Sanay Martinez, a trans student from Louise, Texas, has been kicked out of her school until she abides by the male dress code.
With in-person teaching reopening for the autumn semester, Louise Independent School District prohibited Martinez from adhering to the school’s female dress code after she alerted officials that she is trans.×
Administrators told her that unless she cuts her hair, takes out her earrings, and dresses in accordance with the “male handbook”, she cannot return.
Martinez was just a typical student at who enjoyed her classes and loved spending time with her friends, but told ABC13 that the experience has made her feel almost like a pariah.
“It’s my senior year and I would love to go back to Louise ISD, but I don’t feel welcome at all,” she told the outlet.ADVERTISING
She and her close friend are even considering transferring to a school some 10 miles away in El Campo in protest. School officials sought to stress that as much as they “accept” Martinez, she must abide by their rules.
Trans teen and her best friend may have to transfer to another school due to anti-trans dress code.
The 18-year-old said: “[The school administrators] don’t have to accept it, but they should respect it”.
“They told me I can’t come back until I cut my hair and take out my piercings. And I do not like that because as a female, I should follow the female handbook and not the male handbook.”
Due to the school’s inability to respect as well accept Martinez, she and her friend Alexis Mendoza will most likely have to be transferred to El Campo High School, in the neighbouring town of El Campo.
Mendoza said: “They’re being really disrespectful. They know [Sanay] since [she] was in Pre-K.”
She said that the school was “fine” when Martinez came out as gay, “but when [she] came out as trans, that’s when everything changed.”
The superintendent of Louise Independent School District said how they “accept” and “love” Sanay, but she must follow the rules.
Martinez continued “I’m here to tell everyone, that transgender students should be allowed for their education.
“It is their rightful purpose for them to go into the school and get their education. It doesn’t matter what race, gender or sexuality.”
A fiery and unexpected statement from U.S. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Monday signaling their intent to undermine the Obergefell decision is raising questions about whether marriage rights for same-sex couples are in danger, especially with the possible addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The statement, which is irregular and completely voluntary, was made in response to the denial of a petition to review the case of Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who gained notoriety in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses — both to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples — based on her religious objections to Obergefell v. Hodges.
Thomas, in a statement co-signed by Alito, writes he concurs with the decision to deny review of the case, which has been percolating through the judiciary for some time, but says her request “provides a stark reminder of the consequences of Obergefell.”
“By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix,” Thomas writes. “Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’”
Thomas criticizes the Obergefell decision, accusing the majority of impairing religious liberty and belittling the views of objectors who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds.
“It would be one thing if recognition for same-sex marriage had been debated and adopted through the democratic process, with the people deciding not to provide statutory protections for religious liberty under state law,” Thomas said. “But it is quite another when the Court forces that choice upon society through its creation of atextual constitutional rights and its ungenerous interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause, leaving those with religious objections in the lurch.”
The willingness of two justices to signal they would to seek overturn precedent for marriage equality five years after it was established was a shock to observers who thought the issue had been resolved. Even President Trump has said he’s “fine” with the decision and thinks the matter “settled.”
Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement the message from Thomas and Alito “proves yet again that a segment of the Court views LGBTQ rights as ‘ruinous’ and remains dead set against protecting and preserving the rights of LGBTQ
“From eliminating hospital visitation rights and medical decision-making in religiously affiliated medical centers to granting businesses a license to discriminate against LGBTQ couples, ‘skim-milk marriage’ would have a devastating effect on our community’s ability to live freely and openly,” David added, quoting a now famous quip from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2013 during oral arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act.
Although the statement was signed by only two justices and a majority of five is needed to overturn marriage equality on the nine-member court, it raises questions about the confirmation of Barrett, whose nomination is still pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee after Trump picked her to replace progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
If confirmed, Barrett — who’s known for having a conservative judicial philosophy —would take the place of a justice would was solidly in support of same-sex marriage, skewing the balance of the court further to the right.
David pointed out Barrett has said she openly holds the views of Antonin Scalia and Thomas and Alito “channel” the late justices with their statement.
“That fact, along with Barrett’s ties to anti-equality extremist groups who aim to criminalize LGBTQ relationships in the United States and abroad, shows that Barrett will only embolden these anti-equality extremist views on the Court,” David said, referring to Barrett admitting to having taken a fee to speak at a group associated with the anti-LGBTQ legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Washington Blade has placed a request with the White House on whether Trump thinks marriage rights for same-sex couples would be safe in the aftermath of the confirmation of Barrett to the high court.
Conservatives have already had wins on the Supreme Court with the confirmations of U.S. Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in the Trump administration. Neither, however, signed the statement, nor did U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who dissented from the Obergefell decision but has been siding with liberal justices in recent decisions.
James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said the statement from Thomas and Alito was “appalling” in the aftermath of same-sex couples having secured the right to marry and same-sex couples enjoying the right for five years.
“When you do a job on behalf of the government — as an employee or a contractor — there is no license to discriminate or turn people away because they do not meet religious criteria,” Esseks said. “Our government could not function if everyone doing the government’s business got to pick their own rules.”
Esseks continued Thomas’ statement puts into stark relief the possible consequences of the pending case before the Supreme Court of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which will decide whether a Catholic foster agency has a First Amendment right to reject same-sex parents and still obtain taxpayer funds through a government contract.
In the aftermath of Ginsburg’s death, legal observers have said the legality of religious-based refusals to LGBTQ people is the most vulnerable aspect of LGBTQ rights on the high court.
“That’s exactly what’s at stake in a case that will be argued on Nov. 4 — Fulton v. City of Philadelphia,” Esseks said. “We will fight against any attempts to open the door to legalized discrimination against LGBTQ people.”
A wedding photographer and a group of several Christian institutions filed two different lawsuits against Virginia officials Monday over a new law that bans discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
The lawyers representing the plaintiffs argue that the law violates their First Amendment rights and forces them to “abandon and adjust their convictions or pay crippling fines.”
The law, titled the Virginia Values Act, went into effect on July 1 and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, public and private employment, public accommodations and access to credit. It was the first Southern state to adopt these types of protections for the LGBTQ community. Violations could be met with fines of up to $50,000.
In one lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Loudoun County wedding photographer Bob Updegrove argues that the law forces him to photograph same-sex weddings, even though he is opposed to same-sex marriage because of his faith.
Jonathan Scruggs, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ legal organization representing the plaintiffs in both cases, claims the new policy places the photographer in an impossible position between promoting “views against their faith” and violating the law.
“The government cannot demand that artists create content that violates their deepest convictions,” Scruggs said in a statement posted to the Alliance Defending Freedom’s website.
In a separate suit filed in Loudoun County Circuit Court, two churches, a religious school and a pregnancy center network claim the law will force them to hire employees who don’t share their beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled that no religious organization can be required to hire someone outside their faith and they must be allowed to dismiss or hire their leaders without government interference.
“Virginia’s new law forces these ministries to abandon and adjust their convictions or pay crippling fines,” Denise Harle, another Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer, said in a statement. “Such government hostility toward people of faith has no place in a free society.”
Charlotte Gomer, a spokesperson for Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, said he was still reviewing the lawsuits and would respond in court.
“Attorney General Herring believes that every Virginian has the right to be safe and free from discrimination no matter what they look like, where they come from, or who they love,” she said in a statement. “LGBT Virginians are finally protected from housing and employment discrimination under Virginia law and Attorney General Herring looks forward to defending the Virginia Values Act in court against these attacks.”
Equality Virginia heavily advocated for the Virginia Values Act. In a statement, Executive Director Vee Lamneck pointed to the support the law garnered from a coalition of more than 140 religious leaders in 2019.
“Protecting LGBTQ Virginians from discrimination does not threaten [religious] freedom,” Lamneck said in their statement. “That’s why people of faith across the state advocated with us in support of the Virginia Values Act—because of their deep faith—not in spite of it.”
The first study of its kind found that people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or gender non-confirming are nearly four times as likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside such communities.
Although other research has long shown that LGBTQ people and gender minorities are disproportionately affected by crime, the study published in Science Advances, a multidisciplinary journal, on Friday looked at data that has only been collected since 2016, making for the first comprehensive and national study to examine the issue.
It found that members of such communities, referred to as sexual and gender minorities, experienced a rate of 71.1 violent victimizations per 1,000 persons a year, compared with 19.2 per 1,000 a year among non-sexual and gender minorities.
But it was the fact that sexual and gender minorities are victims of such a variety of crimes at such disparate rates — and who they’re victimized by — that surprised researchers, said lead author Andrew R. Flores, an assistant professor at American University.
For example, researchers found that such a population is much more likely to be victimized by someone they know well than a person who is a non-sexual and gender minority.
The fact that sexual and gender minorities are victimized by people close to them at such higher rates “does kind of raise questions hopefully future research can address about the nature of these incidents and the nature of these relationships,” Flores said.
“There are certain socializations that goes in that. I think many people are socialized and have a certain disdain for trans and queer people,” said Tori Cooper of the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that advocates for the LGBTQ community. Cooper is the director of community engagement for the organization’s Transgender Justice Initiative.
A survey of more than 12,000 LGBTQ teens around the country released in 2018 by the Human Rights Campaign found that 67 percent report they’ve heard family members make negative comments about LGBTQ people.
Cooper said transgender people are particularly vulnerable, especially by partners or people close to them. The HRC has documented the killings of at least 29 transgender or non-gender conforming people in 2020 alone. The majority were Black and Latina transgender women.
“There’s an incalculable amount of transphobia … that plays into these relationships,” Cooper said.
The new study didn’t have a large enough sample of surveys by transgender people to come to a conclusion about their specific victimization rates, but Flores said other research has shown they are particularly vulnerable.
The study also found that sexual and gender minorities are burglarized at twice the rate of other households, and that they’re more likely to be victims of other types of property theft.
The study is based on a national crime survey conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which until 2016 had not asked respondents about their sexual orientation and gender identity. Researchers examined responses to the 2017 survey, which was released last year.
But it may be a while before researchers can look at the data in this way again. The Trump administration, without seeking public comment, announced that it was moving the sexual orientation and gender identity questions from the general demographic section of its national crime survey to a part of the survey only pertaining to victims. This will limit what researchers can learn about crime disparities because asking only victims about their sexual or gender identification makes it impossible to compare those rates of violence to the general population.
Activists have demanded that the next debate moderator grill Mike Pence on the Trump administration’s homophobia and transphobia, after LGBT+ rights went unmentioned during the first presidential debate.
The messy and hostile debate amounted to 90 minutes of insults and accusations peppered with constant interruptions from the president, who refused to abide by moderator Christ Wallace’s rules.
On October 7, the vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris will take place, moderated by USA Today journalist Susan Page.
But activists are determined that the second debate will not overlook LGBT+ issues.ADVERTISING
In a letter to Page, 13 LGBT+ rights groups “implored” her to address queer rights, as it would “do our nation and community a disservice to exclude these issues as a part of the conversation”.
The letter from rights groups, including Human Rights Campaign, LGBTQ Victory Fund and Media Matters, said: “In the midst of this pandemic, President Trump and Vice President Pence put forward a rule limiting LGBTQ people’s access to health care by eliminating LGBTQ non-discrimination protections from the Affordable Care Act.
“Hate-fuelled violence is on the rise, and so far this year 30 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed, putting us on track for the deadliest year on record for the transgender community.
“A majority of those lost are Black and Latinx transgender women who live at the intersection of racism, misogyny, and transphobia — all of which have been fomented and exacerbated by Trump, Pence, and their allies.
“LGBTQ children are dealing with higher instances of bullying in schools, all while Secretary DeVos offers fewer methods of recourse against those bullies.”
Voters, of whom one in 10 identify as LGBT+ according to recent data from NBC, need to be aware of the anti-LGBT+ views held by Pence and the wider Trump administration, the letter insisted.
“Vice president Mike Pence and senator Kamala Harris have deeply divergent records on equality that should be highlighted for Americans… In 2016, presidential and vice-presidential debate moderators did not ask candidates a single question about LGBTQ issues across four debates.
“You have the opportunity to change that and address the issues our community faces in this trying time.”
A mother is threatening to sue an Indiana school district, claiming that her gay daughter was singled out by staff and subjected to “humiliating” homophobic bullying.
Melissa Hart has filed a formal complaint against the administration of Charlestown High School, alleging “discrimination, failing to protect a student from bullying and violation of students rights.”
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She claims her 17-year-old daughter faced multiple instances of homophobic discrimination and bullying at the hands of a teacher and an administrator.
Speaking to the News and Tribune, Hart listed multiple occasions where the teacher “humiliated” the teen in front of other students by making “inappropriate and derogatory comments” related to her sexuality.
It began after Hart’s daughter started dating another female student, she says. The couple would “hold hands like normal teenagers,” and while there are school policies against public displays of affection, she believes her daughter was targeted specifically because they are a same-sex couple.
One day when the teen was late to class, the teacher reportedly told her in front of the class: “You wouldn’t be late if you hadn’t been kissing and hugging on that girl.”
The following week Hart’s daughter skipped that teacher’s class, citing their comments as the reason.
The school administrator found the couple hiding in a bathroom and shouted at them: “Get your s**t and get your gay asses out of there.”
The girl’s mother heard the comments as she had been listening on speaker phone. She remained on the line as two school officials questioned her daughter, asking if she was in a romantic relationship with the other student, and if they had been having intimate relations.
The questions made the girl “feel uncomfortable and isolated as she was forced to answer questions about the fact she identifies as a lesbian,” the mother said.
It wasn’t the first time the girls had been quizzed on their relationship: weeks earlier, school officials raised complaints from teachers and students about the pair holding hands.
Hart asked the school why her daughter was being singled out, and was told that the Charlestown community isn’t ready to deal with same-sex relationships.
“I told him, ‘She has rights, my daughter does have rights,’” Hart said, to which she alleges he responded, ‘No ma’am, she doesn’t.’”
The mother has tried to rectify the situation with the school, but feels the only solutions they’ve proposed involve “mov[ing] my kid around,” either to other classes or other schools.
“Let me be clear, this is homophobic discrimination plain and simple,” Hart told the Tribune.https://lockerdome.com/lad/13296932562903654?pubid=ld-5883-3439&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk&rid=www.pinknews.co.uk&width=572
“You do not have the right to interrogate my daughter regarding her sexual orientation. [The school official] should be ashamed of himself for targeting my daughter with his homophobic remarks in front of her and the entire class.
“The CHS administration should be ashamed of themselves for condoning, promoting, and participating in this behaviour.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a lesbian, announced Thursday she has filed felony charges against conservative hoaxers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman — who have a history of deceit and unscrupulous dealings — for misleading robocalls discouraging Michigan residents from voting by mail.
Nessel said in a statement the robocalls, which were made in Black-majority areas around Detroit, go above and beyond those “flooding our cell phones and landlines each day” in a battleground state for the 2020 election.
“Any effort to interfere with, intimidate or intentionally mislead Michigan voters will be met with swift and severe consequences,” Nessel said in a statement. “This effort specifically targeted minority voters in an attempt to deter them from voting in the November election.”
The message discouraging voting by mail, Nessel said, “poses grave consequences for our democracy and the principles upon which it was built.”
“Michigan voters are entitled to a full, free and fair election in November and my office will not hesitate to pursue those who jeopardize that,” Nessel.
Wohl, 22, and Burkman, 54, are charged with four felony counts: One count of intimidating voters under election law; one count of conspiracy to commit an election law violation; one count of using a computer to commit to intimidate voters against election law; and using a computer to commit a crime of conspiracy.
The two face five years in prison and/or a $1,000 fine for intimidating voters, plus a $10,000 fine for conspiracy to commit that crime, while they face an additional seven years in prison and/or $5,000 for using a computer to commit those crimes, according to the charging papers.
The charges were filed Thursday in the 36th District Court in Detroit, where a judge found probable cause to support them, according to the Associated Press. Arraignment is pending for Wohl and Burkman.
Nessel said her office intends to work with local law enforcement if needed to secure the appearance of each defendant in Michigan, although it’s too early to say if formal extradition will be needed or if the two will voluntarily present themselves.
The robocalls allegedly created and funded by Wohl and Burkman, Nessel said, were targeted at nearly 12,000 residents in the Detroit-area urban in late August. The attorney general had previously warned Michigan residents of the calls at that time.
An audio recording of the robocall provided by Nessel’s office features a caller who sounds like a Black female who claims to be associated with an organization founded by Burkman and Wohl.
The caller, in a false claim according to Nessel’s office, tells people mail-in voting will allow their personal information to become part of a database used by police to track down old warrants and by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts.
“Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man,” the caller warns. “Stay safe and be aware of vote by mail.”
The caller also says, in another false claim according to Nessel’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will use mail-in voting information to track people for mandatory vaccines.
But the calls aren’t limited to Michigan. In working with state attorneys general in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, the Michigan attorney general found other states reported similar robocalls — around 85,000 made nationally — to urban areas with significant minority populations, according to a news statement.
Claims made in the call against mail-in voting are consistent with dubious complaints from President Trump, who has said publicly the system is rife with fraud, despite assurances from experts the voting system is sound.
Trump, who has suggested he wouldn’t accept the results of an election decided by mail-in ballots, has said explicitly said he’d might have to take up the results in the federal court. Trump also said declined to say he’d allow for a peaceful transition of power as result of the election.
Both Wohl — who has been banned for life from Twitter, but still communicates via his Instagram account and has an OnlyFans page — and Burkman have a long history of nefarious dealings aimed at protecting Trump and getting him re-elected.
An attempt to smear FBI investigator Robert Mueller with false sexual harassment charges was exposed, as well as a similar attempt to defame Anthony Fauci. The two made dubious accusations in the Democratic primary about against sexual impropriety against female candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
Wohl and Burkman also reportedly sought to get a male student to make up charges Pete Buttigieg had sexually assaulted them, but the effort was exposed by the Daily Beast and went no where.
The Washington Blade has reached out to Wohl for comment on the charges. Burkman couldn’t be reached for a request to comment.
In August, Wohl said they suspected “leftist pranksters” were behind the robocalls because recipients were shown a caller ID that was Burkman’s mobile number, according to the AP. Burkman was quoted as saying the situation is “a joke” and threatening to sue for defamation.
“Our first and second commandment for ourselves as we ministered with people with AIDS,” Fr. Bernard Lynch, an openly gay, Irish Catholic priest, author, activist and founder of the first AIDS ministry in New York City in 1982, said in a FaceTime interview, “was thou shalt not bullshit anyone!”
Lynch, who holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and theology from Fordham University and New York Theological Seminary, recalled what it was like to live during the height of the AIDS epidemic. “It’s hard to even begin to imagine what it was like if you weren’t there,” he said. “Gay men were queer-bashed. The Pink Panthers protected them. People with AIDS would be in the hospital, and the staff wouldn’t feed them – they were so homophobic and afraid they would get AIDS.”
Lynch is one of 31 icons being celebrated this October during LGBT History Month. The other icons being honored (national, international, living and dead) are from many walks of life – from politicians to clergy to writers – and time periods – from ancient Greece to 19th century in the United States to present day Russia.
The icons range from poets (Sappho) to activists (Moscow Pride founder Nikolay Alexeyev and transgender rights activist Felicia Elizondo) to elected officials (Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay, first Black, female mayor). (For a complete list and bios of all 31 of this year’s icons as well as resources for educators, go to: lgbthistorymonth.com.)
Beginning on Oct. 1, a different icon will be featured on the site. A 30-second video featuring a different LGBT icon will appear on the site daily. Before Oct. 1 and after Oct. 31, a two-and-a-half-minute overview video of all 31 icons will be on display.
History helps us to learn from the past. Stories from history inspire and encourage us to act in the present. Yet, many of us who are queer have only recently started to become informed about the history of our community.
Since 2006, the Equality Forum has spearheaded LGBT History Month in October. “In 1994, Rodney Wilson, a Missouri high school teacher, believed a month should be dedicated to the celebration and teaching of gay and lesbian history, and gathered other teachers and community leaders,” according to Equality Forum’s website.
The idea was endorsed by GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Education Association and other organizations. In 2006, Equality Forum, according to its website, “assumed responsibility for content, promotion and resources for LGBT History Month.” The Equality Forum is a national and international LGBT civil rights organization with an educational focus.
“I grew up in Central Pennsylvania,” Malcolm Lazin, 76, Equality Forum executive director, said in a phone interview. “There was a very negative view of anyone who was gay when I was growing up. Everybody was deep in the closet.”
As was the case with others interviewed for this article, Lazin learned nothing about LGBT history when he was growing up. “In 2006, when we launched Gay and Lesbian History Month [later renamed LGBT History Month], our minority was the only group in the world not taught its history at home, in schools or religious institutions,” Lazin said.
Over the past 15 years, more than 400 “icons” (31 per year) have been celebrated during LGBT History Month. Icons honored previously during LGBT History Month range from James Baldwin to Tallulah Bankhead to Barbara Gittings, widely regarded as the mother of the LGBT civil rights movement, to Alexander the Great to Billie Holiday to economist John Maynard Keynes to Billie Jean King to trailblazing transgender, gay rights and AIDS activist Marsha P. Johnson. The Blade’s Lou Chibbaro Jr. was honored as an icon in 2019.
The LGBT History Month 2020 and 15th Anniversary launch was held on Sept. 30. At the event, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Jess O’Connell, one of this year’s 31 LGBT History Month icons, who was the first openly LGBT Democratic National Committee CEO, received awards. Lightfoot received the Equality Forum’s 25th Annual International Role Model Award. O’Connell received the 6th Annual Frank Kameny Award.
“It was conservative in all the ways you would expect when I was growing up in Arizona,” O’Connell said in a phone interview.
O’Connell didn’t learn about gay history as a high school student in the 1980s. But, from early on, she was exposed to all kinds of diversity. “I was raised by a Black father and white mother,” O’Connell said, “I had an aunt in California who was gay.”
One of the first times that she grieved was when a family friend died from AIDS. “I learned that love comes in many different forms,” O’Connell said.
LGBT rights along with issues of racial and economic inequality were part of her everyday life. Her first job was in AIDS activism. In 2000, she was the first female director of AIDS Walk Colorado, a Colorado AIDS Project program. “The COVID-19 pandemic is triggering to me,” said O’Connell, who served as a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. “With AIDS, I saw the devastation that occurs when the government pretends a disease doesn’t exist.”
There are some similarities between COVID-19 and AIDS, Lynch said. In the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, people didn’t know how it was spread and people died from it. As with COVID, there was fear of contagion and of death. “But, no other disease has the stigma of AIDS,” Lynch said. “The stigma is still there today. It’s rooted in the unease that so many have with sexuality.”
Young queer men were trying to face the fact that they would die from AIDS before they had any idea of the meaning of their lives, he said. One lesson in dealing with COVID-19 that can be learned from the history of the AIDS epidemic is “compassion,” Lynch said. “During the epidemic, friends and lovers fed, visited, and cared for people with AIDS. Even when no one else would. You didn’t think about it – it was the thing to do.”
Theater can help us to connect to our LGBTQ history. “The great thing about theater,” Moisés Kaufman, an award-winning theater director and playwright, emailed the Blade, “is that it allows audiences to have several types of intimacy with the LGBTQ characters in history.”
They can see the play, and be in the room with the living actors as they encounter our ancestry, said Kaufman, one of this year’s 31 LGBT History Month icons.
“Our history is made by other LGBTQ people who had to survive in perilous and forbidding times,” he added. “I’ve been fortunate to be able to learn from them.”
His groundbreaking play “The Laramie Project,” inspired by the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard has generated worldwide empathy and dialogue around LGBTQ hate crimes. Actors “get to experience our ancestors first hand,” Kaufman said, “They get to inhabit their humanity.”
History tells the stories of LGBTQ pioneers and helps us tell our own stories. Rabbi Deborah Waxman, one of this year’s 31 LGBT History Month icons, is herself a pioneer. Waxman is the first woman and the first lesbian to lead a Jewish seminary and national congregational union. She serves as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) and of Reconstructing Judaism, the leading organization of the Reconstructionist movement.
There were no role models for being lesbian or being a woman, let alone an openly lesbian rabbi when Waxman was growing up. “I just knew I didn’t want to kiss boys,” Waxman said in a telephone interview.
Waxman didn’t come out until she was into her 20s. When she said she wanted to be a rabbi, her mother was worried. Because, at that time, there were so few women rabbis. “When I came out to my Mom, she was really worried. She said, ‘It was hard enough being a woman,’” Waxman said. “How would I ever be a rabbi as not only a woman but a lesbian?”
Years later, when she was installed in her leadership positions, Waxman told her Mom, “It worked out OK.”
Her parents were immensely proud, she said.
Waxman is keenly aware that she’s often a pioneer. Frequently, she’s the only woman and only queer person during national conversations among leaders about religious matters. “I try to do it with humility,” she said. “Storytelling helps us make our way through the world, she added.
In 2017, Jon Hoadley came home one day to find his partner, Kris, sprawled on the bathroom floor.
“He was barely able to move, he had been throwing up for over 18 hours,” Hoadley, 37, told NBC News.
At the hospital, the couple received devastating news.
“The doctor comes in and says, ‘I think you have multiple sclerosis,’” he recalled the doctor telling Kris.
Hoadley said the constant headache of dealing with insurance companies and hospital bills since his partner’s diagnosis is a major reason he made affordable health care a priority in his campaign to represent Michigan’s 6th Congressional District.
“I’m not running to make history, I’m running to make change,” said Hoadley, a Democratic who, in addition to health care, is focusing his campaign on climate change and clean energy.
Hoadley, now in his third term as a state representative, is challenging Rep. Fred Upton, a moderate Republican who has represented the southwest Michigan district since 1986. Traditionally a conservative stronghold, the district voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. In this presidential election year, though, moderate voters have the potential swing the district, which sits on the Indiana border.
Hoadley, who grew up in South Dakota, has been an LGBTQ advocate since he was a student at Michigan State University, and he is a member of the Michigan Democrat’s LGBT and Allies Caucus. If elected, Hoadley would be Michigan’s fist openly gay member of Congress. He is one in a “rainbow” wave” of at least 850 LGBTQ people who have run for office this election cycle, up from 700 who ran in 2018, according to the Victory Fund, a group that trains, supports and advocates for LGBTQ candidates.
“This is a moment where we can show that we’re ready for some big change,” Hoadley said. “And, you know, at the end of the day, though, the fact that I would be the first LGBT member of Congress from Michigan, I think it’s an interesting footnote to history, but the thing that keeps me up at night is what’s on the line if we don’t make this historic change this year.”
“We absolutely need to get health care right,” he added. “We are in the middle of a global health pandemic and a health crisis.”
When it comes to health care, Hoadley said, it is “absolutely an issue that we need to be talking about in the LGBT community.”
“We need to be tracking the statistics, we need to be making sure there are strong protections from discrimination, and we need to make sure that we are funding appropriately interventions that will specifically help some of the challenges that our community faces more so than other communities,” he explained.
“It’s a reminder that though we’ve made progress, we have so much work to do,” he added.
In recent months, Hoadley has had to fight back controversy regarding his past. In August, the New York Post reported on 15-year-old blog posts Hoadley made when he was in college. In the since-deleted posts, Hoadley, according to the paper, “referred to women as ‘breeders,'” “discussed learning about crystal meth,” “described his sexual partners as ‘victims’” and “included a reference to a ‘four year old wearing a thong.'”
Hoadley, who publicly apologized for the posts in a Facebook videoon Aug. 10, accused the NRCC of purposely “twisting” the posts, which he described as “slang” and “jokes,” to “use homophobia to paint a powerful story that has been debunked long ago.”
“They’re trying to reach deep into these discriminatory stereotypes about gay men,” Hoadley added.
Last month, the LGBTQ Victory Fund condemned the attacks against Hoadley as homophobic.
Hoadley said he hopes voters in Michigan and beyond “realize how important their vote is this November.”
“There are so many people who will use the forces of cynicism, who will lie about the difference between the candidates on the ballot, who will tell lies through social media to distract,” he said, “and it is important that we stay focused, because we desperately need change in our country.”
With the presidential election a little more than a month away, a new poll finds 75 percent of LGBTQ voters are supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
According to GLAAD’s State of LGBTQ Voters report, released Thursday, just 17 percent of the respondents said they were pulling the lever for President Donald Trump. Five percent said they plan to back another candidate and 2 percent remain undecided. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percent.
The poll, conducted by Pathfinder Opinion Research from Sept. 21-25, indicated 88 percent of the 800 LGBTQ respondents were registered voters.
Of them, 92 percent said they were “definitely or probably” voting in the presidential election — and over 80 percent said they felt more motivated to vote now than in any other recent election.
According to data from UCLA’s Williams Institute released last November, 1 in 5 LGBTQ Americans were not registered. But GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis says there’s been a surge in voter registration this year.
“LGBTQ voters are poised to make a deciding difference this election year,” Ellis said in a statement. “Our community understands how much is at stake in this election. We cannot sit this one out — our very lives are on the line.”
In a memo to GLAAD, Pathfinder confirmed that LGBTQ voters “represent a highly motivated, vital Democratic voting bloc.”
“Together we’ll pass the Equality Act, protect LGBTQ youth, expand access to health care, support LGBTQ workers, win full rights for transgender Americans, recommit to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2025 [and] advance LGBT rights around the globe, not just at home.”
The results from the new report are similar to exit polls from the 2016 presidential election, which found 78 percent of LGBTQ voters backed Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, compared to 14 percent who said they voted for Trump.
“Today’s poll demonstrates a monumental lead for Vice President Biden in the race for president,” Ellis said, “and is a direct response to the incessant and capricious attacks from the Trump Administration on LGBTQ Americans since day one.”
Despite a series of anti-LGBTQ measures — including banning transgender service members from the armed forces, supporting the right of adoption agencies to reject same-sex couples, and opposing workplace protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity — the Trump campaign has publicized the president as a friend to the community.
In August, Trump tweeted a campaign video made by Richard Grenell, the openly gay former acting director of national intelligence, calling the president “the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White House.”
Grenell is part of the Trump campaign’s Trump Pride advisory board, which promotes him as “the first president to begin his presidency in support of marriage equality.”
After declining to endorse Trump in 2016, the Log Cabin Republicans, a national LGBTQ conservative organization, endorsed the president for re-election and launched OUTSpoken, a multimedia campaign designed to give gay conservatives a platform during the race.
Earlier this month, Trump retweeted an article about a survey, conducted by the gay social network Hornet, that found 45 percent of gay male respondents planned to vote for him.
Hornet cautioned its survey was unscientific and shouldn’t be taken as predictive of voter response on Nov. 3. In GLAAD’s poll, likely voters who identified as gay men favored Biden over Trump 80 percent to 18. Gay women backed Biden 83 to 11, while non-cisgender voters supported the former vice president 72 to 18.
Still, Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends, the president’s son Eric Trump said the LGBT community “come[s] out in full force for my father every single day.”
He was responding to a New York Times opinion piece Monday about a lesbian who plans to vote for his father.
“I’m part of that community, and we love the man,” he added, leading some to speculate the president’s third eldest child had come out. He later clarified his remarks in an interview with the New York Post.
But 75 percent of the LGBTQ respondents in GLAAD’s poll said they held “somewhat or very” unfavorable opinions of Trump, while 57 percent said they had somewhat or very favorable opinions of Biden.
Ellis said the results “should put to rest the misinformation from the president’s team and other unreliable sources about his record and where critical LGBTQ voters stand in this election.”