It was a typical day for Juniper Simonis. The freelance ecologist decided to break from work for lunch at about 3 p.m. to take their service dog, Wallace, to the local dog park and grab a bite to eat.
But a planned peaceful afternoon quickly turned ugly. Simonis says they survived a gang assault of about 30 perpetrators in Gresham, Ore., a suburb outside of Portland. The Oregon resident encountered the group for only minutes but suffered a concussion, sprained jaw, extensive car damage and verbal assaults, they said.
“They nearly killed me,” they said.
Simonis said they turned into a parking lot to pick up lunch in Gresham, Ore., and stumbled upon a rally that included several members of the Proud Boys — a far-right, ultra-nationalist organization known for its anti-LGBTQ, anti-feminism and neo-fascist ideologies.
There was a “Flag Ride” right-wing rally in a parking lot earlier that day. Simonis was under the impression the event had ended after checking reports on Twitter. After pulling into the lot, originally to look for lunch options, Simonis saw a large gathering still in the lot.
Simonis decided to take pictures of what was happening to post online to warn others and was intentional in keeping their distance, they said. As Simonis was preparing to leave the area, they yelled from inside the car, “Fuck you, fascists, go home.”
“I did not expect this to escalate into violence,” they said.
The attack itself only lasted about three minutes, Simonis said. Simonis was quickly surrounded by several people and physically blocked from leaving the lot. People stepped in front of the parking lot exit, then a car was moved to barricade Simonis. People began to shout homophobic slurs at Simonis, they said.
“I’m in serious trouble now and I know it,” they said.
Simonis was then punched while inside their vehicle and was briefly knocked out. They regained consciousness a few seconds later, and a cinder block was thrown at the car and shattered the back window of their car inches away from their service dog, Wallace.
Simonis got out of the car to assess the damage and make sure their service dog was safe. They quickly got back in their car and was able to leave the lot by maneuvering around the blocked exit, Simonis said.
Looking back at the photos and videos Simonis took before the assault, Simonis said they saw people looking into the camera and acknowledging them taking photos.
“I honestly don’t know if I hadn’t said anything, that … things would have gone any different,” they said.
Last year, Simonis was targeted and arrested by federal police in Portland during the tumultuous Black Lives Matter protests in the city. They were denied medical attention, misgendered, jumped and aggressively handcuffed while taken into custody.
Simonis is still working through legal proceedings in a multi-plaintiff lawsuit.
A witness to the event called the Gresham Police Department, which was only a few blocks away from the incident. But the call went to voicemail and the witness did not leave a message, Simonis said.
Another witness called 911, Simonis said, which led to an officer calling Simonis about 45 minutes after the accident to take a report.
In the police report obtained by the Blade, Simonis is consistently misgendered. Simonis’ sex is also listed as “unknown” in the report. The incident was labeled as vehicle vandalism.
Simonis said the conversation with the officer was filled with victim-blaming and the officer wrote in the report that Simonis should avoid “approaching groups of this nature.”
“At no point in this conversation does he treat me as an actual victim of a crime,” Simonis said.
The Gresham Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Weeks after the assault, Simonis is struggling mentally and physically, they said.
The concussion makes working on a computer virtually impossible because of light sensitivity and trouble focusing, Simonis said. The pain caused by the sprained jaw makes it difficult to focus, as well.
Simonis is not able to begin physical therapy for their jaw until November because of long medical wait times, they said. The cost to repair the car damages will be about $8,000, as well, they said.
The times where Simonis is able to focus are usually taken up by piecing together what happened that day, they said.
“The part of my brain that I use for work has been hijacked functionally by the part of the brain that needed to know what happened to me,” they said. “There is such a painful need to understand what happened to me.”
Because of past traumatic events, like the experience of being in federal custody last year, Simonis said processing and living with the trauma is a bit easier to handle. But their ability to work will be forever changed yet again, they said.
“I’m not able to work at the pace that I used to work at before I was assaulted by DHS. I’ll never be,” they said. “And this is just a further knockdown.”
The trauma of the event has increased Simonis’ hyper-vigilance, as well.
“Every time I hear a car go by, I’m double-checking,” they said.
Even though Simonis has the tools to process and live with the immense trauma, they will never be the same person, they said.
“They fucking changed my life forever. Point blank,” they said. “Not just mentally, but physically and physiologically. I can’t go back to where I was before. I’m lucky that I survived.”
Simonis has reported the attack to the FBI and is pursuing legal action with two specific goals in mind: to heal and to prevent similar crimes from happening.
“I am somebody who believes in abolishing the carceral system and the justice system as it exists and policing,” Simonis said. “But also a 37-year-old trans and disabled person who somehow managed to survive this long. And so naturally has become pragmatic about the world.”
Because of the reaction of the Gresham Police Department, Simonis did not want to work with local officers and instead went to the federal level. But because of the alleged assault by agents in Portland last year, this decision wasn’t easy for them.
Perpetrators in the assault threatened to call the police on Simonis, even though Simonis did not commit a crime. Reporting the crime to the federal level is also a layer of protection, they said.
“All of this is forcing my hand,” they said. There is no easy decision in the situation, they added.
“We all know that crimes are underreported. We hear about it all the time,” they said. And there are reasons why people don’t report crimes and they’re totally understandable. A lot of victims are very concerned about what will happen if they break anonymity. In my situation, I’ve already broken anonymity.”
With recent arrests and crackdowns on the Proud Boys and other hate groups in the United States, Simonis is bracing for a long process.
“This isn’t just going to go on a shelf,” they said.
Sixteen transgender and intersex activists from around the world on Tuesday participated in a White House listening session.
A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Blade the meeting was one of “a series of listening sessions that State is organizing on the human rights of transgender individuals” through the Interagency Working Group on Safety, Inclusion and Opportunity for Transgender Americans, which the White House Domestic Policy and Gender Policy
The Departments of Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Homeland Security, Labor, Interior and Veterans Affairs participate in the working group. The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development are, according to the State Department spokesperson, “also participating to strengthen efforts to protect transgender individuals from violence and discrimination around the world.”
“These listening sessions will inform the working group’s review of policies that drive violence and poverty for transgender individuals at home and around the world, including homelessness, employment discrimination, violence and abuse, and bullying and rejection at school,” said the State Department spokesperson.
“She looks forward to learning from transgender and intersex human rights defenders what their most pressing priorities are for continued U.S. engagement,” said the State Department spokesperson.
Alexus D’Marco, executive director of the D’Marco Organization in the Bahamas, is among those who the White House invited to participate in one of Tuesday’s sessions.
“It is timely and important that the Caribbean region is included in this discussion,” D’Marco told the Blade. “As a region, we are often left behind. LGB and trans citizens in the Caribbean are becoming more visible; their access to healthcare, housing, justice, education and a decent quality of life are often impeded and fuel by stigma and discriminations.”
“I am grateful to be apart of theses discussion to move the Caribbean region forward,” added D’Marco.
Following a string of violence against Black trans women, LGBTQ activists in New York took to the streets in summer 2020 to draw attention to the deadly issue.
Jason Rosenberg and Marti Gould Cummings were among those who joined the June 2 demonstration in front of the iconic Stonewall Inn.
City officials set a curfew that night, and shortly after the 8 p.m. deadline, a number of the protesters — who were walking arm-in- arm — were arrested and violently attacked, according to Rosenberg, a member of the activist group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
“I felt excessive and violent force on all sides of my body and was knocked unconscious and woke up maybe a minute or two later,” he told NBC News. “My glasses were on the floor, my mask was off and my head was bloody.”
Despite the injuries he allegedly endured at the hands of police, Rosenberg said, he was denied medical treatment while in custody and ended up with a broken arm and 11 staples in his head after seeking treatment following his release.
“There was even a point where we were all sitting waiting to be transported to whatever detention center we were going to be processed at and people were chanting ‘Medic! Medic! He needs medical attention here,’” he added.
Cummings, a former New York City Council candidate who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said police officers were “really targeting protesters.” Cummings, who was arrested and spent more than 10 hours in police custody before being released, said they were unable to make a phone call and did not hear their Miranda rights.
“This is not an isolated incident, especially from the NYPD,” Rosenberg said. According to the New York City-based Legal Aid Society, 295 people in Manhattan alone had been “languishing in detention for 24+ hours” as of the morning of June 3, 2020, in the aftermath of widespread protests.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment on Rosenberg’s and Cummings’ specific allegations, but the New York City Law Department did issue a statement at the time.
“The accusation that officers are retaliating against New Yorkers who are protesting is disingenuous, exceptionally unfair, and perhaps deliberately ignoring the fact that the Police Department is dealing with a crisis within a crisis,” the department said, according to a report published by the nonprofit news site The Marshall Project.
Treatment like the one Rosenberg and Cummings said they were subjected to are not unique to New York City. Reports can be found across the United States of police allegedly using excessive force against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. There have also been numerous incidents in which LGBTQ individuals said members of law enforcement made disparaging remarks about their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to news reports, lawsuits and academic studies.
These incidents — along with the historically fraught relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community — have led a growing number of police departments across the country to introduce LGBTQ awareness and cultural competency training for their officers. With trainings found from Washington, D.C., to Palo Alto, California, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; rather, departments are crafting programs that take into consideration their specific communities.
‘Lingering effects’
The relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community has long been strained. Perhaps one of the most well-known examples of this rocky relationship is the iconic 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. The multiday protest — widely considered a pivotal turning point in the modern gay rights movement — was triggered by a police raid on the popular Stonewall Inn gay bar.
Throughout much of modern U.S. history, police officers were bound to enforce explicitly anti-gay laws — fromlocal measures outlawing men from “impersonating a female” to the widespread criminalization of same-sex sexual activity. In fact, it wasn’t until the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas that gay sex was decriminalized throughout the country.
“These laws do have lingering effects,” said Christy Mallory, legal director at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ think tank. “It can happen in subtle ways from being ingrained in some people’s heads that somehow same-sex relationships are inferior or should still be criminalized.”
“Given that this history is not so long ago, there are people who remember being wrapped up in that, which can come both on the law enforcement side and within the LGBTQ communities,” she added.
A 2015 report, co-authored by Mallory, highlights the numerous surveys, court cases and academic studies that document the alleged discrimination and harassment of LGBTQ people by law enforcement. Most notably, the report points to a 2013 survey of anti-LGBTQ violence survivors who interacted with police that found almost half (48 percent) reported they had experienced police misconduct in the previous year, including use of excessive force and entrapment.
Within the broader LGBTQ community, transgender individuals and queer people of color are at a particularly high risk of encountering police misconduct, according to other recent reports.
The National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found 58 percent of trans respondents who said they interacted with police in the previous year alleged they had been harassed by law enforcement. The survey also found 57 percent of respondents said they were uncomfortable contacting police for help.
In response to allegations such as these, New York recently repealedan anti-loitering code — dubbed the “walking while trans” law — that transgender advocates said was penalizing trans women for simply walking down the street. A similar anti-loitering code has been on the books since 1995 in California, with state Sen. Scott Wiener recently introducing a bill that would overturn this law.
Black LGBTQ people, too, report more harassment from police.
A study published in June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by Devin English, a public health professor at Rutgers University, found 43 percent of Black sexual minority men experienced police discrimination in the past year. This unequal treatment had a range of negative effects on this community, including high levels of depression and anxiety, according to him.
While many explicitly discriminatory laws and policies targeting LGBTQ people have been repealed, there remains an issue with overpolicing of queer people, according to Mallory. She pointed to a study published by the Williams Institute in May that found lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people are six times more likely than the general public to be stopped by police (data about transgender individuals were not available in the datasets analyzed).
One way this historically fraught relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community has manifested over the past several years is in the decision to ban uniformed police officersfrom participating in Pride marches. The bans have been divisive, even within the LGBTQ community — and particularly among openly gay police officers.
One of the Williams Institute’s key recommendations to help bridge the divide, according to Mallory, is the implementation of LGBTQ sensitivity, diversity and specialization trainings within law enforcement departments.
Mallory said there are currently no federal laws that mandate LGBTQ training for law enforcement offers, but two states — California and New Jersey — recently mandated such training. More common, however, are individual police departments instituting these measures, though Malory said there’s no reliable data on how many have such training in place.
‘We can continue to build trust’
A number of law enforcement departments have proactively decided to add LGBTQ programs to their arsenal of training courses. In fact, the largest local police departments in the U.S. — New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington, D.C. — all offer some form of LGBTQ training.
The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — the sixth largest local police department in the U.S. — has been offering LGBTQ training since 2000, though it expanded its curriculum in 2015. Sgt. Nicole Brown, who has been a supervisor for the department’s LGBT liaison unit for the past three years, said her department was the first in the nation to offer such training.
Prior to the start of this training, negative attitudes about the LGBTQ community were reportedly pervasive within the department: In 1996, during a retraining of veteran officers, a word association exercise asked for responses to the word “gays.” The officers’ answers — which elicited no positive or even neutral responses — included “wrong,” “weird,” “faggots,” “AIDS,” “ungodly,” “don’t like ‘em” and “immoral,” according to a reporter for The Washington Post, who was present during the training.
Brown, who has worked as a D.C. police officer for 14 years, said she has seen first-hand the value of effective LGBTQ training for law enforcement. She regularly trains officers across the district in intensive courses ranging from how to approach investigating suspected anti-LGBTQ hate crimes to the importance of using the correct pronouns for transgender people.
But for Brown, there’s no substitute for on-the-beat training in the community, a community she herself is a part of.
“When officers come over to our unit, they get a chance to meet members of the LGBT community and hear their stories. They meet different community leaders that we interact with daily, then they go back to their respective districts and share what they’ve learned with their colleagues,” she said.
Informal, face-to-face meetings, she added, can go a long way to break down preconceived ideas police and LGBTQ community members may have of each other and help foster solid relationships. Brown said she often hears from fellow officers, as well as the people they police, that quick check-ins can open up conversations around similar experiences and make common ground easier to find.
Without building a rapport with LGBTQ residents, trust is hard to build, and awkward encounters are more likely, she said. Once officers get the cultural competency portion of training, they better understand some of the unique issues LGBTQ individuals face in the city and how the department can better support them, according to Brown.
“I think a lot of officers can become a little hung up on the fact that they don’t want to step on any toes and want to be as politically correct as possible,” she said. Following the training, she added, “their approach moves to: “I shouldn’t be nervous that I’m going to say the wrong thing, because I am treating this person like a human being, how I would like to be treated.”
While efforts are being made by the D.C. police to improve the relationship between members of the LGBTQ community and law enforcement, some local activists still have reservations about engaging with police.
Sultan Shakir, executive director of D.C.-based SMYAL, an organization that supports and empowers LGBTQ youths, said that while the training has some benefits, it fails to address the root causes of police misconduct.
“A training will help someone learn how to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, but it’s unlikely to really change someone’s attitude towards an entire group of people, particularly when that attitude is probably based on centuries of what society has told them to think about someone,” he said. “You can’t change that mentality in a two-hour training.”
Shakir said he would prefer a system where first responders are social workers trained on “supporting you from a trauma-informed approach” and “de-escalation.”
“We do our absolute best to try not to engage with the police department,” he said. “When it comes to our work, there’s a lot of very understandable fear, trauma, frustration and anger with a lot of the youth we work with around past engagements with the police.”
While the district has provided some form of LGBTQ-specific training for law enforcement officers for more than two decades, some localities — including Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Grand Forks, North Dakota — have only recently started to incorporate this type of training.
City officials in Grand Rapids approved LGBTQ training for police officers and firefighters in April, at a maximum cost of $20,000 for both departments as part of the one-off scheme. This pilot program includes learning about best practices in de-escalation for LGBTQ individuals, microaggressions, misgendering and the historical relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community.
“We know that historically, the LGBTQ community has been arrested and incarcerated more [than the general public],” said Christin M. Johnson, lead oversight specialist at the Grand Rapids Office of Oversight and Public Accountability. “The point of these training sessions is to make sure that everybody feels welcome and that police are treating people fairly across the board.”
The Grand Forks Police Department recently announced it would launch a Safe Places initiative, which aims to train officers and local businesses to better support LGBTQ victims of hate crimes and harassment. First introduced by the Seattle Police Department in May 2015, Safe Places offers LGBTQ people the ability to report crimes to local businesses and organizations familiar to them that have signed up for the program.
“Some people aren’t comfortable with police coming to them, or them going to a police department,” Officer Brian Samson, the Grand Forks Police Department’s LGBTQ liaison, told the Grand Forks Herald in July. “Seattle found that when people go to a place they’re familiar with, or a local business, the people filing a complaint, or whatever’s going on — it’s easier to communicate with the police better, because it’s a neutral place for both parties.”
After introducing its version of the Safe Places initiative, the Seattle Police Department saw a major increase in the number of reports about harassment and hate crimes in the community. In 2014, 26 anti-LGBTQ crimes were reported to the department, and in 2015, when the Safe Place program had been in place for the last eight months of that year, the department saw 71 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes reported.
“We hope that the LGBTQ and minority communities see that reporting these crimes is important, and that they will be investigated and prosecuted, and that they know they can work with the police department and feel safe in doing so,” Seattle Police Department spokesman Sgt. Randy Huserik said.
‘Institutional hatred’
While some police forces are voluntarily choosing to launch LGBTQ-focused initiatives, others are doing so after being sued by alleged victims of police brutality.
Gustavo Alvarez, a gay resident of Palo Alto, California, settled his lawsuit against its police department after accusing it of violating his civil rights, resulting in a settlement that included a $572,500 payout and a one-off two hours of mandatory LGBTQ-awareness training for all police officers in the department.
Alvarez alleged in his complaint that multiple officers used excessive force and specifically targeted him because of his sexual orientation. A surveillance video recorded Feb. 17, 2018, from Alvarez’s security camera at his home in the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park showed officers slamming him against a car, and one officer, Sgt. Wayne Benitez, pushing Alvarez’s head into the car’s windshield.The complaint says the officers initiated contact with Alvarez because one of them believed he was driving with a suspended license.It also alleges Alvarez was “mocked, made fun of and humiliated because of his sexual orientation” while in police custody.
The microphone worn by Benitez recorded him mocking Alvarez by talking in a “very flamboyant, high-pitched tone when he was pretending to be Mr. Alvarez,” according to Alvarez’s attorney, Cody Salfen.
Following the incident, Benitez was placed on administrative leave and retired from the department in September 2019. As part of the settlement, Benitez was required to make an apology to Alvarez, which reads in full: “I am sorry for my actions during the arrest of Mr. Alvarez. Regrettably I lost my composure, and hope the settlement allows Mr. Alvarez to move forward with his life. Sincerely, Wayne Benitez.”
“Alvarez was very traumatized by their bigotry,” Salfen said. “There was no secret that he was gay, and the officers definitely used that as a way to demean him in their prior contacts with him and also during this contact.”
Introducing LGBTQ awareness training is a starting point, according to Salfen, but it’s not enough to put an end to discriminatory police attitudes.
“When you have a culture that breeds and perpetuates hatred toward the LGBT community, there’s no way that a two-hour class can eradicate that institutional hatred. These institutional norms have existed and persisted for decades, perhaps even longer. You can’t just flip the switch and have that go away,” he said.
In October 2020, Benitez was charged with assault under color of authority and lying on a police report for his alleged actions during the arrest of Alvarez; he pleaded not guilty. The Palo Alto Police Department said it is not able to discuss the specifics of the civil case due to the ongoing prosecution in the related criminal case, according to James Reifschneider, acting captain of the department’s field services division.
Reifschneider, however, affirmed the importance of police officer training and said the department is going beyond the requirements of California’s Assembly Bill 2504, which mandates all new police officers in the state to receive training about the LGBTQ community.
“Our Department proactively chose to expand this training to include all of our sworn personnel (i.e. veteran officers as well) beginning in January 2020,” he said in an email. “We’ll be continuing to do it on an ongoing basis moving forward.”
State mandates
California became the first state to introduce mandatory training on sexual orientation and gender identity for incoming police officers, after former California Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 2504into law in late 2018. The bill requires new recruits to undertake training in five unique areas, including understanding the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity and how these aspects of identity intersect with race, culture and religion, as well as learning appropriate terminology around sexual orientation and gender identity.
How best to respond effectively to hate crimes and domestic violence with LGBTQ victims and ways to create an inclusive workplace for LGBTQ coworkers are also included in the statewide training. While this law came into force on Jan. 1, 2019, it will be some time before all police officers across the state complete LGBTQ awareness education (and there’s currently no deadline for when officers must complete the training).
“Agencies really are just beginning to offer training now — it just got embedded into the basic training academies last October,” said Greg Miraglia, a former deputy police chief who helped draft the bill. Miraglia also serves as president of Out to Protect, a California-based nonprofit that supports LGBTQ officers.
The combination of Covid-19 restrictions and the logistical difficulty of some police agencies to send their agents away to train are driving an increase in online training. Miraglia estimated that about 1,000 officers have participated in the online training so far and approximately 2,000 have taken part in in-person training.
“In-person training is really the best way to go, because you give people a live chance to interact and to get answers to their questions immediately,” he said. “The online course is somewhat interactive with scenarios to respond to and, of course, it has the same components that a face-to-face class has. It’s definitely better than nothing.”
The State of California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training will not certify anything less than two hours on the topic, with Miraglia recommending at least four hours of LGBTQ awareness training.
“We can get the basics done well in four hours. But, in my view, cultural competence training is a perishable skill, and doing refresher training on issues like how to respond to domestic violence and the nuances of dealing with a hate crime victim who happens to be part of the LGBT community, is important moving forward,” he said.
Across the country in New Jersey, on Nov. 20, 2019, Transgender Day of Remembrance, the state’s then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a directive announcing all law enforcement professionals in the state would receive mandated training on how to best interact with transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming individuals. As part of these new rules, officers are directed to address all people by their chosen names and pronouns, even if these don’t match official records. Elements of the directive include the entire LGBTQ community with, for example, police officers required to “not delay responding to, fail to respond to, or treat as less important, any call or request for service or assistance because of the individual’s actual or perceived gender identity or expression and/or sexual orientation.”
Law enforcement officers must also not disclose an individual’s sex assigned at birth unless there is a proper law enforcement purpose. The rise in hate crimes against transgender people was one of the reasons Grewal gave for issuing the directive.
“Building on the extraordinary work of law enforcement agencies across this country and right here in New Jersey, we’re ensuring that our officers will act in ways that promote the dignity and safety of LGBTQ individuals, whether they are victims, witnesses, suspects, arrestees, or other members of the public,” Grewal said in a statement. “Only by having the trust of our diverse communities can we fulfill our mission of protecting all New Jersey residents.”
Mixed reviews
Some experts, like Mallory at the Williams Institute, say the increase in LGBTQ-specific police training is a positive step forward.
“Not only can training help the LGBTQ community, but it can help police departments do their job better, especially those that are really invested in community policing,” she said. “These trainings can really help get to a place where LGBTQ communities feel comfortable working with law enforcement, and actually enable police to do their jobs better and more safely.”
Tailored LGBTQ training is an important development, according to Mallory, but it’s not the final step. She said it’s critical for these initiatives to incorporate the idea that people with multiple marginalized identities can be put at an increased risk of over-policing, resulting in negative outcomes.
“Those LGBTQ people who are in communities of color can see the issues relating to over policing being amplified,” Mallory added. “These issues need to be at the forefront of any kind of reform and training.”
Others, like Rosenberg and Cummings, are less optimistic.
“I don’t think any type of sensitivity training could work,” Rosenberg said. “A lot of us are past the point of any attempt to reform a very corrupt and broken system.”
For Cummings, a ground-up transformation of policing in the U.S. is the only way forward for law enforcement. In New York City — where LGBTQ training is provided by the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) for both new recruits and veteran officers — Cummings wants the police commissioner to be a civilian and rulings from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the NYPD’s oversight agency, be binding.
“We need to take from the inflated police budget and put funding back into violence interrupters and harm reduction efforts in the community,” they said. “Across the board systemic racism and homophobia is in play within policing, so it goes beyond training and budget. This has been going on since the beginning of our country.”
Some of the 50 human rights activists that a Columbia University researcher has helped evacuate from Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control of the country are LGBTQ.
A press release the Washington Blade received notes Taylor Hirschberg — a researcher at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health who is also a Hearst Foundation scholar — has worked with Belgian Sen. Orry Vandewauwer to help 50 Afghan “activists leave the country.”
“The refugees included those who identify as LGBTQI+ or gender non-conforming and their families,” notes the press release.
The Blade has seen the list of names of the more than 100 people that Hirschberg and Vandewauwer are trying to evacuate from Afghanistan. These include the country’s first female police officer, the independent U.N. expert on Afghanistan and a number of LGBTQ activists.
“There are many more human rights advocates we are still trying to get out of the country,” said Hirschberg.
Hirschberg has previously worked in Afghanistan.
He and Vandewauwer were also once affiliated with Skateistan, an NGO that works with children in the Middle East and Africa. The documentary “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone” features it.
The Taliban entered Kabul, the Afghan capital on Aug. 15 and toppled then-President Ashraf Ghani’s government.
A Taliban judge over the summer said the group would once again execute gay men if it were to return to power in Afghanistan.
The U.S. evacuated more than 100,000 people from the country before American troops completed their withdrawal from the country on Aug. 30. It remains unclear whether the U.S. was able to successfully evacuate LGBTQ Afghans from Kabul International Airport, but Immigration Equality earlier this month said it spoke “directly” with 50 LGBTQ Afghans before the U.S. withdrawal ended.
The Human Rights Campaign; Immigration Equality; the Council for Global Equality; Rainbow Railroad; the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration have called upon the Biden administration to develop a 10-point plan to protect LGBTQ Afghans that includes prioritizing “the evacuation and resettlement of vulnerable refugee populations, including LGBTQI people.” Canada is thus far the only country that has specifically said it would offer refuge to LGBTQ Afghans.
Hirschberg on Monday told the Blade that he and Vandewauwer have charted an airplane to evacuate Afghans, but they have not secured a “third country” to which they can bring them.
“Currently, we are working towards a multi-country collaboration for resettlement,” he said. “Our work has now expanded to include election officials and women activists, including those from the LGBTQI+ community.”
Hirschberg also urged the U.S. and humanitarian organizations to do more to help evacuate LGBTQ people, human rights activists and others from Afghanistan
“I understand that this is complicated and that I do not have all the working pieces but why does the United States ignore those who helped in building their agenda in Afghanistan. The same goes for multilateral organizations,” he told the Blade. “Why are neither funding charters and creating agreement with partnering states? If they are why have the not contacted the countries that we are creating collaborations with?”
A Taiwan court has struck down a rule requiring trans people to have surgery in order to be legally recognised in their correct gender.
Under a government rule, trans people in Taiwan have been forced to have their reproductive organs surgically removed in order to have their gender legally recognised.
A plaintiff named only as Xiao E brought a case to the Taipei High Administrative Court arguing that the policy was unconstitutional. On Thursday (23 September), the court ruled in their favour.
In its ruling, the court said the plaintiff had met all the requirements to have their gender legally recognised. It found that the government’s surgery requirement violated principles of legal reservation, equality and proportionality.
The ruling was hailed as a landmark victory for LGBT+ rights by E-Ling Chiu, director of Amnesty International Taiwan.
“The court’s decision to waive compulsory surgical requirements for people seeking gender affirmation is a landmark moment for transgender rights in Taiwan,” Chiu said.
“Trans people in Taiwan face discrimination and inequality in the legal system and in their daily lives, especially in the workplace and in school.
“Self-determined gender is a cornerstone of a person’s identity, and this ruling highlights the advancement of gender equality and human rights in Taiwan.”
LGBT+ rights activists urged Taiwan’s government to strike down the rule
Chiu added: “We now call on the Ministry of Interior to follow up on this ruling by abolishing the requirement of reproductive organ removal surgery as a proof for those who wish to change their gender as registered at birth by the government.
“The Taiwanese government must offer options that protect gender equality for trans and non-binary people who wish to affirm their gender, in line with international human rights laws and standards.”
The court’s ruling is in line with a 2015 report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report recommended that legal gender recognition should be based on self-determination and that it should be a simple administrative process.
The commissioner also said legal gender recognition should be accessible, cost free, and should not require trans people to undergo abusive medical and legal requirements.
Taiwan is far from the only country that has required trans people to have their reproductive organs removed in order to be legally recognised in their correct gender – in fact, numerous states continue to uphold such requirements, despite backlash from human rights groups.
In 2019, Japan’s Supreme Court upheld a policy requiring trans people to have their reproductive organs removed.
Sweden imposed a similar policy until 2012. In 2017, the government announced that it would offer compensation to those who underwent forced sterilisation.
Roberto Navarro has been a dancer since he was 17. Jazz became his passion and he fell in love with classical dancing after he took many classes. And he began to teach four years later.
“I’m so happy when I teach dancing to my girls because they bring me so much joy, I feel like I help my girls to become better women, without noticing I’m some kind of a therapist,” Navarro told the Washington Blade.
He discovered the discipline of dancing in heels in 2014, which made him connect and explore more with his sexuality. He did, however, suffer a lot of bullying because of it.
Navarro — a 33-year-old gay man who is originally from Sahuayo de Morelos in Michoacán state — currently owns a dance salon. Navarro said he started to become an entrepreneur, but it hasn’t been easy because of the pandemic.
He was diagnosed with HIV in 2016. Navarro suffered from depression for several months after he learned his status.
“I woke up very overwhelmed in the morning thinking that I had to go to the hospital to make a long line of patients; to have blood drawn for fast screening tests,” he said. “We arrived at 7 in the morning and left until 1 in the afternoon.”
Navarro has been receiving treatment for almost five years, and he is still dancing.
“Subsequently, I went to my consultations every three or six months depending on my results,” he stated. “By the third month I was undetectable.”
Navarro started with Atripla, an antiretroviral drug he received through Mexico’s Seguro Popular, and he was undetectable a month later.
A shortage of Atripla forced a change to Biktarby after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2019 scrapped Seguro Popular and created the Health Institute for Wellbeing (INSABI). The pharmaceutical company Gilead has said there are many counterfeit versions of the drug on the market.
Seguro Popular in 2018 had almost 52 million beneficiaries. The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) said INSABI at the end of 2020 had more than 34 million beneficiaries.
Antiretroviral drugs have been available in Mexico since 2003, although the Mexican health system is divided into various subsystems based on where one works.
Institute of Social Security and Services for State Workers (ISSSTE)
Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMS)
INSABI (Health Institute for Wellbeing) that was previously known as the Seguro Popular
They vary in the time it takes to receive medication and the time for CD4 viral load tests. The availability of appointments with infectious disease specialists varies in each of the three public health systems.
People with INSABI will take longer to get tests and have access to doctors. It must also be recognized that everyone, in theory, has the possibility of accessing medicines, but it also depends on the states in which they live.
From Seguro Popular to INSABI
The number of people without access to healthcare in Mexico rose from 20 million to almost 36 million between 2018-2020. INSABI, more than a year after its creation, still does not completely cover the same amount as its predecessor.
INSABI is an independent agency through the Ministry of Health that aims to “provide and ensure the free provision of health services, medicines and other inputs associated with people without social security.” The General Health Law says it was to replace Seguro Popular, which was in place from 2004-2019.
“The situation for treatment right now, it’s quite complex, particularly because there have been many changes in the health department of Mexico, and this has to do with the fact that in 2003 when the Seguro Popular was established; there was an increase to comprehensive care for people living with HIV and resources for prevention strategies which are mainly handled through civil society organizations that obtained money from the government.” stated Ricardo Baruch, who has worked at the International Family Planning Federation for almost 15 years.
López,, who took office in 2018, sought to eliminate Seguro Popular, which was the mechanism by which access to antiretroviral drugs were given to most people living with HIV in the states with greater vulnerability. This change was done in theory to expand access for everyone, but the opposite happened.
There is less access due to the modification of purchasing mechanisms and a huge shortage throughout the country. Baruch says this situation has caused a treatment crisis across Mexico.
“The truth is that the Seguro Popular helped me a lot to have my treatments on time, what I do not like is that there is not enough staff to attend all the patients that we are waiting for our consultations,” said Erick Vasquez, a person who learned in February he is living with HIV.
Vasquez, 34, is an artist who works in Guadalajara and Playa del Carmen.
Vasquez did not have health insurance like other people through IMS. He obtained access to Seguro Popular through an organization that supports people with HIV, but he has to wait until October for his first appointment.
Vasquez, who has a very low viral load, in March began a job through which he obtained IMS. He had access to his treatments through it.
He received three months worth of Biktarvy at the end of June; one prescription for each month. He said the drug is not difficult to obtain.
“I have not had any problem with the medication, it is not difficult to get it when you are on the insurance, but there is still a long time left until October,” said Vasquez.
The cost of the antiretroviral treatment in Mexico is approximately $650 per month, and one bottle has only 30 pills.
“I have not had side effects, I have not had nausea, I don’t vomit, I take a pill daily, it is one every 24 hours,” Vasquez said. “I feel very well and I hope very soon to be undetectable.”
Infrastructure over health
Prevention resources were eliminated, and health resources today are used to finance the Felipe Ángeles International Airport at the Santa Lucía military base in Zumpango in Mexico state, a new refinery, the Mayan train and other major infrastructure projects. And this causes many people who want to access treatment not to receive them. It takes much
The cost of the work, including the land connected with the Mexico City International Airport and various military facilities, is set at 82,136,100,000 Mexican pesos and there are provisions to serve 19.5 million passengers the first year of operations, according to a report from the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA).
There are, on the other hand, far fewer HIV tests and this shortage has led to a much higher arrival of late-stage HIV cases and even AIDS in hospitals. This trend is particularly serious among transgender women and men who have sex with men.
“Here in Mexico we concentrate the HIV pandemic, and that we are at a time when this issue of shortages has not stabilized, that there is already more clarity in purchases, but it is well known that all these changes in health systems continue for a year over the years they cause the situation to be increasingly fragile and in the matter of migrants that previously there was certainty so that they could access medicines through the Seguro Popular, now there is a legal limbo for which in some states it depends: on the states, the clinic or social worker; whether or not they give you medications,” said Baruch.
“If you are not a resident or a national here in Mexico, this is a matter won for people in transit seeking political asylum or who had stayed in Mexico,” he added.
Migrants lack access to HIV treatment
Mexico is located between the three regions with the world’s highest rates of HIV: the Caribbean, Central America, and the U.S. This has been used as a foundation for a culture of hatred against migrants, according to Siobhan McManus, a biologist, philosopher, and researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The lack of opportunities, violence and climate change that forces people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture to abandon their homes prompts migration from Central America.
Most migrants — LGBTQ or otherwise — experience violence once they arrive in Mexico.
Chiapas and other states have created an extensive network of clinics known by the Spanish acronym CAPASITS (Centro Ambulatorio para la Prevención y Atención en SIDA e Infecciones de Transmisión Sexual) that are specific HIV and STD units in major towns. They are often within close proximity to most people’s homes.
Sonora and Chihuahua states, which border the U.S., often have such clinics in only one or two cities. This lack of access means people will have to travel up to six hours to access these treatments.
People who have already been receiving treatment for a long time were previously given up to three months of treatment. They now must travel every month to receive their medications because of the shortages.
PrEP available in Mexico
The shortage of medical drugs for people who already live with HIV is a current issue for the Mexican government, but they have made free PrEP available for those who want to prevent themselves from the virus.
Ivan Plascencia, a 24-years old, who lives in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state , has been using PrEP for several years since he became sexually active and he never had any complaints about the medication. Plascencia instead recommends his close friends to take advantage of this prevention drug that is available in one of the CAPASITS where he lives.
Post-pandemic screening tests
There are an estimated 260,000 people in Mexico who are living with HIV. Upwards of 80 percent of them knew their status before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of new cases that were detected in 2020 were 60 percent less than the previous year, but this figure does not mean HIV rates have decreased.
In Jalisco, which is one of Mexico’s most populous states with upwards of 8 million people, there was a 40 percent increase in positive cases in 2020 compared to 2019. This increase has put a strain on service providers.
In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s meeting of world leaders, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said his country would not cede ground on policies that have caused the European Union to impose financial penalties and start legal proceedings against it over violations of the bloc’s values.
Topping the list of contentious government policies: a controversial Hungarian law that the EU says violates the fundamental rights of LGBT people.
That led the EU’s executive commission to delay billions in economic recovery funds earmarked for Hungary — a move Szijjarto called “a purely political decision” and “blackmail.” The law, he says, is meant to protect children from pedophiles and ”homosexual propaganda.”
Japan is about to get a new prime minister – and two candidates in particular have the potential to transform LGBT+ rights, including same-sex marriage.
After the current Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga decided to step down a year into his term, his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is set to choose a successor on Wednesday (29 September).
The election is a “historic moment” for Japan – not just because two of the four candidates are women, but also because two candidates support same-sex marriage.
Alexander Dmitrenko is a co-founder and co-chair of Lawyers for LGBT & Allies Network (LLAN) and a counsel at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Tokyo. He told PinkNews that the current “frontrunners” for the election are Fumio Kishida, former foreign minister, and Taro Kono, the cabinet minister in charge of vaccinations.
Kono’s was the first voice from within the LDP in support of same-sex marriage, Dmitrenko explained, and a “fairly important” one at that.
Even before the leadership race, Kono made headlines in Japan after he said: “I will support marriage equality.”
“The LDP is not the most progressive of parties, but it has a very diverse membership,” Dmitrenko told PinkNews. “For Kono to come out during the leadership race and to express support for marriage equality is, to my mind, very leadership like.”
He said that Kono is a “very viable candidate” with “a lot of junior members of the party supporting him”, and that he is “very well-liked” within Japanese society.
Sanae Takaichi and Seiko Noda are the first women in over a decade to seek leadership of the LDP.
Noda has said that she supports same-sex marriage and in a recent campaign speech, she said that she wants to see more LGBT+ people “take centre stage” in society.
“I seek to create a society of diversity by having people who have not been given main roles in society, including children, women, the disabled and LGBTQ people, take centre stage,” Noda explained, according to ABC News.
However, Dmitrenko told PinkNews that Noda is probably the “least favourite to win” as other candidates, like Kono, have more backing within the party.
According to Dmitrenko, Takaichi has not come out openly opposing same-sex marriage but instead reiterated that the “current status of the law of the land” is that LGBT+ can’t marry.
“And that was the answer which isn’t really an answer.”
Party members will vote for the new leader and prime minister, and polling has been favouring former foreign minister Kishida.
Dmitrenko said that Kishida “hasn’t made up his mind” on same-sex marriage, saying he would “prefer to hear various opinions on the issue”.
Currently, Japan’s constitution defines marriage as based on the “mutual consent of both sexes”.
But in a landmark ruling earlier this year, a district court in the Sapporo district said that blocking same-sex marriage is “unconstitutional”.
The judgement, however, was seen as largely symbolic.
Although organizers are closely watching COVID-19 related developments in their states, at least 15 outdoor, in-person LGBTQ Pride events were scheduled to take place across the U.S. in the fall of 2021, according to the international LGBTQ group InterPride and online announcements by organizers of the Pride events.
Cities in which the fall Pride events are scheduled to take place include D.C.; Fort Lauderdale; Palm Springs, Calif.; Las Vegas; Dover, Del.; and three small cities in Maryland.
The decision to move ahead with those events came shortly after Pride organizers in at least five cities announced they were cancelling their events for this fall due to concern over the COVID pandemic. Among them are Richmond, Va.; Annapolis, Md.; Atlanta; Louisville, Ky.; and San Francisco.
Organizers of a fall Pride event in Philadelphia also cancelled that event, originally set for Sept. 4. But the Philadelphia Gay News reports that the cancellation was not due to COVID but instead was due to objections by members of the community to the policies of the event’s organizers and a controversial public statement by one of the organizers considered by some to be derogatory to transgender people.
A statement announcing the cancellation of a San Francisco LGBTQ Pride Freedom Day Fest scheduled for Oct. 20 by its organizers appears to capture the sentiment of organizers of the other fall Pride events that were also cancelled.
“[W]e’ve determined that to produce a street fair with the safety and health of our communities at top priority, at the quality expected of SF Pride, is just not feasible this fall,” the statement says. “We are not cancelling – we’re merely postponing. Over the coming months, in addition to some new and returning fundraising events, we’re going to focus our energy on Pride 2022,” the statement continues.
“We remain as excited as we ever were to capture that spirit of wonder and look forward to bringing Freedom Day Fest to all of you in October 2022,” it says.
San Francisco Pride organizers noted that the fall Freedom Day Fest event was to be an addition to the city’s regularly scheduled Pride parade and festival that has taken place in June prior to the COVID outbreak but that were cancelled this year and last year.
The Richmond Pride event, known as Virginia Pridefest, was scheduled to take place Sept. 25. The event, which was also cancelled last year due to COVID, has attracted tens of thousands of participants in previous years.
“After consulting with our many corporate sponsors, organizational partners and volunteers we have decided it is in the best interest of the health and safety off our community to postpone VA Pridefest 2021,” organizers said in an Aug. 27 statement. “Our preparation puts us on solid footing as we postpone the festival to 2022 when we hope to hold it in June as part of the national observation of LGBTQ Pride Month,” the statement says. “This has long been a goal of ours, and this just may give us that opportunity,” it says.
Although organizers of Annapolis Pride cited COVID concerns as their reason for cancelling that event, which was scheduled for Oct. 30, activists in three smaller Maryland cities have chosen not to cancel their Pride events.
They include the Howard County Pride Festival scheduled for Oct. 9 in Columbia, Md.; the Upper Chesapeake Bay Pride Festival, also set for Oct. 9 in Havre De Grace, Md.; and Southern Maryland Pride scheduled for Oct. 16 in Solomons, Md.
Like D.C.’s Capital Pride Alliance, Pride organizers in Baltimore cancelled their traditional June Pride parade and festival for the second year in a row and instead held more than a dozen smaller events in June of this year, both in-person and virtual.
In Los Angeles, Christopher Street West, the group that organizes that city’s Pride events, including its annual Pride Parade which in pre-COVID years has attracted hundreds of thousands of participants, also cancelled this year’s parade for the second year in a row. Like other cities, the group held several virtual Pride events in June.
Los Angeles Blade Publisher Troy Masters organized a Pride Walk in June that attracted a few hundred participants in an effort, Masters said, to hold at least one in-person event to celebrate Pride during the traditional Pride Month in June.
A larger outdoor Pride event did take place in LA Aug. 27-29, called the DTLA Proud Festival, with “DT” referring to downtown LA.
Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes D.C.’s annual Pride parade and street festival that have attracted over 200,000 participants in pre-COVID times, held a scaled back Pride Walk and Pride celebration at D.C.’s Freedom Plaza in June. The group has scheduled an Oct. 17 Pride Street Fair and Block Party on 15th Street, N.W. between P and Q Streets that it’s calling Colorful Fest.
On its website, Capital Pride says those entering the block party, which will be in a fenced in area where alcohol will be served, will be required to show proof of COVID vaccination.
“The Capital Pride Alliance is committed to finding opportunities for the LGBTQ+ community to gather together safely, especially as the fall and winter seasons will soon make it more difficult to hold outdoor events and pandemic guidelines will make indoor events challenging,” Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos told the Blade. “To that end, we are working closely with the DC Government and following all current COVID-19 guidelines to have a safe outdoor event,” Bos said.
The Louisville, Ky., Pride, which had been scheduled for Sept. 18, is among the Pride events cancelled this fall due to COVID concerns, according to its organizers. But a second Pride event held in Louisville each year called Kentuckiana Pride, will take place as planned on Oct. 8-9 with a parade and festival.
Chad Eddings, the Kentuckiana Pride co-director, told the Blade the event would take place in an enclosed outdoor area and participants must show proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test as a requirement for admission. He said the event usually draws about 15,000 people.
Cities in which fall Pride events are still scheduled to take place or have already taken place include Burlington, Vt. (Sept. 5); Miami Beach, Fla. (Sept. 18-19); Columbus, Ind. (Sept. 18); North Texas Pride Festival in Plano, Tex. (Sept. 25); Delaware Pride in Dover (Oct. 2); South Florida Afro Pride Parade & Music Festival in Ft. Lauderdale (Oct. 7-11); Las Vegas Pride Parade & Festival (Oct. 8-9); D.C Pride Street Fair & Block Party (Oct. 17) Pacific Northwest Black Pride in Seattle, Wash. (Oct. 29-31); Phoenix Pride Festival & Parade in Phoenix, Ariz. (Nov. 6-7); Palm Springs, Calif., Pride (Nov. 1-7); and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Pride Parade & Festival (Nov. 20).
InterPride, the LGBTQ organization that keeps track of Pride events “all over the world,” released the results of a survey it conducted of 201 worldwide Pride organizations to find out the type of Pride events they were planning for this year. The findings show that the largest number – 40.8 percent – reported they would be holding both in-person and virtual Pride events.
The findings show that 35.3 percent of the Pride organizations planned just in-person events this year; 19.9 percent planned only online or virtual events; and 4 percent either were not planning any events this year or had canceled their events.
The survey results released by InterPride did not breakdown the findings by specific countries.
Germany will welcome its first-ever trans MPs to the Bundestag after a federal election that saw the centre-left SDP narrowly beat the centre-right CDU.
According to preliminary results on Monday morning (27 September), the SPD and its chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz won 25.7 per cent of the vote.
Germany’s Green Party had its best-ever result in a national poll, 14.8 per cent, and Scholz believes he has a mandate to for a coalition with the Greens and liberal politicians, which would bring to an end 16 years of centre-right rule.
In another historic first, two transgender Green MPs were elected to the Bundestag – Tessa Ganserer and Nyke Slawik.
Ganserer, 44, who has been a member of parliament for Nuremberg North since 2013, came out as a trans woman in 2019. She became the the first out transgender person to sit in a regional or national parliament in Germany, and this is the first election she has run since coming out.
When she came out, Ganserer used her own experience of transition to declare the need for Germany to update the 1980 Transsexual Act, which provides a convoluted process for trans people to change their legal name and gender.
She said at the time: “Gender identity is a human right… in future it should be possible for a person to apply to change their gender recorded at birth.”
On Monday, she wrote on Twitter: “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the trust shown by the voters.
“I’m still overwhelmed, but I’m really looking forward to my new job in Berlin!
“My congratulations too Nyke Slawik. #QueerRepresentationMatters.”
For Nyke Slawik, who is just 27 years old, this will be her first term as an MP for the Leverkusen, Cologne IV constituency.
She unsuccessfully ran for parliament in 2017, and for the European parliament in 2019.
According to Queer.de, Slawik ran in this year’s election with the hope of giving young people a voice in the Bundestag, and is determined to use her position to fight the climate crisis and increase diversity in Germany’s parliament as a trans lawmaker.
In a speech at the Green Party congress in April, she said: “Every time has its fighters. Those of the climate protectors. Those of the Greens. And those of the colorful. This is our time!”