LGBTQI History: A Sonoma County Timeline 1990s Next Wednesday, 8/5, 1:30 – 3pm is the last class of Summer session! We’ll be wrapping up the 1990s with a short powerpoint presentation followed by discussion. Hope you can make it! Still online via Zoom. Please contact me to enroll in this FREE class and receive a Zoom invite: [email protected]
The coronavirus pandemic has “robbed” LGBT+ youth – who already had a higher risk of mental-health problems – of support, the head of The Trevor Project has written.
Writing for the World Economic Forum, Amit Paley, the CEO of youth suicide-prevention organisation The Trevor Project, called for better data to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on queer youth.
This follows a surge in the number of young LGBT+ people reaching out to The Trevor Project – the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organisation for young LGBT+ people – reaching double the usual numbers, at times.
A study by the organisation in May found that almost a third of trans and non-binary youth have attempted suicide in the past year. The pandemic will only have “exacerbated” pre-existing problems such as this, Paley wrote.
“Prior to the pandemic, LGBTQ youth have been found to be at significantly increased risk for depression, anxiety and attempting suicide,” he said.
Paley continued: “This correlates with the minority stress model, in which experiences of discrimination, rejection and violence are compounded, and can lead to negative mental health outcomes.
“Furthermore, young LGBTQ people already faced disproportionate rates of unemployment and homelessness. It is clear that the widespread anxiety, physical distancing and economic strain caused by COVID-19 have exacerbated these concerns, and created new, unique problems for many of them.”
Widespread school closures during the pandemic have affected all youth – but Paley argues that, given LGBT+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide compared to their peers, “for many young LGBTQ people, school might be their one safe space and source of affirming community”.
“According to the Trevor Project’s research, young LGBTQ people who report having at least one accepting adult were 40 per cent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year. For some, that accepting person could be a teacher, coach or school counsellor.
“Another unintended consequence of physical distancing has been an increase in negative interactions. Many now find themselves confined to unsupportive home environments – which can result in increased anxiety and emotional pain, particularly among transgender and nonbinary youth, as they may need to hide their authentic selves to maintain safety.
“Among young LGBTQ people, only one-third experience parental acceptance, with an additional one-third experiencing parental rejection, and the final one-third not disclosing their LGBTQ identity until they are adults.”
Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) is leading a group of congressional lawmakers in formal comments against a proposed Trump administration rule allowing homeless shelters to refuse to accept transgender people consistent with their gender identity.
“It is absolutely shameful that in the midst of a pandemic and with a record number of Americans unemployed, when access to safe housing is more important than ever, the administration is focused on attacking the basic rights of transgender Americans,” Wexton said Thursday in a Zoom call with reporters.
Formally made public July 24 in the Federal Register, the proposed rule allows homeless shelters with single-sex facilities to place transgender people consistent with sex assigned at birth, rather than gender identity.
The proposal downplays the idea such actions would be discriminatory by setting up a referral system: Single-sex homeless shelters can send transgender people to other shelters, for these single-sex shelters to house transgender people according to sex assigned at birth.
As pointed out by Katelyn Burns at Vox, the proposed rule has detailed language to aid homeless shelters in determining whether an individual is transgender, such as making assumptions based on ‘height’, ‘facial hair’ and whether or not they have ‘an Adam’s apple.’
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said on the conference call Carson years ago promised only delays in implementing an Obama-era rule against anti-transgender discrimination in homeless shelters, but then reversed himself by saying changes are coming, just being withheld, because members of Congress won’t like them.
“Secretary Carson’s words proved prophetic as under his and President Trump’s leadership, the administration moved to completely gut core housing discrimination protections, such as HUD’s disparate impacts and affirmative fair housing rules,” Quigley said. “That wasn’t enough. HUD has announced a new proposed rule that would enable shelters to discriminate against trans individuals based on shelter staff suspect an individual’s biological sex may be different from the way they self-identify.”
The proposed rule also disregards the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which determined anti-transgender discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, thus illegal in the workplace under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The rule has applications to all federal laws against sex discrimination, including the Fair Housing Act.
HUD justifies the legality of the proposed rule by asserting homeless shelters aren’t under the purview of the Fair Housing Act, although one legal expert said on the conference call that analysis is incorrect.
Sasha Buchert, senior attorney with Lambda Legal, said the proposed rule is “on very shaky legal ground” not just because of the Supreme Court decision, but also rulings from appellate courts, state and local measures against anti-trans discrimination and questions under the U.S. Constitution.
“If you spend five minutes going through the case law, courts apply a case-by-case analysis when deciding whether or not the Fair Housing Act applies to shelters,” Buchert said. “It’s a legal question as to whether they’re considered dwellings, and there are at least two circuit courts that have held that shelters are considered dwellings under the Fair Housing Act, and therefore subject to that, so their analysis is just wrong.”
The Trump administration has previously disregarded public comments against anti-transgender policy. HHS made final a rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act enabling health care providers and insurance companies to refuse service to transgender people despite more than 120,000 comments in opposition to the proposal.
Wexton, nonetheless, said public comments against HUD’s anti-trans rule are still important for other reasons.
“Public comment is always important because even if it’s ignored by the administration, it is something that can be pointed to in the lawsuit that will inevitably arise out of this rulemaking to not be allowed to go forward,” Wexton said. “It is important that the public be heard and make sure that people make their voices known that they object to this discriminatory rule.”
In terms of legislative actions against the proposed rule, Wexton cited legislation she sponsors called the Ensuring Equal Access to Shelter Act, which she said has passed the House Financial Services Committee, but has yet to come up for a floor vote.
Quigley said legislation that would defund the rule is also part of pending T-HUD appropriations legislation, but that hasn’t obtained a vote in the Senate, nor is it clear whether President Trump would sign it into law.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) said on the conference call the Equality Act — which has passed the House, but has been bottled up in the Senate — would also reaffirm discriminatory measures against transgender people in housing are illegal.
“Here we are, 430 days since the House passed the Equality Act, and this rule is just one more demonstration of why we need [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell to take it up and we need to push it through the Senate,” Scanlon said.
Publication of the proposed rule in the Federal Register officially started the clock for a 60-day comment period. Assuming the Trump administration sticks with the measure as proposed, it’s expected to be made final in the fall.
The U.S. House voted Thursday to approve an amendment introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) to defund President Trump’s transgender military ban as part of major defense spending legislation.
Lawmakers approved the amendment by voice vote as part of a block of amendments the House Rules Committee approved for consideration during debate over the fiscal year 2012 defense appropriations bill.
Jennifer Dane, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America, said in a statement after vote undoing the transgender ban would foster an inclusive military.
“As our nation faces seemingly unprecedented challenges, it’s crucially important that the military return to an inclusive policy that allows any qualified patriot to serve,” Dane said. “With this vote, the U.S. House of Representatives just sent a powerful message that bigotry and discrimination should have no place in our armed forces. We urge the full Congress to ensure this critically important amendment is passed.”
The vote comes nearly three years after President Trump tweeted out the policy on July 26, 2017, saying he’d bar transgender people from serving from the military “in any capacity.” Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said he’d reverse the ban upon his election and allow transgender people to serve openly in the military.
Asked this week by the Washington Blade whether he’d reconsider the transgender military ban, Trump claimed he couldn’t hear the question. The White House has subsequently the Trump administration has no plans to change the policy.
The vote marks the third time the House under Democratic control has voted against the transgender military ban. The chamber also approved a resolution introduced by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) against the policy and a Speier amendment to the fiscal year 2021 defense authorization bill that would reverse the ban, although that language didn’t make it into final package approved by Congress.
A prominent children’s hospital publicly apologized Thursday for performing cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex infants and pledged to end the practice.
“We recognize the painful history and complex emotions associated with intersex surgery and how, for many years, the medical field has failed these children,” the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago said in a statement. “We empathize with intersex individuals who were harmed by the treatment that they received according to the historic standard of care, and we apologize and are truly sorry.”
The apology, signed by the hospital’s CEO and three head physicians, comes after activists, over a yearslong campaign, called on the institution to ban cosmetic genital surgery on intersex infants, which is irreversible. The signatories also committed to “evolving” their policies going forward and stated that the hospital would not perform such surgeries unless medically necessary or with willful consent from fully informed patients.
“Historically care for individuals with intersex traits included an emphasis on early genital surgery to make genitalia appear more typically male or female,” the statement, published Tuesday, continued. “As the medical field has advanced, and understanding has grown, we now know this approach was harmful and wrong.”
“Intersex” is an umbrella term that refers to individuals born with sex traits or reproductive anatomy that do not fit the conventional categories of male and female. Approximately 1.7 percent of the population fits into this broad category, according to research cited by the intersex advocacy group InterACT.
Intersex activists have long advocated for a ban on medically unnecessary genital surgery for intersex infants. They have argued that the historically common practice — intended to “help” these individuals better fit into society — denies them the legal right to consent to the procedure. According to the Human Rights Watch, 1 in every 2,000 children “is different enough that doctors may recommend surgical intervention to make the body appear more in line” with a conventional male or female.
Along with intersex justice organizations, multiple civil and human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, have long condemned these procedures as unnecessary, saying that there is no evidence such practices help individuals better function in society.
Many who were forced to undergo these surgeries report lifelong harm, including higher risks of scarring, loss of sexual sensation and psychological trauma.
While the hospital has not disclosed how many such procedures had been performed over the years, it did state that it had not performed a clitoroplasty on a child or infant in five years.
Intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis, who was subjected to cosmetic genital surgery at the Lurie Children’s Hospital, was in disbelief after hearing the news.
“Today, what matters is the autonomy of future intersex people and patients,” Pagonis said at a virtual news conference on Thursday. “We couldn’t do the whole country, we couldn’t get Congress to agree with us, but we knew that we could do it at one hospital where it happened to me and so many other people.”
“I’m here to say that we did that, we did that!” Pagonis said.
Pagonis, who identifies as nonbinary and intersex, founded the activist group Intersex Justice Project with fellow intersex activist Sean Saifa Wall. One of the project’s goals was to end these practices across the country, specifically at the Lurie Children’s Hospital, where Pagonis underwent a clitorectomy as a child.
Three years ago, the organization launched a campaign demanding the hospital end this practice, staging multiple protests at its front doors, starting the social media hashtag #EndIntersexSurgery, and organizing phone and emailing campaigns to express members’ concerns.
This watershed moment is only a taste of victory, Wall said Thursday at the news conference.
“We are one step closer to ensuring a world where intersex children can live free from harm,” he said.
As the hearse carrying John Lewis’ body drove through Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Wednesday, it made a lengthy and symbolic stop at a rainbow crosswalk as dozens of people gathered on the sidewalk to watch the procession pass.
“It feels very appropriate that that stop was prolonged for John Lewis’ legacy,” Victoria Kirby York of the National LGBTQ Task Forcetold NBC News. “I believe his vocal leadership and support in championing LGBTQ equality — even prior to it becoming a cool thing for people to hop on the bandwagon for — was critical in being able to shift public opinion across the country.”
York added: “He was about civil rights, equality and liberation for everybody. Period. Full stop.”
The stop by Lewis’ motorcade — lasting nearly a minute — was an acknowledgement of his vocal advocacy over the years for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans.
An early advocate
Lewis, who represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from 1987 until his death on July 17, did not wait until it was politically safe to stand up for LGBTQ rights.
In 1996, when 65 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, Lewis delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor decrying the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA — federal legislation that sought to define marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman — as a “mean” and “cruel” bill.
“This bill is a slap in the face of the Declaration of Independence. It denies gay men and women the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage is a basic human right,” he said. “You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say when people talked about interracial marriage and I quote: ‘Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.’”
DOMA, considered a political compromise at the time, easily passed both the House and Senate and was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in September 1996. It was the law of the land until 2013, when United States v. Windsor chipped away at the heart of the legislation. Same-sex marriage would not be legal across the U.S. until 2015, when the Supreme Court handed down its Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
York said Lewis’ early support for LGBTQ rights was unsurprising, given his activism in the preceding decades.
“When you’ve stared death in the face solely because of the color of your skin, it gives you a different view of justice,” York said, referring to Lewis’ multiple near-death experiences fighting for civil rights, including during the infamous “Bloody Sunday” protest on Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. “He put his body on the line to create the world that we all thought was impossible.”
“John Lewis’ moral compass overruled whatever the stigma of the day was,” she added. “Equality for black people means equality for Black LGBTQ people, and equality for Black LGBTQ people means equality for all LGBTQ people, and I think that was a clear through-line for him.”
A decades-long ally
Lewis would continue to be on the forefront of nearly every major congressional proposal to advance LGBTQ rights.
On Lewis’ congressional website, there is a page dedicated to LGBTQ issues, which prominently features a powerful quote from Lewis.
“I fought too long and too hard to end discrimination based on race and color, to not stand up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” it reads. He then goes on to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he led the movement for racial equality, saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Lewis was a co-sponsor or vocal advocate for over a dozen congressional bills that sought to either expand LGBTQ rights or limit anti-LGBTQ discrimination, including the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) and the Respect for Marriage Act.
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, noted that Lewis worked closely with Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., during the drafting of the Equality Act — which would modify existing civil rights legislation to add protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity— and was a lead sponsor of the legislation.
Following Lewis’ death, Alphonso David, the Human Rights Campaign’s first Black president, called Lewis “a hero and civil rights icon who pushed our country closer to the promise of a more perfect union.”
“Future generations will learn how he faced down discrimination with courage and defiance, boldly challenging the United States to envision a future where every person, no matter their race, sexual orientation or gender identity, has an equal chance at the American Dream,” David said in a statement.
Lewis appeared at an HRC fundraiser in 2016 and told the crowd of mostly LGBTQ people, “You and I are partners.”
“We are part of an ongoing struggle to redeem the soul of America, to help people in this country and around the world come to grips with one simple truth: We are one people,” he added. “We are one family. We are the human family.”
York said she hopes Lewis’ drive to fight for equality — even if not for a group to which he belonged — will inspire others to do the same.
“He gave full-throated, passionate appeals that all of God’s children be treated equally, and that that included LGBTQ people, and that meant so much to me, both in my career as an advocate and advocating for other marginalized communities that I may not identify with, like the transgender community and intersex community,” she said. “He was a powerful example of how we should be doing advocacy at the margins, and I hope every member of Congress has taken a lesson from him.
A changer of hearts and minds
While Lewis’ LGBTQ advocacy undoubtedly changed hearts and minds across demographic spectrums, York, who is Black, said there was a special significance and power in having a straight, cisgender Black man as such a visible ally.
“I think that all of those identities that he carried helped Black fathers, brothers, nephews all across the country learn how to talk and accept their own children, their own relatives who had been hurt by homophobia and transphobia,” she said, adding that he “gave permission for so many others who were potential allies to be able to step out of their fear” and support LGBTQ equality.
“John Lewis is a man of deep faith — no one could question that,” she added. “So for someone who is a man of deep faith to say that LGBTQ people matter, are equal and deserve protection and dignity, that gave other people the language to be able to say the same thing in their families, in their churches, in their homes. I believe that probably saved countless lives.”
In a sobering survey released this month, The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis prevention organization, found that 2 in 5 LGBTQ youth in the U.S. have “seriously considered” suicide in the past year.
“I do believe that those numbers could have been even higher if it wasn’t for the full-throated advocacy that John Lewis gave, and by him doing that, the permission he gave to others to really show up as the fathers that they wanted to be for their children,” she said.
‘Power of his legacy’
In a posthumous op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday, Lewis wrote: “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”
York said this message underscores the “power of his legacy.”
“We all have the capacity to create change,” she said, adding that Lewis “started as a teenager doing work to bring equality for all people, and that’s something that our youth should be excited about.”
“These protests and rallies over the course of this summer are moving this country forward,” she added. “If we can just stay in it together — despite hurt feelings, despite trauma, despite the healing we’ve got to do together, despite our blindness to other people’s experiences — if we remain open to it all, we can create a country we can be proud of for our children and our children’s children.”
York said this coming together of different groups is also part of Lewis’ legacy.
“It hasn’t been about one group over the other,” she said. “It’s been about all of us getting across the bridge together.”
And, if Lewis’ many supporters are successful, that bridge could one day be named after him.
Officials in California are set to start tracking how coronavirus is spreading in the LGBT+ community in a groundbreaking move.
The state will start collecting data on the sexual orientation and gender identity in all new cases of COVID-19, making it the first state in America to do so, CBS Sacramentoreports.
The move will help officials better understand the unique challenges the pandemic poses for queer people after months of warnings from LGBT+ organisations that the community has been disproportionately affected.
The move came about after senator Scott Wiener worked with LGBT+ rights organisation Equality California to advocate for the data to be collected.
They introduced legislation in May that would require sexual orientation and gender identity data to be collected in all new coronavirus cases.
California will start collecting data on sexual orientation and gender identity in new coronavirus cases.
The bill was recently amended to include all reportable diseases. It was passed by the California senate unanimously on 25 June, paving the way for LGBT+ organisations to better understand the impact COVID-19 is having on the community.ADVERTISING
It will now be referred to the Assembly Committee on Health, where it will be heard on 4 August.
If passed and signed into law, the bill would take immediate effect.
From the beginning of this crisis, we have been clear: If LGBTQ+ people are left out of COVID-19 data, we will be left out of California’s data-driven response.
Governor Gavin Newsom said the decision was a move in the right direction.
Equality California executive director Rick Chavez Zbur welcomed news that the bill was passed by the state senate.
LGBT+ community will finally understand just how bad coronavirus has hit the community.
“The COVID-19 crisis has devastated the LGBT+ community. But for months, we haven’t had the data to understand how, why or exactly what to do about it,” he said.
“From the beginning of this crisis, we have been clear: If LGBT+ people are left out of COVID-19 data, we will be left out of California’s data-driven response.
“Thanks to governor Newsom’s leadership and his administration’s hard work, we will start to have answers.”
He added: “This data will finally give our government, our public health leaders and our community an understanding of the degree to which this pandemic is devastating LGBT+ people — and what steps need to be taken to save lives.”
Three police officers have been jailed for murdering a trans woman in El Salvador, in the nation’s first-ever homicide conviction with a trans victim.
According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Camila Díaz Córdova, a 29-year-old trans woman, had fled El Salvador for the US after being subjected to death threats by a gang, but was deported two years ago as she could not provide enough proof that her life was in danger.
Díaz Córdova, a sex worker, was picked up by three police officers in January 2019 accused of creating a public nuisance.
The three police officers have each been handed 20-year prison sentences for her murder, and their convictions mark a huge victory for the queer community in El Salvador.
According to advocacy group COMCAVIS Trans, the country has seen 600 LGBT+ murders since 1993.
Government data shows that of the 109 LGBT+ murders between December 2014 and March 2017, only 12 went to trial, and none ended in convictions.
Cristian Gonzalez, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters: “It’s a landmark case for the rights of transgender Salvadorians.
“It sends a strong signal that anti-trans and more generally anti-LGBT violence is not going to be tolerated in the country.”
Activists are disappointed, however, that despite 2015 hate crime legislation that covers gender identity, Díaz Córdova’s murder will not be classified as such.
Roberto Zapata of advocacy group AMATE El Salvador said: “It leaves a bad taste in our mouths that the prosecutor’s office wasn’t able to build the case as a hate crime.
“If the state had recognised the homicide as such, it would have sent a much stronger message.”
According to local media, the police officers plan to appeal the ruling.
A gay Baltimore intensive care doctor passed away from coronavirus in his husband’s arms after months of battling the pandemic on the front line.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Dr Joseph Costa, 56, was the chief of the critical care division at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
As he was dying in the hospital he worked at on Saturday, 25 July, his husband of 28 years David Hart held him, while around 20 of Costa’s colleagues held a vigil.
Hart said: “Those who cared for Joe were his best friends. A housekeeper who knelt by his bed and shook with grief said: ‘I’m now losing my best friend.’”
He described his husband, who had worked at Mercy Medical Center since 1997, as the bravest man he ever knew.
Costa was an “egalitarian person”, Hart said, who often volunteered to work on holidays so his colleagues could spend time with their children.
The couple had a farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and Hart said: “Being married to a doctor isn’t easy and you give up a lot.
“When Joe and I were at the farm we always had such a good time. He was a workaholic and he told me I taught him how to relax.”
Hart said his husband’s death makes him even more frustrated to see people not taking the proper precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
There have been more that 3,000 deaths in Maryland due to COVID-19, and Hart added: “I keep thinking, now there is one less ICU doctor to care for pandemic patients in Baltimore.”
“It makes me want to take a bar of soap and write on my car’s rearview window that ‘My husband who saved so many lives died of COVID-19. Wear a mask!’”
Mercy Medical Center released a statement on death of the gay Baltimore doctor from coronavirus, saying Costa was “admired and respected” throughout Baltimore for “his clinical expertise”.
It added: “He was beloved by his patients and their family members – known for his warm and comforting bedside manner as well as his direct and informative communication style.
“When he counselled our patients and families, he did so with great compassion and empathy.
“For all the nurses and staff who worked closely with Joe on the intensive care unit, he was like an older brother that all admired and revered… A life so beautifully lived deserves to be beautifully remembered.
“Planning is underway now for a memorial service and details will be shared as soon as possible. We will grieve together and we will get through this challenging time together.”
Two more Black trans women have been murdered in the US this week, and reports have emerged that a Black trans man was killed in June.
Their deaths mean there have been at least 25 trans people murdered in the US in 2020, just over halfway into the year. The Human Rights Campaign tracked 27 violent fatalities throughout all of 2019.
According to local New York TV station WPIX, 32-year-old Tiffany Harris was stabbed to death in her Bronx apartment early Sunday morning (July 26).
She was initially deadnamed and misgendered by the police and the media, but was correctly identified by people in her community as well as a trans rights group.
NYPD officers responded to a 911 call just after 1.30am and discovered Harris with a stab wound to her chest in the hallway of her building. She was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead at around 2.20am.
Her death is not being investigated as a hate crime. A man caught on CCTV is wanted for questioning, and is believed to have been in a relationship with Harris.
On Monday (July 27) afternoon, a second Black trans woman was found dead in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
According to local news outlet The Advocate, Queasha D Hardy was just 24 years old and had been shot in broad daylight. She was found just after 1pm lying in the street with multiple gunshot wounds and passed away at the scene.
Hardy was also misgendered and deadnamed by police and the media after her death, and her next of kin reportedly demanded that she be identified as male despite her living openly as a trans woman.
A Black trans man was murdered last month.
Reports have recently emerged that a Black trans man, Brian Powers, was murdered in Akron, Ohio, on June 13.
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, Powers was killed by a single gunshot and was found on the street outside a church.
Police said they have no leads, but the man’s friends and family believe his death is not being treated seriously because he was Black and transgender.
Powers’s friend Steve Arrington, who works at the Akron AIDS Collaborative, said: “I’m kind of disturbed when they say ‘Black Lives Matter’.
“I say: ‘Whose lives, my life? Or just heterosexual Black people’s lives? What about my LGBTQ brothers and sisters? They’re Black. Do their lives matter?’”
After Harris’ death, Human Rights Campaign said in statement: “There are currently very few explicit federal legal protections for transgender or gender-expansive people.
“Nationally, despite some marginal gains in state and local policies that support and affirm transgender people, recent years have been marked by anti-LGBTQ attacks at all levels of government.
“We must demand better from our community, peers and elected officials and reject harmful anti-transgender legislation appearing at the local, state and federal levels.
“It is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of colour. The intersections of racism, transphobia, sexism, biphobia and homophobia conspire to deprive them of necessities to live and thrive.
“This epidemic of violence that disproportionately targets transgender people of colour — particularly Black trans women — must cease.”
Following the deaths of four trans people – three of whom were Black trans women – in a single week at the start of July, HRC said it has “never seen such a high number at this point in the year” since they began tracking this data in 2013.