LGBTQ+ people in Malaysia are under sustained attack from the government, but the next generation is giving hope, says one non-binary person.
Malaysia’s government is cracking down on the LGBTQ+ community. Queer people have faced arrests and forced conversion therapy in what officials term an attempt to stem the “spread of LGBTQ+ culture in society”.
Growing up in the country, Shaf, the musician also known as moreofthem, grew up experiencing a “lot of internalised homophobia” and gender dysphoria.
“I didn’t really feel masculine, I didn’t really feel all that feminine at the same time and I was kind of bouncing back and forth,” Shaf explains.
“And at the time obviously when you’re in that environment like a very strict religious environment, you don’t know how to navigate it, and you don’t really know who to turn to.”
Before moving to the UK for the first time in 2016, 2017, Shaf kind of knew the “idea of being transgender”, but there wasn’t a “lot on display back home”.
The predominantly Muslim country criminalises consensual same-sex sexual intimacy, with punishments ranging from corporal punishment to imprisonment under Sharia Law and British colonial-era civil laws.
The Malaysian government relies on the force of the law to prohibit expression and conduct that it deems outside of heterosexual, cisgender norms. It is one of 13 countries worldwide that explicitly criminalises the gender expression of trans people.
In 2021, Nur Sajat, trans businesswoman and social media personality, was charged with insulting Islam after she attended a religious event three years earlier wearing clothing traditionally considered female attire. This offence can be punishable by imprisonment in Malaysia.
Sajat fled persecution in Malaysia and was arrested in Thailand before she found refuge in Australia.
At the start of the year, Shaf visited Malaysia to see family and friends.
“There are cases where you have to be careful, and yeah, raids can happen,” they say.
However, they were pleased to see that there is a a growing acceptance of queerness among younger generations.
“I’ve seen a lot of people with trans identities, and I have a few friends that are non-binary in Malaysia, and they’re able to navigate Malaysia quite safely for the most part.”
They add: “But they do lack the resources in the sense there’s not a lot of LGBT-friendly clinics back in Malaysia.
“You kind of have to play it safe, and you have to be a bit hush hush about it, which is a shame. That was kind of my experience.”
When Shaf was home with family they “had to be really, really careful” about expressing their identity.
“But with friends for the most part – there are some bad apples with people my age – but for the most part, a lot of people that I encountered that have been the same age and maybe younger, they seem to be getting more open and bit more accepting.
“So I can see that there is some form of progress in Malaysia. I don’t think we’re anywhere close, but I think we are hopefully getting to a stage of working towards it.”
Being from Malaysia, Shaf wants to use their platform, music and identity to “help champion others and give them a voice”. After all, they know the power of visibility first-hand.
Shaf says their eyes were opened when a “really good friend” began transitioning.
It took them until “maybe 2020, 2021” to become comfortable with their own identity.
“I was kind of going back and forth, and I had many discussions with friends.
“I would say to them, ‘I don’t really feel like a man. I don’t really feel like this either. I don’t know what I’m going to do at this moment.’ But then I had a friend that came out at non-binary, and they gave me this strength to kind of breathe.
“I went to basically all the meetings with him and was there for him when no one else was and that was kind of my way of learning about it all.”
As an increasing proportion of Americans identify as LGBTQ, leaders in sexual and gender minority health care say that the nation’s medical schools are largely failing to adequately prepare the next generation of doctors to properly care for this population.
The need is critical, according to experts in medical education and LGBTQ care. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, as stigmatized minorities, often have difficulty accessing health care that properly addresses their health concerns, that is sensitive to their sexual and gender identities and that is not flat-out discriminatory, researchers have found.
“It’s terrible that there’s a whole population of people who aren’t getting the health care they need,” said Ann Zumwalt, an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and a leader in the effort to improve medical school curricula pertaining to LGBTQ care.
In 2014, the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC, released a call for the 158 U.S. and Canadian medical schools to provide comprehensive training in caring for LGBTQ people and those born with sex-development differences.
Since then, the need for such instruction has only ballooned, given the dramatic increase in LGBTQ identification among young people in particular.
“The current political and social climates are unfortunately leading to many, many health care-professional students and residents feeling uncertain and frightened to engage in LGBTQ+ education and training.”
DR. DUSTIN NOWASKIE, OUTCARE HEALTH
A constellation of medical schools has heeded the AAMC’s call — progress that inspires hope among queer-health advocates. But the schools’ adoption of comprehensive LGBTQ-focused curricula are the exceptions to the rule. The organization’s call, which was buttressed by a 300-page roadmap for reform but lacked the teeth of a mandate, has mostly gone unheeded nearly a decade later.
Progress at medical schools has been stymied by a myriad of factors, including the lack of LGBTQ-related content in medical licensing exams; inadequate or nonexistent knowledge and clinical experience among educators; administrators and the medical old guard’s resistance to change and concerns about competing educational priorities; and outside political pressures as conservatives seize upon transition-related care for minors and diversity policies as wedge issues and as they scrutinize higher education.
Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, director of education and training at the LGBTQ-focused Fenway Institute in Boston, and six other medical educators who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of the very reprisals they described told NBC News that recent state-level efforts to restrict diversity programs in education and transition-related health care for transgender minors have instilled fear in some medical schools that their LGBTQ-related medical training could draw increased scrutiny and punitive attacks from legislators.
Keuroghlian, who is also an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said that the recent state gender-care bans would likely have a chilling effect “on our ability to teach in an evidence-based way that is grounded in human rights and autonomy.”
Where are the needs?
Researchers who have assessed the capacity of the nation’s health care workforce to serve the specific needs of LGBTQ Americans have found them woefully unprepared, especially to care for transgender people. And LGBTQ people remain in dire need of improved physical and mental health care, according to a trove of studies.
Despite the population skewing younger, 23% of LGBTQ people report being in poor health, compared with 14% of the non-LGBTQ population, according to the health-care analysis nonprofit KFF. And research finds that as many as 1 in 5 LGBTQ people have experienced discrimination during health care encounters, including refusals to prescribe medication and even verbal attacks.
Resulting alienation from the health care system, researchers say, is a key driver of the various health disparities that plague LGBTQ Americans. Such apparent consequences include elevated rates of heart disease, cancer, depression and anxiety, substance use disorders and risk of suicide. These disparate outcomes, according to researchers, are likely also fueled by the damage that being a member of a stigmatized minority can apparently inflict upon the mind and body. These are pervasive problems that the health care establishment would ideally mitigate, not exacerbate.
And yet a 2011 survey of 176 U.S. and Canadian medical schools found that their students received a median of just five hours of LGBT-related training. One in 3 schools devoted no such time during clinical rotations.
Dr. Dustin Nowaskie is the founder and president of OutCare Health, a nonprofit LGBTQ health-equity organization that is at the forefront of a growing movement to improve medical training on this front and has developed queer-medicine training programs for both medical students and physicians. Nowaskie, who uses gender neutral pronouns, argued in a 2020 paper that medical schools should, in fact, provide at least 35 hours of such training. This instruction, according to Nowaskie, should start with basic terminology and cultural sensitivity and expand to issues such as health conditions that occur at higher rates among LGBTQ people, including sexually transmitted infections and skin cancer.
“These skills should absolutely be required,” Nowaskie said, because of the expanding LGBTQ population and the inevitability that doctors will frequently treat such patients. Nowaskie said they consistently hear from medical students nationwide that LGBTQ-specific instruction is “often minimal,” and that it is “very outdated,” relying on language, terminology and an overall understanding of queer people that has otherwise been retired thanks to recent social progress.
A recent Gallup poll found that over the past decade, the proportion of Americans openly identifying as LGBTQ has doubled, to 7.2%, and that 1 in 5 young adults say they identify as something other than a cisgender heterosexual. The Williams Institute at UCLA Law recently estimated that 0.5% of older adults identify as transgender, compared with 1.4% of adolescents and 1.3% of young adults.
A team directed by Dr. Carl Streed, research lead for the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Boston Medical Center, is preparing to publish an update of the 2011 medical school survey. Streed was keen to highlight medical schools that have adopted comprehensive LGBTQ-related curricula — including, among many others, the University of Kentucky at Louisville, Stanford University and Boston University, where Streed is an assistant professor. But Streed tempered expectations that his team would identify much of an uptick in overall training.
“Who ends up being remotely comfortable and competent” in caring for sexual and gender minorities, Streed said, “is a matter of wherethey trained rather than whether they’ve been trained.”
Any progress over the past decade has transpired against a split-screen backdrop of sweeping advances for LGBTQ civil rights and, in response, a fierce backlash against transgender rights, in particular. At least 20 states have now passed various restrictions on transition-related care for minors — a legislative effort that even many physicians who express misgivings about the science backing such treatment say they oppose.
“The current political and social climates are unfortunately leading to many, many health care-professional students and residents feeling uncertain and frightened to engage in LGBTQ+ education and training,” Nowaskie said.
“At the same time,” Nowaskie said, “these climates are perpetuating health care stigma among biased, discriminatory providers.”
How medicine can fail LGBTQ people
Delia M. Sosa, a first-year medical student in Ohio, wants to focus on LGBTQ care. Sosa, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said they are motivated, in part, by their own alienating encounter with the medical old guard.
After growing up in what they described as a conformist Christian community in New England, Sosa came into their trans and nonbinary identity in their early 20s. At 21, they sought to establish a relationship with a primary care physician in their hometown in hopes of eventually having a double mastectomy, or what’s known in trans medical care as top surgery. But after Sosa disclosed to the doctor their queer identity and the fact that they were dating a nonbinary person, they recalled, “she looked at me with a look of confusion” that was also “mixed with frustration.”
“Medicine is playing catch-up in a lot of ways. … I get some really seasoned, experienced physicians who come up to me and say, ‘I never had a chance to learn about this, yet I know this is something I need to learn.’”
DR. SARAH PICKLE
Sosa said they spent the bulk of the appointment providing the doctor a trans-identity 101 tutorial, including breaking down the difference between gender and sex, what it means to be nonbinary, what gender neutral pronouns are and how sexual orientation can be fluid with respect to the gender of partners. They found the experience so off-putting, they let three years pass before seeking surgery again, which they ultimately had last year.
Dr. Sarah Pickle, a family physician and medical educator in Ohio, is a leading proponent of medical schools cultivating a deft hand in up-and-coming physicians in how to care for LGBTQ people. Pickle insists that such training, which focuses, for example, on speaking with sensitivity and inclusivity regarding queer people’s differences, can be crucial in keeping LGBTQ people engaged in care.
“Medicine is playing catch-up in a lot of ways,” Pickle said. “I get some really seasoned, experienced physicians who come up to me and say, ‘I never had a chance to learn about this, yet I know this is something I need to learn.’”
Sosa discovered their own evidence of the potential perils of physicians’ lack of knowledge about treating LGBTQ patients when researching trans people’s experiences with cancer care. Some oncologists, Sosa found, were confounded over how to manage such treatment in a patient taking cross-sex hormones.
“I can’t tell you how many stories I heard of trans folks where they had delayed care because an oncologist didn’t know what to do with them,” Sosa said.
One expert in LGBTQ medicine, who preferred to remain anonymous because of attacks from the far right, described an often cavalier attitude among specialists toward trans patients’ hormone therapy. A cardiologist, they said, might advise a patient to simply go off hormones due to cardiovascular risk, rather than thoroughly reviewing the risks versus benefits of a therapy that is fundamental to many trans people’s sense of self and well-being.
This health care provider and medical educator expressed frustration that such doctors often remain ignorant to studies that provide insight into managing hormonal therapy in the context of certain health problems.
Who is leading the change?
Keuroghlian stands at the vanguard of the movement to train doctors in caring for trans and gay patients.
At Harvard, he and a team of colleagues led a three-year effort to design and implement a new curriculum that provides comprehensive training in such care.
The curriculum, which other schools are free to adopt, permits all professors, regardless of their own identity or experience, to weave LGBTQ themes and practices into their own instruction. So, for example, a course on endocrinology would include instruction on cross-sex hormonal treatment and an embryology course would teach about intersex variations.
Bringing a broad swath of medical educators up to speed is crucial, Keuroghlian said. A major roadblock to progress has been the fact that the professors, who are meant to pass on their own acquired knowledge, have typically never received their own training in sexual and gender minority care. So, in addition to the four-hour training he helped craft for Harvard faculty about how to teach this subject, Keuroghlian is among the educational pioneers, a group that includes Nowaskie, who are designing medical education seminars to train other health care providers nationwide.
Dr. Christopher Terndrup, an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, noted that most demand for LGBTQ health education “is actually pushed by the medical students themselves.”
But such eagerness from the new generation can hit old bureaucratic walls, according to Dr. Nelson Sanchez, an associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and the chair of the annual LGBT Health Workforce Conference. Sanchez said administrators often resist calls for such curriculum by insisting that a zero-sum game governs all medical-school education hours.
Dr. Lily Rolfe, who recently graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago and is matriculating to a residency in family medicine, with a focus on caring for LGBTQ patients, at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, conducted an informal survey of students at Chicago area medical schools about the quality of their education in caring for LGBTQ people.
“It’s always, ‘The gay guy has HIV,’” Rolfe quipped regarding the typical way the respondents characterized their limited education on this front.
“HIV is important,” Rolfe said. “We should learn about it. But that shouldn’t be the entirety of LGBT health.”
Otherwise, the Chicago students said that social determinants of health pertaining to sexual and gender minorities were commonly addressed. But the survey respondents, Rolfe said, “noticed a lack of discussion about trans people, including gender dysphoria; gender euphoria; medical, social, legal and surgical transitioning; and a lack of the discussion of the over pathologization of trans people.”
Harvard’s LGBTQ curriculum, meanwhile, goes beyond just infectious disease, including basic concepts and terminology about gender and sexuality; stigma’s impacts on health inequities; major health concerns that are more common in LGBTQ people, such as anal cancer in gay men or breast cancer in lesbians; effective doctor-patient communication methods; navigating power imbalances and implicit bias; addressing microaggressions; and how to generate learning opportunities if an LGBTQ patient responds negatively to a physician’s words or actions.
Other med schools that have also established substantial training efforts on such subjects include Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi at Jackson, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
The current hostile political environment notwithstanding, Keuroghlian said he remains optimistic for how well prepared the next generation of doctors will be.
“People in medical school are increasingly passionate about doing this work, because there’s more understanding for the need for skilled, culturally responsive care,” Keuroghlian said of sexual and gender minority care.
“There’s also a sense of social justice and health equity that drives young people to do this work,” he said. “They see this as one of the major health rights issues of their generation, and that’s very engaging for them.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been caught on tape mocking transgender women.
In a leaked video from a June 5 event obtained by U.K.-based LGBTQ+ outlet PinkNews, Sunak can be heard taking a shot at Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey.
Unlike in the U.S., the British Conservative party has overseen important LGBTQ advancements. But some activists worry the new PM won’t continue this trend.
“Like me, you can probably see that he was trying to convince everybody that women clearly had penises,” the Tory party leader told the crowd of conservative MPs at the event. “You’ll all know that I’m a big fan of everybody studying maths to 18, but it turns out that we need to focus on biology.”
Sunak’s transphobic remark was met with laughter from the crowd, estimated to have included around 100 conservative MPs.
According to Gay Times, the jab at Davey is likely in response to an appearance he made in May on the British radio show LBC. During the interview, Davey called for “a bit more maturity and a bit more compassion” in the “debate” around transgender rights.
Host Nick Ferrari went on to ask Davey whether a woman can have a penis. “I’ve made it really clear that if people—the vast majority of people will have the same gender as their biological sex,” Davey responded. “But a small number won’t.”
“So, a woman can have a penis?” Ferrari pressed.
“Well, quite clearly,” Davey said.
Since PinkNews posted the video, critics have slammed Sunak.
“You wouldn’t make jokes about other marginalized people the way he did about trans people,” the source who provided the video told the outlet. “There was laughter, there were quite a few younger attendees who looked visibly uncomfortable.”
“It is profoundly depressing – this whole ‘othering’ of minorities – pretty much any minority,” said an unnamed senior Tory MP. “Without stopping to think we have equalities legislation for a reason, to stop discrimination against anyone with a protected characteristic – we should be trying to understand and support, not belittle and demonize.”
LGBTQ+ rights activist Peter Tatchell called Sunak’s words “borderline indecent.” The Prime Minister, he said, “refuses to accept that there are women based on biology and women based on gender identity – both equally valid.”
“No minority community should be the butt of a joke,” Nancy Kelley, CEO of U.K. LGBTQ+ rights organization Stonewall told Gay Times. “It is incredibly disappointing that the Prime Minister chose to mock trans people in front of his parliamentary colleagues. This is a far cry from his pledge to govern with compassion and would be unacceptable in any modern workplace. The PM should apologize for his actions.”
“I am appalled by the way our Prime Minister has sought to use one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, who he knows suffers the highest level of hate crime, as a political football,” said Jayne Ozanne, chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition. “If anyone needs to go back to school it is him, not only to learn about the complexities of biology but also to be reminded of the importance of common decency and respect for all.”
The leaked clip is just the latest example of Sunak’s dismal record on transgender rights.
Even before taking office last year, the U.K.’s first Prime Minister of color essentially aligned himself with so-called “Gender Critical” feminists. During an August 2022 Q&A, he said that transgender women are not women. The following October, he characterized gender-neutral language and trans-inclusive policies as part of “recent trends to erase women.” He promised to release a “manifesto for women’s rights” that would call for banning trans women from women’s restrooms and sports, positions that would likely increase the public harassment and isolation of trans individuals. His party has supported dropping trans people from a proposed national ban on conversion therapy.
In January, the U.K.’s Tory government blocked Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform bill, which would have made it possible for trans people to update their gender on legal documents. Sunak supported the move to block the bill. Earlier this month, he indicated that he intends to change the U.K.’s Equality Act to ban trans women from single-sex spaces.
Large majorities of U.S. adults across different racial, ethnic, and religious identities oppose religious-based discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, according to a new Williams Institute report.
Even majorities of Republicans oppose religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, the report found. Its findings suggest that Republican-led attacks on LGBTQ+ civil rights — many of which are couched in religious terms — are actually opposed by most American adults.
A survey of non-LGBTQ Americans show large majorities disagree with right-wing discrimination.
The data came from the Williams Institute’s September 2022 survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,003 adults.
Approximately 84% of survey respondents said they opposed religious-based denials of healthcare to LGBTQ+ people, 74% opposed religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ employment discrimination, and 71% opposed business employees denying services to LGBTQ+ people based on the employees or employer’s religious beliefs.
Over 80% of respondents in all non-white racial and ethnic groups opposed the use of religious beliefs to deny LGBTQ+ people business services, medical care, and employment. About 70% of white respondents felt the same. Female, younger, or college-educated respondents were also more likely to oppose religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination than respondents who are men, older in age, or non-college educated.
While Democrats unsurprisingly opposed these various types of religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination by about 90%, the report surprisingly found that Republican majorities also opposed such discrimination: 52% opposed religious-based refusal of business services to LGBTQ+ people, 54% opposed religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ employment discrimination, and 71% opposed religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ healthcare discrimination.
Respondents who personally know LGBTQ+ people were more likely to oppose such religious-based discrimination, the report found. However, even respondents who don’t personally know LGBTQ+ people were also opposed to religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination by margins of 65% to 80%.
Even majorities of Protestant/Christian, Catholic, and non-Christian faiths opposed such religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.
When asked about their support for allowing religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, less than 30% of respondents in almost every different demographic supported allowing such discrimination.
These findings matter specifically because Republicans have introduced over 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state legislatures nationwide. Many have been couched in religious justifications.
Florida, for example, passed a law in May that allows any medical worker or insurer to deny care to anyone based on “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs.” The U.S. Supreme Court is also about to issue a ruling on whether religious beliefs should permit public-facing businesses to violate LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws.
“Recent efforts by some state legislatures to expand religious exemptions from LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination laws are largely out of alignment with the views of most Americans,” wrote Christy Mallory, Legal Director at the Williams Institute and author of the study. “More than three in four Americans now favor civil rights laws protecting LGBTQ people against religiously motivated discrimination.”
It’s Pride Month and as more and more businesses have climbed on board the rainbow train, Republicans are running out of places to dine out.
“Rainbow washing” and “rainbow capitalism” have become common refrains from some in the community who are weary of corporations slapping a rainbow on their logo without supporting the community during the other 11 months of the year. But with over 600 anti-LGBTQ+ laws proposed at the federal and national levels by Republicans and the religious right, this is the year to overlook that in favor of just making them squirm.
But as the far-right boycotts Disney, Target, Budweiser, and any other company they can, the perpetually angry are quickly running out of options. Even Chick-fil-A, the right’s bastion of fast food righteousness, has been deemed too “woke” for waffle fries after they hired a vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
So where is a Republican supposed to go on Sundays after church like God intended? Not these restaurants. They’re not offering a side of hatefulness to their menus.
Click through to see some of the brands celebrating online
Dozens of LGBTQ+ Pride flags were damaged and ripped down at the Stonewall National Monument over the weekend, the third such bout of vandalism at the LGBTQ+ landmark during this Pride Month, police said.
The latest occurrence happened Sunday, after others on June 9 and June 15. No arrests have been made in any of the incidents, and it’s unclear whether they were connected. The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating.
On Sunday, officers were called around 8 a.m. and found about 33 Pride flags broken and tossed to the ground, police said.
Park volunteer Steven Menendez told New York’s Fox 5 News that, in all, 68 flags — nearly a quarter of those displayed — were damaged in some way.
“We have so much hatred and anger in the air right now,” Menendez told the station. “We really need to reverse that and replace it with love compassion and acceptance.”
The Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. national monument to LGBTQ+ history, was dedicated in 2016. It encompasses a park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, a bar where patrons fought back against a police raid on June 28, 1969, and helped spark the contemporary LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The Stonewall rebellion is commemorated every year with Pride marches in cities across the U.S. and the world.
A community center that has become a lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Ukrainians – and hub of humanitarian activity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – was broken into and vandalized on Tuesday. Photos show that the door of the Insight office in the northwestern city of Lutsk was shattered, with broken glass and paper covering the entryway. Activists say no electronics or documents appear to be missing.
Insight is a feminist organization that provides medical care, legal aid, and psychosocial services to queer community members. Since February 2022, the group has housed hundreds of people in three emergency shelters run by LGBT human rights defenders, and, together with the Women’s March volunteer team, distributed more than 25,000 emergency aid parcels.
Ukrainian authorities should conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the attack in consultation with Insight’s human rights defenders, who have long been targeted for their work. In April 2022, two unidentified assailants teargassed Insight chair Olena Shevchenko on the streets of Lviv while she was delivering humanitarian aid. This followed a 2016 far-right attack on the Equality Festival in Lviv, LGBT defenders being teargassed at Kyiv Pride in 2018, and two attackers physically beating Shevchenko in 2019 while shouting slurs at her.
Despite the clear pattern of harassment, police did not properly investigate last year’s attack. Lviv Regional Police Department #1 formally launched a criminal investigation and Shevchenko underwent a forensic medical examination, but the police neither informed her of the results of the exam nor did they collect her victim statement. In March 2023, Shevchenko’s lawyer sent a motion to police requesting that they collect her overdue statement from the 2022 attack, and in April her lawyer filed a claim to a Lviv court regarding police inaction.
The authorities need to properly investigate the break-in and damage to Insight’s office, as well as other abuses against Ukrainian LGBT human rights defenders. Such incidents might be reduced if the government were to enact comprehensive legislation that protects people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
With hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed over the past year, both at the federal level and in state legislatures across the country, it’s a difficult time for the queer community. Republican politicians, far-right online personalities, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists have launched vicious attacks against the community, especially drag queens and transgender people.
June is usually a celebration for the LGBTQ+ community, but this year many have found it challenging to enjoy Pride like in previous years. They’ve been traumatized by the nonstop vitriol and threats of violence.
So how can you take care of yourself this year? The onslaught of negativity can quickly take its toll, so LGBTQ Nation spoke with a therapist and psychologist to get tips on how to recognize your trauma, protect your mental health, and show yourself some compassion at the same time.
“These relentless attacks against LGBTQ folks, at minimum, leave us afraid, anxious, and insecure. When we leave our homes, are we safe? Will I be faced with attacks ranging from disgust to outright physical harm?” clinical psychologist Roxy Manning, Ph.D. pointed out. “Someone might call themselves an ally, but will they publicly intervene when horrendous comments are directed at me, or is their allyship restricted to privately commiserating with me and telling me that what happened was so wrong? We begin to doubt ourselves.”
“So many of us walk the world in this state of perpetual anxiety and uncertainty – am I safe, do I truly belong, am I truly welcome, am I appreciated and valued? And these attacks make it impossible for us to fully trust a ‘yes’ to any of those questions, no matter how often we are told otherwise. At our most elemental level, we know that it will only take another slur yelled as we walk down the street or another bullet ripping through our community to let us know how shaky that welcome truly is.”
The Human Rights Campaign recently declared a state of emergency for queer people in the United States, particularly in states politically dominated by Republicans. Pride festivals have been canceled due to threats of violence or legal ramifications. And social media has become an even more giant cesspool, if possible. For a community that already suffers disproportionately from depression and suicide risks, Talkspace therapist Cynthia Catchings, LCSW-S, warns that it is essential to be aware of your mental health risks.
“Fear of the unknown and knowing that there is an emergency can create stress and anxiety. That can result in other negative thoughts and actions, including panic attacks, depression, or PTSD,” she said. “Look out for negative emotions; drastic mood changes; fear, anxiety, or panic attacks; a lack of interest in things that you enjoyed doing before; irritability; not feeling like socializing or talking to others; crying spells, poor hygiene, lack of or excessive sleep; and changes in eating habits.”
“Staying informed but moderating the information intake is essential to avoid more severe mental health issues. You can take some time to observe and reflect on how you feel. It also helps to be open to listening to what those who care about you tell you. A person that loves you will share their concern. Being open to listening to them. Speaking with a mental health professional or joining a support group can help too.”
Dr. Manning agrees. “As we work on expanding our capacity for self-compassion, we can find support in not doing this alone. It can seem counter-intuitive. People used to tell me, ‘You just need to learn to accept yourself.’ But it’s hard to accept yourself when all around you, people are putting you down, making fun of you, and demonstrating that they think you have little value. We can more easily access self-compassion when we experience compassion, when we see reflected in other people’s behavior that we are worthy of care, consideration, and acceptance.”
“Other people can show us the path to self-compassion when it’s new to us, and can keep reminding us that this is possible. For a long time, when I judged myself harshly, I would remember the voice of a dear friend who always received me with total compassion. I couldn’t always find the words to be compassionate to myself, but recalling his words would be a needed jumpstart.”
But what if our emotions keep us from celebrating Pride? That’s okay, they say. Pride started as a protest against authorities abusing their power to persecute the LGBTQ+ community, after all. Give yourself time to process everything from an inside point-of-view instead of solely external, and see if that helps you feel better.
“Not wanting to celebrate is okay,” Catchings says. “Any feeling we are experiencing that makes us avoid participating during the celebrations has a valid reason. However, it is important to take some time to reflect on the reasons why you feel that way. Ask yourself if that attitude is creating more issues or if you will be more resentful in the future for not celebrating this year.”
Mindfulness activities, journaling, yoga, breathing exercises, practicing a hobby or sport, or participating in a support group can help to soothe your emotions. Still, Dr. Manning warns that some techniques may seem helpful at the time but aren’t.
“As a Black psychologist, so many people have shared messages of anti-compassion they’ve learned from their family, often with the best intentions. Instead of giving ourselves permission to feel, to self-empathize, we’re told just to get back out there, pretend,” she said. “For many of us, without the capacity for the healing effect of self-compassion, we seek strategies to distract ourselves or numb ourselves.”
“We use food, alcohol, drugs, and increasingly, the internet and social media. We want to feel cared for and nurtured, so we turn to meaningless sexual encounters. We rely on accessing and expressing anger and judgment at ourselves or others. We even have behaviors that seem prosocial but still serve to distract us from our feelings.”
“Many of us have some emotions we think it’s okay to experience, and others we demonize. I might allow myself to feel anger and rage but not allow myself to feel grief and despair. We think we have to ‘chin up’ and soldier on, be professional, don’t let them see it hurts,” Dr. Manning added. “We can welcome and hold all our reactions and emotions with compassion.”
“One way we can access that compassion for our reactions is to recognize that each emotion is fueled by an underlying need, something that is deeply important to us. If we feel anger, it might be fueled by our deep longing for justice, for relief from pain. We can even feel compassion for our numbness – our inability to feel may be our body’s best strategy to relieve the intense pain.”
“Remember that you are the change that you want to see in the world, and not celebrating or participating in some way may sabotage progress and your own happiness,” Catchings pointed out. “If you feel like it after reflecting on your reasons not to celebrate, pick up those colors and wear them proudly wherever you go!”
Estonia’s parliament approved on Tuesday a law to legalise same-sex marriage, making it the first central European country to do so.
Same-sex marriage is legal in much of western Europe but not in central European countries which were once under communist rule and members of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact alliance but now members of NATO and, largely, the EU.
“My message (to central Europe) is that it’s a difficult fight, but marriage and love is something that you have to promote,” Prime Minister Kaja Kallas [photo] told Reuters after the vote.
55 members of the Riigikogu voted in favor of the measure, while 34 voted against. Going forward, alongside marriage, people will continue to enjoy the right to enter into a registered partnership.
Such a partnership guarantees the right of registered spouses to have a say in decisions pertaining to their partner and to obtain support and benefits as needed. Couples who enter into a registered partnership will also be able to convert their status to marriage in a simplified procedure should they wish to do so.
The proposal also clarifies the Family Law Act’s regulation of parenthood in regards to same-sex couples’ adoption rights. The act is planned to enter into force on January 1, 2024.
Estonia, population 1.4 million, joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.
A Christian-owned wellness center is exempt from the federal law prohibiting employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The unanimous three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Braidwood Management, which runs an alternative health center in Texas, cannot be sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over its policy that employees who engage in homosexual or gender non-conforming conduct will be fired.
Circuit Judge Jerry Smith wrote for the majority that without the shield, the company would be forced to “comply wholeheartedly” with policy it sees as “sinful,” upholding a ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth.
However, the court reversed O’Connor’s ruling that Braidwood could bring the case as a class action on behalf of other religious businesses. That means the exemption now only applies directly to Braidwood.
Smith was joined by Circuit Judges Edith Clement and Cory Wilson. All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.
The EEOC and a lawyer for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Braidwood sued the EEOC after the agency updated its enforcement guidance in 2021 to reflect the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which said bias against gay and transgender workers is a form of unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The company said it was run according to Christian beliefs, including opposition to homosexuality and upholding specific gender roles. It had sought a court order shielding it from EEOC enforcement under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 federal law limiting government agencies’ ability to burden anyone’s religious freedom.
The company is separately suing the Biden administration over the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance plans, including those funded by employers, cover preventive care services including HIV-preventing drugs, which Braidwood also says violates its beliefs. O’Connor, who is also presiding over that case, ruled in the company’s favor in that case, though the order is partly on hold for now.