the most common types of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced during the 2015-19 timeframe were restrictions on single-sex facilities, the report states.
This year alone, there have already been over 200 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at the state level, Parris said.
“Oftentimes the argument in support of [these bills] is to protect children, but what this research suggests is that that may not in fact be the outcome, and simply proposing this legislation may cause children distress,” Parris said.
“When there have been public policy decisions, we hear about that on our crisis line,” Amit Paley, the project’s CEO, told NBC News.
When Trump banned transgender people from the military, the Trevor Project saw an increase in trans and nonbinary people reaching out for crisis services, he said. This was not due to trans people necessarily wanting to serve in the military, Paley added, but because a powerful public figure was making judgments about their worth.
“Young people are listening,” he said. “When their message is discriminatory and hateful, that does have an impact.”
Trans and nonbinary youth are at particular risk for the most devastating consequences of mental distress, including suicide, according to Trevor Project research.
“That’s not because LGBTQ trans nonbinary people are born more likely to consider suicide,” Paley said. “It’s because of the discrimination, isolation and rejection they face.”
Paley said that Texas legislators this year have introduced dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills, many of which target trans and nonbinary people.
On Wednesday, a bill that would that would require student athletes to compete on sports teams corresponding to their “biological sex” advanced out of committee and heads toward a full vote on the state House floor where it is likely to pass. The bill advanced despite emotional testimony from parents and students regarding the toll such a law would take on trans children, something LGBTQ children’s advocates have been sounding the alarm about for some time.
“Trevor Project has received almost 4,000 calls, chats and texts from trans and nonbinary people in Texas this year,” Paley said. “This is effectively bullying by legislation. It is dangerous and it is wrong.”
‘Some steps forward and several steps backward’
Advocates hope LGBTQ mental health might improve under the Biden administration, which has made public statements and enacted policies in support of LGBTQ rights.
However, some, like Paley and Parris, worry about the message that certain signals — like the ongoing support for Trump among many Republicans, the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ state legislation and the failure to pass the Equality Act in Congress — will send to LGBTQ youth and adults.
“I think we are seeing some steps forward and several steps backward,” Paley said.
A-League midfielder Josh Cavallo says he knows there are other players “living in silence” after becoming the only known current male top-flight professional footballer in the world to come out as gay.
Cavallo on Wednesday became a rarity in men’s professional sport, announcing on social media he was “ready to speak about something personal that I’m finally comfortable to talk about in my life”.
The Twitter post and emotive personal video, shared by his club Adelaide United, has since made international headlines and elicited support from all corners of the game.
The 21-year-old said growing up he “always felt the need to hide myself because I was ashamed.” “Ashamed I would never be able to do what I loved and be gay,” he wrote.
“Being a closeted gay footballer, I’ve had to learn to mask my feelings in order to fit the mould of a professional footballer. “Growing up being gay and playing football were just two worlds that hadn’t crossed paths before. “I’ve lived my life assuming that this was a topic never to be spoken about.”
Adelaide United coach Carl Veart said Cavallo, who has played 19 games for the Reds after playing nine matches for Western United, has “shown incredible courage to be one of very few professional sportsmen to be this brave.”
An Adelaide United statement said: “Today, Josh Cavallo speaks his truth to the world and demonstrates profound courage. Adelaide United, not only as a football club, but as the embodiment of an inclusive community, supports a remarkable and brave person.
“We stand alongside Josh for proudly being true to himself and will continue to love and support him as a member of our beautifully diverse family.”
Football Australia chief executive James Johnson said: “Football Australia wishes to commend Josh’s bravery to come out as the only openly gay player in the A-League Men competition. His courage to be open with himself and share that part with others is inspiring and will hopefully inspire more footballers to do the same in the future.”
When Jaime was 44, we fell hard for each other. We had been working on queer youth projects together over 10 years and in the middle of our second date, we decided to have a child. We know the cliché — lesbians usually bring a U-Haul to the second date. Amazingly, masculine-identified, gender non-binary M’Bwende brought a bassinet.
So, in a few short months, we took a massive leap of faith that many people in love take: we got pregnant with the help of some great fertility choreography. M’Bwende’s 35-year-old eggs, Jaime’s 45-year-old womb, and sperm from a 49-year-old gay male beloved who had sired Jaime’s then 6-year-old son.
In 2006, we felt nothing but grateful for this option. When Jaime came out in 1984, lesbians could not even access sperm at a sperm bank — only heterosexual, married women “qualified.” Our family’s reproductive journey to our daughter ultimately took nearly a year of overstimulating egg production, retrieval, implantation, one failed attempt, and $40,000, which we financed by taking out a loan on M’Bwende’s house.
A recent lawsuit against Aetna insurance company for discriminating against LGBTQ women in fertility coverage has brought this all back to us in technicolor. In our family, it’s gone like this: the miracle baby is in her first year of high school; our romantic partnership long ago ended; our parenting partnership is solid; and M’Bwende lost their house to the predatory loan undertaken to bring our daughter into being.
There’s been so much more hemorrhaging of cash and dignity along the way — the work and cost of “adding” one of us to our daughter’s birth certificate, inability to access health insurance during the many years when only one of us was on the birth certificate, one of us has been fired twice for being “too activist” (actual quote), one has navigated unemployment and underemployed due to racism and their gender presentation, one of us has suffered outrageous police harassment, one has endured humiliation at various agencies for not being our daughter’s “legal” parent… the list goes on and on.
Today, Jaime is part of a team of veteran LGBTQ+ activists that has created a new National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey to capture all of the blood, sweat, tears and lost assets that come when LGBTQ+ women form and grow our families. How do sexism, racism, and anti-LGBTQ animus impact families headed by lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, intersex, and/or transgender women? What do masculine spectrum people who identified as or were perceived to be women have to tell us about their experiences in relationships with women who partner with women? How do LGBTQ+ women and their families thrive, regardless? What are our brilliant adaptations and forms of resistance? We want to know!
It is thrilling to finally have this place to tell our stories. The larger world needs to see us, and all we have been forced to endure to make our amazing lives work. Policy makers, corporations, and movement organizations need to wake up to our realities and change laws and priorities. We want equity and justice for all of us. The LGBTQ+ National Women’s Community Survey is over 100 questions long and yet it will ultimately only scratch the surface of the complexity of our struggles. Six thousand people who formerly or currently identify as an LGBTQ+ women have already taken the survey. We plan to be the largest repository on data by, for and about LGBTQ+ women in the world. Come join us.
M’Bwende Anderson is an organizer/activist with various nonprofit, NGO, and government agencies. Dr. Jaime M. Grant, author of Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, and Great Sex: Mapping Your Desire, is an equity expert, researcher and trainer.
Texas officials removed two webpages in late August that provided resources for LGBTQ youths — including a link to a suicide prevention hotline — a few hours after criticism from one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Republican primary challengers.
The candidate, Don Huffines, who owns a real estate development company in the Dallas area, wrote Aug. 31 on Twitter: “It’s offensive to see @GregAbbott_TX use our tax dollars to advocate for transgender ideology. This must end.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/gi7itgd?app=1
He described a webpage on the Department of Family and Protective Services’ website titled “gender identity and sexual orientation.”
“They’re talking about helping ‘empower and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, allied,’ nonheterosexual behavior, and it goes on and on,” Huffines said in a video. “I mean, really? This is Texas. These are not Texas values. These are not Republican Party values. But these are obviously Greg Abbott’s values.”
In a separate tweet the same afternoon, Huffines linkedto a webpage for Texas Youth Connection, a program run by the Department of Family and Protective Services, which included a link to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention group, and other LGBTQ rights groups. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/C3LZcyj?app=1
“This is the webpage where @GregAbbott_TX’s political appointees are promoting transgender ideology,” Huffines wrote.
A few hours later, both pages had been removed.
“The Texas Youth Connection website has been temporarily disabled for a comprehensive review of its content,” a message on the website says. “This is being done to ensure that its information, resources, and referrals are current.”
Patrick Crimmins, the director of communications for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said in an email Tuesday that the review of the webpages “is still ongoing” and would not provide further comment about why the pages were removed.
Abbott’s office has not returned a request for comment.
The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that emails obtained through a public records request show that agency officials discussed removing the gender identity and sexual orientation webpage in response to Huffines’ tweet.
Just 13 minutes after Huffines’ video went up, Marissa Gonzales, the department’s media relations director, emailed a link to Crimmins with the subject line “Don Huffines video accusing Gov/DFPS of pushing liberal transgender agenda,” the Chronicle reported. She wrote in the body of the email: “FYI. This is starting to blow up on Twitter.”
Crimmins emailed Darrell Azar, the department’s web and creative services director. He asked who runs the page and wrote, “Darrell — please note we may need to take that page down, or somehow revise content,” according to the Chronicle.
Azar responded that the webpage came from the department’s Preparation for Adult Living program, which supports older teens placed in foster care by the state. He wrote that the content Huffines criticized is “only a few years old” but that the adult living program has posted “content related to LGBTQ for as long as I can remember,” according to the Chronicle.
Huffines took credit for the pages’ removal in a tweet Tuesday.
“Greg Abbott was using taxpayer dollars to advocate for transgender ideology and the Human Rights Campaign,” he wrote. “Our campaign made him stop.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/2Dukul1?app=1
Many advocates spoke outagainst the pages’ removal in August, but even more people, including elected officials, condemned the decision in response to the Chronicle’s article.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/Maxrkow?app=1https://iframe.nbcnews.com/BIGR3m4?app=1
Former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who was secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration, said the decision to remove the webpages was “disgusting.”
“Greg Abbott is so scared of losing his primary, he’s sabotaging an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention hotline to kowtow his extremist base,” he wrote Tuesday. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/BTMcnyY?app=1
Ricardo Martinez, the CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said in an emailed statement that LGBTQ children are overrepresented in foster care and “face truly staggering discrimination and abuse.”
“The state is responsible for these kids’ lives, yet it actively took away a resource for them when they are in crisis,” he said. “What’s worse, this was done at the start of Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month. LGBTQ youth who have been in foster care report three times greater likelihood of attempting suicide in the past year (according to a Trevor Project research brief). Again and again this year, we are simply asking that these kids’ lives not be politicized.”
Texas has considered more than 50 bills this year that target LGBTQ youths, particularly transgender youths, according to Equality Texas.
While advocates have defeated all of the bills so far, the Legislature recently began a third special legislative session — the fourth legislative session overall this year — and it is considering a number of anti-transgender bills again.
Advocates have said the rhetoric in the bills has a negative effect on the mental health of LGBTQ youths statewide.
From Jan. 1 to Aug. 30, crisis calls from LGBTQ young people in Texas increased by 150 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data shared last week by the Trevor Project.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach a trained counselor at the Crisis Text Line. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional support networks.
A “regressive” bill is could roll back trans rights in Quebec, Canada, threatening trans folks’ “equality, dignity and personal integrity”.
Bill 2 was brought forward by Quebec justice minister Simon Jolin-Barrette on Thursday (21 October), according to CBC.
It aims to change Quebec’s civil code to require trans people to undergo surgery before being able to legally change their gender, and could even bring in separate sex and gender markers on government ID.
Trans Canadians in Quebec have been able to change their legal gender without surgery since 2015, and there are currently no other Canadian provinces that require surgery for legal recognition.
Some trans people do not see surgery as a necessary part of their transition, and others may be unable to access surgery.
Florence Ashley Paré, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law who specialises in cases relating to trans youth, told Global News: “This would absolutely make Quebec the most regressive in Canada for trans rights.”
“All other bills were about progress,” they added.
“This is an exceptional case where we would go back on rights… [It would also create] situations where people might get surgery they otherwise didn’t want just to meet the prerequisite from the government.”
The possibility of having separate markers for sex and gender on government-issued ID could also put trans folk at risk.
Executive director of the LGBTIQ+ Family Coalition Mona Greenbaum told CBC: “A trans woman who hasn’t had surgery will still have an M for her sex and an F for her gender on her legal documents.
“What that does is it puts that person in danger. You have a document that says you were born an M, but you became an F and you have to show that document to other people.
“It obliges you to make do with coming out, whether you want to or not.”
The bill cannot become law until it has gone through a parliamentary committee and public hearings, in which Quebec citizens will have their say on the changes to the civil code.
In the country that first legalized gay marriage, the Dutch crown princess has the right to marry a person of any gender without giving up her right to the throne, the prime minister said Tuesday.
Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia, 17, has not made any comments on the matter, and little is known of her personal life. The question arose after recently published books argued that the country’s rules exclude the possibility of a same-sex royal couple.
But Prime Minister Mark Rutte said times have changed since one of his predecessors last addressed the issue in 2000.
“The government believes that the heir can also marry a person of the same sex,” Rutte wrote in a letter to parliament.
“The cabinet therefore does not see that an heir to the throne or the King should abdicate if he/she would like to marry a partner of the same sex.”
Gay marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001.
Rutte said that one issue remains unresolved: how a gay marriage would affect later succession of the royal couple’s children. And it doesn’t make sense to try to decide that now, he said.
“It’s just very dependent on the facts and circumstances of the specific case, as you can see by looking back at how family law can change over time,” he wrote.
Unlike regular marriages, royal marriages need the approval of parliament. Members of the Dutch royal house have on occasion given up their place in the line of succession to marry someone without permission.
An LGBTQ nonprofit on Monday released its annual Worst Listnaming 180 colleges and universities as “the absolute worst, most unsafe campuses for LGBTQ youth.”
Campus Pride, which advocates for LGBTQ inclusivity and safety at U.S. colleges and universities, added 50 universities to the list since last year — the most extensive update since the list started in 2015, according to the organization.
The list includes colleges and universities that have either received or applied for a religious exemption to Title IX, a federal law that protects students from discrimination in federally funded schools, or have a “demonstrated history of anti-LGBTQ policies, programs and practices,” according to a news release.
At 180 schools, the list is the longest it has been in its six-year history.
“These aren’t just bad campuses or the worst campuses — these campuses fundamentally are unsafe for LGBTQ students, and, as a result, they’re fundamentally unsafe for all students to go to,” Shane Windmeyer, founder and executive director of Campus Pride, said. “They promote an environment of hostility, of discrimination, harassment, toward a group of people, and who wants — when you’re trying to be educated — to have that type of negative learning environment?”
Windmeyer said that part of the reason this year’s update to the list was significant is because of changes the Trump administration made to the Title IX religious exemption process. Under President Barack Obama, religious schools had to submit a letter outlining why they needed an exemption to Title IX. The Trump administration changed that rule so that religious schools were automatically exempt from Title IX, which allowed them to continue receiving federal funds while, for example, enforcing a rule that prohibits students from engaging in gay sex or same-sex relationships.
The Trump administration also stopped publishing an online list of schools that have requested an exemption from Title IX. Campus Pride referred to that list while creating its Worst List.
Windmeyer said the Biden administration has republished previous lists of schools that applied for title IX religious exemptions, but it hasn’t clarified or changed the Trump administration policy undoing the application requirement.
Before Biden took office, Campus Pride relied on student reports and news articles, Windmeyer said. This year, the group used the list of schools that requested exemptions to Title IX and court documents.
In 2019, 41 campuses filed an amicus brief in Bostock v. Clayton County in support of employers who argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t protect LGBTQ employees from discrimination. The Supreme Court sided with the employees.
Windmeyer said Campus Pride also included the 29 religious colleges and universities named in a class action lawsuit against the Department of Education alleging that the religious exemption is unconstitutional and that it allows religious schools that receive federal funds to discriminate against LGBTQ students.
“Religious organizations and colleges were emboldened during the Trump administration,” Windmeyer, who noted that all 180 schools on the list this year are religiously affiliated, said. “Biden has still yet to clarify if Title IX exemptions are mandatory or if he has an executive order that is going to make them mandatory, which I feel that if a campus is going to openly discriminate, then it should be mandated that they tell students and that they have a Title IX exemption on file with the federal government.”
The Worst List is in alphabetical order rather than rank, but some schools have appeared on it more often than others.
David Shill, a 22-year-old junior at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said he isn’t surprised that his school is on the list again because “things haven’t changed.”
BYU, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, forbids same-sex dating. Though it doesn’t specifically mention transgender students in the student handbook, the church counsels against medical transition for trans people; otherwise they face restricted participation in the church or even excommunication.
Shill, the president of BYU Pride, which is not officially supported by or recognized by the university, said that homophobia is “usually assumed” on campus. He mentioned a video taken in August in which a student defaces pro-LGBTQ chalk art on BYU’s campus anduses an anti-gay slur. In March, when about 40 students lit up the iconic 380-foot-tall “Y” on the mountain east of campus with rainbow lights, Shill said LGBTQ students faced cyberbullying.
“My first week back on campus I really felt like, wow I will never belong here,” Shill said. “And just seeing straight couples being couples on campus and like holding hands or hugging … that coupled with the attitudes of some of my professors and classmates, just the whole day, it was hard to be here.”
A representative for BYU did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A number of schools are on the list for the first time, including Seattle Pacific University, a private Christian university named in the class action lawsuit against the Department of Education. Affirm, a group of SPU students, alumni, faculty and staff dedicated to ending anti-LGBTQ policies and culture at the university, began organizing in the spring in response to the university’s involvement in two lawsuits — the class action and a suit brought by a teacher in April who says he was denied a full-time job because he is gay.
In a statement emailed to NBC News, Affirm’s members said they are “saddened but not surprised” by SPU’s addition to the 2021 Worst List.
“For an institution that advertises our community as a place promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the name of Christ’s love, this sobering call from Campus Pride tells us in no uncertain terms how we have failed,” Affirm’s members said. “We must rebuild our existing campus structures, remove discriminatory university policies, and foster novel spaces where LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and AAPI folk are welcomed and celebrated for the priceless gifts they bring our community.”
A representative for SPU declined to comment.
Malone University, in Canton, Ohio, is also on the list for the first time.
This month, Karyn Collie, an associate biology professor at Malone, announced that she would be leaving the university because she’s marrying a woman next summer. She told The Canton Repository that she was hoping she and the school could find a way for her to stay employed, but that she was instead asked to resign. When she was hired, she signed a set of principles called the Community Responsibilities, which prohibit homosexual activity, according to the Repository.
Collie was a popular professor, and the news led to backlash from students, including a sit-in during a weekly worship service, the Repository reported.
A representative for Malone has not returned a request for comment, but Malone President David King told the Repository that Collie isn’t the first professor to leave due to a conflict with the university’s Community Responsibilities. He also said that only employees are expected to adhere to them, and that students are not.
“All students are welcome here, no matter what their story is, whether they have a faith journey or not,” King said.
But Campus Pride points out on its Worst List that the school’sCommunity Agreement for Sexual Conduct, which all members of the Malone community commit themselves to, states that “Sex should be exclusively reserved for the marriage relationship, understood as a legal, lifelong commitment between a husband and wife.”
Windmeyer said that he hopes the Biden administration will mandate that all campuses have to apply for the Title IX religious exemption. “I think that’s the bare minimum our federal government can do to protect these LGBTQ young people,” Windmeyer said. “The President says, ‘trans people, queer people,LGBTQ people, we’ve got your back.’ Well, you need to start here with our LGBTQ young people.”
Many students, like Shill at BYU, don’t want to leave and think their schools can become better. He said BYU Pride is working with the university to change the Honor Code so that queer students can date, and the group is encouraging the university to develop a discrimination office that students and faculty can go to when they experience discrimination.
The group would also like to be able to have queer activities on campus, or put rainbow lights on the “Y” without approval. “Those kind of things like where BYU no longer is silencing us, and pushing us off campus,” he said. “Let us come on campus and be as gay as we want to be without having to hide it all.”
As a bisexual woman — and one who, like Sinema, is white and cisgender — I now cringe every time the senator makes the headlines. Whether it’s fashion columnists dissecting her showy personal style, cartoonists mocking her as a “manic pixie dream senator” or the seemingly endless analyses of her inscrutability, Sinema seems to embody many of the nasty assumptions about bi women I’ve worked my whole life to avoid.
Bi women are constantly told we’re untrustworthy, that our attraction to multiple genders means we’re more likely to cheat. We’re called greedy for finding more than one gender attractive, “confusing” for liking more than one gender and self-absorbed because apparently our brains are unable to think about much beyond our own sexual gratification. Within the LGBTQ community, bisexuals can be viewed as fair-weather members at best — likely to bail the second we stop having fun. Media outlets might not be talking about Sinema’s sex life, but her political reputation as greedy, unreliable and attention-seeking echoes many of the stereotypes my community has been dealing with for years.
“Is she bad for the bisexuals?” I find myself wondering on a nearly daily basis. It feels uncharitable to put so much responsibility on one woman’s shoulders. Yet given that she’s arguably the most prominent bisexual woman in the nation, it feels fair to wish she’d put a little more effort into being a bit less of a stereotype.
At the same time, I find myself wondering why Sinema’s sexuality matters so much to me in the first place. What does “bisexual representation” actually mean in this instance?
Bisexuals have a unique perspective that should ideally be helpful when crafting legislation.
One obvious answer is that bisexuals have a unique perspective that should ideally be helpful when crafting legislation. There’s no question that bisexuals face our own particular challenges when it comes to topics like sexual health, mental health and abuse and assault.
At the height of the HIV epidemic, bi people, and especially bi men, were frequently treated as vectors of disease; yet bi-specific outreach and education was thin. Research has shown that bi people, particularly bi women, are at an elevated risk for depression, anxiety, substance use and suicide; yet mental health resources are rarely targeted specifically to the bi community. Bi women are also at an elevated risk of abuse and assault: 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that over 60 percent of bisexual women reported experience with rape, intimate partner violence or stalking, compared to over 43 percent of lesbians and 35 percent of straight women. Bisexual women are also extremely vulnerable to poverty: A 2019 report showed nearly 30 percent of the community living below the poverty line — a rate matched only by the percentage of transgender people of all sexual orientations living in poverty.
In theory, electing more bisexuals will lead to better legislation that more thoughtfully addresses bisexual-specific concerns, making sure bisexuals don’t fall through the cracks of public health, anti-violence and anti-poverty initiatives. But in practice, it’s clear that politicians from marginalized backgrounds don’t always act in the best interests of their community. Sinema herself is proof of that. Despite her own history with poverty, she’s worked to gut the social safety net provisions included in the Build Back Better Act.
According to Gallup poll results published in February, about 3 percent of Americans identify as bisexual — and yet in over 200 years, there have only been two openly bisexual members of Congress: Sinema and Katie Hill, who stepped down less than a year into her first term after her ex-husband allegedly leaked private photos revealing that the couple had been sexually involved with a female campaign staffer. With Hill out of office, Sinema is the only bisexual member of Congress out of the 535 possible voting members. (For comparison, there are currently seven gay men and three lesbians in Congress.)
This brings me back to my frustration with Sinema. Watching news outlets eat her alive, it’s hard not to feel like America’s getting a rather poor first impression of what bisexuals bring to the table as legislators. Will voters shy away from other bisexual candidates out of a fear that we’ll turn out to be just as fickle as Sinema? Probably not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some potential legislators found themselves less eager to publicly identify as bisexual in the wake of Sinema’s first Senate term.
On the other hand, perhaps the opposite will be true. Maybe Sinema will inspire a new wave of openly bisexual politicians, simply out of a desperation to prove that Kyrsten Sinema is not an accurate representation of all bisexuals. If that were to happen, it’d offer an ironic twist on Sinema’s story. She could very well be the best thing to ever happen to bisexuals in politics — if only because she inspires so many of us to stand up and reject the example she’s set for the country.