A lesbian woman has been stabbed to death in Umlazi, South Africa, after reportedly rejecting a man’s advances, leaving the local community “very disturbed”.
IOL Daily News reported that 32-year-old Pinky Shongwe was stabbed to death while going to a local shop after an “unknown” man allegedly harassed her with unwanted advances.
A spokesperson for Umlazi police, lieutenant-colonel Nqobile Gwala, said that the case is now being investigated as a murder.
“She was found lying on the road and was taken to hospital where she succumbed to her injuries on arrival. The motive of the killing is unknown and the matter is still under investigation,” Gwala said.
A spokesperson for KwaZulu-Natal Social Development said he was “disturbed” to hear about the incident after several awareness campaigns for LGBT+ equality in the area.
Mhlaba Memela told IOL Daily News: “We are very disturbed to hear of another brutal murder of a lesbian woman.
“We are angry after our department has done a lot of public awareness campaigns to teach people to accept and live side by side with gays and lesbians. We have been telling people that gay and lesbian rights were protected by the constitution.
“We believe it is high time that our courts start treating this violence differently, and not be lenient when sentencing the perpetrators.”
The tragic stabbing comes after a slew of violent crimes against the LGBT+ population in South Africa in recent years, including the murder of another lesbian in September 2021 in an area only around 15 miles away from Shongwe’s killing.
Previous victims also include Lonwabo Jack, a 22-year-old gay man found tragically murdered on his birthday.
Nonhlanhla Khoza, a politician serving in the Department of Social Development, said in a 2021 statement: “We are deeply ashamed that, in our nation, we still have people facing discrimination based on their sexual orientation.
“This is a gross violation of basic human rights and we should unite to end such crimes.
“It must sink in the minds of all those involved in such crimes that no one has a right to take a life and abuse someone else because of their sexuality.
“Our government has made giant strides towards safeguarding LGBTQ+ rights. However, incidents similar to this one water down all efforts that have been made.”
The Supreme Court says it won’t review the case of a Seattle-based Christian organization that was sued after declining to hire a bisexual lawyer who applied for a job. A lower court let the case go forward, and the high court said Monday it wouldn’t intervene.
Two justices, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed with the decision not to hear the case at this stage but said that “the day may soon come” when the court needs to confront the issue the case presents.
The case the high court declined to hear involves Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. In addition to providing food and shelter to the homeless the organization offers addiction recovery, job placement and legal services. In 2016 it was looking for an attorney to help staff its legal-aid clinic.
One of the applicants was Matthew Woods, who had volunteered at the clinic for more than three years. Woods identifies as bisexual and was in a same-sex relationship. He was told before he applied that his application would be rejected because the organization’s “code of conduct excludes homosexual activity.” Woods sued, arguing that the organization violated state law by discriminating against him on the basis of his sexual orientation.
A state trial court judge ruled for Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and dismissed Woods’ lawsuit. The judge ruled that the organization is exempt from the state’s anti-discrimination law. But the Washington Supreme Court reversed the decision and let the lawsuit go forward.
The Supreme Court does already have a different high-profile dispute involving a clash between religion and the rights of LGBTQ people on its docket. That dispute involves a Colorado web designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her from offering wedding website designs to gay couples. That case is expected to be argued in the fall.
In today’s heightened culture war, the coffers of the anti-gay movement are overflowing. According to publicly available annual returns, 11 nonprofit groups identified as anti-LGBTQ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center took in over$110 million in contributions during the financial year ending in 2020.
The dollar amount represents a recent high-water mark for the organizations, whose take of donations, grants and other noncash contributions has increased steadily since 2016, when the same 11 groups reported more than $87 million in such contributions.
In just four years, their total revenue swelled by over 25 percent, with some indication that the positive trend continued into 2021. The multimillion-dollar war chest has bolstered a movement that just a few years ago appeared to be losing ground in America’s decadeslong culture war around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights. Far from retreating, the groups have won significant battles at all levels of American government and society — from local school boards to the federal courts.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, based in Montgomery, Alabama, has tracked the anti-LGBTQ movement for more than a decade. In 2011, the SPLC published its first list of 13 “hate groups” that propagate known falsehoods and pseudoscience to disparage gender and sexual minorities. Since 2020, the organization has been tracking more than 40 entities,of which many engage in a host of issues beyond LGBTQ rights, like abortion and Covid-related mandates. Several groups are also churches, which are exempt from filing annual returns and therefore do not disclose their finances.
Many of these groups assert that LGBTQ people are a threat to society itself. “
SCOTT MCCOY, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
Then, as now, a loose affiliation of fundamentalist churches, conservative law centers and far-right advocacy organizations makes up the anti-LGBTQ movement.
“Many of those, while not specifically tied to a church, are rooted in the conservative Christian, biblical sense of human sexuality,” said Scott McCoy, the interim deputy legal director for LGBTQ rights and special litigation for the SPLC and the SPLC Action Fund, the group’s political action committee.
But simply holding a religious belief that views homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful does not automatically land a church or an organization on the SPLC’s list of hate groups.
“Many of these groups assert that LGBTQ people are a threat to society itself. That kind of extremist rhetoric and belief is part of what goes into our decision-making process,” McCoy said. He also pointed to groups that justify violence against LGBTQ people, like Westboro Baptist Church.
‘The hard core of the anti-gay movement’
When the SPLC began tracking anti-LGBTQ hate in the early 2010s,the organization noted that “a small coterie of groups now comprise the hard core of the anti-gay movement.” The same groups — many now flush with financial resources — continue to shape the anti-LGBTQ agenda.
“As of today, there probably are five or six key players,” McCoy said, highlighting the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel and the American College of Pediatricians as parts of the core.
From 2011 to 2021, the total revenue of the Family Research Council — an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that, according to its website, believes “homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it” and “is also harmful to society at large” — jumped from over $12 million to more than $23 million.
During the same period, contributions to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, more than doubled, from over $34.5 million in 2011 to more than $76 million in 2021. According to its website, the group aims to secure “generational wins” to ensure “the law respects God’s creative order for marriage, the family, and human sexuality.”
In a statement, Jeremy Tedesco, the senior counsel and senior vice president of corporate engagement at the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted its judicial track record and alleged that the SPLC has “destroyed its own credibility because of its blatant partisan agenda.”
“Alliance Defending Freedom is among the largest and most effective legal advocacy organizations dedicated to protecting the religious freedom and free speech rights of all Americans. Our record since 2011 includes 13 Supreme Court victories, including two wins last year and one upcoming case next term,” Tedesco said. “Our track record of success is due in large part to those who generously support our work, and increased giving demonstrates the growing movement to protect Americans’ First Amendment freedoms.”
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Florida, said that the organization is “neither anti-LGBTQ nor a hate group” and that the SPLC’s “self-appointed hate group list is false and defamatory.”
“We hate no one and oppose violence and demeaning language or behavior towards anyone,” Staver said in a statement. “We believe every person is created in the image of God and has inherent dignity and value. Liberty Counsel believes everyone is entitled to religious freedom and freedom of speech.”
The Family Research Council and the American College of Pediatricians did not respond to requests for comment. They have previously rejected the accusation that they are hate groups.
‘Outliers’ who ‘wield a pretty big hammer’
The significant flows of contributions to the groups, however, do not reflect a growing antagonism toward the LGBTQ community in broader American society.
Survey after survey confirms that Americans of many different political stripes and religious affiliations have become more supportive of LGBTQ rights over the past decade. According to the2021 American Values Atlas, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of Americans supported same-sex marriage last year, up from 47 percent a decade before. That included majorities of historically conservative religious groups, like Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and nearly half of all Republicans.
The same survey found even greater public support for protections against discrimination in the workplace and public accommodations for LGBTQ people.In 2021, the American Values Atlas reported that 79 percent of respondents supported such protections.
One group in the American Values Atlas continues to lag behind the rest of the country when it comes to affirming LGBTQ equality: white evangelical Protestants, whose fringe, far-right elements comprise the core of the anti-LGBTQ movement in the U.S. today.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/qDAUKZK?_showcaption=true&app=1
“As someone who writes social science, I can’t tell you how many sentences I have begun with the words ‘with the lone exception of white evangelical Protestants,’” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, the organization behind the American Values Atlas. “Whether it is on immigration, LGBTQ issues, abortion — white evangelical Christians are increasingly outliers to the middle of the country, not just to the left.”
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Jones, a scholar of white Christianity in the U.S., has spent years tracking the cultural and political power of white evangelical Protestants.
“I think the biggest marker of change among white evangelicals over the last decade has just been the internal shifts that they have undergone,” Jones said. “They have shrunk by nearly a third just over the last decade. Today, they are 14.5 percent of the population. And as they have shrunk, they have been hemorrhaging young people. I think that is one of the reasons why they have become increasingly out of step with the middle of the country.”
Despite the bleed of parishioners, white evangelicals have managed to maintain their power in electoral politics by solidifying their stake in the Republican Party. Between 2016 and 2020, Pew Research Center found that white evangelical voters’ support of President Trump rose from 77 percent to 84 percent. Although this voting bloc only accounted for 19 percent of the total electorate in 2020, it made up 34 percent of all Trump voters.
“When you’re a third of one party’s base, you wield a pretty big hammer,” Jones said.
Without the broad support of white evangelicals, Pew Research Center observed, Trump would have lost to Joe Biden by more than 20 points in the last presidential election.
From the start of his foray in national politics, Trump made an effort to woo this key constituency. In 2016, during his first run for the Oval Office, Trump formed a so-called evangelical executive advisory board to help shape his political platform. Among the people in the group of advisers were heavy hitters in evangelical Christianity, as well as the anti-LGBTQ movement, including James Dobson, an Alliance Defending Freedom co-founder and the founder and former leader of the fundamentalist Christian organization Focus on the Family.
“We saw this shift throughout Trump’s presidency — and it has certainly lasted past it — of the term ‘evangelical’ becoming more of a political signifier than it is a religious one, that being almost a stand-in for white, Christian nationalist beliefs,” said Maggie Siddiqi, the senior director of Religion and Faith at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.
It was not just Trump who welcomed evangelical leaders into the highest levels of politics and policy. In 2018, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appointed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 that is “dedicated to defending the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad.” At the time, Heidi Beirich, then the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, called Perkins’ appointment “deeply disturbing.” His current term on the commission expires in May.
Siddiqi noted that among evangelicals, there is some noted resistance to marrying faith with contemporary American politics. For example, in 2019, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty launched the campaign Christians Against Christian Nationalism, which, among other tenets, holds that “conflating religious authority and political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups.”
Still, conservative white evangelicals have found in the modern Republican Party champions for a political agenda that extends well beyond LGBTQ rights. On issues of abortion, religious freedom and, more recently, Covid vaccination mandates, today’s GOP has aligned itself with the interests of many white evangelicals, affording the group outsized power in the U.S.’s two-party political system.
With so many evangelicals flocking to one side of the political spectrum, Jones said, they have “yielded disproportionate influence in the public, by leveraging a political party.”
A strategic ‘pivot’
At the same time, the political arenas where conservatives and progressives battle over LGBTQ rights and other fraught social issues have continued to evolve.
“There’s been a focus downward to more local places like school boards, boards of health, bodies of that nature,” said McCoy of the SPLC. “Now they are taking up the latest fault lines in the culture war, whether it be mask mandates, LGBTQ school policies or even critical race theory.”
There has also been “a pivot” to targeting the transgender community, said Sharita Gruberg, the vice president for the LGBTQI+ Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.
“The groups that are opposed to LGBTQ equality did their message testing and found that attacking gay people is no longer the broadly popular culture war totem that they used in the ’90s,” Gruberg said. “From the bathroom bills in 2015 and 2016 to the bans on trans kids playing school sports, it is easier for these groups to frame attacks to focus on trans kids paired with policies that they say are restoring parental rights. It’s a bit of a Trojan horse.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/j2EQSqk?_showcaption=true&app=1
The Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its critics — which is on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk, is a case in point. If it is signed into law, it would prohibit “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in the state’s primary schools. Opponents say the law would harm LGBTQ youths by creating an antagonistic educational environment. But Republican state Rep. Joe Harding, who introduced the bill in the House in January, contends the measure is about “empowering parents.”
Last month, Harding defended his bill in a blog post for the Family Research Council, an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group since 2011.
Gruberg contends that protecting LGBTQ rights nationwide would require federal intervention. Congress is considering the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. But passage of the law is far from ensured: All Democratic-voting senators and 10 Senate Republicans would need to vote in favor of the measure to overcome the filibuster.
Even then, the law could still meet its demise in the courts. While the Supreme Court has a history of affirming LGBTQ rights, conservatives now command a solid majority.
The most recent addition to the court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, even has a past with members of the anti-LGBTQ movement. From 2011 to 2016, Barrett gave lectures on five different occasions to theBlackstone Legal Fellowship, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s flagship summer program for Christian law students. During her confirmation hearing in 2020, Barrett described her experience with the Blackstone Legal Fellowship as a “wonderful one” but also said that “nothing about any of my interactions … were ever indicative of any kind of discrimination on the basis of anything.”
For Jones, the pace at which LGBTQ equality has advanced has created a “last stand mentality” among white Christian conservatives, who have worked diligently over the decade to shore up their power on the federal bench.
“It’s that dynamic that is driving the fundraising,” he said. “There’s a kind of last-stand desperation, an apocalyptic feeling that if we don’t do something now, we will lose the country. And if we don’t do something to win it back, there will never be another opportunity.”
Horizons Foundation, the world’s first LGBTQ community foundation, will host a panel with leading experts in the fight against hate and extremism discussing new global research on conversion therapy, the discredited practice of trying to change one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Produced by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a grantee partner of Horizons Foundation’s Global Faith and Equality Fund, this research exposes how tech companies, many of which are based in the SF Bay Area, have failed to root out anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy disinformation and ban providers pushing the discredited practice, even though many claim to do so.
Entitled “Deplatforming LGBTQ Hate: Stopping Conversion Therapy Online,” the free, public event will take place virtually on March 30 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. PT. Registration is now open online.
The event will include a panel and Q&A in which the report’s authors will share the research results and new information on the impact of the research so far. The panel will be moderated by Francisco Buchting, Horizons’ vice president of grants, programs, and communications, and will feature the co-founders of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and co-authors of the research, Dr. Wendy Via and Dr. Heidi Beirich.
To view this significant and timely research beforehand, the two reports can be accessed online: The first report finds that the internet is filled with disinformation, and the second report profiles 25 conversion therapy providers around the world.
Horizons Foundation is proud to host the event as the first of the Horizons Forum, a series of panel discussions on topics of interest to the LGBTQ community.
About Horizons Foundation
Horizons Foundation (www.horizonsfoundation.org) envisions a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully. The world’s first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people, Horizons invests in LGBTQ organizations, strengthens a culture of LGBTQ giving, and builds a permanent endowment to secure our community’s future for generations to come. Learn more at horizonsfoundation.org.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Tuesday to make abortions cheaper for people on private insurance plans, the first of more than a dozen bills the state’s Democratic leaders plan to pass this year to prepare for a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could overturn Roe v. Wade.
The new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that banned states from outlawing abortion.
If they do, at least 26 states are likely to either ban abortion outright or severely limit access, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.
That would force many women to travel to other states to get abortions, prompting Democratic-led states like California to propose and pass new laws to prepare for them.
Last week, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law aimed at banning legal action against people who aid or receive an abortion, a measure responding to the Texas law that lets people sue abortion providers or those who assist them.
Oregon lawmakers included $15 million in their state budget to help pay for people to travel to the state to get abortions.
California has a similar bill, one of 14 proposals aimed at expanding and protecting access to abortion in the nation’s most populous state. The bills were inspired by a report from the Future of Abortion Council, a group Newsom convened last year to advise him about how to respond if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
“We’re looking at 26 states that will introduce some sort of ban and restriction on abortion, so you have the other half of the country that will need to prepare for how we take care of those patients,” said Jodi Hicks, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. “We’re all imagining and trying to prepare correctly for what that impact will be.”
California already requires health insurance companies to cover abortions. But insurers often charge things like co-pays and deductibles that can add an average of $543 to the cost of a medication abortion and $887 to the cost of a procedural abortion, according to an analysis by the California Health Benefits Review Program.
The law Newsom signed on Tuesday eliminates those fees. While the law will make abortions cheaper, it will also slightly increase monthly premiums for patients and their employers.
But the savings from eliminating the fees will be greater than the increased premiums, according to an analysis by the California Health Benefits Review Program.
The law, authored by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, makes California the fourth state to ban the fees — joining Illinois, New York and Oregon.
“As states across the country attempt to move us backwards by restricting fundamental reproductive rights, California continues to protect and advance reproductive freedom for all,” Newsom said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide this summer whether to uphold a law in Mississippi that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. During a public hearing on the case last year, a majority of justices indicated they were willing to uphold the law and even overturn Roe v. Wade.
Scottish MP for Glasgow East, John Mason, during a debate Tuesday on legislation to ban the practice of conversion therapy in the Scottish Parliament, compared it to getting therapy assistance for saying no to eating too much chocolate.
Speaking to his fellow parliamentarians Mason said sexual orientations must be accepted “to a large extent” but the argued that for conservative religious communities, being LGBTQ was an issue not dissimilar to “self-control and choosing not to put your thoughts or desires into action.”
Mason also argued that religious groups could be described as being “above and beyond the law of the land,” comparing this to bowling clubs having mandatory dress codes, and added that for those people who are religious, the word “conversion” was “good” because it meant “turning away from something bad like alcohol or drug abuse.”
Anderson, in an interview with the Daily Record this past July, described his experience as “intimate, non-physical abuse from someone who intended to ‘cure’ his homosexuality.” He told the Daily Record, “I lived in a strict religious household, and had grown up being told that being gay was a sin. When I came out, that was the response. I was told it wasn’t an option and given an ultimatum — to be gay, or disowned.
“I was only 14, a child. I was scared, and so for the next five years I repressed my sexuality. l couldn’t explore it or express it. I pretended I was straight, in relationships with girls, and couldn’t tell anyone else I was gay.”
He goes on to relate that his experience as a “more informal, intimate form of violence,” which at times left him feeling suicidal. “I endured gas lighting, bullying, harassment and isolation,” he said.
“It always took the form of a one-on-one discussion, away from the rest of the family, to talk. I was subjected to prayers in that capacity, biblical writing, teaching on a one-on-one environment. I was threatened, told that if I was to practice my homosexuality in any way, family members would die as a result — they’d be killed by God. Other controlling behavior included being denied access to healthcare,” Anderson said.
The National, a Scottish newspaper reported that Ross Greer, Greens MSP for western Scotland, said it was “wrong” to characterize the debate as being a “conflict between LGBTQ people and people of faith.” He added that most religious leaders have supported a ban on the practice.
A source in the SNP told the Washington Blade on Wednesday that Mason was oft times seen as an abomination who has only been able to keep his seat due to his longevity in the party.
“We are at a precious point in the party’s history, there is a regressive wing of the party that has been permanent throughout its recent history and, by virtue of being permanent (and arguably having paid membership fees, campaigned etc), thinks it is entitled to the present,” the source said.
“Ultimately there are more and more of the older generation who are having to reckon with the fact this party is no longer what it once was — socially conservative and anti-Europe/internationalist. Mason is someone who was part of the party when it was like that and hasn’t yet left or died. He and those like him are merely voicing the concerns of the past but increasingly irrelevant,” the source noted.
During the debate on same-sex marriage in Scotland, Mason was widely condemned for raising a motion stating that “while some in society approve of same-sex sexual relationships, others do not agree with them” and that no person or organization should be forced to be involved or to approve of same-sex marriage.
Mason’s history of inflammatory rhetoric includes most recently in June 2018, when Glasgow Live reported he responded to an email from a constituent saying he did not agree with retrospective pardons for gay men convicted of having consensual sex before decriminalization. He wrote, “I do not see that we can go round pardoning and apologizing for everything that other people did that does not conform to modern customs. Will the Italians be apologizing for the Roman occupation?”
In November 2018 he wrote a letter to the Herald newspaper to complain that transgender people “override science.” Then in January of this year Mason referred to trans women as “people whose biological sex is male” and suggested that those convicted of crimes should serve their sentences in male prisons.
As the world continues to watch the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine with horror, one question continues to plague the minds of queer activists in the West: what about the LGBTQ people?
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has a long record of oppression of the queer community from public humiliation and imprisonment to encouraging mob violence. Filmmaker David France documented Putin’s anti-gay campaign in his film Welcome to Chechnya [now streaming on HBO Max] which detailed queer oppression in the titular Russia-allied republic.
Will Ukraine face the same fate? We sat down with France to discuss the situation for LGBTQ people living in Russia and Ukraine, the state of the underground resistance, and how Vladimir Putin has declared all-out war on queer people. France also reveals how the same forces of oppression have infected the United States, and how preserving democracy may hold the only hope for LGBTQ people in the future.
Are you in contact with the Rainbow Railroad (an underground resistance that smuggles queer people out of Eastern Europe) in Ukraine?
I did just speak with David Isteev [from Welcome to Chechnya] who is doing rescues in the Caucasus. He wanted to talk about what was happening to queers in Russia because of the invasion.
So what’s the situation there?
They are despairing. I’ve never heard the kind of grimness from the folks I know that we’re hearing now. The entire leadership of the LGBTQ movement in Russia is now outside Russia.
They’ve all had to flee?
Correct. Not just because of the invasion, but there was also a crackdown in the months leading up. [The Putin government] has made it impossible for queer leaders to do their work, and they’ve strangled their source of funding. Now the borders are closed, so it’s not possible to move money into the country. It’s not possible to access the money they have in the country. And the people outside the country trying to help are delivering money to the border in cash.
I’m sure that carries a whole other set of risks.
Yes. And if they bring money in US dollars, is it possible to change it into rubles? And if it is rubles, it’s worth almost nothing.
So is the solution to escape?
Well, here’s another problem. It’s not possible to enter most countries without proving vaccination status, and with an approved vaccine. Almost nobody has approved Sputnik 5, the Russian vaccine, because they’ve never produced reputable data. So if you have Sputnik 5, you’re not getting into Europe.
Putin’s persecution of LGBTQ people is nothing new. Is this personal for him?
It is a strategy that works. 10 or 15 years ago, he discovered the more he spoke against queer folks, the more he generated a divide that turned people against people, instead of against the government.
Putin said he wants to install a new government in Ukraine. How safe is it to believe he would install a leader similar to the one he appointed in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov?
Well, Putin has been using an anti-queer plank in Ukraine for the past decade alleging that if Ukraine joins NATO, they will have to recognize marriage equality. And in some corners, it has worked. It worked with the Russian Orthodox Church—in the past week, they’ve come out in favor of the invasion and against “the gay agenda.”
So what you’re actually saying—Putin’s fighting an international war on LGBTQ people?
Absolutely true. He’s saying modernity and liberalism equal queerness. He’s pulling the Iron Curtain closed again to resist the queer movement. It’s that central.
The Western media implies that the invasion of Ukraine is unpopular in Russia…
Well, from what I understand from my Russian friends is just the opposite. The people they talk to, family, for example, don’t believe [the invasion] is happening.
They don’t believe the war is real?
Correct. They have no access to Western or social media. The Kremlin made it a crime to report on Ukraine. People don’t have any reason to believe there is a war unless they have children coming back in body bags.
That’s a total page out of the Stalinist playbook.
That’s why it’s an Iron Curtain—you can’t communicate. And so many young Russians have great experiences traveling across Europe. They’re very integrated into world culture. And those are the people protesting in little pockets here and there. But between 10-15,000 have been arrested. People are just disappearing for saying there’s a war.
So let me ask you then: there seems to be this link between autocracy and autocratic-type leaders and homophobia or anti-queer sentiment. Why?
People want to know what’s causing their problems. It just turns out that it works if you say queers are to blame. Since Putin started his return to power on the backs of the queer community, other leaders take note. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is doing that in Hungary. It’s happening in Poland. It’s a successful campaign in Belarus. And Trump discovered you could do it here.
Indeed.
It’s a huge shock. For those of us that saw 50 years of LGBTQ civic engagement and thought it was a permanent victory are having to reckon with it getting rolled back. Look what just happened in the Virginia Governor’s race.
Or Florida. Or Texas. Or Georgia.
Mmhmm. And what’s happening to queers in Ukraine—many queer Russians had fled there. The LGBTQ community had a stronghold there, and now that’s at risk. Putin’s state department issued a “kill list” for invading forces to round up and kill political leadership in the country as well as LGBTQ leaders. They gave the hit list to an elite force out of Chechnya. And men can’t get out of Ukraine. They’re terrified.
What’s happening now has people scared. Will Putin go for broke? Will he level Kiev? Will flatten Odessa? Will he drop a nuclear bomb?
Well, if he drops a nuclear bomb, we all have a lot more to worry about.
Yes. And that’s why everyone is praising the Ukrainian resistance, but talking about [Putin’s] “off ramp.” He may feel like he has no choice but to throw everything at it. And if the West gives him Ukraine, what does that mean [for the rest of Eastern Europe]?
Is there anything we can do in the West?
We need to start talking about how queer panic is being weaponized as the chief articulation of Putin’s dissent for his own military actions. Continue to support the Rainbow Railroad. They’re not solving problems, but they are creating a pipeline for flight. That saves lives. And look to LGA Europe and LGA Asia. They’re doing important work too.
So then, how much of the future of LGBTQ equality is tied to democracy?
It is plain that where democracy is strong, our movement has been successful. There’s a 100% correlation. But crushing democracy in Ukraine will only harm queers there along with everybody else. Putin and his oligarchs have sucked trillions out of the economy and done nothing for the Russian people.
The special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ rights abroad on Friday said she and her office continue to provide support to advocacy groups in Ukraine and in countries that border it.
Jessica Stern told the Washington Blade during a telephone interview that she has held “multiple roundtables” with Ukrainian activists and organizations “to make sure that my office and I both have the relationships and then getting information directly from people on the frontlines.” Stern also noted she has also spoken with LGBTQ rights organizations in Poland, Hungary and other countries that “would be receiving LGBTQI Ukrainian refugees” and regional and international groups “that are closely monitoring and supporting LGBTQI Ukrainians in this incredibly difficult time.”
“The first and most important thing that the U.S. has been doing has been establishing contact with people who are advocating for and servicing LGBTQI Ukrainians, and then in all instances, trying to find ways to support them,” said Stern. “One of the things that’s been really important has been to identify the sort of patterns of human rights abuses, violations and vulnerability that they’re tracking that we need to be aware of.”
Stern said the State Department has “activated” its grant mechanisms to provide financial support to LGBTQ organizations in Ukraine and in surrounding countries.
“One of the things we’ve been focused on has been ensuring that LGBTQI Ukrainian organizations and LGBTQI organizations in the surrounding countries have the financial resources to provide emergency support to this population that finds itself facing double and triple discrimination,” she said.
Stern told the Blade a “top priority” is to ensure that humanitarian assistance to Ukraine “is distributed without discrimination.”
“One of the message that my office has been conveying and with working with others at the State Department to convey is that LGBTQI Ukrainian refugees are at heightened risk and that they should be supported and that anyone providing humanitarian assistance should actually be on the watch for instances of discrimination or violence they may be subjected to.”
Stern said her office has not received “too many stories of (discrimination) incidents, but we have to been able to sound the alarm.”
“The institutions and partners, we work with have been taking that seriously,” she said.
Russian airstrike kills Kharkiv activist
Stern spoke with the Blade less than a month after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
A Russian airstrike in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in the eastern part of the country, on March 1 killed Elvira Schemur, a 21-year-old law student who was a volunteer for Kharkiv Pride and Kyiv Pride. A group of “bandits” on the same day broke into the Kyiv offices of Nash Mir, an LGBTQ rights group, and attacked four activists who were inside.
“The case of Nash Mir was really horrific and really demonstrated the kind of opportunistic violence that LGBTQI persons, human rights defenders and organizations can be subject to right now by both state and non-state actors,” said Stern.
Stern told the Blade that activists have also said many transgender and gender non-conforming Ukrainians have decided to remain in the country because they cannot exempt themselves from military conscription.
“What I’ve been told is that many trans and gender non-conforming Ukrainians are sheltering in place, and even in some cases staying in places where they are at risk of being attacked by missiles and bombs and definitely in harm’s way simply because they’re concerned that they don’t have a way of being exempted from military conscription,” she said.
Stern cited the case of a trans man who tried to leave Ukraine and “in an effort to prove who he was who he said he was, he was actually forced to remove his shirt and show his chest” at the border.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the only humiliating and potentially violent incident that I’m hearing us,” she said.
Stern expressed concern about safety of gay men who are conscripted into the Ukrainian armed forces. Stern also noted “all women are at risk in times of war and conflict.”
“There’s absolutely a concern about the safety and well-being of lesbian and bisexual and trans and intersex women,” she said.
Challenges for LGBTQ Ukrainians ‘will be enormous’
Stern told the Blade the State Department is “working to provide as much support as possible for all Ukrainians that want to leave the country.”
She noted many LGBTQ activists in Ukraine with whom she spoke immediately after the invasion began said they did not want to leave. Stern acknowledged some of them have now fled the country.
“The invasion has just been so violent that even the most committed activists that people we both know have had to change their strategy,” said Stern. “So, in every instance where I’m hearing of an individual or a group that is at risk and wants to leave, we’re doing everything we can to help give them the support they need.”
“Most people do not become refugees,” she added. “You know, most people cannot leave … the global community should do everything we possibly can to affirm the human rights and provide support for Ukrainian refugees.”
President Biden shortly after he took office issued a memorandum that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ rights around the world.
Letters that Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality and Ukraine Caucuses sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the eve of the invasion noted Ukraine in recent years “has made great strides towards securing equality for LGBTQ people within its borders and is a regional leader in LGBTQ rights.” These advances include a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and efforts to protect Pride parades.
Stern reiterated the challenges for LGBTQ people inside Ukraine “will be enormous” as the conflict drags on.
“In all war and conflict, anyone who is vulnerable and vulnerable before the conflict remains at heightened risk and even becomes at greater risk,” she said. “Where people have access to weapons and LGBTQI people are unsafe. In a context where the rule of law is weak, LGBTQI people are at risk as the Nash Mir case showed us immediately.”
“I’m very worried that discrimination and violence will rise for LGBTQI people in Ukraine,” added Stern. “I’m extremely concerned that the track record from the Russian government on these issues is a harbinger of danger for LGBTQI Ukrainians in Russian occupied parts of the country.”
California could provide legal refuge to displaced transgender youth and their families under a proposal announced Thursday that joins a growing list of initiatives from the nation’s most populous state aimed at counterbalancing actions in Texas and other conservative places.
Democratic state lawmakers said they will introduce legislation to offer California as a safe haven for parents in other states who risk having their transgender children taken away or from being criminally prosecuted for supporting their children’s access to gender-affirming procedures and other health care.
The measure is a response to moves in several Republican-dominated states and particularly Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state agencies to consider removing transgender children from their families and placing them in foster care. A Texas judge last week temporarily blocked that effort, although the state is appealing.
California Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener said his bill would ensure that “California is a place of refuge for transgender children and their parents as a wave of criminalization sweeps through Texas and other states.”
“They have a safe place to go if they’re threatened with prosecution,” he added. “California will not be a party to this new wave of deadly LGBTQ criminalization.”
Jonathan Keller, president of the conservative California Family Council, responded to the proposal by citing the story of a woman who said last week that her 16-year-old daughter killed herself while receiving gender-affirming treatment against her mother’s wishes.
The mother spoke during a forum by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank, entitled Protecting Our Children: How Radical Gender Ideology is Taking Over Public Schools & Harming Kids.
“California should not be complicit in the sterilization and permanent disfigurement of American’s children,” Keller said.
The bill to provide refuge to transgender youth and their families is the latest effort by California officials to counter moves on generally liberal vs. conservative issues like abortion and gun control in other states.
Wiener’s approach is similar to the provisions in another pending California bill responding to efforts in other states to restrict abortions.
It would bar the enforcement of civil judgments against doctors who perform abortions on patients from other states. It’s among several measures designed to make California a sanctuary for people seeking or providing abortions.
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In a spinoff move, California is also advancing efforts to target illicit assault-style weapons with legislation patterned on Texas’ attempt to restrict abortions, by allowing private citizens to take legal action against gunmakers.
Like the abortion bill, the transgender bill would reject any out-of-state court judgments removing transgender children from their parents’ custody because they allowed their children to receive gender-affirming healthcare.
Because the judgments in other states wouldn’t be enforced in California, families could move to California to avoid having their children taken away from them.
It would also prohibit California officials from complying with out-of-state subpoenas seeking medical or related information about people who travel to California for gender-affirming care. To be blocked, the subpoena would have to be related to attempts to file criminal charges or remove children from their homes for receiving gender-affirming care.
The measure would also make it California’s policy that any out-of-state criminal arrest warrants based on an alleged violation of another state’s law against receiving gender-affirming care would be the lowest priority for law enforcement in California.
“We will not allow other states to hunt our community within California’s borders,” said Tami Martin, legislative director at Equality California, which says it is the largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization in the U.S. Her organization is co-sponsoring the bill with Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.
Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender-confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee has approved a similar measure.
Idaho legislators last week introduced legislation that would make it a felony for parents to allow their children to obtain gender-affirming care, though the measure failed.
Advocates of California’s measure said there also are legislative efforts to restrict gender-affirming care pending in Alabama, Arizona and Louisiana.
Supporters of the California bill said efforts to suppress transgender youth can lead to fear and mental health issues including depression and suicidal thoughts.
Those problems can be magnified if youths are denied access to gender-affirming care including hormones and puberty-blockers, or if their parents were prosecuted, bill supporters said.
“Families will be separated and children will die because of these policies,” said Alexis Sanchez, director of advocacy and training at the Sacramento LGBT Community Center.
Lawmakers have rejected legislation that would have made Kosovo the first Muslim-majority country in the world to legalise same-sex civil unions.
Kosovo wants to join the European Union, and the bid to introduce same-sex marriage was part of modernising efforts by prime minister Albin Kurti’s government, which also tried to introduce other rights for minorities and business reforms
But after hours of debate, just 28 out of MPs out of 120 voted in favour of the motion with some members of Kurti’s Vetevendosje party voting against it, according to Euractiv. Many against the draft code cited religious beliefs and “family values”.
Vetevendosje representative Labinote Demi-Murtezi said during the debate that she only “sees as acceptable the marriage of persons of opposite sex”.
She added: “Any connection outside of this combination is considered depravity and moral degeneration.”
LGBT+ and human rights groups were devastated by the news, and protesters took to the streets of Kosovo’s capital Pristina on Thursday (17 March).
According to Balkan Insight, they chanted, “homophobes, you have no place in parliament” and “love is resistance; we also are part of the family”.
After the legalisation of civil unions was snubbed, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Kurti, as well as Kosovo’s president Vjosa Osmani and minister of justice Albulena Haxhiu, urging them to go further and push for full marriage equality.
“We believe that extending marriage to same-sex couples is the most rights-respecting option for Kosovo to pursue,” the human rights group wrote.
“Partnership recognition is a step forward – any protection is better than none – but civil union is unlikely to protect people’s rights to the same extent as equal marriage, and indeed, can signal continued inequality…
“We hope that the Kosovo government will work to ensure that same-sex couples have the same rights as other couples, and to eradicate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in family law.”