A new William’s Institute study has found that LGBTQ+ adults are more likely to have federal student loan debt than non-LGBTQ+ adults.
The study found that 39% of LGBTQ+ adults have student debt totaling approximately $93 billion. Most of those loans are federal loans, and the study found that 35.4% of LGBTQ+ adults have federal loans, compared to 23.2% of non-LGBTQ+ adults.
The largest burden seems to fall on transgender adults. 51% of trans adults have federal student loans, compared to 35.9% of LBQ cisgender females and 27.9% of GBQ males.
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The study found that 16% owe $50,000 or more, while 84% owe less than $50,000 in federal loans.
LGBTQ+ adults between the ages of 18 and 40 owe an average of $34,000 in federal loans and $47,500 in total student debt. In comparison, the average amount owed for all Americans is $32,731.
The overview of the study states that “information about student debt among LGBTQ adults is missing from student loan forgiveness discussions,” a point that has been made more than once by LGBTQ+ advocates.
The Point Foundation, an LGBTQ+ Scholarship Fund, published a piece in September citing the Williams Institute study and declaring student debt an LGBTQ+ issue.
Out writer Nick Wolny also called student debt an “LGBTQ+ crisis” earlier this year, citing the often intense yearning of LGBTQ+ young people to leave home and the need for them to take on massive amounts of debt to do so.
“I was not allowed to have a girlfriend when I was living at home because of my mom’s beliefs,” said therapist and clinical social worker Lee Ring. “Once I got out and was living in the dorms and had more independence, I was able to more freely be out. I was able to connect with other LGBTQ peers. I came out as nonbinary in my undergrad career as well; that wouldn’t have happened if I had been living at home with my parents, because I wouldn’t have had the opportunity for exploration.”
This need to leave home and get “as far away as possible” led to $120,000 in student loan debt.
A 2018 report also noted that LGBTQ+ young people are more likely to lack financial support from family. In addition, anti-LGBTQ+ employment discrimination makes it more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to earn a living that allows them to easily pay back their loans.
“The intent of the legislation is just to simply say that you cannot have sexually explicit entertainment … in a public venue where kids might be present,” Johnson said.
Critics like Veronika, whose name off-stage is Steve Raimo, say the bill targets the LGBTQ community and that the subjectivity of what is considered “sexual” could effectively ban drag in many settings.
“I don’t know who will be the drag police to judge whether my performance was adult-oriented,” Veronika said.
Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, said other art forms use many of the same imagery and movements of drag without being considered adult content.
“What does it mean when someone who is dancing shakes their hips?” he asked. “Cheerleaders clearly do it. Dance teams clearly do it. If a drag queen does it, does that suddenly make it sexual?”
Johnson maintains that his proposal is a common-sense bill.
“We’re protecting kids and families and parents who want to be able to take their kids to public places. We’re not attacking anyone or targeting anyone,” the senator said. “I’ve heard references to this bill that it will ban drag shows? Well, no, it won’t. It just says you can’t do something that’s sexually explicit. It won’t prevent someone dressed in drag from being in a parade or being in public.”
Even if the bill doesn’t overtly ban drag, Sanders argues, its language — which references drag performers as “male or female impersonators” — could create dangers for many members of the LGBTQ community.
“I would not assume that all of our law enforcement entities around the state have a good understanding of who trans people are,” he said, noting that differences between a person in drag and someone living as transgender or nonbinary may not be immediately apparent to every officer.
To complicate things, Sanders added, Tennessee does not allow trans people to change the sex designation on their birth certificate.
“This can go down a very bad path quickly,” he said. “You could be harassed increasingly for being trans and nonbinary in public.”
The battle over Senate Bill 3 and other similar bills across the U.S. comes as drag has gained increased mainstream popularity. “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the Emmy-winning drag competition show, saw a 30% jump in viewership for its newest season, according to Deadline. And Drag Story Hour — a nonprofit that sets up drag queen storytelling events for children at libraries, schools and bookstores — has grown from one chapter in 2015 to 45 in the U.S. today, according to a representative for the organization.
But that rapid growth has also thrust drag into the center of America’s culture wars: In 2022, there were 141 protests and threats targeting drag events, according to LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD. And those incidents have skyrocketed year over year since 2018, according to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium.
In December, far right groups including the Patriot Front and Proud Boys contributed to the cancellation of an Ohio drag storytime event. Many demonstrators showed up armed, while others held up signs with slogans like: “Groomers not welcome” and “Groomers are Child Abusers.”
According to Politifact, “The weaponization of the term ‘grooming’ is tied to a history of longstanding false claims that gay, lesbian and bisexual people — and gay men in particular — molest children at higher rates than people who are not LGBTQ. Research shows that the ideaisfalse.”
In Tennessee, a video posted on Twitter in September showing what appears to be children handing a drag queen dollar bills sparked outrage in conservative circles.
“There have been news reports about some of these events taking place where parents are there with their kids, and they were mortified,” Johnson said. “That’s who reached out to me and some of my colleagues and led us to pursue this legislation.”
So far this year, there have been hundreds of anti-LGBTQ state billsproposed across the U.S., according to LGBTQ advocacy groups that track such bills, including the Human Rights Campaign and Freedom for All Americans. Tennessee has proposed 31 anti-LGBTQ bills this year, the most of any state, according to Freedom for All Americans.
Veronika says the outrage surrounding social media videos of drag performances represents a misunderstanding of the art form, where tipping is not sexual.
“We tip our servers, we tip our bartenders, we tip our hair stylists, and we tip our drag queens,” she said. “It is not, ‘I’m giving you this dollar bill, so will you show me this?’ It is just a tip of appreciation.”
Johnson said he plans to move quickly on Senate Bill 3 after the New Year. And in a state where Republicans control both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office, it very well could become law.
If it becomes law, Sanders said, he questions whether it could be challenged as a violation of the First Amendment.
California attorney Katherine Read, who wrote an article titled “Dressing the First Amendment in Drag” for the Journal of Race, Gender & Poverty in 2019, thinks a First Amendment challenge is possible.
“If you were going to go see Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift in concert, no one would argue that that isn’t art. I mean, it clearly is. And I think in this context, too, with drag queens, it certainly is art as well, which is protected by the First Amendment,” Read told NBC News.
Read also said she sees drag as a form of symbolic speech that comments to audiences on femininity and other important societal topics, which would make it protected speech.
Some past cases offer an encouraging outlook for drag performers and their supporters.
“Most lower courts in the United States have nullified cross-dressing statutes as being vague and not providing proper notice to citizens as to what is being criminalized,” Read wrote in her journal article.
There are multiple potential legal grounds for opposing legislation like Senate Bill 3, Read explained, but it would need to be challenged to find out how specific courts in today’s current political and legal climate would assess the notion that drag performances are protected under the First Amendment.
As for Veronika, she said she’s determined to rally enough opposition to scuttle Tennessee’s drag bill before it becomes state law.
“So many amazing drag performers that are certainly famous have all either started or come through Nashville,” she said in her dressing room the day of the drag brunch performance. “I would hate to think that a simple piece of legislation like this would minimize the effect that art can have on our community‚ and drag is literal, moving, living art.”
Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced a coalition of 18 attorneys general that are opposing Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act — also known as the “don’t say gay” law.
Racine’s office said in a press release late last week that the law posed a threat to LGBTQ+ students, emphasizing that they are at particular risk and harm to discrimination.
“My office has a strong track record of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in the District and across the country to make sure that everyone can simply be who they are and love who they love,” Racine said. “Florida’s law offers no benefit to anyone and in fact puts children and families in harm’s way. We will continue to use all of our authority to help strike down this law and any other hateful, discriminatory policies that threaten people’s fundamental freedoms.”
In an amicus brief submitted in support of a lawsuit brought by several Florida families, the attorneys general state that the law, “are far outside the bounds of ordinary educational decision-making,” adding that its “outlier” status further indicates it is “constitutionally suspect.”
The law, which has been called vague by critics, bans “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner. “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” it also states.
The families’ lawsuit, which was filed only days after the bill was signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, argues that the legislation violates Due Process and Equal Protection, as well as First Amendment free speech rights. The suit also raises questions about how the law will change in-classroom discussions and school functions. Already, many teachers and school district officials have voiced uncertainty about what goes against the law and what doesn’t.
“To appreciate how this dynamic will unfold in practice, just consider how students, teachers, parents, guests, and school personnel might navigate these common questions: Can a student of two gay parents talk about their family during a class debate about civics? Can that student paint a family portrait in art class? Can a lesbian student refer to their own coming out experience while responding to a work of literature? Can a transgender student talk about their gender identity while studying civil rights in history class? What if that occurs in homeroom, or during an extracurricular activity with a faculty supervisor, or in an op-ed in the faculty supervised school newspaper? Are teachers allowed to respond if students discuss these aspects of their identities or family life in class? If so, what can they say?” the suit reads.
The brief points out that the states that submitted it “have curricula in place that allow for age-appropriate discussion of LGBTQ+ issues while respecting parental views on the topic,” according to the release.
“The law is causing significant harms to students, parents, teachers, and other states. Non-inclusive educational environments have severe negative health impacts on LGBTQ+ students, resulting in increased rates of mental health disorders and suicide attempts,” the release said. “These harms extend to youth not just in Florida, but throughout the country.”
In addition to Racine, the attorneys general of New Jersey, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Title 42 — a Trump-era immigration policy implemented when the pandemic broke out to quickly expel asylum-seekers at the border — to remain in effect for now, putting a judge’s ruling that would have ended it last weekon hold.
The court voted5-4 to grant an emergency request by 19 Republican state attorneys general who sought to intervene in defense of the policy. The decision puts on hold a ruling by Washington-based U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s implementation of the policy was “arbitrary and capricious.” Sullivan’s ruling was due to go into effect Dec. 21.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the three liberals on the court in voting against the stay request. The brief court order said that while the administration cannot set aside the Title 42 policy, the decision “does not prevent the federal government from taking any action with respect to that policy.”
The Supreme Court also agreed to hear oral arguments in Februaryand rule on whether the states can intervene, with a decision due by the end of June. The policy will remain in place at least until that ruling is issued.
Gorsuch suggested in a dissenting opinion that the court’s decision to intervene seemed to be more related to the crisis at the border than the legal issues in the case, which concerns whether the states can intervene in defense of a pandemic-era policy, noting that the states “do not seriously dispute that the public-health justification undergirding the Title 42 orders has lapsed.”
Gorsuch acknowledged that the states may have valid concerns, but, he added, “the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials has failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not a policymaker of last resort.”
The court’s intervention averts what many had predicted would be an additional surge of people seeking to enter the United States at a time when border crossings are already high. Without the policy in place, people seeking asylum would be able to enter the U.S., where they could be waiting for years for a court date if they pass their initial interview with authorities.
Title 42 is strongly backed by Republicans alarmed at the number of people crossing the southern border and it is opposed by immigrant rights groups, who say it is inhumane. Some Democrats, including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, have expressed support for it being kept in place at least temporarily. Another Democrat, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, has warned that the system for handling migrants seeking asylum would “break” if Title 42 is ended.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Dec. 19 placed a temporary hold on Sullivan’s ruling while the Supreme Court weighed its next steps.
States led by the Republican attorneys general of Arizona and Louisiana filed the emergency requestlast week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected their request to intervene in the case in a bid to prevent the policy from being wound down.
The states argued that President Joe Biden’s administration had “abandoned meaningful defense” of the rule, saying it effectively engineered, with the help of lawyers challenging the policy, a ruling that would end it. As a result, the states sought to intervene to keep it in place. The appeals court had said in its order that the states waited too long before they tried to intervene.
In a separate case, the administration’s previous effort to unwind the policy had been blocked by a federal judge.
Title 42, named after a section of U.S. law, gives the federal government power to take emergency action to keep diseases out of the country. Then-President Donald Trump invoked it when the coronavirus pandemic broke out in March 2020, and it has remained in effect during the Biden administration. More than 2 million people have been expelled from the country as a result.
Many nationalities and demographics have been exempted from the policy, including children traveling unaccompanied and some nationalities whose countries refuse to repatriate them, such as Cuba, Nicaragua and, until recently, Venezuela.
Various civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, challenged the policy on behalf of people affected by it.
Out gay Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) has admitted lying to voters about some parts of his resume, but didn’t address other alleged falsehoods in his backstory. He also said he wouldn’t give up his seat even though Democrats have said that he should.
“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” he said on Monday, according to the New York Post, adding, “I am not a criminal… This [controversy] will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”
Among the falsehoods he fessed up to is the fact that he never graduated from Baruch College. “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he said. “I own up to that … We do stupid things in life.”
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He also admitted that he never worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He now claims that, while working as vice president for a company called Link Bridge, he helped make “capital introductions” between clients and investors who were at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
“I will be clearer about that,” he said. “It was stated poorly.”
Indeed, his campaign website had “poorly” stated that he “began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm.” Link Bridge didn’t respond to media requests for clarification.
He also admitted that he was indeed married to a woman from 2012 until they divorced in 2017. He had told USA Today in October that he had “never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade.”
He didn’t mention his ex-wife ever during his two election bids. “I’m very much gay,” he said on Monday. “I’m OK with my sexuality. People change. I’m one of those people who change.”
The publication The Daily Beast failed to find a marriage record for Santos to the man he currently refers to as his husband.
When asked about why he doesn’t reside at the Queens, New York address in his district where he was registered to vote, the Post reported, “Santos also admitted to lying when he claimed that he owned 13 different properties, saying he now resides at his sister’s place in Huntington but is looking to purchase his own place.”
He also threw his own dead grandmother under the bus when asked about the claim that his grandparents escaped the Nazi Holocaust. Genealogical records threw doubt on this claim, suggesting they might have resided in Brazil rather than having fled from Europe. He now says the claim came from his deceased grandmother’s stories.
Even though he has previously identified as a nonobservant Jew in the past, he now says that he never claimed he was Jewish (but rather Jew-ish), noting that his grandmother told him that she converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
He also explained his claim that he lost four employees in the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting. The New York Times found that none of the shooting’s 49 victims seemed to be associated with any of his businesses. He now says that, at the time of their deaths, the four “employees” were in the process of being hired for his company (which he didn’t name) when they died in the shooting. He provided no additional information to back up his claim.
Numerous discrepancies in Santos’ past remain. No records seem to back up his claim that his mother escaped the south tower of the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. No records seem to back up his claim that he founded a charity called Friends of Pets nor that he attended New York University.
The New York Times also noted that, even though he denied ever having cashed stolen checks in Brazil, he didn’t explain why Brazilian court records alleged otherwise. Nor did he explain how he was able to lend himself $700,000 to his congressional campaign despite owing landlords and creditors thousands in the past.
Democrats like outgoing House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and upcoming House Democratic Minority Leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries (NY) have said that Santos isn’t fit to serve in Congress and should resign.
“George Santos should resign as congressman-elect,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). “If he refuses, Congress should expel him. He should also be investigated by authorities. Just about every aspect of his life appears to be a lie.”
“George Santos admits his life story is a complete fabrication,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY). “His pitiful confession should not distract us from concerns about possible criminality and corruption.”
However, Santos has refused and Republican Congress members have stayed silent about his falsehoods. In fact, the Post cited an “unnamed senior GOP leadership aide” who said that Republicans joked about all of Santos’ discrepancies.
“As far as questions about George in general, that was always something that was brought up whenever we talked about this race,” the aide told the Post. “It was a running joke at a certain point. This is the second time he’s run and these issues we assumed would be worked out by the voters.”
Nevertheless, New York State Attorney General Tish James is reportedly looking into whether Santos broke any laws through his past claims.
Mary and Sharon Bishop-Baldwin were jubilant after winning a decadelong fight for the right to wed in Oklahoma.
But eight years after tying the knot — on the day they won their lawsuit challenging a state ban on gay marriage — and seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed same-sex couples’ constitutional right to marry, they no longer take their union for granted.
“The very fact we’re even having these conversations is really disheartening to me,” especially given a dramatic shift in public opinion over the past decade, with polls showing 70% of U.S. adults now favor same-sex marriage rights, said Sharon Bishop-Baldwin, 54.
But when the high court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed abortion rights, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in a concurring opinion that the decision upholding gay marriage should also be reconsidered. That prompted Democrats to act quickly to protect same-sex marriage while the party still holds the majority in both chambers of Congress.
The Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act last week with support from 12 Republicans; it’s expected to easily win approval in the House before being signed by President Joe Biden.
At first, Sharon Bishop-Baldwin said, she thought the act was “lip service.” But she changed her mind because it would at least provide some protection.
“It’s ridiculous to think that anybody in this country who has legally married one place could suddenly be unmarried in another,” Bishop-Baldwin said.
When the couple filed their 2004 Oklahoma lawsuit, 76% of state voters had just approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Ten years later, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a federal appeals court ruling that declared the state ban unconstitutional. A year later, the high court decided in another case that all states had to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
“When we won, one of our lawyers said, ‘This is game, set, match, marriage’ … and that’s what we thought: We’re done,” said Bishop-Baldwin, who runs a small newspaper and met her wife in 1995 when both were editors at the Tulsa World.
The legislation wouldn’t codify, or enshrine into law, the Supreme Court decision requiring states to issue same-sex marriage licenses. But if that decision were overturned and states revived bans, they still would have to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states.
“I can’t imagine that happening at the Supreme Court … but we have to be prepared,” said Mary Bishop-Baldwin, 61, who notes that Oklahoma’s ban is still on the books.
The possibility has created “a state of extreme anxiety and stress” among same-sex couples, said Jenny Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights group.
That’s especially true for those with children, she said. Currently, both spouses are considered legal parents, which is especially important if one of them dies or they divorce. “So this bill really does matter,” Pizer said.
Some also fear the high court or a future Congress could undo the federal legislation.
“Every time the House and Senate overturn, you’ll wonder what might happen this time,” said Dawn Betts-Green, 43, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her wife, Anna Green, whom she married in Florida in 2016. “It’s honestly in the hands of whoever we elect, and that is scary.”
A scenario in which constitutional protections are overturned by the Supreme Court and the Respect for Marriage Act is overturned by the court or Congress might be a long shot, but “it is certainly possible for there to be a series of events that really took us back to that earlier time when it was incredibly difficult for families,” Pizer said.
“The idea of returning to those days, frankly, is terrifying,” she said.
Betts-Green and her wife hurried to complete paperwork, such as wills and powers of attorney, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, getting “all of our legal ducks in a row (because) they’re clearly coming for us,” she said, recalling a time when her wife was hospitalized in Florida — before they were married — and a nurse said Betts-Green would not be permitted to make medical decisions.
Marriage also provides many other legal protections, including the ability to claim survivor benefits from Social Security and to obtain health insurance through a spouse’s plan, and tax benefits, such as the ability to leave assets to a spouse.
The Respect for Marriage Act makes Betts-Green feel a little more secure, she said, though “I find it absolutely ridiculous that we’re having to go through this kind of thing in 2022, not only just for queer people, but also interracial marriages. It’s not 1941, but it certainly feels like we’ve gone back in time.”
The issue of same-sex marriage also is overshadowing other concerns, including anti-LGBTQ legislation and harassment of and attacks on LGBTQ people, most notably the recent shooting at a Colorado nightclub that killed five people, Betts-Green said.
“I’m constantly reminded that this is the least of our issues in a lot of ways,” she said.
Minneapolis legal aide Robbin Reed, a white woman who is married to a Black transgender man, supports the act but worries it could mean more danger from people who might be angered by its protections.
“The law won’t really change anything about my life … because there’s still so much to worry about,” said Reed, who has an 8-month-old child and performs with her husband in queer nightclubs. “This is a ridiculous situation to be in.”
The Bishop-Baldwins said they doubt the Supreme Court will strip away same-sex marriage rights, but are relieved there will be some protections in place just in case. Still, federal legislation shouldn’t even be required, they say.
“Is the Respect for Marriage Act good enough? No, of course not. Good enough should be” constitutional protection, said Sharon Bishop-Baldwin.
As monks chanted evening prayers in the dimly lit Saint John’s University church, members of the student LGBTQ organization, QPLUS, were meeting in a dedicated, Pride flag-lined lounge at the institution’s sister Benedictine college, a few miles away across Minnesota farmland.
To Sean Fisher, a senior who identifies as nonbinary and helps lead QPLUS, its official recognition and funding by Saint John’s and the College of Saint Benedict is welcome proof of the Catholic schools’ “acknowledging queer students exist.”
But tensions endure here and at many of the hundreds of U.S. Catholic and Protestant universities. The Christian teachings they ascribe to are different from wider societal values over gender identity and sexual orientation, because they assert that God created humans in unchangeable male and female identities, and sex should only happen within the marriage of a man and a woman.
“The ambivalence toward genuine care is clouded by Jesus-y attitudes. Like ‘Love your neighbor’ has an asterisk,” Fisher said that late fall evening.
Most of the 200 Catholic institutions serving nearly 900,000 students have made efforts to be welcoming while staying true to their mission as Catholic ministries, said the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
Among Protestant institutions, a few are pushing the envelope, and most are hoping to stay out of the messiness, said John Hawthorne, a retired Christian college sociology professor and administrator.
“Denominations won’t budge, so colleges will need to lead the way,” Hawthorne added. Otherwise, they might not survive, because students are used to values far different from churches’ teachings, as highlighted by last week’s Senate passage of legislation to protect same-sex marriage.
“Today’s college freshman was born in 2004, the year Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage,” Hawthorne said, suggesting there might not be enough conservative students in the future for some of the universities to survive.
The consequences extend beyond the experiences of current students, many of whom enroll not because of faith but academics, athletics or scholarships. Some will likely become church leaders in an already divided society, where the recent shooting at an LGBTQ club in Colorado was only the latest reminder of the threats against that community.
The majority of Christian colleges and universities list “sexual orientation” in their nondiscrimination statements, and half also include “gender identity” — far more than did so in 2013, said Jonathan Coley, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who maintains a Christian higher education database of policies toward LGBTQ students.
But translating that into practice creates tensions affecting most campus life, including enrollment at single-gender institutions, housing, restroom design and pronoun use.
Backlash follows from opposing corners: At some conservative schools, some students and faculty have filed discrimination complaints, while at more affirming institutions, some parents and clergy argue that approach doesn’t align with their mission.
“We have to learn to live with this tension,” said the Rev. Donal Godfrey, chaplain at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution in a city with a history of LGBTQ rights advocacy and a conservative Catholic archbishop opposed to same-sex marriage.
New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ Catholics, keeps a list of over 130 Catholic colleges it considers LGBTQ-friendly because they provide public affirmation, including courses and clubs, said its director, Francis DeBernardo.
“Catholic colleges and universities were … and still are the most LGBTQ-friendly places in the church in the United States,” DeBernardo added.
The Cardinal Newman Society, which advocates for fidelity to church teachings on all Catholic education issues, maintains its own list of recommended schools, a little more than a dozen the organization considers “faithful.”
“For these colleges, being ‘Catholic’ is not a watered-down brand or historical tradition,” Newman president Patrick Reilly said via email.
Other campus leaders see tension in Catholic teachings, which tend to skew conservative on human sexuality but progressive on social justice.
“It’s kind of a tightrope,” said John Scarano, campus ministry director at John Carroll University, a Jesuit school near Cleveland with “safe zone trainings” as part of its ministry to LGBTQ students.
When parents and prospective students come to him undecided between John Carroll and Franciscan University, 100 miles away in Steubenville, Ohio, Scarano tells them, “Here, your Catholicism is going to be challenged” by different perspectives.
At the Franciscan-run school, “we don’t move away from the truth of the human person as discovered in Scripture, the tradition of the Church, and the teaching authority of the Church — this is our mooring, and we believe that to follow Christ is to be faithful to the Church’s teachings,” said the Rev. Jonathan St. Andre, a senior university leader.
The Steubenville institution strives to develop students’ “healthy sense of the gift of their human sexuality,” he added via email — but with no tolerance for harassment of those who disagree.
Students’ safety is a priority, said Mary Geller, the associate provost who oversees student affairs for the 3,000 undergraduates at Saint John’s and Saint Benedict, the single-sex institutions in Minnesota.
“We’re set up in the binary, but we know there are people coming to us who don’t live in the binary,” Geller said. They now admit students based on the gender they identify with, and consider transfers for those who transition.
That has enraged a few parents, like a father complaining “that we have students with male body parts in a female dorm,” Geller recalled. “I just said, ‘Sir, I don’t check body parts.’”
With the help of legal advocates, some students at evangelical and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints schools are suing.
Last year, 33 LGBTQ students or former students at federally funded Christian schools filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the department’s religious exemption allows schools that receive federal dollars to unconstitutionally discriminate against LGBTQ students. The plaintiffs have grown to more than 40.
In May, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched a separate investigation for alleged violations of the rights of LGBTQ students at six Christian universities — including Liberty University.
The independent evangelical university is one of several that have greatly expanded their rules prohibiting students from identifying as LGBTQ or advocating for such identities.
Liberty forbids LGBTQ affinity clubs, same-sex displays of affection, and use of pronouns, restrooms and changing facilities not corresponding to a person’s birth sex. As of this year, its student handbook, called “The Liberty Way,” bans statements and behaviors associated with what it calls “LGBT states of mind.”
“Liberty is very anti-gay,” said Sydney Windsor, a senior there who first decided to attend Liberty to quash her sexual attraction for women and now identifies as pansexual. “I found friendships ending and me getting bad grades because of differing opinions or things I said or posted. It’s years of irreversible trauma.”
At some evangelical schools, the argument has now moved from fighting over student’s sexual and gender equality to fighting for LGBTQ diversity in faculty and staff hiring.
This year, Eastern University, located in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and affiliated with American Baptist Churches USA, amended its policies to allow for the hiring of faculty in same-sex marriages — one of only a handful of evangelical schools to do so.
“If we can get faculty to come out and to have queer people openly represented on campus, that would be really big,” said Faith Jeanette Millender, an Eastern University student who identifies as bisexual or queer and is active in the school’s LGBTQ group.
A high-stakes clash between students, faculty and the school’s board of trustees over hiring LGBTQ faculty is unfolding at Seattle Pacific University, a 131-year-old school affiliated with the Free Methodist Church.
The faculty held a vote of no-confidence in the board, one-third of which is appointed by the denomination, because it insists on keeping the policy barring people in same-sex relationships from full-time positions. Faculty and students have also sued the board in Washington State Superior Court for breaching its fiduciary duty, arguing the policy threatens to harm SPU’s reputation, worsen an already shrinking enrollment and possibly jeopardize its future.
“This entrenchment around human sexuality feels so incongruent with the on-campus experience and what we teach our students,” said Lynnette Bikos, professor and chair of SPU’s clinical psychology department and a plaintiff in the suit against the board.
Chloe Guillot, a 22-year-old graduate student at SPU who is one of 16 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the school, said it was a matter of social justice.
“I’m wrestling with my own identity and I know how much Christianity has brought harm to communities, whether its people of color, women, or LGBTQ people,” Guillot said. “I have a responsibility to step into those spaces and be willing to fight back. As someone who is a Christian we need to hold ourselves accountable.”
In late November, a group of students and faculty decorated several campus buildings with rainbow-colored Christmas lights.
The administration has responded to one of the suits in a court filing saying that it expects students and faculty to “affirm the University’s statement of faith, and to abide by its lifestyle expectations, which together shape the vision and mission of the institution.”
Kathryn Lee, who came out as lesbian last year, while still a professor at Whitworth University, an evangelical school in Spokane, Washington, said debates over LGBTQ issues will persist for years.
“What’s unfortunate in my view is that in some people’s minds how do you define Christian education and it will be, ‘Oh, where are they on LGBTQ?’” she said. “I find that tragic.”
To students like Fisher in Minnesota, concrete actions will show if LGBTQ people can truly be welcomed on Christian campuses.
There are still too many incidents. Ryan Imm, a Saint John’s University junior and QPLUS leader who identifies as gay, recalled an anti-LGBTQ slur used on his residential floor. Sitting together in the QPLUS lounge, both students pointed to signs of hope — like the popular drag show at Saint Benedict.
“It’s almost like people forget there’s dissonance,” Imm said.
James was just 16 when Mom and Dad found out he was gay. Faced with the choice of accepting his orientation, they chose not to and forced him to leave. They couldn’t tolerate his “lifestyle choice.” In the small rural town in Georgia where he lived, he became an outcast with no support system. He ended up on the streets of Atlanta, where he eventually found his chosen family, which embraced him and fulfilled his need for support, comfort, and kinship.
James’s story is hardly unique. Roughly 40% of queer adults have faced rejection from their biological families. As for homeless youth, more than 40% are LGBTQ. What happens to these queer individuals once the safety net from parents, other family members and colleagues is yanked away?
Chosen families in the queer community are a lifeline, all about belonging and filling the void left by biological families. Chosen families are inclusive. Rather than shutting people out, they provide joy, security, and protection.
A new project — The Chosen Family Project — seeks to explore this little-understood but essential part of the LGBTQ story, the idea of the chosen or “found” family.
The Chosen Family Project was born out of months of discussion in 2020 among the initial three founders, Steve Rossetti, Steven Drew Auerbach and Bruce Purdy, all gay men living in Palm Springs, Calif. These founders wanted to support the gay community through an online platform that assists gay men through the coming out process. After exploring the existing literature and organizations, they discovered there was very little about what happens after coming out. The original idea evolved into a focus on the chosen, created family.
The Chosen Family Project’s mission is to celebrate, honor, and give voice to the diverse, loving, and joyful people we in the LGBTQ community call “family.” Through
books, interviews and documentary films, The Chosen Family Project will redefine the notion of the traditional nuclear family. It will share stories from people of various age groups and regions of our country about how they found, created and nurtured their chosen family. The Project will shine a light on the many forms and combinations of these families.
Through stories, testimonials, photographs, re-imagined iconic images and select family recipes, the Project will provide a new lens for understanding the concept of family. The chosen family becomes a refuge and a source of unconditional love from the people we support and who support us.
In this way, The Chosen Family Project hopes to change the prevailing narrative that has labeled LGBTQ families as different, though in reality they are more alike than different.
These powerful stories are a part of the LGBTQ history and culture, not to be forgotten. Our goal is to highlight and counteract the long-standing adversity that the LGBTQ community has faced (and continues to face), based on whom they love. We aim to inspire compassion and community rather than divisiveness.
Revenue from The Chosen Family Project will support LGBTQ foundations and individuals that assist those moving from traumatic family circumstances toward the triumph of living authentically with the family they choose.
A Seattle-area pub was hit by gunfire yesterday, days before a scheduled drag queen story hour and bingo night.
The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Washington, just south of Seattle, was hit a single gunshot to their front window in a drive-by shooting around noon on Wednesday. The pub’s monthly Drag Queen Storytime and Rainbow Bingo events will go on as planned on Saturday.
Brewmaster’s owner Marley Rall told LGBTQ Nation she was working at home when she got a text from an employee at the coffee stand next door to the pub. “They just texted me and said, ‘Hey, I just watched this.’”
Rall said the assailant had removed the license plates from the car and was wearing a mask and gloves.
Rall posted to Facebook: “So just an update for everyone. Our taproom was shot at today around noon. We believe it has to do with the people who are upset about our Drag Queen Story Time. We would like you to know we are still going to have drag queen storytime. But we also want to be transparent with parents. Renton PD is aware and has set up cameras.”
“Hatred isn’t pretty,” one commenter posted. “Hang in there. A lot of us will be there to support you! Grateful for your inclusion of all people.” Rall, who lives with her husband in Renton, calls herself a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
The shooting comes after plans for a protest at the event by right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ groups came to light. “We are aware of the chatter and threats,” Rall wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. “Every month we get emails and phone calls about our Drag Queen Story Time. Never have we had issues, but this time feels different.”
The single gunshot came from a silver four-door sedan hours later.
Rall said she noticed unusual activity on the tap room’s Facebook page Monday night. “I get a notification,” Rall said, and a woman “had posted on our newsletter, ‘This is fucking disgusting,’ and ‘You’re fucking groomers and you’re pedophiles,’ and then had scrolled through our Facebook page to go find another post from the month before, specifically for our drag queen storytime and bingo.”
Rall was also made aware of a protest flyer originating with right-wing group Wake Up WA State that had spread across social media and was shared by advocacy group LGBTQIA+ Renton and a local councilwoman. Calls for protest also made their way to Reddit, where one poster suggested shooting up a transformer to deprive Brewmasters of power during the event.
“So I screenshot it and send it to the city,” Rall says. “This is a thing and somebody clearly wants to replicate what was going on in North Carolina.” She was referring to a
Following the shooting Wednesday, Wake Up WA State scrubbed their Facebook account of any reference to the event.
“Wake Up WA State is shutting its pages down at least for now,” wrote group organizer Justine Andrina. “We talked about it a lot and made this decision because the people running the groups are putting themselves at risk at this point and the benefit is outweighing the risks [sic].”
A deleted post archived by a Brewmaster supporter illustrated Wake Up WA State’s role in the protest and purported cancellation.
Andrina shared: “Per the organizer holding the protest: ‘Based on some recent developments we’ve decided to pull the plug on Saturday. Someone took a shot at the bar today.’ I don’t know if it was a false flag or a patriot who got too hotheaded. Either way, it now seems like a major security issue and since children will be present, we made the decision to cancel. If you are able to make a note of that on Wake Up WA FB, it would be appreciated. Thanks.”
“Whoever did this to Brewmasters,” Andrina wrote, “you’re sick in the head.”
Rall says both her parents lost family in the Holocaust, and they made sure she could recite the poem First They Came.
“Just because it doesn’t personally impact you, one day, you’re going to turn around and nobody’s going to be there, because it will,” she said. “This is about keeping everybody safe, and making sure that everybody continues to feel comfortable coming out and being their authentic self.”
As the first out, gay member of the state Legislature, Democrat Brian Sims represented Philadelphia’s 182nd District from 2012-2022. During the last election cycle, he ran an unsuccessful primary campaign for lieutenant governor, taking second place in the contest.
Sims announced last week that he’s taking on the newly-created position of managing director of public policy & government Affairs for Out Leadership, a 98-member business and nonprofit organization urging state-level conversations on LGBTQ+ issues and public policy.
His goal is to connect the dots of lobbying and policy in a way that members will be prepared for discussions around queer civil rights in an increasing hostile and violent atmosphere.