An LGBTQ+ group was banned from participating in an Iowa town’s Labor Day parade, reportedly at the behest of the mayor.
On Thursday, just days before the parade in Essex, Iowa, members of Shenandoah Pride say they received an email from Mayor Calvin Kinney on behalf of the city.
“Out of concern for the safety of the public and that of Essex Labor Day parade participants, the City of Essex has determined not to allow parade participants geared toward the promotion of, or opposition to, the politically charged topic of gender and/or sexual identification/orientation,” the email read. “This parade will not be used for and will not allow sexual identification or sexual orientation agendas for, or against, to be promoted.”
Essex City Council Member Heather Thornton told the Associated Press that the decision was made by Kinney, despite the fact that the parade’s organizers had unanimously approved Shenandoah Pride’s participation. Thornton said she disagreed with the decision but was told that the mayor had the authority to ban the group without a city council vote.
According to KETV, the city said it had received threats from a group opposing Shenandoah Pride’s participation in the parade. But the group’s co-founder Jessa Bears said that Shenandoah Pride had not received any threats directly. Thornton told the Associated Pressthat she was unaware of any threats.
Bears told KETV that she believes the decision to ban Shenandoah Pride came in response to their plan to have local drag performer Cherry Peaks ride in a convertible in the parade with the group.
On Saturday, the ACLU of Iowa sent a letter to Kinney and City Attorney Mahlon Sorensen urging the city to allow Shenandoah Pride to participate in Monday’s parade, calling the group’s exclusion a violation of the First Amendment.
Kinney has not commented publicly about the decision.
Bears told the AP that Shenandoah Pride wanted to march in the parade to “let people know there is a queer community in southwest Iowa that they can be a part of.”
“It’s just really about visibility and being in the community and showing, you know, we work and we go to school with everybody in the community, and just letting everyone know that we’re here,” Bears told KETV.
“I think the misconception is that, you know, it’s these gay people from these cities,” said Ryan Fuller, who performs in drag as Cherry Peaks. “We’re not from the city. We live less than 10 miles away from the town.”
While Shenandoah Pride ultimately did not march in the parade, they did set up a booth at the town’s Labor Day festival and gathered for the parade after members of the community reached out to invite the group to watch from their yards. Other groups in the parade carried Pride flags in solidarity with the group.
Despite feeling “shocked and angry,” Bears told the AP that the ban had actually done more for the group’s visibility than marching in the parade would have.
At the same time, KMTV reports that following coverage of the ban, Fuller received a death threat.
An activist detained in Hong Kong partially won his final appeal Tuesday seeking recognition for same-sex marriage registered overseas, in a landmark court ruling that is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
Jimmy Sham, a prominent pro-democracy activist during 2019 anti-government protests, married his husband in New York 10 years ago. Sham first asked for a judicial review in 2018 arguing that Hong Kong’s laws, which don’t recognize foreign same-sex marriage, violate the constitutional right to equality. The lower courts had dismissed his challenges.
Sham has been in custody after being charged under a Beijing-imposed national security law following the massive protests. The law has been used to arrest and silence many other pro-democracy activists as part of a crackdown on dissent in the former British colony.
Judges at the city’s top court, by a majority, declared in a written ruling that the government is in violation of its positive obligation to establish an alternative framework for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, such as registered civil partnerships or civil unions. But they unanimously dismissed his appeal on other grounds.
Their ruling will have strong implications for the lives of the LGBTQ+ community and the financial hub’s reputation as an inclusive place to stay and work.
Currently, Hong Kong only recognizes same-sex marriage for certain purposes such as taxation, civil service benefits and dependent visas. Many of the government’s concessions were won through legal challenges in recent years and the city has seen a growing social acceptance toward same-sex marriage.
In a previous hearing, Sham’s lawyer Karon Monaghan argued that the absence of same-sex marriages in Hong Kong sent a message that they’re less worthy of recognition than heterosexual marriages.
Sham is the former convenor of Civil Human Rights Front, which was best known for organizing the annual protest march on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997, for years.
The group also organized some of the biggest political protests that roiled the city in 2019 but was disbanded in 2021 under the shadow of the security law.
After parents in a rural and staunchly conservative Wyoming county joined nationwide pressure on librarians to pull books they considered harmful to youngsters, the local library board obliged with new policies making such books a higher priority for removal — and keeping out of collections.
But that’s not all the library board has done.
Campbell County also withdrew from the American Library Association, in what’s become a movement against the professional organization that has fought against book bans.
This summer, the state libraries in Montana, Missouri and Texas and the local library in Midland, Texas, announced they’re leaving the ALA, with possibly more to come. Right-wing lawmakers in at least nine other states — Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — demand similar action.
Part of the reason is the association’s defense of disputed books, many of which have LGBTQ and racial themes. A tweet by ALA President Emily Drabinski last year in which she called herself a “Marxist lesbian” also has drawn criticism and led to the Montana and Texas state library departures.
“This is the problem with the American Library Association, it has changed from an organization that helped communities and used common sense into one that just promotes a view,” said Dan Kleinman, a blogger and longtime ALA critic.
Widely disputed books over the past couple years include Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir “Gender Queer,” Juno Dawson’s “This Book Is Gay,” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” the ALA points out.
In northeastern Wyoming’s Campbell County, a coal-mining area where former President Donald Trump got 87% of the vote in 2020, library board meetings have been packed and often heated for over two years now.
After a local outcry over a drag queen story hour and an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute library officials over books in the library’s children’s section, a library board with several new members appointed by the County Commission withdrew from the ALA last year.
“We were the first library in nation to do this. And now it has progressed to something to something I couldn’t even have imagined,” library board member Charles Butler said. “And all we were ever worried about was the sexualization of children.”
The nonprofit American Library Association denies having a political agenda, saying it has always been nonpartisan.
“This effort to change what libraries are, or even just take libraries away from communities, I think, is part of a larger effort to diminish the public good, to take away those information resources from individuals and really limit their opportunity to have the kinds of resources that a community hub, like a public library, provides,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
The ALA won’t say how many libraries are members of the group but denied any “mass exodus.”
The troubles come as individual membership in the ALA is down 14% since 2018 to about 49,700, the lowest since 1989, according to figures on the organization’s website. The ALA attributes the decline to suspended library conferences during the pandemic.
While librarians pride themselves about being open to different perspectives and providing access to different kinds of materials, political leaders telling them to part with the ALA runs against that, said Washington University in St. Louis law professor Gregory Magarian.
Magarian has been following Missouri’s departure from the ALA amid a debate over who may take part in local library “story hours” and new state rules that seek to limit youth access to certain books deemed inappropriate for their age.
“When you see state governments kind of replacing that type of control by librarians with greater control by politically motivated, politically ambitious, politically polarized government officials, I think that’s really troubling for the prospects for free access to ideas,” Magarian said.
In Campbell County, recent library policy changes remove the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,” which states: “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.”
The new policy says the library system takes seriously keeping “obscene sexually explicit or graphic materials” out of youth sections and can apply that priority in the routine “weeding” of damaged, unused and out-of-date books.
When library Director Terri Lesley expressed doubts about doing that, the board asked her to resign. After she refused, the board voted 4-1 to fire her.
“If we just start moving books, it is really putting the library staff in a bad position legally,” Lesley said at a library board meeting just before her firing July 28. “This raises First Amendment concerns with no right to appeal or challenge books that have been weeded.”
She singled out MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ+ group, and Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal advocacy group, for working together on the library policy changes, a claim supported by a July 19 post on the MassResistance website.
Lesley won an ALA award last year for “notable contributions to intellectual freedom” and “personal courage in defense of freedom of expression.” She did not return a message seeking comment and Butler and ALA officials declined to comment on her firing.
“People should be running their own libraries based on common sense, community standards and the law,” said Kleinman, the ALA critic and blogger. “And if library directors don’t want to go along with that? Goodbye.”
Kleinman last month launched an alternative to the ALA, the World Library Association, which he said will offer new policy guidelines for libraries.
“We’re going to return things to commonplace, community standards,” Kleinman said.
Butler and Campbell County Library Board Chairwoman Sage Bear, who did not return phone and email messages seeking comment, have joined as “team members” of the World Library Association. Butler said he hoped the new association will eventually offer librarian continuing education that Campbell County can no longer provide through the ALA.
So far, state library associations — private, professional organizations that resemble the American Library Association, but on a state level — are sticking with the American Library Association. Wyoming librarians don’t always see eye-to-eye with the ALA but the Wyoming Library Association has no plans to cut ties, President Conrrado Saldivar said.
Wyoming librarians are being “constantly critiqued” but they — not the ALA — are the ones who control their collections based on community needs, Saldivar added.
“ALA is not telling our library workers, our collection development librarians, you have to have this book in your library collection,” Saldivar said.
Republican Gov. Mark Gordon looks to be on the same page, criticizing as a “media stunt” a recent letter from 13 state lawmakers and Wyoming’s secretary of state asking him to pull the Wyoming State Library from the ALA.
“The letter implies that Wyoming citizens — Wyoming parents — are not capable of deciding how best to govern themselves and need the self-appointed morality police to show them the way,” Gordon said in a statement.
He called for discussion about the ALA’s “organizational drift” but is keeping the Wyoming State Library in the ALA, at least for now. Whether still more states and communities decide to leave remains to be seen amid what Caldwell-Stone described as a new push to question the group’s very existence.
“We have to question whose agenda is served by taking away library service from the people and taking away the liberty to make ones own choices about one’s own reading,” she said. “Because that’s what we’re here for.”
A number of Republican lawmakers in central Florida have warned against the state’s LGBTQ+ Safe Place Initiative and said they are considering “all legislative, legal and executive options available” to prevent it from going ahead.
The city-sponsored program, which is in operation in the town of Mount Dora, gives local business owners the option to display rainbow decals in their windows to inform members of the LGBTQ+ community who feel threatened that they are a ‘safe place’.
“The mission of the Safe Place Initiative is to provide the community with easily accessible safety information and safe places throughout the city they can turn to if they are the victims of an anti-LGBTQ+ or other hate crimes,” reads an explainer of the program on the official City of Mount Dora website.
Mount Dora city council approved the Safe Place Initiative this August, following in the footsteps of other neighbourhoods throughout Orlando and across the US.
Other Safe Place Initiatives have been sponsored by the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
That’s why it might have taken some residents by surprise when four Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to Mount Dora officials that they were concerned about the initiative.
According to AP News, lawmakers expressed fears that the optional program might put central Florida “in the crosshairs of potentially detrimental and absolutely unnecessary economic harm.”
The letter reportedly cited recent boycotts of brands like Bud Light and Target as a result of their efforts to support and promote LGBTQ+ inclusion and diversity.
Bud Light came under fire from right-wing consumers after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney uploaded just one social media post sponsored by the beer brand.
Outraged responses ranged from beer boycotts to smashing displays in public to musician Kid Rock filming himself shooting cans of the beer.
Meanwhile, US retail giant Target took a sales hit this summer after unveiling its LGBTQ+ Pride-themed collection.
Not only did the brand report a slump in profits but it was forced to remove or hide their displays for the “safety and wellbeing” of their staff members when protests turned violent.
As reports of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks in Orlando – including the devastating vandalism of an LGBTQ+ centre’s murals just last week – increase, this is a time when the city needs safe spaces most.
Reacting to the letter to Mount Dora officials, Democratic Floridian lawmaker Anna Eskamani described it as “the weirdest letter I’ve ever read.”
Sharing a copy of the letter to social media in a post seen by AP News, she wrote: “Let LGBTQ+ (people) exist and stop politicizing everything!
“So much manufactured panic from the right. Meanwhile, families can’t even afford to live in Florida. Focus on that instead.”
A Maryland transgender boy with disabilities died last year in what police are calling a case of criminal neglect by his parents, who have been charged with second-degree murder.
Morgan Moore died May 10, 2022, at age 17 at his home in Montgomery Village. His passing is just now being recognized as one of the violent deaths of transgender people in 2022, as some media reports at the time of his death misgendered him.
Police and paramedics were called to his home, where they found him unresponsive. He weighed only 79 pounds, and his father and mother, Dominique and Cynthia Moore, said he hadn’t seen a doctor in two years, according to local media and the Disability Day of Mourning website. He had diabetes and multiple sclerosis and was suffering from long-term effects of COVID-19. He had lost the ability to walk and had an abscess on his back.
There were 10 adults and children living in the home. Authorities removed six minor children from the Moores and placed them in foster care. Court documents showed the home was filthy, with animal feces throughout, nonfunctioning toilets, little lighting, and not enough beds for family members, Washington, D.C.’s Fox affiliate reports. The children were homeschooled and isolated, communicating with people outside the family only through video games.
Morgan was out as transgender, but not all family members recognized or respected his identity. He was “a celebrated artist, self taught guitarist, cook, keyboard player, gamer and all around great person,” according to an online tribute page. He had expressed a wish to travel to Japan.
“I just want my brother to be remembered as the artist and the person he was,” one sibling told the Fox station. “He was as good person, and I want people who are transphobic and not accepting of their children to accept their kids for who they are and love them no matter what.”
The local medical examiner did not officially classify Morgan’s death as a homicide until April. Then in May, his parents were both charged with second-degree murder and six counts of neglect of a minor.
“What happened to Morgan was inhumane,” said a statement from Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative. “Morgan deserved the same respect and love from his parents as he received from his siblings, who were such a loving support in his life. Morgan’s beautiful memory is a reminder to all of us that we need to do better. Folks living with disabilities, Black and Brown people, and transgender people require the same love and respect that is given so freely to the many who take it for granted. We’ll remember Morgan as the bright artist and good person that he was.”
On Tuesday, the City of Boston announced it will no longer require applicants for a marriage license to register their sex or gender identity.
It was a day that Boston’s director of policy and strategic initiatives Kimberley Rhoten, who identifies as nonbinary, has “eagerly awaited.
“Unfortunately for people like me, the certificate’s outdated and narrow gender markers were a glaring reminder that our city still had a long way to go in acknowledging our existence,” they said.
At a press conference, Rhoten was presented with the first new marriage license by Boston Registrar Paul Chong, who told them: “Your love makes the world a better place. It makes this city a better place.”
The change is part of a broader effort by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to address gender identity in city services.
“Our fundamental charge in public service is ensuring that our services and opportunities reach everyone, and that starts with affirming and supporting constituents of all identities,” Wu said announcing the change.
“This update to Boston marriage licenses is a huge step in building a City that is truly inclusive, and I’m excited to see how these critical changes for accessibility at City Hall serve Bostonians.”
The new gender awareness initiative outlines a strategy to address how Boston collects gender data, how it’s used, and what city services are impacted by it.
“Right now, we ask residents about gender identity to deliver key services,” an explainer on the city’s website reads. “But when we ask, we often aren’t using language that represents all gender identities and may not even need gender identity to deliver some of these services. We want to understand how to ask about gender identity in an accessible, affirming, and safe way.”
The marriage license update is one result.
According to Rhoten, the change will help to alleviate gender dysphoria among non-binary individuals and spare them from “having to pick from a list of limited, narrow, and delineated options.”
“And for those of us who change and grow, later identifying with a different gender than when we first got married, our marriage certificates no longer constrain us and can now reflect the love we hold without disrespecting who we’ve grown into and our new pronouns,” she said.
Rhoten asserted the new marriage license is “not just a win for the queer community. It’s a win for everyone who believes in the principles of fairness, equality, and equal access to our city’s services. It’s a win for Boston.”
A Canadian cricket player is set to become the first trans woman to compete in an international match.
Danielle McGahey has been named by Cricket Canada as part of the country’s squad as they compete to qualify for nest year’s Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh.
Canada will take on Argentina, Brazil and the United States in the ICC Americas Qualifiers in Los Angelesnext week, where they will vie for a place in the global play-offs.
A native Australian, McGahey moved to Canada in February 2020 and has spoken of her pride at representing her adoptive country on the international stage.
Speaking to BBC Sport, she said: “I am absolutely honoured. To be able to represent my community is something I never dreamed I would be able to do.”
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has not sought to ban trans women from competing at elite level outright as other sports, such as cycling, swimming and athletics, have, instead requiring athletes to demonstrate “the concentration of testosterone in her serum has been less than 5 nmol/L1 continuously for a period of at least 12 months, and that she is ready, willing and able to continue to keep it below that level for so long as she continues to compete”.
‘Blood tests every month for over two years’
Alongside this, a trans player must provide the ICC with a “written and signed declaration, in a form satisfactory to the designated medical officer, that her gender identity is female”.
McGahey said: “To determine [my testosterone levels], I’ve been doing blood tests every month now for over two years. I also have to put in my player profile who I have played against and how many runs I’ve scored.
“A lot of work with my doctor sending medical information to the ICC… they have a dedicated officer who looks over all of the information provided, and determines whether or not I have provided enough for an expert panel to make a decision.
“The need to do blood tests every month is probably the biggest challenge because when you are playing cricket, you are travelling a lot.”
She went on to say: “It’s very personal in terms of the information you are giving over: all your medical information, history of puberty, any surgeries. There’s a lot in it. But the protocols are there and it has been used as intended.”
Sports bodies banning trans women
In recent months, a number of sporting bodies have put regulations in place which specifically exclude trans women from playing elite-level sports.
Most recently, in July, the world cycling governing body – Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) – banned trans women who had transitioned after male puberty from competing in women’s categories.
Prior to this, trans women were able to compete in the women’s category if their testosterone level was 2.5 nanomoles per litre or below.
Now, trans women who transitioned after male puberty will be forced to compete in the men’s category, which has been renamed “men/open”.
The UCI’s policy review followed British Cycling’s decision in May to ban trans women from female events. They also introduced an open category.
McGahey follows Quinn – Canada’s out trans, non-binary football player who competed in this year’s Women’s World Cup – on to the world stage.
A spokesperson for Cricket Canada said McGahey’s selection was based on the ICC’s player eligibility regulations for male-to-female [MTF] transgender players.
“Danielle sent through her application to the ICC, and Cricket Canada followed the process as per the ICC rules, which made [her] selection to the Canadian team possible,” they said.
And a statement from the global governing body stated: “We can confirm that Danielle went through the process as required under the ICC’s player eligibility regulations and as a result has been deemed eligible to participate in international women’s cricket on the basis that she satisfies the MTF transgender eligibility criteria.”
The number of gender-affirming surgeries in the U.S. nearly tripled from 2016 to 2019, likely due to more insurers covering the procedures, with top surgery more common than genital surgery, according to a new study.
The study was published online Wednesday in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open. It was conducted by faculty at the medical schools of Columbia University in New York City and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, using data from the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample and the National Inpatient Sample.
The study identified 48,019 patients who underwent gender-affirming surgery from 2016 through 2020. The authors found that the number of these surgeries rose from 4,552 in 2016 to a peak of 13,011 in 2019, then declined slightly to 12,818 in 2020. The decline in 2020 is likely due to restrictions on in-person health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers observed.
In the period covered by the study, 27,187 patients (56.6 percent) had breast or chest surgery, 16,872 (35.1 percent) underwent genital surgery, and 6,669 (13.9 percent) had facial and other cosmetic procedures. Some patients had more than one type of surgery. “Breast and chest procedures made up the greatest percentage of the surgical interventions in younger patients while genital surgical procedures were greater in older patients,” the study noted.
The study backs up what has been pointed out as states pass or debate bans on gender-affirming surgery for minors — genital surgery is not usually suggested for young people and is rate among them. Among patients aged 12 to 18, 87.4 percent had breast or chest surgery, while only 11 percent had genital surgery, the researchers found. Most bans that have been enacted or proposed deal with people under age 18, with 18 considered the age of majority.
Gender-affirming surgeries “were most common in patients aged 19 to 30 years,” the authors reported. “This is in line with prior work that demonstrated that most patients first experience gender dysphoria at a young age, with approximately three-quarters of patients reporting gender dysphoria by age 7 years. These patients subsequently lived for a mean of 23 years for transgendermen and 27 years for transgender women before beginning gender transition treatments.”
While the right wing sometimes claims there is “social contagion” leading more people to seek out these treatments, the study’s authors proposed a different explanation. “The increase in [gender-affirming surgery] is likely due in part to federal and state laws requiring coverage of transition-related care, although actual insurance coverage of specific procedures is variable,” they wrote. The majority of patients in the study — 60.5 percent — had private insurance coverage, while 25.3 percent were Medicaid recipients.
The study noted the benefits of gender-affirming care at a time when it’s under attack, with states banning it for minors and some banning it for certain adults, such as those whose health care is covered by Medicaid.
“Despite many medical societies recognizing the necessity of gender-affirming care, several states have enacted legislation or policies that restrict gender-affirming care and services, particularly in adolescence,” the authors wrote. “These regulations are barriers for patients who seek gender-affirming care and provide legal and ethical challenges for clinicians. As the use of [gender-affirming surgery] increases, delivering equitable gender-affirming care in this complex landscape will remain a public health challenge.”
The study has some limitations, the researchers added. One of them is that “while we comprehensively captured inpatient and ambulatory surgical procedures in large, nationwide data sets, undoubtedly, a small number of procedures were performed in other settings; thus, our estimates may underrepresent the actual number of procedures performed each year in the US,” they wrote.
Still, the information is valuable, Dr. Jason D. Wright, the lead researcher and the chief of gynecologic oncology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, told The New York Times.
“There’s been a sense that more patients are asking about it, and ultimately pursuing it, but there wasn’t good data,” he said. “Ours is one of the first studies to quantify the age groups and the procedures they’re undergoing.”
Brian Kerekes, a high school statistics teacher in Florida, said he froze like “a deer in headlights” when a student asked him a personal question at the beginning of the school year this month.
He said the student looked around the classroom, saw a small Pride flag, then asked, “Are you gay?”
Kerekes said that his identity is no secret and that he is one of a few out gay teachers in his school. But under a new state law that restricts the instruction of LGBTQ topics, he feared that his answer could somehow be illegal, he said.
“I said something to the effect of, ‘I don’t think I can tell you that,’” Kerekes said. “And she’s like, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘It’s kind of the state law now.’”
Kerekes said the exchange is just one example of the variety of difficult situations that he and his colleagues in Osceola County have had to navigate under Florida’s recently expanded Parental Rights in Education act, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Battles over what content is appropriate for children — in books, history classes, health classes and elsewhere — are dominating school board meetings and state legislatures across the country. In most of these debates, one side portrays LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and transgender-inclusive school policies as inappropriate or harmful for minors, with some conservative activists and elected officials going so far as to describe such content as “grooming,” resurfacing a decades-old moral panic about queer people.
Nowhere has that battle been more pronounced than in Florida, which made national headlines in the spring of 2022 when the state Legislature debated — and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, ultimately signed — the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill. Initially, the measure prohibited “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” DeSantis signed an expanded version of the law in May that prohibits such instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade and restricts health education in sixth through 12th grade.
Seventeen states enacted more than 30 new LGBTQ-related education laws in 2023, which will all be in effect for the 2023-24 school year unless they are blocked in court, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In addition to Florida, five states — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina — enacted restrictions this year on LGBTQ-related instruction in schools. Currently, 11 states have laws censoring discussions of LGBTQ people or issues in schools and several additional states have laws requiring parental notification of LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, according to the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an LGBTQ research think tank.
Iowa’s prohibition on the instruction of LGBTQ-related topics in kindergarten through sixth grade includes additional provisions that require school libraries to conduct regular reviews to ensure books don’t include sexually explicit material, allow parents to opt their children out of sex education and mandate school staff to immediately inform parents if they believe a child “has expressed a gender identity that is different” than the sex on the child’s birth certificate.
Ten states enacted new laws that bar transgender student athletes from playing on the school sports teams that align with their gender identities, bringing the total to 23 states, according to MAP, with the majority of these state measures applying to both K-12 schools and colleges.
Seven states have new laws that bar schools from requiring teachers (and, in some cases, other students) from using pronouns for students that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. Florida’s expanded Parental Rights in Education act also bars transgender teachers from sharing their pronouns with students.
Five states have enacted laws so far this year that bar trans students and school staff from using school facilities that align with their gender identities, bringing the current total to nine states with such laws, according to MAP.
Florida also enacted a law that prohibits colleges and universities from spending state and federal funds on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The law also restricts courses that could promote “social activism,” such as race and gender studies.
‘Educated, not indoctrinated’
Supporters of restrictions on LGBTQ-related content argue that it is inappropriate for children, and that parents should be allowed to determine their children’s access to such information.
“Parents deserve the first say on when and how certain social topics are introduced to their children,” Iowa state Rep. Skyler Wheeler, the Republican who sponsored the state’s parental rights law, said in March after the bill passed the state House, according to the Des Moines Register.
He added that “parents should be able to send their children to school and trust they are being educated, not indoctrinated,” nearly quoting language used by DeSantis when he signed the original version of Florida’s parental rights law.
DeSantis defended the expansion of the law after signing it in May, saying teachers and students would “never be forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”
“We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago?” DeSantis said of people using pronouns that are different from those associated with their assigned sex. “Now this is something, they’re having third graders declare pronouns. We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida. It’s not happening here.”
Students and educators ‘are under assault’
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, which represents public school teachers and staff, said the laws have created a culture of fear among educators nationwide.
“We are in a moment where our students are under assault, teachers and other educators are under assault, parents are under assault,” said Pringle, who taught middle school science for 31 years. “People are afraid. They’re afraid for their livelihood. They’re afraid for their lives.”
Pringle noted that the teacher shortage is “chronic and growing” across the country because teachers are dealing with unprecedented challenges, including the effects of the pandemic, burnout and low pay.
She pointed to a 2022 NEA survey that found 55% of its members said they were planning on leaving education sooner than they intended because of the pandemic, compared to 37% in 2021. On top of that, she said teachers have told her they feel like the public doesn’t respect their expertise, and the new laws are an example of that.
“That’s at the heart of what’s happening right now, where people who haven’t spent a day in our classrooms are telling us what to teach and how to teach and who to teach,” Pringle said. “We spend our lives trying to create those culturally responsive, inclusive, caring, joyful environments for kids, because we know that’s at the heart of them being able to learn every day.”
Michael Woods, a high school special education teacher in Palm Beach County, Florida, said he has encountered a number of difficult situations under the state’s new law. He has been advising a student for three years who uses a different name and pronouns than those assigned at birth. He said he’ll have to tell that student that he can no longer refer to them that way until they return a state-mandated form signed by their parents.
“We’re essentially telling kids, in my opinion, as a gay man, ‘You know what, go back in the closet,’” Woods said. “We’ve taken something as simple as a name that a student calls themselves and made it shameful.”
Lola, a 12-year-old seventh grader in Winter Haven, Florida, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said the state’s new education-related laws have made kids in their school afraid to come out or talk about their identities publicly.
“A lot of students come out to me, because at school I’m openly queer and nonbinary,” Lola said.
They said students have also asked them questions about their family, because they have two moms, and in three cases, Lola said teachers told them they can’t discuss their family on school premises.
Lola’s discussion with their classmates would not break the law, which specifically mentions instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from school staff. But Kerekes said teachers are avoiding LGBTQ subjects entirely out of fear that something they say or do could be interpreted as illegal or reported by a parent, who could sue the school district under the Parental Rights in Education act.
“I’m just talking about my parents,” Lola said. “Students shouldn’t be getting in trouble for talking about their life just because it’s different from the norm.”
Because of the part of Florida’s law that bars students from using bathrooms that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth, Lola said they have to walk to the nurse’s office, which is in a separate building, to use a unisex bathroom.
Lola said there are other trans kids at school who are too shy to ask to use a different bathroom, so they’ll avoid using the bathroom for the entire school day.
Advocates say legislation that removes LGBTQ-inclusive books and curricula or allows teachers to use the wrong pronouns for students harms their mental health, while supportive policies do the opposite.
Research released Thursday by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that LGBTQ middle and high school students who had access to one of four school-related protective factors — gender-neutral bathrooms, LGBTQ-inclusive history lessons, a gender-sexuality alliance (GSA) club or teachers that respect their pronouns — had 26% lower odds of attempting suicide.
In Osceola County, Kerekes said he has inherited his school’s GSA club from a teacher who left last year. Some teachers in Florida, including Woods, have stopped hosting club meetings temporarily because they’re not sure how the new law affects them, but Kerekes said he will continue his school’s and hopes to have the first meeting this week.
In Blount County, Tennessee, local attorney general Ryan Desmond sent a letter Tuesday to organizers of a Pride event scheduled for Saturday, threatening them with prosecution for what he anticipates will be violations of Tennessee’s drag ban.
The chilling warning comes despite the fact a federal judge blocked the drag ban in June, ruling it unconstitutional.
That hasn’t stopped Desmond from claiming he has the authority to prosecute any drag performer who “appeals to a prurient interest,” in the words of the Adult Entertainment Act.
“It is certainly possible that the event in question will not violate any of the criminal statutes,” Desmond wrote in a three-page “notice” addressed to Blount Pride organizers and distributed to local law enforcement, “however if sufficient evidence is presented to this office that these referenced criminal statutes have been violated, our office will ethically and justly prosecute these cases in the interest of justice.”
The invitation to present “sufficient evidence” was shared with the Blount County sheriff and two local police chiefs.
The drag ban signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) in early March prohibits “male or female impersonators” from appearing “on public property” or “in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.” The bill defines adult cabaret as adult-oriented performances “that feature topless dancers, go-go entertainers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators or similar entertainers.”
On June 2, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, a Trump appointee, ruled the drag ban “is an unconstitutional restriction on speech.”
The suit seeking the injunction was filed against State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy. Skrmetti maintains the injunction applies only to Shelby County, where the suit was filed. Desmond says he’s following Skrmetti’s lead in his claim the law is still valid everywhere else in the state.
“My legal analysis leads me to concur with the State Attorney General, both as to the constitutionality of the AEA as well as the applicability of the District Court’s order controlling only the District Attorney for the 30th Judicial District.”
Blount Pride 2023 is scheduled for Saturday afternoon and evening at the Clayton Center for the Arts at Maryville College and will feature a headline performance by drag performer Flamy Grant, among other acts that could run afoul of the enjoined law.
College President Bryan Coker, another recipient of Desmond’s “notice,” said Blount Pride had agreed to conduct the event “in compliance with all applicable laws,” and he saw “no problem with the event going forward.”
In a memo to faculty and staff, Coker was more worried about “individuals and groups outside the college who are opposed to the Pride Festival and are planning to protest the event.”
Blount Pride board president Ari Baker said their organization will be filing suit with the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee in response to Desmond’s threat.