A landmark ruling by a Pennsylvania court could set crucial precedent for child custody decisions when LGBTQ+ couples separate or divorce.
Nicole Junior and Chanel Glover went through the entire IVF process together, splitting the massive costs to help Glover get pregnant, co-signing contracts, and establishing Junior as the intended co-parent, according to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer. They had also been working on paperwork for Junior to obtain a second-parent adoption.
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But the couple experienced trouble in their marriage when Glover was about halfway through the pregnancy. Once Junior moved out, Glover declared she wanted to be a single mom and that Junior would not be allowed any contact with the baby.
The court, however, decided Glover had no right to make that decision.
Junior petitioned to be recognized as the baby’s parent, and the judge agreed that she deserved to be, as the couple had participated in the conception of the baby together.
Glover accused Junior of emotional abuse and volatile behavior, but Junior denied the accusations. The judge said accusations of abuse also do not have bearing on parental rights and could be discussed in a future custody hearing.
Glover appealed the judge’s decision just before the baby was born, and in August 2023, a panel of nine judges on the Pennsylvania Superior Court unanimously determined that Junior deserved full co-parental rights due to the couple’s “intent-based parentage.”
The decision declared, “The couple not only evidenced their mutual intent to conceive and raise the child, but they also participated jointly in the process of creating a new life.”
The decision is considered a victory by LGBTQ+ advocates, who praised the court for thinking beyond marriage and genetic connections for what makes someone a parent – especially as the number of LGBTQ+ people using assisted reproductive technologies continues to rise.
Helen Casale, a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, told the Inquirer the state now has precedent for judges to take into account the decisions and actions that lead to a child’s birth.
“How did they come to this determination to plan this family together?” Casale explained. “Did they go to doctors appointments? Did they make decisions related to the type of person who’s going to be the sperm donor?”
Attorney Mark A. Momjian described the suit as a “multigenerational legal battle to confirm civil rights in the LGBTQ community.”
Grover is now trying to get the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to take the case. According to Inquirer, she said someone contributing money to the IVF process is not enough to show intent, and if it were, her mom could claim parental rights as well.
“My mom was at the majority of my doctors appointments, majority of my son’s pediatrician appointments. My mom has done more,” Grover said.
But Junior has desperately been trying to be part of the child’s life. She has yet to meet her son or even see a photo of him since he was born.
Are transgender athletes allowed in the Olympics? With Paris 2024 soon approaching, many people have been asking that question.
Unfortunately, recent years have seen transgender athletes competing in sporting events face increasingly extreme restrictions.
While transgender athletes are technically allowed in the Olympics, they’re not exactly given a warm welcome given the increasingly demanding requirements placed on them.
Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic games, the topic of trans athletes’ participation is once again being raised. The forthcoming Olympic games are set to introduce further restrictions to previous editions.
Can trans athletes compete at the Olympics?
Taking place in Paris this July and August, the 2024 Olympics includes a new requirement that athletes must have completed their transition before the age of 12 to compete.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has suggested that transitioning after the age of 12 could give an advantage to athletes over their cisgender competitors.
There are examples of transgender athletes at the Olympics. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history as the first openly trans athlete to compete at the Olympic Games.
Now, athletes like Hubbard who have previously represented their nation at the Olympics will not be eligible for the Paris 2024 Games.
Previously, the IOC had guidelines in place that allowed trans women athletes to compete if their testosterone levels were below 10 nanomoles per litre a year before competing.
Various further bans have also been enacted against trans athletes recently in a number of sporting groups.
Laurel Hubbard speaks to media after competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games (Laurence Griffiths/Getty)
Are there restrictions on trans people in professional sports?
Last March, the governing body of athletics (World Athletics Council) banned women from competing in elite female competitions if they have gone through male puberty.
At the time, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said the tightening restrictions to exclude transgender women was due to the “overarching need to protect the female category.”
The decision was enacted on 31 March, Transgender Day of Visibility.
Unfortunately, similar attitudes were then adopted by World Aquatics in its ‘Gender Inclusion Policy’.
The governing body voted to bar trans women from competing in women’s swimming events if they had gone through any part of puberty.
Swimmer Lia Thomas has now filed a legal dispute against World Aquatics’ anti-trans policies, citing a number of decisions from the governing body disqualifying most trans women and intersex athletes from international events.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) has also introduced bans on trans women participating if they have reached puberty before transitioning.
Such restrictions are introduced with the attempted justification of ‘safeguarding’ women’s sport. These trans bans have reached every corner of the sporting world: professional golfer Hailey Davidson was pushed into testosterone testing to verify her eligibility after she won a women’s pro tournament in Florida.
A pizza restaurant in upstate New York has agreed to pay a transgender former employee $25,000 and take other steps to settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged the worker was subjected to invasive personal questions and told he wasn’t “a real man.”
Quinn Gambino, a trans man, was a cook at T.C. Wheelers Bar & Pizzeria in Tonawanda, which is near Buffalo. Beginning in January 2021, according to the suit, the owners repeatedly asked questions about his genitalia and transition procedures, such as “Does she have female parts?” They “also intentionally misgendered Gambino by using female pronouns (such as ‘she’ or ‘her’) and stood by as employees and customers did the same,” says an EEOC press release.
Managers and coworkers further told Gambino he wasn’t “a real man” or “a real guy” and even likened being trans to pedophilia, according to the EEOC. Gambino reported the harassment to management, but it continued, so he resigned after four months. The EEOC, a federal agency, filed the suit last March in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York after an initial attempt to reach a settlement failed.
Under the settlement reached last week, T.C. Wheelers, which has denied any wrongdoing, will pay Gambino $25,000 in back wages and compensatory damages. The restaurant also agreed to take steps to prevent discrimination and harassment, such as requiring all owners, managers, and employees to undergo training on federal antidiscrimination laws, and it has hired an independent human resources monitor to investigate all employee complaints. The monitor will provide annual reports to the EEOC, which will look at the company’s business records when needed to ensure compliance.
“We appreciate T.C. Wheelers’ agreement to settle this lawsuit and make proactive changes, and we are proud to have obtained an effective resolution that compensates Gambino for what he endured and helps ensure that other transgender employees will be treated fairly in the future,” Jeffrey Burstein, regional attorney for the EEOC’s New York District Office, said in the press release.
“The EEOC considers protecting members of the LGBTQIA+ community to be an important enforcement priority,” added EEOC New York District Director Yaw Gyebi Jr. “We will continue to assure that transgender employees receive the full benefit of federal antidiscrimination laws in all industries.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans sex discrimination in employment. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Former Las Vegas Raiders star Carl Nassib made history during Pride month in 2021 when he came out as gay.
“I actually hope that, one day, videos like this and the whole coming-out process are just not necessary,” he said in a post on Instagram. “But until then, I’m going to do my best, and my part, to cultivate a culture that’s accepting, that’s compassionate.”
Having also played for the Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Nassib announced his retirement from the NFL last September.
Many people believe that Nassib was the first player to come out, but that’s far from the case. Sure, he was the first to come out while on the sport’s regular season roster, but the title of “first” actually goes to Dave Kopay, who revealed his gay identity 26 years earlier, three years after retiring.
What’s more, in 1969 Kopay was on the same team as two other gay NFL football players, training under the legendary (and open-minded) Washington coach Vince Lombardi. He also played for the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers.
To date, there have only ever been 16 out gay or bisexual NFL players – hardly any, in the grand scheme of things, especially when you think about the huge number of footballers who have donned a uniform since the NFL was founded in 1920.
There are undoubtedly more players who never came out, but sadly that means their stories are lost in the mists of time.
Thankfully, we do know the incredible, powerful and heart-wrenching stories of three players. Two lost their lives during the Aids crisis, but all of them were truly talented.
These are the stories of running back Dave Kopay, who played between 1964 and 1972, Jerry Smith (1965-77), a tight end with Washington, and Ray McDonald (1967-68), a running back, also for Washington.
Dave Kopay
Dave Kopay was the first professional team sport athlete ever to declare his homosexuality. He made the announcement in 1975, three years after his retirement, following a nine-year NFL career.
He played for five teams during his career: San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay. After he came out, he tried to get into coaching, but he claims that NFL and colleges expressed no interest after his sexuality became public knowledge.
Dave Kopay, pictured in 1977 (Getty)
Kopay spent a lot of his younger years denying his sexuality. He joined the Theta Chi fraternity when he arrived at the University of Washington, and it was at the there that he says met the man he now calls the great love of his life. But he was still very much in the closet, and trying to deny who he really was. After all, this was the early 1960s, when declaring he was gay would have essentially ruined his prospects.
Describing that time to the University of Washington Magazine, he said: I was never thinking I was a gay man because I just wasn’t like ‘one of them’. Just talking about it like that almost reinforces the utter bullsh*t that society uses to identify gay folks.
“I didn’t have the knowledge or strength to take it on then, and even after I did take it on, there were many, many times that it almost consumed me and took me into deep depression.”
Letters from fans helped him to find the strength to carry on, the former running back explained.
Kopay is alive and well. He became a Gay Games ambassador, and was a featured announcer in the opening ceremony for Gay Games VII, in Chicago in July 2006.
Jerry Smith
In 1986 Kopay revealed, in his autobiography, a brief affair with fellow NFL star Jerry Smith, who played for Washington (then the Redskins, but now called the Commanders) from 1965 to 1977, playing in a losing Super Bowl team in 1973 – although he didn’t name Smith at the time.
Tight end Smith kept his sexuality very private, focusing on his career. After officially retiring at the end of the 1978 season, he quietly came out as gay to a few family members. He moved to Austin, Texas, where he co-owned a gay bar called The Boathouse.
Jerry Smith kept his sexuality private even after revealing he had Aids. (Getty)
In 1986, Smith revealed that he had contracted AIDS, hoping to bring awareness about the disease and de-stigmatise it – a brave move as, at the time, the prevailing belief was that it was an illness that only affected “drug addicts and hairdressers” as Jim Graham, director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, put it in an interview with the Washington Post in 1986.
Smith’s teammates all visited him as he lay in a Maryland hospital. He died, aged 43, on October 15, 1986, of an AIDS-related illness, a year after being diagnosed with HIV. Twenty-three players from Washington’s 1973 Super Bowl team reunited for the funeral, with several, including Sonny Jurgensen, Charley Taylor and Bobby Mitchell, serving as pallbearers.
“I don’t know how many of the players even knew he was gay, but I’ll tell you one thing: if they had known, they wouldn’t have cared,” Jurgensen has said.
Ray McDonald
As it turns out, Washington had not one, not two, but three gay men on the roster in 1969. The third was Ray McDonald, who had studied at the University of Idaho.
Questions about McDonald’s sexuality are believed to have started late in his college career, with rumours spreading that he was seeing a man at Washington State University, about 10 minutes from Idaho’s campus.
He went on to be drafted by Washington and during the rookie talent show at a training camp in 1967, McDonald delighted some with his singing skills, while others, it’s said, raised their eyebrows.
Ray McDonald played for Washington for two seasons and once delighted teammates with his singing voice. (University of Idaho)
At the time, Washington was coached by the now-legendary Vince Lombardi, who was no stranger to the LGBTQ+ community: his brother was gay, and many former players say he knew some of his team were gay. Not only did he not have a problem with it, but he also went out of his way to make sure no one else would make it a problem.
“Lombardi wanted to give him every benefit of the doubt and every chance and said if he found out that any coach was challenging McDonald’s manhood, they [would] be fired immediately.”
Former running back A.D. Whitfield, who played for Washington between 1966 and 1969, agreed that McDonald’s sexuality was something of an open secret.
“People more or less knew he was gay,” he said. “In the first year, there were all kinds of stories about incidents around town.”
One of the biggest incidents was when McDonald was reportedly arrested for having sex with another man in public.
It’s tragic that none of these great athletes felt they could come out during their career, but their legacy lives on through players like Carl Nassib.
LGBTQ+ advocates slammed Florida higher education officials for eliminating Sociology courses and any diversity programs on campuses.
The Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s university system, made the decision in implementing higher education reforms championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“It should be no surprise that today the Florida Board of Governors, a rubber stamp for Ron DeSantis’s agenda of censorship and surveillance, approved unprecedented rules that effectively abolish diversity and inclusion programs in our State University System intended to support LGBTQ and minority students,” said Carlos Guillermo Smith, Equality Florida’s Senior Policy Advisor.
“The Board’s rules go well beyond its authority granted by the Legislature and instead impose broad censorship on a vast array of campus activities and speech and seriously threaten student and faculty participation in public life across the political, social, and religious spectrum. The shockingly broad and vague language will inevitably lead to self-censorship and a chilling effect that will end academic freedom as we know it on university campuses.”
The university action took place just over a week after the Florida Board of Education voted to permanently ban any diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in Florida’s public colleges as well.
“Higher education must return to its essential foundations of academic integrity and the pursuit of knowledge instead of being corrupted by destructive ideologies,” said Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. “These actions today ensure that we will not spend taxpayers’ money supporting DEI and radical indoctrination that promotes division in our society.”
Smith said the actions taken to stop any recognition, much less promotion, of equality on Florida campuses marked an appalling blow to education in the state.
“The sweeping away of academic freedom combined with the elimination of sociology as a core course option, a reckless and unresearched decision made with little review of potential impacts, has diminished the prestige and reputation of Florida’s public universities,” he said. “The Board of Governors had the opportunity to hit the brakes, but instead, shamefully followed their censorship agenda off a cliff in service to DeSantis’s failed political ambitions.”
DeSantis embraced anti-LGBTQ policy in the build-up to a run for president, one he suspended earlier this month after a distant second-place finish to former President Donald Trump in Iowa, the first state to hold a presidential contest this year.
San Francisco Pride represents a community of people who choose to call the San Francisco Bay Area home. We have chosen to be here whether seeking safety in community or the possibilities of what our futures might hold. We are the community who championed our freedom to love. We are the community who uplifts the beauty and fullness of our gender and sexual orientation intersecting with our race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, disability – all of our identities. As we look among ourselves in community, we see that our work is to create a community where we feel welcomed and loved by each other even as we identify with seemingly opposed affinities.
Our hearts are heavy with grief for the Palestinians and Israelis whose lives have been damaged or destroyed by violence, whether physical, psychological, or emotional. In the magnitude of the conflict in Gaza, we must remember who we are as a community, both locally and globally. In these times of profound sorrow, we echo the cries of the world in calling for peace and unity. The continued war and genocide in Gaza are marked by tens of thousands of lives lost including many children. As urged by the United Nations and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, we urgently echo the call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages.
As the SF Pride community, we know that living in and protecting our freedom to be, express, and love ourselves and each other are central to the community we co-create. Love is the answer. Love can be revolutionary and transformational. And in these times of war and violence, SF Pride calls for an immediate activation of a comprehensive plan for resolution, restoration, and reparation. We choose to lead for queer liberation with compassion and unity – to create and preserve safety for ourselves, for each other, and for our communities. Our liberation is an act of love, and our quest for collective freedom binds us to one another.
Dehumanization is rampant in our governments, media, and communities: we reject this. We are witness to the abuse of power in our communities: we reject this. We reject narratives that pit us against each other. Instead, we choose to turn to the love that we can foster together. In these challenging times, SF Pride will maintain that love and liberation must be interwoven in our pursuit of freedom. Our city, a sanctuary for the queer community, epitomizes the power of love and resilience in the face of global injustices.
Together, we are committed to building spaces of healing, understanding, and acceptance – a sanctuary that uplifts the fullness of our identities and makes space for us to live and love freely and without threat of harm and violence. SF Pride chooses to shine brightly as a symbol of hope and solidarity, united in our dance against injustice everywhere. We believe we are a beacon for the world. Let us be a Beacon of Love.
The U.S. syphilis epidemic isn’t abating, with the rate of infectious cases rising 9% in 2022, according to a new federal government report on sexually transmitted diseases in adults.
But there’s some unexpected good news: The rate of new gonorrhea cases fell for the first time in a decade.
It’s not clear why syphilis rose 9% while gonorrhea dropped 9%, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, adding that it’s too soon to know whether a new downward trend is emerging for the latter.
They are most focused on syphilis, which is less common than gonorrhea or chlamydia but considered more dangerous. Total cases surpassed 207,000 in 2022, the highest count in the United States since 1950, according to data released Tuesday.
And while it continues to have a disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men, it is expanding in heterosexual men and women, and increasingly affecting newborns, too, CDC officials said.
A tissue sample with the presence of the bacterium responsible for causing syphilis.Skip Van Orden / CDC via AP file
Syphilis is a bacterial disease that can surface as painless genital sores but can ultimately lead to paralysis, hearing loss, dementia and even death if left untreated.
New syphilis infections plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when antibiotics became widely available and fell to their lowest by 1998.
About 59,000 of the 2022 cases involved the most infectious forms of syphilis. Of those, about a quarter were women and nearly a quarter were heterosexual men.
“I think its unknowingly being spread in the cisgender heterosexual population because we really aren’t testing for it. We really aren’t looking for it” in that population, said Dr. Philip Chan, who teaches at Brown University and is chief medical officer of Open Door Health, a health center for gay, lesbian and transgender patients in Providence, Rhode Island.
The report also shows rates of the most infectious types of syphilis rose not just across the country but also across different racial and ethnic groups, with American Indian and Alaska Native people having the highest rate. South Dakota outpaced any other state for the highest rate of infectious syphilis at 84 cases per 100,000 people — more than twice as high as the state with the second-highest rate, New Mexico.
South Dakota’s increase was driven by an outbreak in the Native American community, said Dr. Meghan O’Connell, chief public health officer at the Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board based in Rapid City, South Dakota. Nearly all of the cases were in heterosexual people, and O’Connell said that STD testing and treatment was already limited in isolated tribal communities and only got worse during the pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year convened a syphilis task force focused on stopping the spread of the STD, with an emphasis on places with the highest syphilis rates — South Dakota, 12 other states and the District of Columbia.
The report also looked at the more common STDs of chlamydia and gonorrhea.
Chlamydia cases were relatively flat from 2021 to 2022, staying at a rate of about 495 per 100,000, though there were declines noted in men and especially women in their early 20s. For gonorrhea, the most pronounced decline was seen in women in their early 20s as well.
Experts say they’re not sure why gonorrhea rates declined. It happened in about 40 states, so whatever explains the decrease appears to have occurred across most of the country. STD testing was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and officials believe that’s the reason the chlamydia rate fell in 2020.
It’s possible that testing and diagnoses were still shaking out in 2022, said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.
“We are encouraged by the magnitude of the decline,” Mermin said, though the gonorrhea rate is still higher now than it was pre-pandemic. “We need to examine what happened, and whether it’s going to continue to happen.”
In three years, President Joe Biden’s nominations have helped to bring broader diversity to the federal judiciary — a body that has long been dominated by White cisgender men.
Now, Biden and Senate Democrats are poised to tie a record for confirmations of LGBTQ+ judges. If the Senate approves Judges Nicole Berner and Melissa DuBose, Biden will tie with former President Barack Obama’s record of appointing 11 openly LGBTQ+ lifetime judges to the federal bench. These confirmations would come at a time when more LGBTQ+ rights cases are being fought in courts across the country — and even making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“LGBTQ+ representation belongs everywhere, within all of our nation’s institutions in our system,” said Judi O’Kelley, co-interim executive director and chief program and policy officer for the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. “We are very grateful that President Biden has been working to remedy the historic vast underrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people, including people with intersectional identities, on the federal bench.”
Berner would be the first openly LGBTQ+ judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit,which is currently considering two separate cases about government-sponsored insurance benefits for adults receiving gender-affirming care in North Carolina and West Virginia. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently advanced Berner’s nomination to the full Senate for a vote, which is expected to take place within the next few weeks.
Berner would be the third openly LGBTQ+ women to serve as a federal appellate court judge — all three of whom have been nominated by Biden, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil rights lobbying group.
DuBose would be the first openly LGBTQ+ judge, and the first person of color, on the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. DuBose is currently awaiting her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
Currently about 2 percent of Article III lifetime federal judges — 21 out of about 815 active judges — are openly queer, according to data from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Federal Judicial Center. No openly transgender or nonbinary judges have ever been nominated or confirmed to these prestigious positions.
Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that the importance of having more out LGBTQ+ judges is twofold: It helps to build more public trust in the judiciary, and it brings needed perspective into courtrooms that have not had LGBTQ+ life experiences represented on the bench.
“I think it’s crucial right now,” she said. “I say that in the context,especially, of numerous bills that have been advanced to intentionally harm the LGBTQ community, particularly when we think about some of the bills that are attacking transgender youth in particular.”
Lawsuits over gender-affirming care bans for trans youth have reached the 6th and 11th Circuits, as lower courts across the country grapple with whether banning such medical care is likely unconstitutional on the grounds of the 14th Amendment. Lower courts have repeatedly found that such bans violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses, while several federal appeals courts have rebuked those lower-court decisions.
Many lawsuits over anti-LGBTQ+ laws or discriminatory policies are currently underway — particularly now that 22 states have banned gender-affirming carefor trans youth. Active challenges include one against Indiana’s gender-affirming care ban, now before the 7th Circuit, as well as a lawsuit against Texas’ care banbefore the state’s Supreme Court. In Oklahoma, another case against the state’s gender-affirming care ban is currently before the 10th Circuit.
Harper Seldin, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, is working on all of those cases. As more anti-LGBTQ+ bills are proposed in state legislatures, the ACLU and other civil rights groups are committed to challenging laws when they can, he said — though he feels that the courts are becoming increasingly hostile in certain areas of the country.
“It is becoming harder to educate courts on how these laws really prevent transgender people from living their lives on equal terms,” Seldin said. “Courts and judges are like everyone else, they’re affected by the media climate that they’re in. And so to the extent that that climate becomes more hostile to trans people, it becomes difficult, and impossible, I think, to wall off the courts from that.”
Judges have been increasingly following the precedent set by a recent 6th Circuit ruling that mandated gender-affirming care bans stay in place in Kentucky and Tennessee, Seldin said — even though they don’t have to. A 6th Circuit ruling is only binding for the handful of states in the court’s jurisdiction, and other states aren’t obligated to follow suit.
“For the moment, folks are looking to those decisions,” he said.
Until recent presidential administrations, representation of out LGBTQ+ federal judges was almost nonexistent. In 1994, Deborah A. Batts became the first openly queer federal judge in the country. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
In 1994, Deborah A. Batts became the first openly queer federal judge in the country.
It would be another 17 years before J. Paul Oetken, appointed to the same court by Obama, became the second openly LGBTQ+ federal judge. Two judges — Vaughn Walker, appointed by President George W. Bush, and Martin Jenkins, appointed by Clinton — came out after they joined the federal judiciary.
Obama reached a record number of LGBTQ+ judges, with 11 of them confirmed over his eight years in office. President Donald Trump appointed two LGBTQ+ judges in four years and Biden currently has nine LGBTQ+ judges in three years.
Biden and Senate Democrats have also prioritized racial, gender and professional diversity in their nominees. Of Biden’s 164 confirmed judges, 104 of them are women, and a majority of those are women of color. Additionally, they have increased the number of judges with public defender and civil rights backgrounds.
With the rise of LGBTQ+ judges, more queer lawyers are expressing interest in positions on federal courts, said Kristin L. Rosi, president of the International Association of LGBTQ+ judges and the chief administrative law judge for the California Department of Insurance.
“I think that’s something on the table right now in a way that people did not feel was on the table in years past,” Rosi said.
Generally presidents set the tone for the kind of background and characteristics they look for in their judicial nominees. Some nominate judges within a particular age range; others tend to nominate judges with work experience as prosecutors or corporate lawyers. U.S. senators play a key role in recommending potential nominees from their state.
While recent additions to the federal judiciary are more reflective of the U.S. population, on the whole lifetime federal judges remain overwhelmingly White heterosexual cisgender men. More work needs to be done to expand diversity, experts told The 19th.
Part of that work requires intentional recruitment and training to maintain a pipeline of qualified legal professionals who are interested in public service, said Daniel Anders, a judge for the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and the former president of the International Association of LGBTQ+ judges.
“If the pathways are not utilized, or not taken, then they tend to be overgrown and forgotten,” Anders said. “But, if every year or every term there are successful LGBT candidates who become judges, then the conversation will change to, ‘We value that diversity and we want to make sure that there’s LGBT representation on the court.’”
Networks like the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association aim to be part of the solution, O’Kelley of the association said. The bar association hosts sessions during its conferences that are focused on pathways to the judiciary. It also offers a program called the Nuts & Bolts Academy for Judicial Candidates. The academy provides mentoring and networking opportunities to candidates who are seriously interested in pursuing a judicial position within the next three years.
The education does not end with LGBTQ+ judicial candidates, however. The bar association also wants to provide cultural competency training to judges of all backgrounds with the hope of strengthening their ability to make fair decisions.
“Even with the increase in numbers that we’re talking about, I think we’re roughly talking about 2 percent of our Article III federal judges being LGBTQ+ identified,” O’Kelley said. “That’s a whole lot of other judges who we want to make sure are getting the education and the cultural competency that we need. Because we do look to them to be administering our laws fairly and on behalf of everyone.”
The report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is the latest piece of evidence demonstrating that restrictions on puberty blockers, hormones, and other care for transgender youth “deny children access to routine health care that has been shown to decrease dramatically high rates of suicide and depression.”
Yet conservative state legislators are unrelenting. More than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced across the U.S. in 2023, and 80 were passed into law, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Just weeks into 2024, 285 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced. The majority of the bills target transgender minors, whether they be bans on gender-affirming health care, laws mandating that they use bathrooms and school facilities contrary to their gender identity, or policies forcefully outing them to their families.
Medical professionals say gender-affirming care has become more heavily scrutinized than other areas of medicine. To Dr. Carl Streed Jr., president of the U.S. Professional Association for Trans Health, this is not because of the actual science behind the treatment but instead due to “ideological” bias.
“The goalposts continue to be moved,” he said at the HRC 2024 State Legislative Press Briefing. “It’s one of those situations where I often will ask people if you can tell me honestly what evidence you need to consider changing your mind. And if they cannot do that, I definitely know they’re not thinking about the facts. They’re definitely thinking about this from an ideological perspective.”
The recent legislation wave is not just anti-science, added Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at HRC — it is also legally unsound. Regarding the bills that have been passed into law, one aspect she flagged was “how often our opponents have to cheat in order to win.”
“Some of the worst bills that passed last year passed after a circumvention of the usual process. So they passed because the rules were suspended, they passed in the last several hours or last hours of a [legislative] session, they passed after having cut off testimony contrary to the usual rules and public comment,” she explained.
Oakley attributes the sudden attention placed on transgender issues in legislatures, in part, to the culture war. Instead of leaving health care decisions to medical professionals, she said politicians have taken it upon themselves to “use transgender folks as a political wedge.”
“They do not really have any subject matter expertise at all,” she continued. “And in fact, when people are trying to offer subject matter expertise, [they are] absolutely rebuffed and rejected. These are folks who are doing what they’re doing because they perceive this to be their path to power.”
While the bans are hastily pushed through in many cases, they bring devastating consequences for the transgender residents of their states, young and older. As trans minors lose access to critical treatment, Streed said the restrictions also “continue to affect the science and affect our ability to continue to do research,” as they “get in the way of us being able to disseminate information effectively.”
If evidence is not enough to change their minds, what is?
Streed noted that “some of the easiest ways to combat misinformation is actually sharing narratives,” which data also supports. Severalstudies have shown that knowing a transgender person, whether in real life or in media, can increase support for transgender rights and decrease prejudice.
“We always like to say evidence changes minds, narratives change hearts,” Streed said, adding, “We need more people to feel comfortable, and we need to provide them protections and support in sharing their experiences around this.”
This rings true for Minna Zelch, a member of the leadership team at Trans Allies of Ohio, whose 19-year-old daughter is transgender. Zelch shared that after the state where her daughter was attending college passed anti-trans laws, she had to switch to a university in another state for her safety.
Many transgender people and their families have been forced to relocate in order to live unrestricted lives, and even the ability to move is a privilege not afforded to all. To be able to openly share one’s narrative is also a privilege, Zelch noted, which makes it all the more crucial to speak out if you can.
“As parents one thing we constantly tell our legislators is we are the first people to say there needs to be more research on this. We need more information, but these laws will make sure that never ever happens. And it’s very frustrating for for them to just to just dismiss it completely,” she said. “And so that’s why so many of us have chosen to risk our safety to tell our stories.”
The Advocate’s Christopher Wiggins contributed to this report.
Saturday February 24 @ 7 pm. The Ray Charles Project at Occidental Center for the Arts. Join us for a musical journey through the legendary hits of the iconic Ray Charles, as this talented ensemble pays tribute to the “Genius.” Immerse yourself in the soulful sounds that defined an era, performed with passion and authenticity that will transport you back in time. From “Georgia on My Mind” to “What’d I Say,” The Ray Charles Project is not just a performance; it’s a celebration of the enduring legacy of one of the greatest musicians in history. Tickets are $35 GA, $28 for OCA members at www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org; or at the door. Doors open at 6:30 pm. Beer, wine and refreshments for sale, art gallery open during intermission. OCA is accessible to mobility-challenged patrons. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 94565. 707-874-9392. OCA is a community based arts organization staffed by volunteers.
