Poland has violated the right to respect for a private life by failing to offer legal recognition for same-sex couples, the European Court of Human Rights said on Tuesday, putting pressure on Donald Tusk’s new government to quickly change the law.
Ten Poles argued that the vast majority of Council of Europe member states offered same-sex couples a right to marry or to enter into registered civil unions, and asserted that they were disadvantaged, for example in the fields of taxation, social rights and family law.
“The Court considered that the Polish State had failed to comply with its duty to ensure that the applicants had a specific legal framework providing for the recognition and protection of their same-sex unions,” it said in a statement.
“That failure had resulted in the applicants’ inability to regulate fundamental aspects of their lives and amounted to a breach of their right to respect for their private and family life.”
The case dates back to the rule of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which was effectively ended after eight years on Monday when parliament backed a new pro-European government under Tusk to take power after October’s election.
PiS says that extending marriage and adoption to gay couples threatens traditional family structures and is harmful for children. It also says that teaching about LGBTQ issues in schools results in children being sexualized.
Tusk had said during the election campaign that his party would introduce a provision for same-sex partnerships and he considered it a priority.
As a sign of his government’s dedication to fighting discrimination, Tusk’s cabinet will be the first to include a minister for equality, Katarzyna Kotula, a politician from the New Left party forming part of his pro-European coalition.
“It’s a good day. The time of discrimination is coming to an end. We know that we are all different, but we are equal. We will ensure equality for all — which is guaranteed by … the Constitution,” she wrote on social media platform X.
Tusk will face a vote of confidence in parliament later on Tuesday and his government could be sworn in on Wednesday morning.
ECHR rulings are binding on members of the Council of Europe, an organization separate from the European Union, but some remain outstanding for years.
The Love Does Not Exclude Association which supported the applicants in court said the ruling would result in “serious pressure” on the government to introduce same-sex partnerships.
“Since the new government wants to rebuild Poland’s reputation … and prove that the rule of law crisis has ended, it will not be able to ignore the voices of international bodies such as the tribunal,” it said in a statement.
Flames shot through the crowded Up Stairs Lounge as bartender Buddy Rasmussen opened the front door to see who had been ringing the downstairs buzzer. Someone had lit the popular bar’s stairwell carpet on fire, and it burned its way up the wooden stairs into the bar, quickly igniting the lounge’s red wallpaper, curtains, and posters of Burt Reynolds naked on a bearskin rug and Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz wearing his seven gold medals, a star-spangled Speedo, and a smile.
Some patrons saw the blaze and ran for the nearest exits or down the stairwell, emerging with their clothes on fire as neighbors raced to pour pitchers of water onto them. Rasmussen began tapping patrons on the shoulder to follow him toward the fire exit at the back of the bar, but many were too shocked by the exploding blaze to move.
The June 24, 1973, conflagration, likely set by a sex worker ejected from the New Orleans bar earlier that night, killed 32 people and injured at least 15 others.
Yet the reaction to the catastrophe hardly matched the immense suffering the fire caused, and the tragedy was compounded by multiple denials: Public officials refused to issue statements about the fire, and Catholic churches refused to hold funeral services for the victims, whom they saw as unrepentant sinners. The media only reported on the fire briefly or not at all, and some families refused to claim their relatives’ bodies because they didn’t want to acknowledge that they were gay. Three of the victims ended up buried in unmarked graves — two remain unidentified.
To this day, the arson remains unsolved.
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The June 25, 1973, blaze quickly engulfed the Up Stairs Lounge. Photo by Philip Ames, courtesy of the LGBT+ Archives of Louisiana.
Hate crimes reverberate through communities, intimidating an entire class of people. The Up Stairs Lounge had been a safe space in the gay-friendly, tourist-heavy French Quarter. But as bar patrons feared a similar attack on other gathering spots, still others worried that police might start raiding gay bars more often and arresting more men in the name of public safety. Bar owners believed talking too much about the fire could hurt business. And locals just wanted to move on from the horror.
As a result, to this day, even many queer New Orleanians aren’t aware of the most devastating fire in their city’s history, the deadliest massacre of gay men in the U.S. before the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
This year, half a century later, there’s considerable important work being done to ensure that the arson and its aftermath are remembered and the deaths memorialized. For the tragedy’s anniversary, a group of community activists, religious leaders, and queer historians partnered with the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and the Historic New Orleans Collection to organize a weekend of commemorative events at the end of June.
The weekend, attended by LGBTQ Nation, featured discussions with religious leaders and activists who lent a hand in the fire’s aftermath, artists who have made documentaries and theatrical works based on the event, church leaders concerned with the tragedy’s spiritual legacy, and podcasters and archivists dedicated to preserving its terrible memory. The weekend events also included art exhibitions, film screenings, a memorial service, and a “second line” jazz funeral through the city’s streets to the now defunct bar’s front entrance.
Their work is especially important considering the current backlash against remembering the atrocities America has committed against its most vulnerable communities. Extreme right-wingers are busy denying our guilt over slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the effect these traumas have on minority communities to this day.
But those committed to preserving history aren’t just making artworks and public speeches about the tragedy; they’re also working to ensure that the victims and their families finally get the recognition and empathy they deserve for their loss.
The fire occurred when New Orleans author Johnny Townsend was only 11 years old. Though he saw horrific photos of the aftermath on TV news at the time, as he grew up, he could find little background on what happened. So in 1989 — 16 years after the fire — he began tracking down the bar’s survivors and former patrons with the help of Rasmussen, the lounge’s surviving bartender.
Through interviews and research, Townsend published the first historical account of what happened as well as profiles for each victim in his 2011 book Let the Faggots Burn. The amateur historian struggled to find a publisher, so he eventually published it himself via BookLocker.com. After the 333-page book was released, a son of one of the fire’s victims approached him after Townsend spoke publicly about the book and said that all he had ever known of his father was what his mother had told him: “Your father was a drunk, and he died at a bar.”
Townsend’s book had given his dad back to him. Today, the historical amnesia is finally being addressed. There are three books about the fire — including Clayton Delery-Edwards’ comprehensive 2014 account, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, and Robert W. Fieseler’s 2018 nonfiction narrative, Tinderbox.
Three documentaries have been made about the arson, with a fourth in production, as well as one play, a stage musical, four unproduced screenplays, a dance piece, various podcasts, and a permanent art installation.
One of the documentaries, a 2013 short by Royd Anderson, helped the estranged family of World War II veteran Ferris LeBlanc realize that he was one of three “unidentified white males” who perished in the blaze. The city buried his corpse in an unmarked plot within Resthaven Memorial Park, a potter’s field located near the city’s northeastern coast.
Anderson is now working on a documentary called Saving Ferris and pressuring government officials to exhume LeBlanc and give him the proper military burial that he deserved.
Max Vernon’s 2017 stage musical, The View UpStairs, depicts a snarky gay fashionista millennial who buys the dilapidated Up Stairs Lounge to launch his flagship store but is then magically transported to 1973, just before the fire. Despite its tragic content, it has been seen by over 100,000 people — Off-Broadway, in multiple U.S. cities, as well as in England and Australia — and has been translated into Japanese and seen by 20,000 theatergoers. Drag legend RuPaul called the musical “fantastic.”
None of these things would’ve been possible without Townsend’s first book. Delery-Edwards and Fieseler agreed on this point as the three book authors spoke at an opening-night panel during the 50th-anniversary commemorative weekend.
Fieseler said that people still contact him regularly with new information about the fire. At speaking engagements, attendees will often approach him, tears in their eyes, to confess their estrangement from their own queer family members.
“It can change minds,” Fieseler said of the history. “It can melt hearts when they learn the inhumanity of how these people were treated.”
Many of the weekend panelists said they wanted to ensure that the history is never forgotten and that it never happens again — but it already is happening again.
“New Orleans is renowned internationally for being a welcoming, open city. And part of us continuing to promote that narrative requires us to acknowledge a time when we were not an open, welcoming city.”City Council Vice President J.P. Morell
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Eleven states have laws censoring discussions of LGBTQ+ issues in public school classrooms. Thirty-three states have banned LGBTQ+-inclusive books from schools and public libraries, according to the free speech organization PEN America. Meanwhile, recent reports show that the LGBTQ+ community has increasingly been targeted by legislation banning drag shows and gender-affirming care, as well as by hate speech, threats, and violence from white supremacist, neo-fascist, parental rights, and Christian nationalist groups.
“New Orleans is renowned internationally for being a welcoming, open city,” City Council Vice President J.P. Morell told attendees at the opening reception of the 50th anniversary commemoration. “And part of us continuing to promote that narrative requires us to acknowledge a time when we were not an open, welcoming city.”
Morell spearheaded an official apology from the city, delivered in 2022, for its “botched and callous response” to the arson. He said that the city and media had made an “active effort” to bury the massacre and shield the politically powerful from any guilt for neglecting its victims. That same year, Louisiana state Rep. Alonzo Knox (D) passed a resolution apologizing for the state’s response.
A growing community has emerged to preserve the arson’s memory and counter those who wish to keep it buried. To understand what drives them, one must first know a little about the bar, the community it created, and the fire that ravaged both.
“When I try to explain [the arson] to people not in the queer community,” Morell told the reception attendees, “I tell them the Up Stairs Lounge is like the [1921] Tulsa Massacre for those in the African American community … The fact that we didn’t know about it as a country tells you how successful the government and the media can be in erasing history if we don’t fight for it.”
How a refuge turned into a deadly nightmare
Gay life during the early 1970s was nothing like today. The American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a mental illness, the best-known depiction across America was the hillbilly rape scene from the film Deliverance, and some closeted men got married and had children just to avoid persecution.
While some of New Orleans’ queer community joined invite-only dinner clubs and Mardi Gras krewes to socialize privately, others frequented public cruising spots and bars. In the late-night hours, police would sometimes raid these establishments, beating up and arresting patrons on vague “obscenities” charges for actions as simple as hugging. Arrestees had their names published in the newspaper, resulting in firings, divorces, and even taking their own lives.
In 1970, gay entrepreneur Philip Esteve opened the Up Stairs Lounge and hired Rasmussen, a friendly man who had been dishonorably discharged from the military for being gay.
The bar didn’t get much business when it first opened, but then Rasmussen had the idea for a Sunday evening Beer Bust from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. when customers could pay $1 for all-you-can-drink beer. He figured, accurately, that Beer Bust customers would become bar regulars.
As the crowds grew, the lounge became a refuge for its patrons, some of whom were out among gay friends but closeted at work. The bar held annual parties for Mardi Gras and Halloween and also community fundraisers for children’s hospitals and other causes. On a small stage, patrons performed plays and lighthearted “Nellydramas” where men played women’s roles, and the audience threw popcorn at cartoonish villains.
The bar also hired a pianist to play singalongs. At the end of every Beer Bust, he’d play the 1970 Brotherhood of Man song “United We Stand,” and patrons would sing together: “There’s nowhere in the world that I would rather be / Than with you my love / And there’s nothing in the world that I would rather see / Than your smile my love / For united we stand / Divided we fall / And if our backs should ever be against the wall / We’ll be together, together, you and I.”
The bar also hosted Sunday morning services for the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a gay-affirming church started in Los Angeles in 1968. William “Bill” Larson, New Orleans’ MCC minister, temporarily held Sunday services in the bar’s intimate theater. Even after moving the gatherings into his own home, church members still patronized the bar after services, often staying for the Beer Bust.
According to accounts in the aforementioned books and an ABC News featureabout the arson, during one Beer Bust on June 24, 1973, 26-year-old sex worker Roger Dale Nunez was reportedly sexually harassing patrons. One patron punched him, and the bartender threw him out. But before leaving, Nunez allegedly said, “I’m gonna burn you all out!”
It’s believed that Nunez then went to a nearby Walgreens, purchased a 7-ounce canister of Ronsonol lighter fluid, emptied it onto the bar entrance’s bottom steps, and ignited it. The small fire quickly blazed up the carpeted stairway and swept into the bar, engulfing its wallpaper, window drapes, wood paneling, posters, and decorations.
Rasmussen, who received fire training in the military, helped 22 people safely exit from a fire door behind the stage, but others were too intoxicated or stunned to follow. Some of the 42 people who remained in the bar escaped through another fire door; others ran down the fiery stairwell and emerged downstairs severely burned.
Twelve escaped by miraculously squeezing through the 10-inch gaps in the metal safety bars guarding the lounge’s large floor-to-ceiling windows. One such person was Rusty Quinton, a man who would soon after be photographed while looking at the fiery bar and crying, “My friends are up there!”
Others weren’t so lucky. Larson, the MCC pastor, squeezed his head and arm through the bars before catching flame and burning alive. Some people feared the windows’ 12-foot drop to the sidewalk and blocked others from escaping through them.
Though firefighters extinguished the blaze barely 20 minutes after it began, when they entered the bar, they discovered that nearly 17 corpses had piled atop one another while trying to escape through the windows. Firefighters vomited from the stench and cried at the horrific sights. Larson’s charred corpse remained visible in the window for nearly four hours before being removed.
Fifteen injured survivors went to Charity Hospital, forcing it to prematurely open its new burn unit. Three of those admitted died from their injuries.
One survivor with burned hands asked for help dialing his boyfriend on a pay phone. When his lover answered, he looked at the floor and said, “Hello, David? Listen, I’ve had a sort of accident. Yes … Please come quick. Please come. I hurt.”
Heroes from the ashes
Throughout history, some haven’t considered the fire a hate crime because it was committed by someone from the LGBTQ+ community. But, as one commemoration panelist, Metropolitan Community Church minister Paul Breton, said, the real hate crime happened afterward with the inhuman response of the city, state, and church.
The indignities began almost immediately. As journalists arrived at the scene, Rasmussen found Nunez in the crowd and dragged him to a police officer for arrest. The cop, possibly more concerned with crowd control, told Rasmussen to move along. The officer’s negligence characterized the police’s handling of the case. While investigators often use victims’ clothing, jewelry, birthmarks, and IDs to identify the dead, the fire had rendered them unidentifiable. Police officials told reporters from then newspaper The States-Item that they had trouble identifying people because “some thieves hung out” at the bar, and it was “not uncommon for homosexuals to carry false identification.”
Reggie Adams, Adam Fontenot, Horace “Skip” Hetchell, Ken Harrington, Rev. William “Bill” Larson, Ferris LeBlanc, Robert Lumpkin, Leon Richard Maples, Bud Matyi, Duane George “Mitch” Mitchell, and Perry Lane Waters, Jr. were among the victims on June 27, 1973. Photos courtesy of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana.
Police concluded their investigation about two months later without ever questioning or arresting Nunez. The fire marshal’s more thorough investigation subjected Nunez to a psychological stress evaluation (PSE) that detected dishonesty in Nunez’s denials. PSEs, however, are subjective and often inadmissible as court evidence.
Nunez drunkenly confessed to three people — his lover, a nun, and a drag queen — that he had started the fire, only to deny it when sober. None of them told the police. The drag queen, Miss Fury, said Nunez confessed to her on Christmas Eve 1973 that “He’d only meant to cause a little fire and smoke. He’d only meant to scare everybody. He didn’t realize the whole place would go up in flames.” The 27-year-old arsonist died by suicide on November 15, 1974, by overdosing on beer and painkillers.
Even though the fire marshal concluded that Nunez was guilty, the Orleans Parish District Attorney refused to sign off on the conclusion. With no fingerprints on the lighter fluid can, witnesses to the fire setting, or confession, there was no proof and no conviction — the case remains officially unsolved to this day.
The local paper, The Times-Picayune, printed the names of the deceased and the survivors, outing some of them. Closeted survivors who avoided the press still couldn’t mention the tragedy at their workplaces. According to Delery-Edwards’ and Townsend’s research, tasteless jokes began circulating among New Orleans locals about “flaming queens,” how the dead homos should be buried in fruit jars, and how the real tragedy was that more f**gots didn’t die.
When a 1972 fire at New Orleans’ Rault Center killed six people, then-Mayor Moon Landrieu, then-Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, and then-Catholic Archbishop Philip Hannan issued sympathetic statements to the victims and their families. However, after the Up Stairs Lounge fire killed 32, the officials said nothing for weeks. Hannan reportedly told local Catholic churches not to hold funerals or burials for any of the fire’s non-Catholic victims.
An appeals court blocked 19 different lawsuits suing city and state agencies for failing to inspect the bar for fire hazards for over two years before the blaze. With no one else to hold accountable, the litigants sued the bar’s owner for $80,000, a paltry sum to split among them all.
But even amid this coldness, heroes rose from the ashes.
Three MCC leaders — MCC founder Troy Perry of Los Angeles, Reverend John Gill of Atlanta, and Minister Paul Breton of Washington D.C. — quickly met in New Orleans to begin organizing memorials and press conferences, shaming the media and government for sweeping victims’ ashes under the rug.
These men helped establish The National New Orleans Memorial Fund, which raised $18,000 (worth about $125,000 today). The fund covered burial costs and aided survivors with medical bills and lost wages. It was the first-ever national fundraiser for a gay cause, and it provided a blueprint for similar fundraisers during the soon-to-come AIDS epidemic.
Breton, who is now 83, recalled the unkindness of churches that refused to host memorials for homosexuals.
“Church is not necessarily found in a community of people who adhere to a creed,” Breton said during a 50th anniversary panel about the fire’s spiritual legacy. “The Beer Bust was a church. You had people of like mind and like interest coming together every Sunday at a specified time, and they did something that people in church should do and often that people in churches don’t do — they were friends with each other.”
The three MCC leaders eventually convinced Father Bill Richardson of St. George’s Episcopal Church to host a June 25 memorial in the church’s small chapel. Only 50 people attended since it wasn’t well publicized and victims were still being identified. But afterward, 100 parishioners complained to the local bishop and demanded Richardson’s resignation.
In response, Richardson wrote a June 28 letter to congregants stating, “St. George’s is not a private club but the House of God … Would Jesus have barred these grief-stricken people from His church, or would He have welcomed them?” If congregants felt that the church should only minister to a select few, he wrote, he’d consider resigning. He never resigned, but the Episcopalian bishop of New Orleans, Iveson Nolan, told Richardson and other local Episcopal churches not to host future memorials.
A second memorial was held at St. Mark’s Methodist Church on Sunday, July 1. Its organizers printed 3,000 flyers to advertise it, and about 300 people attended, including the Methodist Bishop of Louisiana — a big deal considering the church officially sees homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The mourners then sang “United We Stand,” the same song that bar patrons sang at the end of every Beer Bust.
That same day, 46 MCC branches in the U.S. and Europe held memorial services, and several gay bars, nightclubs, and bathhouses in eight major U.S. cities also closed for an hour to commemorate the victims.
“I’m not ashamed of who I am or who my friends are. I came in the front door, and I’m going out that way.”An attendee at a memorial event for the Up Stairs Lounge fire, circa 1973.
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Though the organizers of the New Orleans memorial had asked the press not to attend, TheTimes-Picayune and the local NBC TV affiliate arrived with cameras, waiting to record departing attendees and potentially out them. Perry notified the mourners and offered a backdoor exit. But an unidentified butch lesbian reportedly shouted, “I’m not ashamed of who I am or who my friends are. I came in the front door, and I’m going out that way.”
Recounts differ on what happened next. Some say the mourners left through the front door. Some say a few exited out the back. Others say the TV cameras had already departed by the time the memorial ended. Perry told one historian it didn’t matter if the cameras were there or not — what mattered was that the gay mourners faced them.
A reckoning 50 years in the making
(from left) A local “watering hole,” The Jimani, has occupied the street level of 141 Chartres Street since 1972. The Up Stairs Lounge on the second floor had only one public entrance, its second-floor windows were either boarded or covered with iron bars. Photos courtesy of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana.
Contrary to widespread belief, the Up Stairs Lounge fire wasn’t New Orleans’ Stonewall moment. The fire wasn’t a victory against oppression, and it didn’t rouse the local gay community to start fighting for their rights. In fact, the LGBTQ+ community rarely discussed the fire, and some opposed the efforts of the visiting MCC ministers.
The ministers were referred to as “fairy carpetbaggers,” borrowing a post–Civil War term for Northerners who profited off of Southern suffering. Up Stairs Lounge bar owner Esteve and other local gay business owners blamed the out-of-state activists for interfering in local matters, divisively politicizing a tragedy, and attracting unwanted government attention to gay establishments and their patrons.
Though the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of mental disorders six months after the fire, it wouldn’t be until six years later that the city’s queer community would unite to oppose a force that bears an eerie resemblance to the threat LGBTQ+ people face today.
In 1977, the leaders of seven local gay and lesbian groups organized a 2,000-person protest against hate group leader Anita Bryant — it was the city’s largest-ever gay rights demonstration. That same year, a gay and lesbian newspaper Impact began publication, and the mayor appointed gays and lesbians to his city hall committee. Throughout the 1980s, various gay political and HIV advocacy groups evolved, including the New Orleans Chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
Despite this progress, the Up Stairs Lounge Fire remained mostly forgotten, and it was even excluded from a 1991 Louisiana State Museum exhibit about the city’s historic fires. However, on the arson’s 30th anniversary in 2003, the New Orleans MCC and others placed a bronze memorial plaque with the names of the fire’s 32 victims in front of the bar’s original entrance. By the arson’s 40th anniversary, the city’s then-mayor Mitch Landrieu (son of the mayor who had served during the fire) issued a statement formally recognizing the fire, and then Catholic Archbishop Gregory Aymond apologized for the archdiocese not issuing a statement when the blaze occurred.
Many of the fire’s survivors are dead, and the victims’ families have grown older and largely moved away. But local MCC Rev. Lonnie Cheramie, a queer group called the Crescent City Leathermen, and others have helped organize annual memorials, including a 2023 recreation of the 1973 memorial service that occurred at St. Marks.
“There are growing numbers of people across our country who want to erase our history and our very existence. Your very existence and participation today is, in fact, a political act.”Apostle Shelly Planellas of New Covenant Church, host of the Up Stairs Lounge 50th anniversary commemoration
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In front of the crowded sanctuary stood 32 small black banners, each with the name of a different victim sewn in gold lettering. After the New Orleans Gay Men’s Chorus sang “United We Stand,” various leathermen, drag nuns with the Big Easy Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and others carried the banners through the French Quarter for a “second line” jazz funeral procession to the entrance of the former Up Stairs Lounge. (The street-level bar, The Jimani, has occupied the space since 1972, with building records dating back as far back as 1848.)
There, people left flowers and bouquets on the plaque as Regina Adams observed the proceedings. Her husband, Reginald “Reggie” Adams, died in the fire. When she returned to the bar after going home to retrieve her checkbook, she saw the fire and stood in the middle of Iberville Street, screaming. Every day of the following week, she laid out her husband’s work clothes as if awaiting his return. She has rarely ever attended these memorial events, one local filmmaker noted.
“We still have a lot of work left to do,” said the event’s emcee, Apostle Shelly Planellas of New Covenant Church, through a loudspeaker in front of the 32 black banners. “Seven years ago, we lost 49 lives at Pulse in Orlando. Last year, we lost five at Club Q in Colorado Springs. And we have lost countless members of our beloved trans community to bigotry and hatred. And our work does not end here. Our work and our mission do not end ever. Homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, and hatred are still a part of our daily reality. There are growing numbers of people across our country who want to erase our history and our very existence. Many would say that we should never politicize a tragedy like this. Your very existence and participation today is, in fact, a political act.”
Most of the memorial’s attendees skewed older, Tim Reynolds of the Crescent City Leathermen said, because the older generation is more invested in preserving history. His group helps organize the memorials, he said, to keep the memory alive for the next generation.
In a recently released podcast about the arson, The Fire UpStairs, activist, drag performer, and RuPaul’s Drag Race alum BenDeLaCreme said that many younger queer people and allies don’t understand why gay life is so centered around bars.
“These were the spaces that [homophobic society] pushed us into,” BenDeLaCreme told the podcast’s co-creator Joey Gray. But now — with more hookup apps and civil rights — even queer spaces are disappearing, she said.
This disappearance of queer spaces makes it more urgent to convey this history, Gray said, especially at a time when bigots are fighting to actively erase it. The AIDS epidemic silenced an entire generation of queer elders from passing down our community’s legacy. Because of this, more young people have grown up in an unprecedented era of acceptance and find themselves shaken and unprepared to face the current threat to our progress, not aware of similar historical threats and actions.
“In order to fight these battles and to stand up for what’s historically our culture, you have to have some kind of a foundation, a base knowledge,” said Gray about why he started the podcast.
Another guest of Gray’s podcast — Brian Derrick, founder of the progressive political engagement site Oath — noted that the cost of LGBTQ+ progress has been paid with career sacrifices, lives, and emotional labor.
“So now we have this fight in front of us,” Derrick said. “It’s also going to be expensive, and it’s going to cost a lot of time, money, careers, and all of these massive inputs in order to again move equality forward so that the next generation doesn’t have the same fight that we have right now. So we are leaving our kids — both literal and metaphorical — in a better place.”
Additional research by Billy McEntee and Kelly Suzan Waggoner.
Florida officials temporarily barred a transgender student from participating in any of her high school’s sports teams, saying the teenager violated state law by playing on the girls volleyball team.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the unnamed student’s school, Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, officials from the Florida High School Athletic Association said the trans teenager was “declared ineligible to represent any member school” and therefore barred from competing on any school sports team for just under a year.
Officials also placed the South Florida high school on probation for 11 months, fined it $16,500 and mandated that its staff undergo a series of compliance trainings.
The state’s penalties come just a few weeks after the high school’s principal and several other school officials were reassigned after county officials opened an investigation into “allegations of improper student participation in sports,” flagged by an anonymous tipster.
A spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools confirmed Wednesday that the district received the Florida High School Athletic Association’s letter and that its investigation into the matter is ongoing.
Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group which is serving as the trans student’s legal representation, condemned the state’s action’s in a statement Tuesday.
“Today’s determination by the Florida High School Athletics Association does not change the fact that the law preventing transgender girls from playing sports with their peers is unconstitutionally rooted in anti-transgender bias, and the Association’s claim to ensure equal opportunities for student athletes rings hollow,” Jason Starr, a litigation strategist at the HRC, said in the statement. “The reckless indifference to the wellbeing of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored.”
Through the HRC, the trans student and her parents, Jessica and Gary Norton, declined to comment. The student’s mother did, however, issue a statement last week suggesting county officials outed her daughter by launching the investigation.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, signed a law in 2021 barring trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams in public schools. About half of the country’s states have similar laws restricting trans athletes’ ability to participate in school sports. A representative for the Florida governor’s office directed NBC News’ request for comment to the state’s Education Department.
The department did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment, but in a social media post Tuesday, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. commended the association’s decision to penalize the high school and the trans athlete and the state law that led to those actions.
“Thanks to @GovRonDeSantis, Florida passed legislation to protect girls’ sports and we will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” he said in a post on X. “We applaud the swift action taken by the @FHSAA to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”
The trans student at the center of Monarch High School’s sports controversy and her parents filed a suit over the sports law in 2021 against DeSantis, the Broward County School Board and several other Florida officials. The family argued that the state law violated Title IX, a landmark civil rights law that prevents sex-based discrimination at both public and private schools that receive funding from the federal government. A federal judge denied the family’s challenge to the law last month.
Three days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Sam Guidogave birth to his first child. His doctors, unsure of what was still legal, didn’t prescribe misoprostol — a drug used in medication abortions — to help with contractions.
That was another blow, another way in which Guido felt he wasn’t in control of his labor. Guido hadn’t wanted to give birth in a hospital at all — he was afraid to be there. As a transmasculine and nonbinary person, they have faced the same ignorance and discrimination in medical institutions that many trans people in the United States experience. But a home birth just wasn’t an option; health insurance wouldn’t cover that or midwife care, and Guido’s apartment was too small.
Instead, Guido enlisted chosen family and friends to advocate for them in the hospital. Having other trans voices in the room ensured that they were respected by hospital staff as they brought his daughter, T, into the world. Guido asked that The 19th only use his daughter’s first initial for privacy.
“They made sure everybody who came into the room knew that I was going to be ‘Papa,’ that I was T’s ‘Papa,’ and that the language that they used surrounding myself and my body was all appropriate,” he said.
T is now 17 months old. Guido is grateful for the small wonders of parenthood, like watching T learn to blow kisses and give high-fives, becoming her own person more every day. He and his partner, Joey, both grew up with siblings, and look at them as some of the most important relationships in their lives. They want T to have that kind of special connection. So for the past six months, Guido and Joey have been trying to conceive another child. It has been a beautiful and queer process — but not without struggle.
It’s taking longer than it took with T. Seeing one negative pregnancy test after the other has made Guido feel constantly like he’s doing something wrong. While trying to conceive, Guido has gone without testosterone, which many transmasculine people take for hormone replacement therapy. Without it, he struggles to regulate his emotions as his hormones fluctuate. His period has come back, which causes him significant gender dysphoria.
Prior to his daughter’s birth, it took Guido a year and a half to find a safe and trans-affirming primary care doctor near where he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
Yes, they want to get pregnant. But pregnancy means being vulnerable once morewithin the medical system. Prior to T’s birth, it took Guido a year and a half to finda safe and trans-affirming primary care doctor near where he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin.
It means risking harassment from strangers when going out in public while pregnant and looking too much like a man.
It means taking on the same emotional and financial turbulence as other couples who go through fertility treatments that, for whatever reason, aren’t working.
But trying for another pregnancy has also led Guido to discover new facets of their identity. As an asexual person, it has brought them closer to their partner as they both explore what intimacy looks like while trying to conceive.
Being a pregnant transmasculine person in the United States is full of these dualities — joy and pain. The 19th interviewed two transmasculine people who were elated to become new parents, but experienced isolation and discrimination in a health care system that assumes all pregnant people are women, and by a society that still views pregnant men as abnormal.
Guido’s last pregnancy showed them that being pregnant actually felt affirming to them — not dysphoric, as it does for some other transgender men. They have often felt like they have to justify those feelings.
“I was surprised at how little dysphoria I felt when it came to pregnancy. It felt very natural to me … in a way that didn’t challenge my gender identity in any way, shape or form,” he said.
Instead, Guido grappled with feeling invisible and isolated during his first pregnancy. Outside of his close circles, he couldn’t talk about this huge part of his life with other queer or trans people. In one queer postpartum group he tried to join, other trans people were uncomfortable hearing about his pregnancy, while some queer people pointedly said that pregnancy was an experience that only women had.
He didn’t see anyone else like himself.
Guido is acutely aware of how alone being a pregnant transgender person in rural Wisconsin can feel.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
“You pick up a pregnancy book, and it refers to you as ‘mama.’ You walk into pregnancy support groups, and it’s a group of cis women plus you, and everyone’s looking at you weird because you have a beard,” they said.
Those instances made Guido aware of how alone they were as a pregnant transgender person in rural Wisconsin.
In rural areas, transgender people tend to have fewer resources and face higher risks being out than trans people in urban areas, according to a 2019 report from the Movement Advancement Project (MAP). With fewer accepting employers, doctors, housing options and nearby LGBTQ+ spaces, discrimination can have a more profound effect and make hostility harder to bear.
However, regardless of where trans people live in the United States, they often face discrimination within health care. That includes being denied insurance coverage for routine sexual or reproductive screenings that are still treated as women’s health issues like Pap smears and mammograms, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Others must teach their medical providers about trans people in order to receive proper care. Often they are asked invasive questions.
The country’s medical system is extremely ill-equipped to care for transmasculine people, said Kellan Baker, executive director and chief learning officer of D.C.-based LGBTQ+ health care provider Whitman-Walker. It gets even more difficult for pregnant transmasculine people, especially for those who experience gender dysphoria around pregnancy, to access good care, he said.
“People assume that trans men would never want to get pregnant because of dysphoria. Or people think that testosterone is birth control, which it isn’t,” Baker said.
Health care professionals often assume that trans pregnancies don’t happen — or if they do happen, that they are so rare that it doesn’t affect their practice. This leads to doctors who don’t know how to give people proper care, Baker said.
“When people don’t have the right tools to fully understand the health care needs of trans people, it can be deadly,” Baker said.
In a 2019 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, that risk is laid clear. A 32-year-old transgender manwent to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain, only to discover several hours later — to his surprise, and to the surprise of medical staff — that he was pregnant. At that point, there was no fetal heartbeat.
The patient was correctly identified as a man when admitted to the ER. But his treatment did not correspond to his actual physiology or needs. His symptoms weren’t treated as an urgent case of abdominal pain in pregnancy and his elevated blood pressure was assumed to be hypertension.
Guido’s last pregnancy showed them that being pregnant actually felt affirming to them — not dysphoric, as it does for some other transgender men.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
That same lack of knowledge among medical staff about trans people, and what kind of reproductive health care they need, also affected Kayden Coleman, a gay Black transgender man, during his first pregnancy in Philadelphia in 2013.
That ignorance among medical staff is part of why Coleman didn’t know he was pregnant for five months.He didn’t experience the same symptoms as most cisgender women would. He didn’t have breasts, so heightened tenderness was not a factor, and he didn’t have morning sickness. He only experienced fatigue, so his doctor assumed he was not pregnant.
“My rule of thumb is if you’re having sex with somebody with a penis that doesn’t detach, you can get pregnant. And you should be checking. And you cannot rely on your medical providers,” Coleman said. His own doctor at the time was a transgender man. It still didn’t occur to him that Coleman might be pregnant. “We’re kind of on our own out here,” he said.
Once he started to receive care, Coleman enjoyed taking photos of his stomach and sharing updatesas his first pregnancy progressed. He didn’t feel any gender dysphoria — he wanted to be as visible as possible.
“Ten years ago, there was no representation of Black pregnancy for trans men,” he said. “I felt like we needed more of that. So I volunteered as tribute, I guess.”
Childbirth was traumatizing because of how Coleman was treated by medical staff. He wasn’t listened to, he said. After he was induced, medical staff misgendered him and ignored his requests for a C-section until he reached what he described as a mental breakdown. After his daughter Azaelia was born,he struggled with postpartum depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
It wasn’t until he met a nonbinary doula through a queer Philadelphia-based Facebook group that he felt truly helped and supported. They offered a depth of knowledge and warmth that went far beyond anything Coleman was offered in a doctor’s office, explaining what he was going through in a way that made sense.
Coleman didn’t know he was pregnant for five months. He didn’t experience the same symptoms as most cisgender women would. He only experienced fatigue, so his doctor assumed he was not pregnant.
(KAYDEN COLEMAN)none
“I couldn’t be left alone with my child without having a panic attack. So she helped me through that as well,” Coleman said. She took care of Azaelia so that Coleman and his former husband could rest, and talked him through the common experience of postpartum depression.
“Just her explaining all of the aspects, like the PTSD and all of that, helped tremendously for me to be able to talk myself off the ledge when I was feeling like I wanted to unalive myself,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which only tracks how many cisgender women face the issue, says that about 1 in 8 women with a recent live birth have experienced postpartum depression. There’s minimal comparabledata on the birthing experiences of trans people, and what little research has been done has largely excluded nonbinary people and trans women and has focused on White people’s experiences.
What’s known is that trans men often experience loneliness, anxiety and isolation during pregnancy, which makes trans-inclusive health care all the more important. Transgender men and women both face limited access to gender-affirming fertility preservation services, on top of erasure, stigma and discrimination within the reproductive health care system.
And considering the grave Black maternal mortality rate in the United States — Black women are at least three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause compared to White women — more can be assumed: that Black transgender men, and Black nonbinary people, face even greater dangers when accessing reproductive health care.
When Coleman found out he was pregnant with his second daughter, Jurnee, New York City was shutting down due to the coronavirus.He had to navigate medical spaces without anybody else there to advocate for him due to heightened pandemic restrictions. He couldn’t bring a doula to medical appointments like he’d planned to. Those appointments were hostile, he said.
A receptionist at a perinatal office in Brooklyn told Coleman that he wasn’t supposed to be there — it was for women only. He had referral papers from his doctor so he was able to be seen, but he said the receptionist never apologized for trying to dismiss him. He said the ultrasound technicianat that same office laterrefused to use his correct pronouns or stop calling him the mother of his child.
Coleman’s daughters pose for a family portrait at a park in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2020. Coleman felt that much of his treatment throughout his second pregnancy was motivated more because of racism than because of transphobia. (KAYDEN COLEMAN)none
It wasn’t a new experience for Coleman to be misgendered. But this was worse than what he had gone through before. He was stuck, COVID-19 limiting his options. He couldn’t just find a new perinatal office or a new place to get an ultrasound.
Coleman felt that much of his treatment throughout his second pregnancy — including medical personnel repeatedly asking him if he wanted an abortion even as he talked about how happy he was to have another child — was motivated more because of racism than because of transphobia.
“Them knowing I’m pregnant takes a backseat to their fear, or their microaggressions, towards Black men,” he said. “If I would have lashed out or lost my cool, now I’m the angry Black man, and who knows what could have happened.”
Those experiences robbed Coleman of moments of joy during his pregnancy that he can’t get back, he said. He remembers leaving an ultrasound appointment with Jurnee’s other dadfeeling hurt, angry and uncomfortable. And those moments kept piling on.
“As soon as you’d get one thing rectified, here’s another one. Eventually the office got it together, the ladies in there were even nice. But that was towards the end of my pregnancy,” he said. “The next move was to be in the hospital.Now I have a whole other staff that I have to deal with. And a whole other list of microaggressions that I have to deal with.”
Guido also struggled after T’s birth, experiencing a brief period of postpartum psychosis followed by depression that lasted for eight months. They started medication for their symptoms and saw a therapist weekly, feeling overwhelming guilt for not being as attentive of a parent as they wanted to be.
Their experiences with postpartum mental health issues underlined for them how vital it is for other transgender people to have access to birthing and postpartum spaces that are meant specifically for and led by trans people. Right now, even finding reproductive health care at institutions knowledgeable of trans people is difficult. And when Guido didn’t have trans-competent health care, he had to educate his own medical providers about his basic existence while trying to get help.
Guido hold his partner’s hand at their home in Wisconsin. Guido also struggled after his daughter’s birth, experiencing a brief period of postpartum psychosis followed by depression that lasted for eight months.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)none
“My gender is intrinsically tied to this fertility journey and is a non-removable piece of it,” they said. “It’s already a very personal and difficult process currently, to conceive. I don’t really need additional factors making it harder.”
As Guido continues his journey to conceive again, he has found a new postpartum support group for queer and trans parents in Madison, roughly an hour’s drive from where he lives. The group meets every month. He joined them for the first time on a sunny, crisp Saturday in late October. The older kids — the 3- and 4-year-olds — played in the park as the adults swapped stories and ate packed lunches.
That meeting was an emotional moment for him. It was the first time he had ever interacted with another transgender parent who had gone through a pregnancy. Not only was his experience as a trans person being understood, but he wasn’t being doubted for his lack of gender dysphoria while pregnant. That was actually a shared experience between himself and the trans man that he met, who had brought his own family.
“It was just a relief to be like, ‘Oh, you get it. You’ve been there,’” he said. He’ll be back in the spring when meetings start again — when he expects to meet other trans parents like him.
On November 2, 1979, a group of three arrived at Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in Dannemore, New York sometime between one and four pm. Their IDs were checked at a nearby state school so they could visit an inmate in South Hall, a maximum security wing of the prison.
During the guard-sanctioned trip to South Hall, the three visitors took over the prison van transporting them to the unit. In a November 3, 1979 New York Times article, Captain Gordon Hector of the state police revealed, “They came in with guns at the guards’ heads. They got the drop on the guard inside the unit.”
Kuwasi Balagoon, a bisexual New Afrikan Anarchist and member of the Black Liberation Army, is alleged to have been among these three visitors, there to assist in the escape of prisoner Assata Shakur, the alleged “mother hen” of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The revolutionaries who helped her escape were a sub-group of the BLA known as “The Family,” radicals committed to underground life, guerilla warfare, and bank robberies to bolster their cause for Black liberation. Their escape plan for Assata Shakur was successful.
For example, Black & Pink, an organization started in 2005 to abolish the prison system and mitigate its effects on LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV/AIDS, honors the community with the Kuwasi Balagoon Award. The award is designed to “ honor everyday people thriving with HIV/AIDS.”
To the revolutionaries closest to him, Balagoon represented many things. To Sekou Odinga (as quoted in A Solidier’s Story: Revolutionary Writings by Kuwasi Balagoon), Balagoon was a living “contradiction” in the best way – a hardened warrior for the Black Panther Party and BLA who also loved to help children and the elderly.
Becoming a queer, Black radical
Kuwasi Balagoon was born Donald Weems on December 22, 1946. During his Maryland upbringing, Balagoon was radicalized by the Cambridge civil rights movement of the early 1960s, as well as by his uncle’s escape from prison after being charged with sexual assault. While serving in the U.S. Army, Balagoon became a part of a radical anti-racist group, Da Legislators, and learned more about Afrocentrism while traveling in London.
“While standing on a corner one morning, rapping to some West Indian, African, Asian, and South American brothers, it occurred to me,” Balagoon wrote in his autobiography, Look For Me In The Whirlwind, “Like through the flow and substance of the conversation and their mannerisms, that we were really brothers. Among them and the beautiful Black sisters, I was home.”
Balagoon became a committed member of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 and within a year would be arrested alongside 20 other Black Panthers (the group became known as the Panther 21) on conspiracy charges related to alleged planned killings of police officers and bombings of police stations, as well as other buildings in New York City. Charges against all 21 people were ultimately dropped. Although acquitted, Balagoon would plead guilty to a separate case – one of bank robbery in New Jersey. While he was incarcerated, the tension between the East and West coast branches of the Black Panther Party escalated, eventually leading to ousted Black Panther Party members creating the Black Liberation Army sometime in 1970.
All of this led Balagoon to study anarchists like Emma Goldman while incarcerated and to eventually escape prison in September 1973. Just a year later, Balagoon was back in prison for a failed attempt to help another BLA member escape. After four more years of incarceration in Rahway State Prison in New Jersey, Balagoon escaped again, cementing his status as “the Maroon.”
New Afrikan Anarchism & Afrocentrism
One of the ways that Balagoon was most admired was his ardent commitment to guerilla politics, partially stemming from his affinity for Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, who sought political exile numerous times in his life and escaped Italian prison in 1899. On a basic level, Balagoon savored Malatesta’s logic of a revolutionary life that “consists of more deeds than words.”
Like other New Afrikan Anarchists, Balagoon believed in a kind of Afrocentric nationalism that viewed Black Americans as a “subjugated nation” within the United States of America that deserved to resist the racist and economic conditions forced onto them.
In July 1983, Balagoon spoke about his political praxis while on trial for the 1981 attempted robbery charges of a Brinks armored truck, which resulted in the deaths of two police officers and one security guard:
We say the U.S. has no right to confine New Afrikan people to redlined reservations and that We have a right to live on our own terms on a common land area and to govern ourselves…
LGBTQ+ erasure
On December 16, 1986, Kuwasi Balagoon passed away at 39 from AIDS-related complications after four years in jail for robbery and murder. Many of the obituaries written on Balagoon by the groups he was involved in both omit his sexuality and the cause of his death; a consequence of the LGBTQ+ erasure that came with mainstream denial of the AIDS crisis’ impact on poor, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities, all of which Balagoon embodied.
Today, Balagoon’s legacy lives on. In 2005, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement dedicated their Black August celebration to Kuwasi Balagoon. Since 2014, Cooperation Jackson, a collective of revolutionary co-operatives, has operated in Jackson, Mississippi, even aiding in the 2017 election of Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a New Afrikan Anarchist, as the city’s new mayor. The cooperative’s base is known as The Balagoon Center.
Balagoon continues to serve as a beacon for the queer Black revolutionaries fighting today.
Today LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, the only national organization dedicated to electing LGBTQ+ leaders to public office, endorsed nine more out candidates for federal, state and local office around the country. Among the candidates is Evan Low, who is running for Congress in California’s 16th District and would be the first out LGBTQ+ person to represent the Bay Area. LGBTQ+ Victory Fund has endorsed 69 candidates for the 2024 election cycle.
LGBTQ+ Victory Fund endorses the following candidates:
Lorena Austin (she/they) Arizona House of Representatives, District 9 Primary: 8/6/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Imani Barnes (she/her) Georgia House of Representatives, District 86 Primary: 5/21/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Kyra DeGruy Kennedy (she/her) Colorado House of Representatives, District 30 Primary: 6/25/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Karla Drenner (she/her) Georgia House of Representatives, District 85 Primary: 5/21/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Dallas Harris (she/her) Nevada State Senate, District 11 Primary: 6/11/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Evan Low (he/him) U.S. House of Representatives, CA-16 Primary: 3/5/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Devin Murphy (he/him) City Council Pinole, California General: 11/5/2024
Adrian Tam (he/him) Hawaii House of Representatives, District 24 Primary: 8/10/2024 General: 11/5/2024
Ritchie Torres (he/him) U.S. House of Representatives, NY-15 Primary: 6/25/2024 General: 11/5/2024
LGBTQ+ Victory Fund
LGBTQ+ Victory Fund works to achieve and sustain equality by increasing the number of out LGBTQ+ elected officials at all levels of government while ensuring they reflect the diversity of those they serve. Since 1991, Victory Fund has helped thousands of LGBTQ+ candidates win local, state and federal elections.
Some cold cases linger for decades without any leads. But in one unique case out of Utah, a prime suspect was identified in the murder of 24 year-old Douglas Ray Coleman and all but admitted to the killing – but was never charged.
Coleman was an openly gay man who was shot dead less than a month after Anthony Adams, a black gay activist and member of the Salt Lake City Socialist Workers Party was found stabbed to death in his apartment. Friends and colleagues of Adams called his death an “assassination” and claimed he was killed for his political beliefs and sexuality.
While Coleman and Adams reportedly didn’t know each other, their murders marked a spate of killings that targeted the gay community in Salt Lake City. While the Salt Lake City city council now consists mainly of LGBTQ+ representatives, it’s long been a religiously conservative town, and in the late 1970s that made it especially deadly for its openly queer residents. It also made it extremely difficult for gay people to find justice from law enforcement due to dangerous stereotypes they weren’t credible witnesses due to their “lifestyles.”
Image: Kris Robinette via Salt Lake Tribune
Who was Doug Coleman?
Accounts of Coleman’s life portray him as a relatively quiet artist who, per his obituary, “had received awards on Peach Days [an annual harvest celebration and fair in Utah] for his oil paintings.”
Coleman reportedly was recognized at gay bars but didn’t have a penchant for being ostentatious or flamboyant – the Salt Lake Tribune noted in a 2023 reportthat Coleman was “a regular” in the local gay scene but “also kept to himself.”
Before his death at age 26, Coleman had battled mental health challenges, including paranoid schizophrenia. He was reportedly “cycling in and out of mental health facilities,” per the Salt Lake Tribune, not long before he was killed. His brother, Dennis Coleman, told the Tribune Doug “was just a normal kid from a normal family that had the unfortunate experience of having a disease.” Doug was survived by his parents, four brothers and one sister. Some members of the Coleman family were active members of the Mormon church.
Image: Kris Robinette via Salt Lake Tribune
The Advocate’s attempts to reach Dennis Coleman were unsuccessful.
During the workday, Doug Coleman worked as a produce manager at a Brigham City Safeway store. He also reportedly worked at Rastskeller Pizza in downtown Salt Lake City and lived with a coworker and his girlfriend – next door to the man who’d end up being a prime suspect in the murder, a 62-year-old retiree named Bruce Hughes.
Coleman was last seen at Salt Lake City’s Sun Tavern bar on Nov. 30, 1978. That same night, his body was found in a boxcar along a stretch of railroad tracks not far from the city’s Pacific Union rail depot. Shell casings from a .22 pistol were found near his body. Coleman had been fatally shot twice, once in the head and once in the chest.
The main suspect
The evidence against Hughes seems damning and all but conclusive. Cases are considered cold if there isn’t sufficient evidence to charge a suspect, but in Coleman’s case, it’s striking how much information police had and still failed to make an arrest.
A ballistics expert determined Hughes’ gun was likely the one used to kill Coleman. The casings found at the scene matched a weapon Hughes had sold to a pawn shop.
Hughes was a longtime firearm owner and pawned all of his weapons shortly after the murder. Per the Tribune, when asked why he sold the guns, Hughes said he “didn’t want them to be misused.” And when asked how he’d account for his gun matching the crime scene, Hughes glibly said “oh gee, I had no explanation for it.” He reportedly also told police that unless someone had broken into his home, stolen the gun from its hiding place under his mattress, killed Coleman and returned it, there wasn’t any other explanation for his weapon being used for the shooting.
This wasn’t all. Hughes was Coleman’s neighbor, and he had a fascination with Coleman’s female roommate. One time, the woman complained to Hughes about Coleman and Hughes openly threatened to kill him. Hughes even admitted this to police, confessing that he threatened Coleman “because he was ignorant.” Further, the Tribune reported Hughes claimed he would shoot Coleman and make it look like a burglary gone wrong.
Images: Salt Lake City PD
Hughes had also worked in the same railyard where Coleman’s body was found. He admitted to police that he’d seen Coleman the day of the murder, but said he was there “looking for scrap metal.”
The Tribune viewed Coleman’s police report, which noted Hughes told police the name of a friend who might know where his guns were kept – but officers never followed up.
Finally, although witnesses found it difficult to conclusively identify Hughes, a worker at the railyard described the suspect as having similar hair as Hughes and neighbors noted he owned a jacket similar to that of the reported suspect’s.
Dangerous stereotypes
So why wasn’t Hughes charged? Former U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber toldthe Utah Investigative Journalism Project that prosecutors likely weren’t confident in spite of all the evidence they had because the main witnesses were “colorful characters” – members of the gay community or sex workers.
And there was another suspect – Perry Stanger, a religious man who left Salt Lake City the day Coleman was killed. Stanger’s own mother said he had a penchant for acting violent in the name of God and noted she thought he could have killed Coleman. Stanger was arrested and institutionalized for mental health issues, but he was never charged because he reportedly never had access to a firearm.
Still, it’s difficult to reconcile the evidence and borderline confession from Hughes with police’s hesitancy to arrest him. Salt Lake police didn’t immediately return The Advocate’s request for comment.
It’s not clear exactly why there was a spike in murders against the gay community in Salt Lake City at this time. But what is certain is that the gay community was sent reeling from both murders, and it took years for many of Salt Lake City’s queer residents to feel safe again.
Hughes was elderly when questioned about the killing and consequently not around to answer any more. Unfortunately for Coleman’s loved ones, the trail stopped with Hughes and the case remains cold.
Have a tip about this case to share with law enforcement? Contact the Salt Lake City Police Department at 801-799-3000.
When I first started questioning my sexuality and identity, I didn’t feel butterflies. I didn’t feel excited or even the strong desire to understand more about these new feelings. I felt scared. Terrified even. I knew that even the first tendrils of these thoughts had the capability to unravel my entire life.
And unravel it they did. My past world had revolved closely around my community and my family. When you grow up in a Pakistani Muslim household as I did – and strictly Muslim at that – there is often a great reverence and respect placed upon relatives and elders, and also a strong emphasis placed on the importance of blood ties and family.
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I grew up thinking of myself as a boy. In a world where men had certain duties and roles, my entire life and my outlook on the world was shaped by these men and the power they held.
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Transness brought a real loneliness, and my world fell apart. My family withdrew from me, but I also shrank from their touch. Since then, I have found it hard to find community that I can really relate to.
So imagine my delight at finding Club Kali.
Creating magic
Club Kali emerged in the 90’s club scene in London, 1995 specifically, out of an intense need to develop an environment of freedom, dignity, and beautiful brown magic in the closeted doorways and rain-soaked paving stones of the city.
The struggle to build a space for Desi people, even without the added layers of queer identity, was intertwined with the tail end of 70s and 80s political movements for equality that were cloaked in political blackness and the strong stereotype of “queerness” being equated with whiteness.
This struggle drew together two incredible Desi women – DJ Ritu and Rita.
Ritu and Rita met at the Shakti Disco, a venue in the London Lesbian & Gay Centre (LLGC) in Farringdon (a community center in London), where Ritu was the DJ. When Shakti closed, Ritu – by day a full-time youth worker – knew something was needed to replace one of the few scenes where intersectional Desi queer people could connect with a culture that often relied on the family love they had lost. For Rita – by day working with victims of Domestic Violence – her love of music was key to this future they wanted to build.
Ritu spoke with LGBTQ Nation about the first time she met Rita: “Rita walked into my DJ booth at the LLGC and asked for an Abba track to be played. I thought she was gorgeous. This thought was unrequited for about 3 years! But we became friends and then a couple. Eventually, we simply became business partners that created the two [of the] longest-running Asian club nights in the world. Club Kali since 1995 and our straight Bollywood club, Kuch Kuch Nights since 2000.”
Music and dance are strong reminders of the past, used as key tools in many cultures to teach the stories of ancestors and morality, but they are also important for self-reflection, self-love, and community care. Queer Desi communities called out for the magic of their culture to be intertwined with the newer aspects of London nightlife, in a time where community care was all but essential.
As Ritu explains, “Last century, being LGBTQ+ was an isolating, lonely, experience of feeling confused and ‘othered’. We had very few positive images of people like us in the media, particularly women. There were almost no South Asian role models – queer or non-queer. Everything associated with who we thought we were, was negative, and of course the intersectional racism, sexism, and homophobia was difficult. Eventually, I found a ‘gay scene’ in 1985, went on my first Pride march, and a few years later, became a founding member of a new South Asian LGBTQ organization, Shakti”.
DJ Ritu is a pioneer in this sense, and Rita is right up there with her. They dragged a biased world into a new age of music by never forgetting their roots but also never feeling the need to sacrifice all they had learned from their time in the UK music scene.
Ritu says that Kali itself was born specifically out of a need for safety, but also the need for a multicultural, multi-faith space that celebrated South Asian music. She says as a DJ, her magic is in the bringing together of diverse cultures through the power and joy of music, culminating on the dance floor. Through her work with Club Kali and her many other venues, she has provided a proper performance space for new artists and drag acts, and even hosted high-profile Brit Asian stars like Rishi Rich, Juggy D, and Jay Sean.
To take it upon yourself to walk a path so hard is awe-inspiring, but unfortunately very common within the Desi Queer community. Many of us even now are forced, through the “othering” of ourselves as individuals and as a community, to walk alone. And while that is changing, I was keen to ask Ritu, along with Club Kali’s Community Engagement Officer Sakib Khan, what they think of the evolving world, and if they think we are on a track to more freedom and autonomy for queer Desi youth.
Ritu sees a bright future ahead, stating that Club Kali and its members and team, trailblazed and created new pathways for so many others to follow. She says that as soon as Kali was held up as a baton for others to see, many new and similar clubs opened. She spoke warmly of Zindagi – a club founded in 2003 for queer people in Manchester, that plays a colorful mix of the latest Bhangra, Bollywood tunes, Arabic music, RnB, HipHop and Dance, which she says is “furthering the boundary of clubbing.” She also praised the acclaimed Saathi club night in Birmingham. “Authenticity is key,” she said, “It must come from the heart.”
Sakib agrees, saying: “There are more events now than when Kali started, nightlife has changed a great deal in the 28 years since Kali began and there is greater visibility of LGBTQ+ people of color and from the South Asian diaspora, which is wonderful to see. Also, the change in legislation across the globe, particularly in India, has begun to shift attitudes. People have digital channels as a way of connecting and finding community. All of these are positives and with each generation comes a change in attitude”.
So we’re going strong, and now more than ever, with dangerous legislation on trans people finding its way into politics around the world, a space of safety and community for marginalized queer people is desperately needed. I pointed this out to Ritu, emphasizing my anger and pain as a generation of trans youth building our own new worlds, and she agreed strongly that while things are looking up in many areas, a huge push overall is needed.
“I wish we could do more… Because there’s such a huge need for it. But sadly, no – there aren’t enough spaces for queer Desi youth being made. Club Kali is limited in how much help and support we can offer to people at the moment. There certainly does need to be more funding for specialist organizations that can offer other services”.
Even so, it’s inspiring to see such strong figures exist in a world I thought I would never have and to see how much love and strength they have cultivated and nurtured for our community. Club Kali was established to offer shelter, and it would seem – through incredible platforms in dance, performance art, music, and even film – that it has developed into a godmother of the queer Desi clubbing scene.
States that pass anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion laws may be undermining their economies, according to a new study from the University of Houston.
Researchers from the university surveyed 1,061 people of varying backgrounds about whether these laws would affect their willingness to move to a given state. The survey was conducted after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, striking down the national right to abortion and allowing states to ban or severely restrict the procedure. Efforts to restrict LGBTQ+ rights were gathering steam then as well and have greatly ramped up this year.
“The majority of people who responded to our survey, regardless of their political orientation, indicated they would be less willing to move to states with these policies or that the policies wouldn’t affect their decision to do so,” Amanda Baumle, lead author and sociology professor at UH, said in a press release.“These policies are much more of a deterrent to migration than an incentive.”
Women and their partners, gay men, lesbians, and people with LGBTQ+ family members were likely to avoid states with these laws, the study found. “The findings also suggest that those in higher-earning occupations, or those who are invested in work or education opportunities, could be discouraged from moving to states with these policies,” the press release notes.
“Migration attitudes provide an important benchmark for understanding how abortion and LGBT laws and policies influence opinions about the desirability of states as potential destinations,” Baumle said. “If the policies are deterring people from moving to a certain state, there could be negative economic and workforce impacts.”
“Our findings suggest that these restrictive laws and policies have implications for migration attitudes beyond the individuals specifically targeted,” says the study, published in Population Research and Policy Review.For most respondents in our survey, laws restricting the rights of women and sexual and gender minorities were viewed to be deterrents or irrelevant to their attitudes about migrating to a particular state. This was true for the majority of liberals, moderates, and slight conservatives. These findings indicate that states, including business owners as well as legislators, should consider potential social and economic effects of such legislation as an important component of their policy deliberations.”
Looking at 11 types of policies in all, the researchers found that highly restrictive abortion laws were the most likely to discourage migration to a given state, while laws against gender-affirming care for minors, restricting transgender young people’s sports participation, or censoring LGBTQ+ content in schools were less likely.
“I think that fits in with a lot of prior research that people perceive children as in need of being sheltered from anything that falls outside of the gender binary or heterosexuality,” study coauthor Elizabeth Gregory, professor of English and director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at UH, said in the release. “Something that was somewhat surprising was that restrictions on participation in sports for transgender youth was viewed less negatively for migration and more as a potential draw than any of the other policies.”
Still, “only small minorities of the sample reported that any of the eleven policies would serve as a pull factor, increasing their desire to migrate to a state,” the study says.
Since the Dobbs ruling, at least 21 states have enacted restrictive abortion laws. Also, this year more than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across 43 states, with more than 80 being passed into law, more than double the number from 2022, which was previously worst year on record, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The majority have specifically targeted trans youth.
At the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), a noxious combination of political ambition, billionaire privilege, and bureaucratic cowardice led the academic hospital to cut off gender-affirming care to minor patients, including patients younger than what the institution’s right-wing detractors had demanded.
In September 2022, opponents of gender-affirming care in South Carolina latched onto a parenthetical included in a medical student’s graduate research at MUSC. The parenthetical comment described the youngest transgender patient to visit the hospital’s pediatric endocrinology clinic, just 4 years old, according to a report from ProPublica.
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That fact morphed into fiction as far-right critics inaccurately claimed that children that young were prescribed hormones as part of gender transition therapy at the hospital.
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None other than gender-critical transphobe and X owner Elon Musk amplified the false claim, posting, “Is it really true that four-year-olds are receiving hormone treatment?” His post led federal and state lawmakers to interrogate hospital leaders about whether the public hospital was, in fact, helping young children medically transition.
The truth was that the hospital didn’t offer surgery to minors as part of their gender-affirming care offerings, nor did any patients receive hormone therapy before puberty.
The facts, however, didn’t matter.
“If MUSC is mutilating or castrating children, I won’t stop until they are stripped of public funding,” Republican state Rep. Thomas Beach of South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus, threatened in an X post.
The South Carolina legislature had already banned the state’s flagship medical university from using public money to provide any treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16, and hospital leaders assured lawmakers they didn’t use state money to care for trans patients.
But over the next several months, hospital administrators went even further in an effort to evade scrutiny from lawmakers, the press, and the far-right outrage machine. MUSC cut off all gender-affirming care for anyone under 18, while abandoning all previous patients with no explanation or advice for their continued care.
That autumn — as pressure mounted on the hospital from state lawmakers and those anxious to exploit the culturally divisive issue for political gain — U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) was locked in a contentious race against her Democratic opponent Annie Andrews, a pediatrician at MUSC who wasn’t connected to the endocrinology clinic. Mace exploited the connection, and placed trans kids at the center of the controversy.
In a tabloid-style video from Mace, text scrolled over a photo of Andrews: “Sex change surgery, puberty blockers, gender changing hormones for children?! That’s not protection. That’s child abuse.”
Hospital administrators dissuaded pediatric residents who wanted to publish a letter defending Andrews against Mace’s political attacks, for fear it would invite more scrutiny.
“They left me out on a limb,” said Andrews, who has since resigned from the hospital.
The state’s far-right Freedom Caucus also reveled in their charge to strip MUSC of funding because of the hospital’s perceived pro-LGBTQ+ bias.
After MUSC leaders agreed in December to cut off access to hormones for gender transition for minors of all ages — including 16- and 17-year-olds — state Rep. Beach crowed on Facebook, “I went after the Medical Center of South Carolina with 19 other of my door-kicking, rock-ribbed, and South Carolina’s most Conservative legislator friends. It feels good to be a gangster.”
Prior to his daughter’s birth, it took Guido a year and a half to find a safe and trans-affirming primary care doctor near where he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Guido is acutely aware of how alone being a pregnant transgender person in rural Wisconsin can feel.
Guido’s last pregnancy showed them that being pregnant actually felt affirming to them — not dysphoric, as it does for some other transgender men.
Coleman didn’t know he was pregnant for five months. He didn’t experience the same symptoms as most cisgender women would. He only experienced fatigue, so his doctor assumed he was not pregnant.
Coleman’s daughters pose for a family portrait at a park in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2020. Coleman felt that much of his treatment throughout his second pregnancy was motivated more because of racism than because of transphobia. (KAYDEN COLEMAN)none
Guido hold his partner’s hand at their home in Wisconsin. Guido also struggled after his daughter’s birth, experiencing a brief period of postpartum psychosis followed by depression that lasted for eight months.