Less than two months into 2024, lawmakers in at least 13 states have introduced legislation that could disrupt libraries’ services and censor their materials. The new wave of bills follows a historic year of book challenges, mainly affecting titles centered on the topics of race, gender identity or sexual orientation.
“The American Library Association condemns in the strongest terms possible legislation in more than a dozen states that would threaten librarians and other educators with criminal prosecution for doing their jobs,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a statement. “This is not a culture war; it’s a threat to our democracy.”
Caldwell-Stone added, “Nowhere have we witnessed attacks on education like those currently proposed in Wisconsin.”
The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to take away protections from library employees being prosecuted on charges of possessing “obscene” materials by removing public, private and tribal schools from the list of institutions exempt from prosecution for obscene materials violations.
“Those who would prosecute librarians and teachers would divert precious education resources to defending frivolous lawsuits and policing our nation’s most trusted institutions and community anchors: libraries and schools,” Caldwell-Stone said.
In Idaho, a bill proposes to prohibit librarians from making materials that include sexual conduct available to minors. Homosexuality is included in that category alongside sexual intercourse and masturbation.
Caldwell-Stone said the American Library Association is familiar with “attempts to rewrite obscenity statutes” to encompass specific books and topics, and she said she considers it a form of discrimination.
Obscenity laws in the majority of the states provide exemptions and are designed to prevent legal action against school, museum and library employees, who typically provide access to a breadth of materials.
Revoking those exemptions would mean schools and libraries would have to spend more time and resources on defense against scrutiny, Caldwell-Stone said.
She added that making cases for published resources to be considered obscene must be conducted by judges and juries with evidence brought forward by prosecutors.
“We’re seeing attempts by advocacy groups to file criminal charges against librarians and educators for books that they would like to see out of the library, and over and over again, these prosecutors decline to prosecute because there is absolutely no evidence that the books meet the most minimal standards for obscenity under the Miller Test,” she said.
The Miller Test is the U.S. Supreme Court’s legal test to determine what works are obscene. A book, a picture or a film is classified as obscene if it “describes or shows sexual conduct in a patently offensive way” or “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, educational, or scientific value.”
On Feb. 9, the Utah Senate Education Committee advanced a bill to amend provisions to identify and remove ”indecent material.” Another bill would allow public school employees in the state to be charged if “objectively sensitive” materials were made available to students.
“To open the door to the prosecution of librarians and educators for doing the work we ask them to do is to allow one individual or one group to dictate what our students learn according to their personal beliefs, regardless of the beliefs and choices of other families in the community,” Caldwell-Stone said.
The material that would be most affected includes information about puberty, reproductive health, gender identity and sexual orientation, Caldwell-Stone said.
“These books touch on topics that don’t match the values or tastes of some groups but are absolutely wanted and needed by other members of the community, and they should be able to find those books in a publicly funded library,” she said.
In addition to changing obscenity laws, some states are moving ahead with legislation that would make library board elections more frequent and create committees to process requests to move materials.
Some states are considering legislation that could target drag performers. Iowa state Sen. Sandy Salmon introduced a bill in January that could make it a crime for someone involved in a similar event at a public library to expose minors to an “obscene performance,” defined as one that includes sexual acts or “appeals to the prurient interest and is patently offensive.”
“These efforts are simply an attempt to intimidate and chill librarians and educators from serving everyone in their community,” Caldwell-Stone said.
Other state legislatures are considering changes to obscenity laws this year, including Wyoming’s, Nebraska’s and Indiana’s. Caldwell-Stone said that it is still early in legislative sessions and that initial hearings and cost concerns could affect whether the bills pass.
Mack Allen, an 18-year-old high school senior from Kansas, braces for sideways glances, questioning looks and snide comments whenever he has to hand over his driver’s license, which still identifies him as female.
They’ve come from a police officer responding to a car accident. They’ve come from an urgent care employee loudly using the wrong name and pronouns. They’ve come from the people in the waiting room who overheard.
“It just feels gross because I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now in my transition, and obviously I don’t look like a woman and I don’t sound like a woman,” said Allen, who has been on testosterone for two years.
Kansas enacted a law last year that ended legal recognition of transgender identities. The measure says there are only two sexes, male and female, that are based on a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth.
That law and others introduced around the nation this year — often labeled as “bills of rights” for women — are part of a push by conservatives who say states have a legitimate interest in restricting transgender people from competing on sports teams or using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Critics argue the proposals to legally define sex as binary are essentially erasing transgender and nonbinary people’s existences by making it as difficult as possible for them to update documents, use facilities and generally participate authentically in public life.
They’re also creating uncertainty for the many intersex people — those born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female — with the measures unclear on how people would prove they’re exempt.
Some of the measures would remove the word gender, which refers to social and self-identity, from state code and replace it with sex, which refers to biological traits, conflating the two terms. Others make gender a synonym for sex. Medical experts say the efforts rely on an outdated idea of gender by defining it as binary rather than a spectrum.
“You pass a law because there’s a problem. The medical community doesn’t see people having different gender identities or being born with an intersex condition as a problem for society,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who edited the section about gender dysphoria in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. “The medical community can only stand back to say, what exactly are you passing this law to protect?”
Measures have been proposed this year in at least 13 states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming — and advocates expect that number to grow. The bills follow a historic push for restrictions on transgender people, especially youths, by Republican lawmakers last year. At least 23 states have banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and some states are now shifting their focus to trying to restrict that care for adults, as well. Others have moved on restroom and sports restrictions.
Many political observers say the Republican focus on transgender people is an attempt to rally a voting base with a “wedge issue” to replace abortion rights, which the public has largely favored, notably in Kansas. The efforts also worry transgender people and their allies that they’re further stigmatizing and threatening a community already at high risk of stress, depression and suicidal behavior.
With the latest round of bills defining man and woman, it’s clear “the intent is to make it as difficult as possible for transgender people to operate within a state,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, a large LGBTQ rights group.
“It’s an attempt to deny transgender people’s existence,” she said.
A similar proposal in Iowa put forward by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds led to protests at the state Capitol. The bill was introduced soon after the failure of a lawmaker’s effort to remove gender identity from the state’s civil right law. It would narrowly define male and female and require a transgender person’s assigned sex at birth to be listed alongside their gender identity on their birth certificate.
“Women and men are not identical; they possess unique biological differences,” Reynolds said after introducing the measure. “That’s not controversial, it’s common sense.”
The sponsor of a similar bill passed by the West Virginia House said the legislation is needed to allow restrictions on who can use single-sex restrooms, locker rooms and changing areas.
“At any given time, we’re unable to protect single-sex spaces,” said Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, the measure’s sponsor, said. “If we don’t have a definition, we can’t protect them.”
Jocelyn Krueger, of Grinnell, Iowa, joined protesters at the statehouse days after testifying to lawmakers that she opposed the failed effort to remove gender identity from the civil rights law.
Krueger said she’s concerned about potential repercussions of the bill, given that a person’s identifying documents “unlock basic participation” in everyday life.
She compared it to how she was temporarily unable to get money from her bank account when she was updating her documents. Krueger worries the Iowa bill could create similar challenges for trans residents, but longer term.
“Not having access to documentation, or things that out you in a way, or where your documentation doesn’t match, puts you at risk for all of those daily interactions where people are looking at your documentation,” Krueger said.
The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, estimates there are 1.3 million transgender adults in the U.S. But it’s believed that intersex people represent 1.7% of humans, which would translate to over 5 million in the U.S. alone.
In Alabama, lawmakers added language to legislation defining male and female that sex can be designated as unknown on state records “when sex cannot be medically determined for developmental or other reasons.”
West Virginia’s proposal specifically states that someone who is intersex is “not considered a third sex.” But the measure says people with a “medically verifiable” diagnosis of it should be accommodated.
Before this year, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Tennessee had enacted laws defining man and woman in state code. Oklahoma — where advocates say a law restricting bathroom access helped create a climate that led to the bullying of nonbinary teenager Nex Benedict, who died after a fight in a girls bathroom at a school — already has a measure by executive order, as does Nebraska.
Before Tennessee’s law took effect, advocates held events to assist people on changing their names and gender identities on government documents.
“There’s a lot of potential for harm that seems ready to explode at any moment,” said Dahron Johnson, of the Tennessee Equality Project.
In South Carolina, amendments have been proposed to the state constitution to narrowly define male and female. But the measures face an uphill battle in clearing the Legislature by an April 10 deadline in order to make this fall’s ballot.
Opponents say efforts to codify sex are likely to face court challenges, just as other restrictions such as youth medical care have.
“We’ve already lost this case,” said Idaho Rep. Ilana Rubel, a Democrat who voted against a definition bill approved by the state’s Republican-led House, predicting the state would get sued. “This is really just an unfortunate gesture that makes people in our community feel unwanted and unloved by their government.”
A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed Indiana’s ban on gender-affirming care to go into effect, removing a temporary injunction a judge issued last year.
The ruling was handed down by a panel of justices on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. It marked the latest decision in a legal challenge the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed against the ban, enacted last spring amid a national push by GOP-led legislatures to curb LGBTQ+ rights.
The law was slated to go into effect on July 1, 2023. But the month before, U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued an injunction preventing most of it from taking effect. Hanlon blocked the state from prohibiting minors’ access to hormone therapies and puberty blockers, but allowed the law’s prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries to take effect.
Hanlon’s order also blocked provisions that would prohibit Indiana doctors from communicating with out-of-state doctors about gender-affirming care for their patients younger than 18.
In a written statement Tuesday, the ACLU of Indiana called the appeals court’s ruling “heartbreaking” for transgender youth, their doctors and families.
“As we and our clients consider our next steps, we want all the transgender youth of Indiana to know this fight is far from over,” the statement read. “We will continue to challenge this law until it is permanently defeated and Indiana is made a safer place to raise every family.”
The three-judge panel that issued Tuesday’s order comprises two justices appointed by Republican presidents and one by a Democrat. The late Republican President Ronald Reagan appointed Kenneth F. Ripple; former Republican President Donald Trump appointed Michael B. Brennan; and current Democratic President Joe Biden appointed Candace Jackson-Akiwumi.
The ACLU of Indiana brought the lawsuit on behalf of four youths undergoing gender-affirming treatments and an Indiana doctor who provides such care. The lawsuit argued the ban would violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantees and trampled upon the rights of parents to decide medical treatment for their children.
Every major medical group, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, has opposed the restrictions enacted by at least 23 states and has said that gender-affirming care for minors is safe if administered properly.
Representatives from Indiana University Health Riley Children’s Hospital, the state’s sole hospital-based gender health program, told legislators earlier last year that doctors don’t perform or provide referrals for genital surgeries for minors. IU Health was not involved in the ACLU’s lawsuit.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called the state law “commonsense” in a post on X, formally known as Twitter, Tuesday evening.
Most of the bans on gender-affirming care for minors that have been enacted across the U.S. have been challenged with lawsuits. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional. Judges’ orders are in place temporarily blocking enforcement of the bans in Idaho and Montana.
The states that have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors are: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
Ghana’s parliament passed legislation on Wednesday that intensifies a crackdown on the rights of LGBTQ people and those promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identities in the West African country.
Gay sex was already punishable by up to three years in prison. The bill now also imposes a prison sentence of up to five years for the “wilful promotion, sponsorship, or support of LGBTQ+ activities.”
The bill, one of the harshest of its kind in Africa, still needs presidential assent to come into force. President Nana Akufo-Addo has not confirmed if he will sign the bill into law.
A coalition of Christian, Muslim, and Ghanaian traditional leaders sponsored the legislation.
Real Agency for Community Development was established by a proactive group of people who have fled persecution due to their sexual orientation in their respective districts of origin (Isingiro, Mbarara and Ntungamo) and now live in the Nakivale refugee camp where they hoped to find greater safety and freedom.
Homosexuality, however, is illegal in Uganda and they face new challenges: Arbitrary arrests, discrimination, corrective rape, kidnapping, robbery, stigma, homophobia, harassment and bullying. RACD has identified more than 123 LGBTQ Ugandans and other refugees living in the Nakivale and Oruchinga refugee camps. The organization provides them with services depending on their unique situations.
The legal and social marginalization experienced by these people results in many violations of LGBTQ persons’ liberty and threats to their safety.
Since the beginning of this year, we have already seen three people arbitrarily arrested for being LGBTQ. Another two LGBTQ community members were brutally attacked by a gang of 10 homophobic neighbors in Kampala. One of them had his jaw shattered and had to get a surgery to insert a metal to his jaw. HIV prevention drugs and equipment are always a necessary part of the work with LGBTQ people and female sex workers. The general economic situation in Uganda is decreasing rapidly, and LGBTQ persons suffer the most. Many members reported that they pass many days without being able to obtain any food.
Please email [email protected] for more information about RACD. Donations can also be made to RACD through this GoFundMe link.
Experts say LGBTQ people experience religious trauma at disproportionate rates and in unique ways. Justin J. Wee and Evan Jenkins for NBC News
Kellen Swift-Godzisz, 35, said he doesn’t go on dates, struggles with erectile dysfunction and is hesitant to trust people. For more than 20 years, he’s experienced intense bouts of anxiety and depression that have had a “major hold on his life.”
“Imagine being told by everyone you trusted that you’re going to hell because you like men,” Swift-Godzisz, a marketing project manager living in Chicago, told NBC News.
At just 11 years old, Swift-Godzisz recalled, he would sit in his bedroom every night praying or writing letters that said, “Please God, remove my affliction of same-sex attraction,” and would then store each letter in an overflowing shoebox in his closet.
Swift-Godzisz, who grew up in an evangelical Baptist church in rural Michigan, believed Bible verses like Matthew 21:22 — “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” — would help him “pray the gay away.”
As he entered his teens and realized his feelings of same-sex attraction were only intensifying, Swift-Godzisz finally accepted that God would not be answering his prayers. Things went downhill from there, he said.
Swift-Godzisz is among the 1 in 3 adults in the United States who have suffered from religious trauma at some point in their life, according to a 2023 study published in the Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry Journal. That same study suggests up to 1 in 5 U.S. adults currently suffer from major religious trauma symptoms.
Religious trauma occurs when an individual’s religious upbringing has lasting adverse effects on their physical, mental or emotional well-being, according to the Religious Trauma Institute. Symptoms can include guilt, shame, loss of trust and loss of meaning in life. While religious trauma hasn’t officially been classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), there is debate among psychiatrists about whether that should change.
Experts say LGBTQ people — who represent more than 7% of the U.S. population, according to a 2023 Gallup poll — experience religious trauma at disproportionate rates and in unique ways. Very little research has been done in this field, but a 2022 study found that LGBTQ people who experience certain forms of religious trauma are at increased risk for suicidality, substance abuse, homelessness, anxiety and depression. And as political animus toward the LGBTQ community intensifies ahead of the 2024 presidential election, many queer people say their pain is resurfacing.
‘It’s basically a mind rape’
The concept of religious trauma has been around for centuries, and, according to experts, it can have serious consequences that can last a lifetime.
“In its worst manifestations, it’s basically a mind rape,” said Marlene Winell, a psychologist who coined the term “religious trauma syndrome” in 2011. “These doctrines that are taught to you over and over are so damaging and so hideous and so hard to weed out. In many cases, you have been violated, you have been abused or you have been shamed, and the impact is very deep and can be everlasting.”
Dr. Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who specializes in LGBTQ populations, agreed, noting that growing up gay or transgender in a nonaccepting religious environment could have serious mental health consequences.
“When you hide or morph your behavior in an effort to conceal your queer identity, you wind up hiding other things about yourself,” he said. “There may be strengths or aspirations you have that you never access because you’re afraid they’re associated with your gender identity. This can affect your self-esteem, it can affect your confidence, and even your capacity to be realistic about what you can do and achieve.”
At 14, when Swift-Godzisz accepted that he could not “pray the gay away,” he confided in his youth pastor, who in turn told his parents and the entire church leadership.
“My mom was hysterical and ashamed and wanted us to pack up and move to a new town,” he said. “My parents very much viewed it as a sin and a choice that I made that we were going to fix.”
For the next three years, Swift-Godzisz said, he was grounded indefinitely. He said his parents controlled the friends he was allowed to hang out with and enrolled him in so-called conversion therapy, a discredited practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation. For this type of therapy, Swift-Godzisz said, his parents forced him to speak with various people from the fundamentalist Christian group Focus on the Family, which is widely known for its anti-LGBTQ advocacy.
“They weren’t trying to understand me,” he recalled of his sessions with the Focus on the Family leaders. “All of their advice was just, ‘Practice abstinence,’ or ‘Don’t do that; that’s against God’s wishes.”
Swift-Godzisz’s mother, who declined to address her son’s allegations, told NBC News that while she and her son “differ on some things,” she would give her life for him in a moment. “I’m proud of my son, I love him and I’m glad the Lord gave him to me,” she said.
Focus on the Family did not reply to a request for comment.
“The church has been the villain in my life story,” Swift-Godzisz said, adding that he’s been traumatized by his family and religious leaders. “Anything I’d do that’s ‘gay’ was considered a sin.”
Now, decades later, Swift-Godzisz said he struggles with severe ADHD and — though he’s never been officially diagnosed — what he described as post-traumatic stress disorder, or “PTSD-like feelings.” He also said growing up queer in an ultrareligious household has led to persistent issues in his romantic life, including erectile dysfunction.
“When you’ve spent decades of your life reinforcing not getting a boner around another guy, and now even though you are ready to do that sort of stuff, your brain still kind of goes like, ‘I don’t know, we’re not supposed to do that,’” he explained.
He also said he avoids romantic relationships altogether.
“Still, to this day, one of my biggest fears is that I’ll get married to a man, have children and get old with him, and on my deathbed I’ll denounce it all because I’m afraid that I might go to hell,” he said. “So I just don’t do it.”
Winell said many of her patients’ trauma response is so active from what they experienced as a child that their brain gets confused about what’s past and what’s present, which causes the fear response to fire up in situations where they are doing something related to their sexuality or gender identity.
“Sometimes there’s a real split between what you think in your head — your intellectual understanding of everything — and your gut-level emotional condition and response to situations,” she explained. “So someone like Swift-Godzisz might be comfortable with his identity but can still have this gut-level fight-or-flight response in the amygdala to all the trauma from the past, and if that happens constantly, that can really screw you up.”
She added that people experiencing this can also develop physical symptoms like digestive problems and headaches.
The effect of familial and community rejection
Religious trauma for LGBTQ people may be particularly intense, because it “goes to the very essence of who the person is,” according to Winell.
“There’s so much condemnation in conservative kinds of churches about being LGBTQ, that the trauma is felt as a direct attack on them,” she said.
LGBTQ people experiencing religious trauma may also be met with instant rejection when they come out or when their queer identity is discovered, she said, noting that they could lose connection with family, friends, church leadership and other forms of community overnight.
“In a biological way, we all want to belong, and we are attached to our parents — we’re dependent on them and need their approval. So if you have their love growing up and then one day, boom, they reject you for something you can’t control, that can create long-lasting anxiety and trauma,” Winell said. “The icing on the cake is that you might simultaneously be losing friends, mentors or entire communities.”
Jamie Long, 40, is among those who quickly lost her support system due to a clash between her LGBTQ identity and her religion.
“Religion has obliterated my life,” she said.
Growing up in Greensboro, Alabama, where her father was the deacon and Sunday school teacher of her Pentecostal church, Long — who was assigned male at birth but now often uses she/her pronouns — remembers feeling different about her gender and sexuality as early as kindergarten. She spent her youth “in hiding,” doing everything to beg God to give her the power to change the feelings she had about her gender and her attraction to men.
“I would pray for hours nonstop,” said Long, who, decades later, is still trying to figure out her gender identity. “Nothing worked. It was terrifying.”
As time went on, it became harder for Long to hide her effeminate behavior. So she came out as a gay man and started hooking up with men on “the down-low,” which she said is omnipresent among men who have sex with men in the Black church.
“The pressure to subscribe to heterosexuality and masculinity is so intense, so there’s this culture in the Black religious community of guys keeping their hookups on ‘the low,’” she added.
As people close to Long started to find out she had come out as gay, the rejection ramped up. Her choir director — whom she described as a prominent figure she looked up to — pulled her aside after a Sunday service and said, “We can’t have a homosexual singing in the choir. I’m going to work with you to get that evil spirit out of you,” Long recalled. Her mom, who had been her “biggest supporter,” broke down in tears and said, “You will burn in hell,” and her brother berated her and called her anti-gay slurs for the duration of a 30-minute drive through Alabama, she recalled.
Long’s brother told NBC News that he “doesn’t remember” that car ride and — using male pronouns for his sibling — said that while he loves Long, he does not respect the path Long has chosen. “I don’t believe in gay; I believe it’s a spirit,” he said. Long’s choir director did not respond to a request for comment.
Now, years after losing most of her support systems because of her LGBTQ identity, Long has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.
“I blame 100% of my identity crisis, of who I am as a queer person, on my religious upbringing,” Long said. “I had to create a mask and suppress my feelings all because of how I was brought up in the church. I was conditioned to believe my life was wrong.”
When religion meets politics
In addition to feeling isolated or rejected by family and community, many LGBTQ Americans say the current political climate is exacerbating their experience with religious trauma.
In 2023, a record-shattering 510 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures, with more than 80 of them passed into law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Transgender people’s access to health care was a key talking point in the Republican presidential primary debates, and, before he was in Congress, recently elected House Speaker Mike Johnson called same-sex marriage a “dark harbinger of chaos” and suggested it could lead to people wedding their pets.
“For me, the religious aspect is almost inextricable from the political aspect,” said Amberlyn Boiter, a business analyst for a software development company, who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
She remembers attending a 1,500-person megachurch just months before she came out as trans where the entire audience applauded after the pastor went on a 10-minute “transphobic rant.”
“I had to go up and play the bass in the church band after that, and I remember hating every second,” Boiter, 36, said.
Shortly after that, she came out to her family and they rejected her, stating that she was “betraying God and in turn she had betrayed them.”
“I think the biggest hurt is seeing our family members choose mythology over a relationship with their own flesh and blood,” she said.
Boiter cited the 20 anti-LGBTQ bills that were introduced in South Carolina’s state legislature in 2023. Some bills would strip trans people of gender-affirming health care, while others would criminalize them if they use public bathroomsthat match their gender identity. Many of the bills were backed by Christian legal groups and think tanks like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council.
“Being able to tie the policy to religious sources, it makes me feel doomed,” Boiter said. “There have been some pretty dark days, some of which have gone into the territory of suicidal ideation, where I’m worrying about whether I am going to have to uproot my wife and my child and move them from a place that I was born and raised.”
Boiter said she has ancestral ties in Spartanburg that go back to the 1780s.
“I have more than once spiraled into a place of thinking, ‘I might not only need to move to a different state, I may need to consider moving to another country.’ When people like Mike Johnson — who I would call a religious fanatic — are elected to higher and higher positions and even federal office, what am I supposed to think? More than a couple of times, I’ve looked at Canada’s refugee policies. I legitimately and truthfully worry that a day may come where my family and I are refugees.”
Swift-Godzisz shares those sentiments.
“I’m keeping the lid on a pot that is ready to boil over,” he said, adding that Johnson’s anti-LGBTQ track record is “one of the scariest things that has happened in my perception of politics.”
Healing from religious trauma
Mental health experts say in order to heal, those suffering from religious trauma should work toward building a new, affirming chapter in their lives.
Dr. Harold G. Koenig, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center, said building that next chapter may involve cutting off those who hurt you.
“You say, ‘I love you, I forgive you,’ and you take the initiative to move forward. That will help heal you,” he said.
Koenig added that LGBTQ people who have experienced trauma but don’t want to leave religion entirely should consider joining an affirming church where leaders may be able to help with the healing process.
“Christian acceptance of [the LGBTQ] community is growing,” he said. In fact, majorities of every major religious group favor laws that protect LGBTQ people against discrimination, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2022American Values Survey.
To move forward, Drescher recommends rebuilding self-esteem by forming new relationships. “It’s important to find new communities, new friendships that are affirming and that can help you heal,” he explained.
For those who leave their religion — as Swift-Godzisz, Long and Boiter have all done —it’s “like the rug gets pulled out from under you,” according to Winell.
“Your life needs to be gradually reconstructed,” she said. “It’s a reconstruct of who you think you are and what you believe now. One of those new beliefs is that being LGBTQ is OK.”
In terms of treatment, Winell said she first helps her patients learn to take care of themselves.
“Instead of outsourcing all that care to God, I teach them how to be self-reflective and how to regulate their feelings from their own perspective, rather than from the Bible’s,” she said.
From there, she teaches skills that help with the trauma response, like writing down negative messages you grew up believing and changing them to something that can read as positive and hopeful.
“What used to be, ‘My life is a trial, and then I die and go to hell,’ can change to, ‘My life is an adventure and a journey,’” she said.
She also works with her patients on relaxation by teaching them breathing exercises and body scan meditations, among other techniques. In certain cases, she recommends combining these tools with medication.
A debate among mental health providers
As more LGBTQ people share their experiences with religious trauma, there is debate among mental health experts about how it should be characterized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s reference guide for coding, classifying and diagnosing mental disorders.
In the decades-old manual’s fifth and latest edition, the DSM-5-TR, religious trauma falls under the category “Religious or Spiritual Problem,” as a Z code, not an official mental disorder. Z codes are listed in the back of the DSM and are referred to as “other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.” Other examples include various forms of “Child Psychological Abuse,” “Unsheltered Homelessness” and “Victim of Terrorism or Torture.”
Koenig is now working with a group of public health experts and psychiatrists at Harvard Universityto expand “Religious or Spiritual Problem” as a Z code in the DSM to include “Moral Problems,” such as moral injury.
Moral injury, which is not currently listed in the DSM, may occur when an individual believes they have acted in a way that deeply conflicts with their morals and values, which produces guilt, shame or profound feelings of broken trust. It has been applied to war veterans and, more recently, to health care professionals who did not feel like they were able to provide appropriate care to those suffering during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For centuries, people have been manipulating and weaponizing religion by condemning LGBTQ individuals,” Koenig said. “Moral injury — particularly for religious LGBTQ people — can create a whole life of shame and guilt. To live with it can result in mental health problems over time, like suicide, depression and anxiety, because that’s what moral injury does, and you can get stuck in it for years and decades.”
Koenig said it’s critical that the combination of “Religious or Spiritual Problem” and “Moral Problem” — which is currently under review by a DSM committee — finds a spot in the manual as a Z code. By adding moral injury, he explained, providers will be able to collect more specific data and prescribe more targeted treatments, such as whether it’s appropriate to recommend pastoral support for those suffering. They’ll also be able to more effectively document which part of the patient’s trauma came from their family’s or community’s religious beliefs and which part came from a separate worldview that being LGBTQ is immoral.
“For religious people who identify as LGBTQ, it’s not just Christianity at play,” he said. “It’s the whole moral fabric of the culture that’s been passed down through generations that has caused this condemnation.”
Getting a new disorder or code added to the DSM involves submitting an extensive proposal to the manual’s steering committee, which is then reviewed and forwarded along to the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees for approval.
“Having it as a Z code will validate and stimulate funding support, and then there’ll be more money for research, which will help us learn more about how we can treat folks experiencing moral injuries like religious trauma,” Koenig said.
A further step would be changing “Religious or Spiritual Problem” from a Z code to an official disorder in the DSM. While Koenig is unsure about his stance on this, as the process would be even more rigorous and could take years, Winell said she “definitely thinks it should be in there” as a disorder.
“Right now, most therapists don’t know much about it. They’ll do an intake with a new client and talk about family, schooling, substance abuse, but they won’t touch religion,” she said. “So if it was a real thing in the DSM, it would get covered and the millions of folks who are struggling with it across this country could get better help.”
Winell added that a disorder classification in the DSM would give religious trauma more credibility in the eyes of medical professionals and would give those experiencing this type of trauma the ability to name what they’re going through. She also predicted this would result in more research in the area and religious trauma becoming part of the curriculum in university psychology courses.
Drescher, who was part of the APA committee that in 2013 changed gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in the DSM in an effort to remove stigma, disagrees with Winell on this matter.
“We don’t need diagnoses to understand what’s going on. … Medicalizing social issues is how homosexuality was originally labeled a mental disorder,” Drescher said, noting that homosexuality wasn’t officially removed from the DSM until 1973. “So the idea that now we’re going to turn anti-LGBTQ ideas into psychiatric diagnoses doesn’t sit well with me.”
This, he added, could enable a future generation to “just flip the switch” and pathologize homosexuality once again.
And while Drescher — who has been practicing psychiatry for over four decades — isn’t optimistic about changing the hearts and minds of today’s anti-LGBTQ church leaders who are “set in their ways,” he is still hopeful about the future.
“Younger religious people don’t think of LGBTQ people as their enemies. They know them as their friends, their neighbors and their fellow congregants,” he said.
“So as the new generation grows up, religious LGBTQ people will be met with greater acceptance rather than being stigmatized and having to hide who they are, and less hiding who you are means you can grow up feeling better about yourself and perhaps experience less anxiety, depression and other mental health struggles.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.
Spencer Macnaughton is an Emmy-nominated and Gracie Award-winning producer and an adjunct professor at New York University, where he teaches journalism with a focus on LGBTQ issues.
An independent non-profit think tank based in the US has created an interactive map to show which states in the US are safest for LGBTQ+ people to live and work – and which are not.
It has then scored each state based on those laws and policies – the higher the score, the more protective its laws are towards LGBTQ+ people while the lower the score a state receives, the more harmful its policies are towards LGBTQ+ people. The states are then put into five categories: High, Medium, Fair, Low, and Negative.
States must score between 75 to 100% of possible points to end up in the High category, between 50 to 74.9% for the Medium category, between 25 to 49.9% for the Fair category, 0 to 24.9% for the Low category, and less than zero to be placed in the Negative category.
The interactive map is colour-coded, with states highlighted in red being places where LGBTQ+ people have barely any protection under the law or are actively stopped from living freely as an LGBTQ person and thus have scored negatively on MAP’s criteria. This includes Texas, Arkansa, Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, Tennessee, South Caroline, and Louisiana.
LGBTQ+ safe states
By comparison, states who score in the highest category are highlighted in green on the map are considered places where LGBTQ+ people are safest and offered the most amount of protection under the law.
This includes states like California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Vermont, Illinois, Minnesota, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington D.C.
MAP is keen to stress that their map only reflects existing laws and policies that are already in place and not does include bills currently under consideration by the state legislature nor does it look at how each state enforces these laws.
“These scores are an excellent measure of the current LGBTQ policy landscape across a wide range of issues, but the scores do not necessarily reflect the entire political or social landscape for LGBTQ people,” it writes.
According to the organisation’s research, 27% of the overall LGBTQ+ population in the US currently live in states with low scores while 44% of the overall LGBTQ+ population live in states with high scores.
The think tank was founded in 2006 with the mission to “create a thriving, inclusive, and equitable America where all people have a fair chance to pursue health and happiness, earn a living, take care of the ones they love, be safe in their communities, and participate in civic life”.
The first man was found dead in the driver’s seat of his car on March 20. He’d been shot twice — once in the head and once in the back. He’d been led to the area, north of downtown Phoenix, for what authorities described as a sexual encounter with another man.
The second victim, who family members have said was openly gay, was discovered in a park eight months later, in November. He’d been shot and mutilated in a manner that a cousin said reminded her of a horror movie.
Last month, three people were charged with various crimes in the November killing of Bernardo “Bernie” Pantaleon, 30. A fourth suspect was arrested and later released after prosecutors asked police to continue investigating.
One of the suspects, Leonardo Santiago, 21, later confessed to the March killing of Osvaldo Hernandez Castillo, 20, officials said, and he has since been indicted on first-degree murder charges in both cases. He has pleaded not guilty. No one else has been charged in Hernandez Castillo’s death.
Authorities have not accused the suspects of targeting gay men — despite calls from Pantaleon’s family to charge them with hate crimes in connection with his killing.
Law enforcement documents allege Santiago initially told authorities he killed Bernie over an “unwanted advance.” The documents also suggest there was a sexual relationship between Santiago and Hernandez Castillo.
Juan Pantaleon said a conversation days after the November death leaves little doubt as to why his cousin was killed.
In the online conversation, which occurred in a group chat and was included in a probable cause statement from the Phoenix Police Department, some of the suspects made “derogatory remarks regarding the victim’s sexuality and a derogatory statement about homosexuals not being allowed in the northside” of Phoenix.
“There’s more than enough evidence here,” Juan said. “It’s clear as day to everybody who sees this — he was targeted for being gay.”
Juan said his family has pleaded with local and federal prosecutors to pursue hate crime charges. To their great frustration, he said, they’ve made little headway, prompting the family to call for a reform to the state’s hate crime statute.
In Juan’s view, calling the crime what he believes it is is key to heading off an inaccurate and demeaning portrayal of the murder — “another brown-on-brown gang crime,” Juan said. (Authorities have charged the suspects with assisting in a criminal street gang. Bernie, who worked for a local author and sold e-cigarettes for extra income, was “absolutely” not in a gang, Juan said.)
Another of Bernie’s cousins, Gasdeli Pantaleon, said she hoped the family’s effort might offer a measure of protection to Arizona’s LGBTQ community.
In an email to Juan last month, Jordan Uglietta, a Maricopa County prosecutor trying the case, said the state has no hate crime charge, but that state law allows prosecutors to allege bias against a person’s sexual identity as an “aggravating circumstance” that can help secure a stiffer prison sentence.
“The prosecution will continue to review the evidence obtained through the police investigation of this case and, in consideration of such evidence, determine whether to allege this aggravating circumstance in this case at the proper time,” Uglietta wrote.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office declined to comment, citing the status of the case. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix — which could potentially file hate crime charges that are separate from the state’s case — declined to comment. A spokesman for the FBI’s field office said his office is aware of the killing but cited a policy barring the agency from confirming or denying the existence of an investigation.
NBC News could not reach Hernandez Castillo’s family.
Lawyers for Santiago,who is being held in lieu of $4 million bond, either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. Lawyers for Santiago’s alleged accomplices did not respond to requests for comment.
Santiago’s next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 1.
The family ‘rock’
Bernie’s family described him as their “rock.” Gasdeli said Bernie lost much of his childhood to familial obligations: His parents were deported and later died when he was a teenager, she said, so Bernie became the primary caregiver for his younger siblings and grandparents.
“Bernie just thought that he had to care for everybody,” she said. “He was a very caring person.”
The added responsibilities prompted Bernie to drop out of high school, she said. He worked with another cousin doing home remodeling and later began working for the author and selling e-cigarettes, she said.
Bernie had an eye for home organization and interior design, Gasdeli said, and had planned on launching a business. After his death, his family found business cards he’d made for the new venture.
Juan, who now lives in New York but lived in Phoenix as a teenager and was close with Bernie, remembered the moment his cousin came out. Bernie was 15, Juan said, and he and some other cousins were hanging out at a relative’s house.
“He just, like, took a deep breath,” Juan recalled. “He’s like, ‘Guys, I want to tell you something. He’s like, ‘I’m gay.’ And we’re like, yeah, ‘We know.’”
“We saw this weight come off of him,” Juan said. “And then from that point forward, little by little, he started becoming his true self.”
Juan, now 30, moved to New York in his teens, but when he returned to Phoenix for a visit two years ago, he said he and Bernie picked up like he’d never gone.
“When I left he was still wearing polos and closeted in his style,” Juan said. “When I went out there again, he was lashes up and nails on, and I could tell that he was happy.”
During the visit, Juan recalled, he and Bernie talked about their dating lives. At one point, he said, Bernie mentioned a man he was having sex with and showed Juan the man’s dating profile.
When Bernie said the man belonged to a gang, Juan warned his cousin to be careful, he said.
The conversation “echoes in my mind. It just haunts me,” Juan said.
A frantic search
On the morning of Nov. 26, a Sunday, Gasdeli learned that Bernie wasn’t answering his phone and no one had talked to him since Saturday.
Bernie was supposed to go to a bar Saturday night, she said, but the friends he planned to meet up with said he was a no-show. From Bernie’s younger brother, Gasdeli said, she learned someone had been messaging Bernie all Saturday, trying to make a deal for e-cigarettes.
The brother had warned Bernie against it, saying it seemed like a setup, Gasdeli said. But that afternoon, Bernie decided to go. He put on a hoodie and walked to a nearby park, she said.
When Bernie’s family couldn’t find him the next morning, Gasdeli said, they checked the location of his cellphone and discovered it was still at the park. When they drove by the area, she said, it was surrounded by police officers.
Investigators at the scene couldn’t confirm a body that had been discovered was Bernie’s, she said, but when they finally did, the moment left the family “shattering in pieces.”
“My whole family’s crying, screaming,” she said. “We’re trying to find answers.”
A few days later, on Nov. 30, the apparent answers came in a grim message. Another cousin who was close with Bernie, Roman Pantaleon, said someone sent him graphic and disturbing images of Bernie. There were other people in the images, as well.
One of the images, which were being shared on a messaging platform, showed Bernie’s body, Roman said. Standing over him was a man flipping off the camera, Roman said.
“It makes you really angry,” Roman said. “It enrages you.”
Roman said he shared the pictures with the Phoenix Police Department and then deleted them. Days later, on Dec. 2, three men were arrested in the killing. In the probable cause statement, authorities described the images the family had received — a second picture showed Bernie’s mutilated body — and said they were shared on Instagram. The statement says only that the profile that shared the image belonged to one of Santiago’s co-defendants.
Investigators obtained a warrant for the Instagram profile and discovered a group message that showed a conversation about robbing and killing Bernie, the statement says. A co-defendant was part of the thread, the statement says, where members “repeatedly asked for updates” about the alleged crime and “lamented they were not invited.”
An hour after the slaying, the statement says, Santiago’s co-defendants discussed returning to the scene to mutilate Bernie’s body.
The probable cause statement says that days after the slaying, the thread showed some of the suspects discussing news coverage of Bernardo’s death and making derogatory statements about his sexuality and stating that gay people were not allowed on Phoenix’s north side.
The statement doesn’t say if the suspects learned that Bernie was gay from the coverage or if they already knew.
‘It was personal’
After his arrest, Santiago told investigators that he’d met Bernie around 6 p.m. on Nov. 25. After an initial denial, Santiago allegedly told investigators that he killed Bernie over an “unwanted advance that made him uncomfortable,” the probable cause statement said.
Santiago later changed his story, the statement said, and said the original plan had been only to rob Bernie. He then blamed a person whom he couldn’t fully identify for the killing, the statement adds, and he blamed others for coming up with the idea to mutilate Bernie — although he acknowledged being there when it happened.
That effort to shift blame was “contradicted by the codefendant during their interview,” the statement says. “A second codefendant provided statements indicating the defendant” — Santiago — “was responsible for killing the victim.”
To Gasdeli, her cousin’s horrific death appeared to reveal a crime that wasn’t just a robbery. He’d been shot multiple times and cut with a sharp-edged object, police said, and had suffered significant injuries to his head, neck and torso.
“It was personal,” Gasdeli said.
Juan rejected the claim that his cousin made an unwanted pass at Santiago and also believes Bernardo’s slaying was personal. He believed he recognized Santiago as the man from the dating profile Bernie showed him two years earlier — the man he warned his cousin about.
A police spokesman declined to comment on how or if Santiago and Bernie knew each other and referred the question to the prosecutor’s office. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office declined to comment. Santiago’s lawyer also declined to comment.
A confession in an earlier slaying
After Santiago’s arrest, authorities linked him to a second killing. A man who was arrested in what authorities described as an unrelated investigation on Dec. 4 told officials about a video he’d seen of Santiago fatally shooting a man inside a car, according to a probable cause statement reviewed by NBC News.
Authorities said in the statement they searched Santiago’s phone and found a clip of him fatally shooting Osvaldo Hernandez Castillo in March.
In an interview with investigators, Santiago admitted to the killing, saying he’d been forced by another man to carry out the murder and that he’d done so to be recognized by his gang, the statement says. Santiago also told investigators he’d threatened to rob Hernandez Castillo, according to the statement.
Santiago acknowledged using a Snapchat handle — “IPEEPNIKE10” — to message Hernandez Castillo, and a chat thread between them showed that they’d met up for sexual encounters, the statement says. On March 19, the day before Hernandez Castillo was found dead, the messages showed they’d planned to meet, according to the statement.
The affidavit pointed to evidence at the scene — including an unused condom — as well as interviews with Hernandez Castillo’s family and friends and said: “It is believed the victim was engaged in a sexual encounter with a male at or around the time of his murder.”
The statement does not provide additional information about the relationship.
At Santiago’s initial court appearance Dec. 8, he stood quietly at a lectern wearing an orange jumpsuit. Hernandez Castillo’s mother offered a brief, tearful statement.
Santiago had taken a piece of her, she said through an interpreter, and another man had to die before they found her son’s killer.
Brittany Morris reported from Phoenix. Tim Stelloh reported from Alameda, Calif.
The first at-home cervical screening device is currently under clinical trial to become FDA-approved in the USA, and we think it’s about time for a change.
For women and those with uteruses, undergoing a regular pap smear to prevent cervical cancer can be an unpleasant experience thanks to the speculum used.
The outdated device used in pelvic appointments to separate the vaginal walls can be cold and uncomfortable. The clamp-like instrument was invented in the mid-19th century and hasn’t adapted much since its origins.
The new device called Teal Wand, designed by women-led company Teal Health, is an at-home cervical cancer screening device. The brand explained in an Instagram post that the at-home screening device “follows the American Cancer Society’s cervical cancer guidelines and runs the samples on approved primary HPV assays”.
Teal Health’s initial study of the device revealed that 97% of women said the at-home cervical cancer screening device was easy or very easy to use. Meanwhile, 92% of participants said they would choose self-collect over the current standard of care with a clinician collecting, while 87% said they would be more likely to get screened if the Teal Wand was an option.
In the US, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that around 4,000 women and people with uteruses die of cervical cancer a year. Self-collected cervical screening tests are already an option in other countries and actively reduce the barrier for women and LGBTQ+ people facing healthcare-based discrimination.
The Australian Government introduced such tests in July 2022. The home kit tests “allow privacy and help break down barriers for thousands of people who have never screened – including women who have experienced sexual violence, LGBTQIA+ people and culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations communities”, the Department of Health and Aged Care website reads.
“Australia has always punched above its weight when it comes to cervical cancer, and now Australia is on track to be the first country in the world to eliminate this deadly disease,” said the assistant minister for the department The Hon Ged Kearney.
Unsurprisingly, the original device has bleak origins. In 1945, Dr James Marion Sims performed surgeries on enslaved women without anaesthesia or pain relief, in a bid to understand the reproductive system. He invented the instrument to allow himself – and largely Cis male doctors – the ability to better look at the vagina and cervix, GE HealthCare explains.
There’s been a noticeable uptick in police harassment since 2023, that began with legislators proposing bills aimed at LGBTQ people. More recently police and other public officials have seemingly gone out of their way to target the LGBTQ community. This includes spaces in “red states,” like Missouri where police officers arrested the owners of Bar:PM (a leather bar in St. Louis) after they wrecked their police cruiser into it. “Blue states” however, are not immune to this — as was the case in Seattle where authorities raided The Cuff and The Seattle Eagle citing them for “lewd conduct” because of a bartender’s exposed nipple, and patrons wearing jockstraps.
As many LGBTQ activists are already aware, federal policymakers have been enacting legislation at the local and federal level targeting the LGBTQ community. Among those at the federal level is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal in May of 2023. Endorsed by President Joe Biden, the bill is a bipartisan initiative to “protect” kids from harmful content online by placing a responsibility on online social media platforms to regulate content and services. Republicans have noted, if passed, the bill would be used to protect “minor children from the Transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence.”
While KOSA seems to have stalled, despite urging from the Biden administration to pass it, some states have begun passing their own versions of the bill — or by enforcing laws at LGBTQ venues like The Cuff in Seattle. Utah’s obscenity laws has even caused PornHub to pull out of states passing these laws, due to their vagueness.
While some may dismiss these concerns as overblown, it seems clear that it is only one part of a larger strategy aimed at curtailing LGBTQ expression. The irony is that those espousing “freedom” are the same ones passing censorship laws. This gradual ratchet effect, which began last summer by targeting children’s books and LGBTQ persons online, has now shifted into something targeting LGBTQ institutions. It’s the same rhetoric used in the 1960s—which included government produced propaganda directed at LGBTQ people painting them as a social contagion dangerous to kids. At the height of this moral panic were laws prohibiting positive depictions of LGBTQ persons, the impact of which is still being felt today through stereotypes and negative framing.
Even in states that aren’t adding to this moral panic, KOSA has provided the framework by which states can pass vague “obscenity” laws that appear neutral, but in practice are aimed at LGBTQ people. Structural forms of discrimination also exist online as social media platforms act as determiners of what is allowable under their guidelines. In reality, moderation disproportionality impacts LGBTQ people, and especially trans women online. According to a recent study, content moderation against trans people was roughly five times more to occur than cisgender counterparts. These facts and figures resonate with trans content creators we spoke with, like Polly People who was recently de-platformed for “inappropriate attire” — the same attire that is promoted by cisgender women on the same platform.
Whether it’s jockstrap night at the local leather bar, trans content creators trying to express themselves, or protests of expressions of sexuality at Pride or events at Folsom, we are quickly descending into an age of marginalization that many LGBTQ people haven’t experienced since before Stonewall. While some of the established forms of collective organizing and community have been forgotten or lost, new forms are emerging to fight against these laws and regulations designed to further marginalize and render invisible the lives of LGBTQ Americans.
Christopher T. Conner is assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri. They are author of numerous scholarly publications, including ‘The Gayborhood: From Sexual Revolution to Cosmopolitan Spectacle.’ Fletcher Jackson is a senior undergraduate student at the University of Missouri, Columbia in Religious Studies and are co-teaching a class in spring 2024. Their research is at the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and queer visibility.