Gay California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) and several other Democratic senators walked out of the California Senate on Monday after a Republican honored Ric Grenell, an out gay former official who worked in President Donald Trump’s administration.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R) took to the senate floor to honor Grenell. He praised Grenell’s public service record and his historic appointment as the first out gay man ever to serve on a president’s cabinet. Grenell served as Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo, and acting Director of National Intelligence (the last one lasted for about two months).
The senate floor “offered mute applause” during the honor, The Sacramento Bee reported. Grenell walked onto the Senate floor and then held a conference alongside Republican legislators on the Capitol steps afterward.
However, Sen. Wiener didn’t applaud Grenell. In fact, he and other California Senate Democrats walked off of the floor during the honor. Wiener also published a tweet noting that when the Democrat-led state senate passed a resolution earlier this month recognizing June as Pride Month, seven of the chamber’s eight Republicans refused to vote on it.
Republicans said they objected to the invitation of Sister Roma, a well-known member of the drag nun activist group the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, calling her presence “a slap in the face to Catholics” and a “distraction” from California’s unresolved social issues.
In his tweet, Weiner wrote, “Today, GOP is honoring Richard Grenell on our Senate floor, after having protested our actual Pride celebration. Grenell is a self-hating gay man. He’s a scam artist pink-washer for Trump & spreads anti-LGBTQ, anti-vax, election-denier conspiracy theories.”
Indeed, Grenell repeated Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” due to an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voter fraud that only occurred in the states that Trump lost. Grenell refused to provide proof of any such fraud when asked about it on live television. Republicans and Trump’s re-election campaign lost over 60 court cases alleging such fraud — most were thrown out due to lack of evidence. The fraud claims led to numerous death threats against election officials nationwide.
On March 21, 2021, Grenell compared COVID-19 vaccine requirements to Nazism. In May 2021, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum published an open letter signed by 50 Holocaust survivors urging politicians to stop making comparisons between modern social conditions and the Holocaust.
Grenell, while serving as the Republican National Committee’s senior adviser for LGBTQ+ outreach, called Trump “the most pro-gay president ever.” The Washington Post’s fact-checkers called Grenell’s statement “absurd” and awarded it “four Pinocchios” — its highest rating for lies. Grenell also opposes the Equality Act, legislation that would provide federal LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections, claiming it would be an attack on religion.
Grenell praised Trump’s so-called effort to decriminalize homosexuality “around the globe.” But the Trump administration made no actual substantial efforts to do so. In fact, Trump’s State Department called foreign anti-gay laws a form of “religious freedom” that it vowed to protect.
This coming Sunday, Tiburon’s Community Congregational Church is holding a concert with talented young singers from the Marin School of the Arts and its own music program in support of Marin’s LGBTQ+ community. The concert is free but donation proceeds will go to The Spahr Center and our sibling organization Trans HeartLine, along with the church’s music program. This event will be hosted on Sunday, July 9, at 5:00pm, at the Community Congregational Church in Tiburon.
Many people think anti-sodomy laws were widely used to prosecute gay men before the Supreme Court declared the laws unconstitutional in the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texasdecision. But in reality, anti-sodomy laws were mostly used to legally prosecute heterosexual men, according to Yale Law School Professor William Eskridge.
Eskridge wrote the 2008 book Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003, and in his book, he says the Puritan-age laws were long used as a way to punish straight men for public sex and rape. While gay men were more often prosecuted under other vague laws against “lewdness” and “indecency,” Eskridge told LGBTQ Nation, anti-sodomy laws were often pointed to as theoretical proof of queer people’s immorality — and, thus, their unfitness to serve as teachers, Boy Scout leaders, and military members.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Lawrence decision, Eskridge spoke with LGBTQ Nation about the history of sodomy laws, how they went from punishing straight men to punishing gay and bi men, how the Lawrence decision led to the legalization of same-sex marriage, and what would happen if the Supreme Court were ever to overturn Lawrence in the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Your book notes that anti-sodomy laws had an impact on both heterosexual and homosexual Americans. How’s that?
Most of the sodomy laws, including the one in Georgia that was upheld and Bowers v. Hardwick (the 1986 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy that criminalized private oral and anal sex) applied to heterosexual intercourse. So when Bill Clinton was being fellated by Monica Lewinsky in the District of Columbia, that was a felony under the District of Columbia sodomy law.
I think most sodomy prosecutions in American history were against different-sex sodomy. Yes, you might be astounded but that is a fact. The reason is, most sodomy prosecutions were against men for sodomizing women, girls, and boys…. The overwhelming majority of prosecutions were for forcible sodomy, [for] sex with animals — which was a big chunk of the 19th-century ones — and a much bigger chunk was [for] forcible intercourse with unconsenting typically under-age, let’s say under 21, boys and girls, and sometimes unconsenting intercourse with women or men.
It sounds like what you’re saying is that these sodomy prosecutions were more about punishing rape rather than non-vaginal intercourse.
That’s right. Some of the people prosecuted under those laws were indeed gay, lesbian, or homosexual. But if you were gay or lesbian or bisexual or whatnot, it was highly unlikely you were going to be arrested for sodomy because there had to be evidence of penetration. And the evidence — if it was a consenting engagement — the evidence could not be provided by the co-conspirator, in other words, the other adult man. You had to have independent evidence, which meant it had to be in public or have some other witness.
So that meant private, consensual sodomy was almost never prosecuted. If you were engaged in intercourse in public, in 90% of the cases, you would not be arrested for sodomy, but you’d be arrested for one of the other basket of offenses that the police used: indecency, disorderly conduct, lewd vagrancy, those were the main ones. They tended to be misdemeanors and tended to be situations where the police would arrest you… but most did not go to jail. They got off with a warning and public humiliation.
The actual sodomy prosecutions were overwhelmingly nonconsensual, as we would understand it, and were also in public.
Sodomy laws were a Puritan American law from the 19th-century church in colonial America. The following crimes in many of the colonies were punishable by death: fornication, adultery, sodomy or buggery, some form of indecent cohabitation, as well as incest. Almost no one was executed for this, though they were capital offenses.
The point of the laws was… the popular view is that criminal law creates moral guardrails that you should not traverse and it punishes people who are in non-conformance to these moral guardrails. But (gay, French philosopher Michel) Foucault told us that the other point of criminal laws is productive. So when you’re prohibiting fornication, adultery, sodomy, but you’re not really enforcing it, what you are producing is a norm where the only legally acceptable, moral, non-criminal sex is penile-vaginal sex within a procreative marriage.
And remember, there was no such thing as gay or anything like that in the 19th and early 20th centuries — there were people called “degenerates,” “perverts,” “inverts,” and “homosexuals.” The word “gay” was used in the subculture after World War II to some extent, but it was not used in popular culture very much until the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Now in the 20th century, the God thing is a decline, the marriage thing is in decline. The percentage of women working that are married increases steadily, and the percentage of women in the workforce increases steadily. And as women go into the workplace, they put off marriage, many of them don’t get married. They put off having children, they have fewer children on the whole, demographically.
So, if you’re a traditionalist and you’re swallowing [unmarried] cohabitation, what are you producing [with modern anti-sodomy laws]? Well, you’re producing heterosexuality.
In Texas, in 1973, they totally redid their criminal code. They eliminated most of the consensual crimes for heterosexual sodomy [both in and outside of marriage]. But they recreated it as a misdemeanor: the homosexual conduct law — only against homosexuals, and it was almost never enforced.
So it’s technically a crime, even though you’re not going to put people in jail for it. So most of the effect of these laws, whether they were called homosexual or not, was to hold up the possibility that you could be disciplined at any point if you were openly gay or lesbian… and the state could create whatever level of criminality it wanted.
You ask, “How much the state is willing to invest in undercover cops who parade around gay resting places — bars, restrooms, or tea rooms — waiting to be molested or invited?” So if it’s all the homosexuals who are taking over the neighborhood, you send in undercover cops and you can arrest a lot of them…. But if you don’t invest all that money in undercover cops, you ain’t got no crime. You might have a nuisance or neighbors complaining, etc., but you got no crime. So that’s the way it worked if the state wanted to go after sexual and gender minorities.
[The anti-gay military ban known as “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT)] was founded on the idea that lesbian and gay soldiers are presumptive criminals. And therefore, anybody who even has a proclivity toward illegal behavior can be kicked out. What if a school teacher is found to be a lesbian in a lesbian relationship, violating the Texas homosexual conduct law? Theoretically. You don’t catch them. What do you do with her? You fire her!
You know, what happened when [President George W.] Bush fought a war [in Iraq]? When you fight a war, you need the gays. Okay, so [DADT] collapsed. I was told by someone within the Bush administration, “No, we don’t have any interest in enforcing this… We’re at war. It’s stupid.” You need the gays because they speak Arabic. The gays are heavily skilled. If you kick them all out, then you don’t got no intelligence, right?
Bigiduz, Creative CommonsYale Law Professor William Eskridge
I’ve heard it said that in order for LGBTQ+ people to win marriage and other civil rights, we first had to strike down the sodomy laws so the public wouldn’t consider us a bunch of criminals. Do you think that’s true?
I don’t think that’s the way I would put it, but I think it was an important domino…. By the time you got to Lawrence, I think there were only about 13 states that made consensual private sodomy, including oral sex, a crime that was usually a misdemeanor.
Why would some schmuck judge agree with some plaintiffs that we should overturn a conceptual sodomy law? [Because] you can win those arguments, because it’s not giving the gays any kind of special privileges, it’s just taking the government off our backs. And you could argue, you know, during [the height of the AIDS epidemic], the doctors were all saying [anti-sodomy criminalization] actually spreads AIDS. The doctors were a united front that it was bad.
The opponents of decriminalization would make sort of wild stupid claims. Like, oh, you know, “If you make them non-criminals they’ll rape children…. It’ll be the end of marriage, etc.” And of course, when you decriminalized it, none of those things ever actually happened. So you would have our side, gathering allies — some types of religious allies, sometimes conservatives, sometimes unexpected people — and the other side making ridiculous points. And then, when the world didn’t end, they look like idiots.
Nearly every single state, [soon after its legislature] decriminalized sodomy, they passed an anti-discrimination law protecting gay people. And this predicted exactly the order in which states would legalize gay marriage.
I think the progression is like a normative progression. When sodomy laws are repealed, more people will come out of the closet. And people come out of the closet as the mother of a lesbian. Then you have a PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) you know, you build up that coalition. More people come out of the closet. And then we get another discrimination law where your job is protected. More people come out of the closet. Then companies come out of the closet, right? It’s gay support. It’s, “Hey, the gays are actually good customers! They’re good employees! They speak Arabic! They’re very handy dandy! The gays are okay! They’re okay!”
So you get more so them [coming out], and then they want to partner up. We’re no longer misfits who can’t be employed, right? But what about you know, getting married? And the straights are like, “Well, let’s compromise with civil unions. Let’s give them a euphemism.” And the gays are like, “Well, okay, but we still want marriage.” And then a lot of them get civil unions and domestic partnerships. They have children and heterosexuals like, “Wow, who, who knew?” because they didn’t know that there were gonna be lesbians with children. They’re like, “Who knew they cared for one another? Why hush my mouth, they have children, biological children! — where’d that come from?” Right? And then people were just flummoxed, and then we ultimately get Obergefell (the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide).
Screen capture via C-SPANClarence Thomas
What do you make of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ suggestion that maybe the court should overturn Lawrence? Is this just something he said to excite conservatives or is something else going on?
Thomas and Alito are very devout Catholics. So Alito believes in this: Sex is procreative and it’s got to be heterosexual, and he believes this is all ordained by God. And if you really believe that’s the most important thing for a polity, then you don’t care if no one agrees with you. You say, “Well, God agrees with me,” and that’s that. So a lot of it is just that. That’s really what they believe.
It would be insane for them to overrule Lawrence vs. Texas. It would just be insane because a lot of sodomy laws would pop back. Texas has never repealed its law. Virginia has never repealed its law. So they would pop back, just like these abortion statutes [did when Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022].
You know, in Arizona [in 2014]… the legislature passed a statute [that would allow religious business owners to discriminate against gay people]…. It was all symbolic, you know. The Republican legislature passed it so it could rev up the base or something. And the Chamber of Commerce came down and said, “No, no, no, this is terrible.” The head of the Chamber of Commerce in Arizona — nice Republican old white guy — sits down with [then-Arizona Gov.] Jan Brewer (R) and says, “You cannot sign this piece of legislation.”
The f**king Mormon Church tells her not to sign the legislation. The Mormon legislators, a couple who have voted for the bill, said, “Oh, this was a bad idea. What was I thinking?” Because the Mormon church was now realigning…. Though they bashed the gays [by financing California’s 2008 anti-gay marriage ballot measure] Prop 8. “Oh, who is that? Not us?” [the Mormon Chuch said afterward.] “We don’t bash no gays.” … Jan Brewer — a horrible, right-wing, vicious, horrible Republican governor — vetoes this horrible statute, and then it dies. Like, no one wants to pass another statute. No, no, they won’t touch this issue anymore.
Something kind of similar happened in Arkansas, the same kind of stupid thing happened in Indiana. So you can imagine what s**t these states would take from corporations, from the gays, from women’s groups, from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). The Super Bowl — Arizona was gonna lose the Super Bowl over this, and they were scared sh**less over all the repercussions. So yeah, it would be insane. It would be insane. And plus, I don’t think you’d have to have a case where someone was actually arrested under one of the sodomy laws [in order for the issue to reach the Supreme Court], I guess. So no one’s gonna do that.
But this is the most conservative Supreme Court, I think in American history, maybe since Dred Scott (the 1857 decision that declared that Black former slaves weren’t U.S. citizens). And [the current Court is] so out of touch with America on the environment, on abortion, on religion, on about anything. America’s going one way, [and the Court] is moving back in the other direction…. I’ve never seen anything like it in American history.
On the same weekend that saw hundreds of thousands of people flocking to Boston’s Pride parade route, a much quieter walk took placeon the brick-laden backstreets of Beacon Hill. There, a handful of people gathered for the inaugural National Park Service tour honoring a little-known yet pioneering gay rights activist.
The tour explores the life of the late Prescott Townsend, a queer advocatewhose long life spanned the 19th century and the first Pride Parade in New York City in 1970, and who lived an exuberantly out gay life that flew in the face of the social and legal boundaries of his time.
At the tour’s start, on the south slope of Beacon Hill, National Park Service ranger Meaghan Michel explained how Townsend, born in 1894, was part of an old, Boston Brahmin family. He came out as gay to his parents in his teens before following a family tradition of attending Harvard.
“They accepted it, but did warn him to be careful,” said Michel. “But once he entered Harvard, once he was kind of off on his own, that’s when he started to actually act on those feelings that he confessed to them about. We don’t know the name of his first sexual encounter. What we do know is that, apparently, it was a very handsome polo player.”
Michel said Townsend cut short his Harvard studies in 1917 to enlist in the Navy during World War I. After his discharge, he joined the ranks of those who would become known as the “lost generation,” making his way to Paris. It was there he encountered — and embraced — a 1920s bohemian counterculture.
And upon his return to Beacon Hill, he sought to establish an outpost of that culture in his hometown using ample family money.
A young Prescott Townsend wears a fur coat.
A bohemian outpost on Beacon Hill
One of the attendees on the inaugural tour was Michel’s partner, Theo Linger, who researched Townsend for a master’s thesis and helped organize the tour for the park service. They said most National Park Service tours on Beacon Hill emphasize the 1800s.
“Maybe occasionally we’ll touch on the fact that … in the later 19th century, it became more of an immigrant neighborhood,” Linger said. “But for some reason, the gay, artsy history had never really come to the forefront before. And I think that’s just an interesting fold of this neighborhood.”
The bohemian outpost sprang up on the more eclectic northern slope of Beacon Hill — another stop on the tour — where Prescott Townsend opened a bar and an experimental theater. Joining forces with a theatre producer, the two started spending a lot of time in Provincetown, Michel said.
“And it’s there that they meet members of the Provincetown players, who are also staging these very interesting Avant Garde theater productions, including plays by Eugene O’Neill,” Michel said. “So Prescott becomes friends with Eugene O’Neill. He becomes friends with these different actors and theater producers. He was very happy to bankroll them. And they were very happy to take his money.”
But Prescott’s financial situation changed abruptly when the stock market crashed in 1929. So he settled into a less entrepreneurial life around the corner from the experimental theater, which he was forced to shut down.
The next tour stop is at 75 Phillips St., where Townsend rented out affordable rooms in a property he owned, often to young, gay men.
Some sources indicate that in those Depression years, Townsend had already begun a life of gay activism by visiting the State House up the hill to ask legislators to decriminalize homosexual acts. But in 1943, during World War II, his life reached a turning point.
From Beacon Hill to behind bars
“He worked at the shipyard in Fall River,” Michel told the tour, “but one day, he was actually arrested for engaging in a sex act with another man here in Beacon Hill. They were caught … And he was actually imprisoned for 18 months out in Deer Island.”
Upon hearing that, one person on the tour, Gastónde los Reyes, suggested there might be an opportunity now to right an old wrong.
“The Park Service should lobby Mayor [Michelle] Wu to essentially pardon him for his crime of being homosexual,” said de los Reyes. “And use him as an example of how far back the need for affordable housing in Boston exists, right?”
Someone pointed out that in Massachusetts, it’s the governor, not the mayor, who holds the power to pardon — prompting a discussion about the nation’s first openly lesbian governor, Maura Healey, and how it would be appropriate for her to weigh in on this during Pride month.
Michel said Townsend’s arrest in the 1940s finally led to him being kicked out of the Social Register, and hence, ‘polite society’ — something he wore as a badge of honor.
Activism begins in earnest
After he was released from prison, Prescott Townsend moved to 15 Lindall Place, a three-story brick house with two bay windows down a short alley.
“Very early on, this house became site to some of the earliest meetings discussing specifically gay issues in Boston,” Michel said in front of the home. “And [it] was the first headquarters of the Boston chapter of the Mattachine Society. So that national society of gay men that organized and came together, there were chapters throughout the United States.”
But Michel added that Townsend balked at the early Mattachine Society members’ respectability politics.
“He was very vocal. He had a lot of opinions. He let people know what they were, and a lot of people in the society very much disagreed with what he was proposing,” Michel said. “He lost his reputation and he had nothing to lose.”
Townsend began to push for a radical acceptance of the full panoply of human sexuality by society at large — and even for the early gay rights advocates of the ’50s and early ’60s, that was just a bridge too far.
“And then in 1969, when the Stonewall riot breaks out, that is really the type of activism that he would relate to the most strongly,” said Michel.
A new generation of gay activists had risen up, and the aging Townsend had found his milieu, she said.
“He was very close to hippies and vagabonds and runaways of the young queer community,” Michel said. “So it makes sense that because he’s close to these people who also have nothing to lose, when they finally decide to fight back and fight for their rights in a different way, he’s totally on board with them.”
A Beacon Hill light shines on
On the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in New York City, an aging Townsend ventured to New York for the first Pride parade, just days after his 76th birthday.
Toward the end of the National Park Service tour, ranger Meghan Michel shared a black-and-white photograph of Prescott Townsend with her small audience. In it, the once button-down Brahmin of the early 20th century is sporting love-beads and a beret atop his long, shaggy hair, embracing young, gay activists who would walk in the trail he blazed.
An unpublished biography of Townsend, written by Adrian Cathcart and referred to on the tour, describes the advocate as a lover of freedom and “unpopular causes.”
“He loved being a star and the center of attention. He loved Harvard. He loved New England. He was proud to be Prescott Townsend. A state of being that involved not only himself, but also his ancestors. He felt this mattered,” Cathcart writes.
But after that inaugural Pride parade in New York, Townsend’s health declined quickly and he fell on hard times. A series of fires rendered him essentially homeless and destroyed almost all records documenting his extraordinary life. He died in the basement apartment of a friend on Garden Street in his beloved Beacon Hill at the age of 78.
One of the young men standing next to Townsend in that 1970 Pride parade picture was Randolfe “Randy” Wicker. Today an 85-year-old global LGBTQ+ activist, Wicker is set to be a Grand Marshal at this year’s NYC Pride March later this month.
“Well, to me, he has only one legacy, and it’s ‘love, money, uplift.’ And that doing for others brings you happiness. Those are the two most important statements you will ever hear anyone make,” Wicker said of Townsend in an oral history interview with Theo Linger.
The National Park Service says it doesn’t yet have a regular schedule for the historical walking tour of Prescott Townsend. But it’s planning more opportunities, ensuring the story of Townsend’s courage, advocacy and impact are known in his old, cherished neighborhood and beyond.
A trans woman living in Moscow is scared for her safety as Russia moves to ban gender recognition and trans healthcare.
Mihelina moved to Moscow from Georgia to study performative arts and music. It used to be “one of the most liberal cities and queer friendly,” she tells PinkNews, via translation by Queer Svit co-founder Anna-Maria Tesfaye.
“Now, every day, I hear slurs and threats towards me,” she goes on.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, president Vladimir Putin has clamped down even further on LGBTQ+ people in Russia. Trans people have been considered internal enemies, with fresh efforts to take away their rights to healthcare, legal recognition and participation in society.
“All of this made homophobes and transphobes feel more comfortable and basically made them think they can do anything,” Mihelina says.
“For example, two days ago, we were walking around in one of the central parks in Moscow, and two men came to us and said, ‘You have two minutes to leave this park or else’.
“Then, we went to the [underground], and someone called my friend a ginger c**t for no reason.”
Mihelina, who uses she/him pronouns, has been left “worried and scared s**tless”. She’s particularly concerned for his future given a new bill that seeks to ban trans people from updating their official gender marker, particularly with Russia tightening its conscription for the war effort.
She eventually made contact with Queer Svit, an LGBTQ+ support group which, among other things, is helping trans people to obtain legal recognition while they still can.
Mihelina, a Georgian trans woman living in Moscow, says the situation for LGBTQ+ and trans people is “getting worse and worse” in Russia. (miliyollie)
“Before Queer Svit happened, I thought that the only option I had was suicide… I was very confused, and I didn’t know what I should do” Mihelina says.
“Every day, a new law project or law would be passed. It’s not only concerning queer people, but in general. They were all insane… I felt absolutely hopeless and I didn’t know what to do.
“But then I found that Queer Svit has this initiative where they help people like me with changing their gender marker.
“Honestly, when they said they would help me, it made me cry because I was unable to find money then, and my parents were not very helpful. They didn’t want to help me with this, and I was terrified.”
Russia moves to ban trans healthcare and gender recognition
On 14 June, Russian lawmakers gave initial approval to a bill that would ban gender-affirming healthcare as well as changing one’s gender marker in official documents, such as passports, and public records.
The bill still needs to go through the state duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, before it lands on Putin’s desk, but there’s little doubt that the legislation will pass quickly because about 400 of the 450 members of the Russian parliament, from all political factions, are listed as its authors, according to Russian independent media outlet Mediazona.
Queer Svit has received more than 500 requests from trans people like Mihelina who need help, Tesfaye says. The number has increased at least fivefold lately, because “people are freaking out”.
“Trans people are already marginalised,” Tesfaye says. “If – well not even if, it’s just when – they pass this law, it means these people will be unable to find a job, to get medical help, to have gender-affirming therapy and definitely surgeries. [It will] also increase the level of transphobia.
“This increases the level of any type of crime – hate crime, murders. I don’t think we can even process the levels of problems. It’s horrible.
“I don’t think I can even understand the catastrophe that will happen even though I know it will happen. It’s just impossible to realise how inhumane this law is.”
The anti-trans law is yet another blow to Russia’s beleaguered LGBTQ+ community
Putin, lawmakers and the Russian Orthodox Church have embarked on a decade-long campaign to preserve what they deem the country’s “traditional values.”
This crusade saw tightened restrictions under Putin’s so-called LGBTQ+ propaganda law, preventing queer representation in mass media.
The law, which was first introduced in 2013 under the guise of protecting children, was revised in December to prohibit the dissemination of information on LGBTQ+ and trans identities to people of all ages.
Amid this onslaught of state-run hate, LGBTQ+ activists have fled the country, queer organisations have been persecuted and social media influencers arrested.
The Russian health ministry has been instructed by Putin to establish a psychiatric facility to study the “social behaviour” of LGBTQ+ people, independent news outlet Meduza reported.
Mihelina would ‘love to leave Russia right now’, but the trans woman can’t because of family obligations and her studies. (miliyollie)
Health minister Mikhail Murashko announced the move while answering questions in the duma during the first reading of the bill.
LGBTQ+ groups fear the statements are a sign that Russia is preparing to roll out forcible conversion therapy. The pseudo-scientific practice has been widely condemned by medical organisations, LGBTQ+ advocates and human rights groups worldwide and has been compared to torture by UN experts.
Mihelina doesn’t have “any words to describe this madness”. She would “love to leave this country right now”, but she can’t because of family obligations and her studies.
She says music is what keeps her afloat – she’s “obsessed” with hyperpop, and artists such as Arca and Sophie.
Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
August 9, 2002 was the first day I went out in drag. I had just moved to Nashville for college and had touched nearly every theatrical production I possibly could but had yet to venture into the world of drag. The second I did, Nashville welcomed me with open arms and I quickly realized with the help of other queens, that this would allow me to celebrate my creativity in a whole new way.
And thus, Veronika Electronika was born.
I have used drag in a myriad of ways in the past 20-plus years: to cultivate community, call for political action, and educate those across the state on inclusion. That’s the beauty of drag — you can contour the art form to become whoever you want.
Drag has given new meaning to my life and a flourishing diverse community of which I am grateful to be a part. But this freedom and my community are under attack. All year, lawmakers around the country have been working to make life more dangerous for transgender people, queer people, and drag queens, advancing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation while systematically dismantling gun safety laws.
In March, Tennessee became the first state to explicitly ban drag performances in public spaces,punishing first-time offenders with misdemeanors and possible prison sentences of up to six years for repeat offenders. (The law has now been ruled unconstitutional.) This legislation and bills like it target drag queens, taking particular aim at our right to peacefully coexist. Let’s call these what they are: discriminatory policies grounded in prejudice and fear — fear of us harmlessly expressing ourselves. Empowered by the hateful rhetoric of our so-called leaders, armed Nazis and white supremacists have targeted our community — swarming LGBTQ+ drag events across the country.
Meanwhile, lawmakers ignore the real threat to public safety: gun violence.
Guns are a threat to safety in this country. Drag queens are not. Guns kill more than 120 people every day and are the number 1 killer of children and teens in America. Set against the backdrop of our country’s raging gun violence epidemic and a concerted movement to loosen existing firearm laws, this exponentially growing hatred of drag queens, trans people, and queer people is a recipe for hate-motivated gun violence against LGBTQ+ people. There is an already clear disproportionate effect of gun violence on queer communities. We saw the deadly intersection of guns and anti-LGBTQ+ hate when a shooter walked into a sacred queer space in Colorado Springs and killed five people.
This year alone, at least 12 trans people have been killed in the U.S., the vast majority with a gun. Between 2017 and 2022, there were 222 homicides of transgender or gender-nonconforming people. During this period, 74 percent of the trans people killed were killed with a gun.
Now more than ever, states desperately need to pass common-sense gun safety laws, but instead, legislators across the country, backed by a gun lobby that is driven by profits over public safety, are systematically working to weaken our gun laws and remove fundamental public safety laws.
The Tennessee legislature recently passed permitless carry and continues to introduce other harmful legislation, such as guns on campus and expansions to the state’s Shoot First law, also known as Stand Your Ground. In August, legislators will convene a special session, and we’ll be calling on them to pass a lifesaving extreme risk law — a law that could have prevented the shooting at the Covenant School.
We shouldn’t have to live in a world where members of the LGBTQ+ community and drag queens have to live in fear every single day. It’s exhausting to endure these tragedies over and over again.
As we commemorate Pride Month this June, we must remember that Pride and what it has become started as a protest. In 1969, the Stonewall riots in New York City served as a pivotal moment for the modern LGBTQ+ movement, and we will carry the power of those who came before us to say enough is enough. Enough hate. Enough violence. We don’t have to live this way, and I don’t want to die this way.
Drag queens have the right to exist in peace. Drag queens have the right to be safe in their communities. Drag queens and queer people have the right to express themselves and to live free from the fear of gun violence. We won’t stop working to make our communities safe — for everyone.
Veronika Electronika is a Tennessee-based drag queen.
Over half of Americans surveyed in the last year reported facing online harassment and hate during their lifetime, including more than 75% of transgender respondents, advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said on Wednesday.
ADL’s fifth such annual survey showed that reports of online hate and harassment over the last 12 months increased within almost every demographic group.
About 52% of the survey respondents reported having faced online harassment, compared to 40% in the survey’s previous year.
“We’re confronted with record levels of hate across the internet, hate that too often turns into real violence and danger in our communities,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, urging tech and social media platforms to do more to tackle online hate.
The rate of harassment stood at 76% for transgender people, while 26% of Jewish respondents, 38% of Black Americans and 38% of Muslims said they had been harassed online at some point in their life.
Excluding transgender people, 47% of the LGBTQ+ community respondents reported online harassment.
“Due to the recent proliferation of extreme anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric, ADL sampled transgender individuals separately this year,” the advocacy group said.
Republican-led states have signed a flurry of bills relating to transgender youth, which proponents say are aimed at protecting minors and opponents say limit their rights. Some states have banned teachers of younger children from discussing gender or sexuality, while conservative lawmakers have also proposed or passed laws restricting drag performances.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden warned about “ugly” attacks from “hysterical” people who he said were targeting LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender youth.
The survey of 2,139 adults and 550 teenagers was conducted online from March 7 through April 6 by YouGov, a public opinion and data analytics firm, on behalf of ADL. It oversampled respondents who identified as LGBTQ or as members of various minorities.
Of those who reported being harassed, 54% indicated harassment took place on Facebook, 27% said it took place on Twitter and 21% said it occurred on Reddit.
Join the Sonoma County Library for eventsthroughout the month of July, from live music performances to bilingual paint parties. All events are free and you don’t need a library card to attend; registration is required for select events. See some of our July events below!
All Ages
Danza Xantotl de Santa RosaBuild connections with nature and community at this Aztec dancing and drumming ceremony! Join the celebration at three locations: Bayer Park & Gardens in Santa Rosa, Healdsburg Library, and Rincon Valley Library.
Paint PartiesSign up and follow along to paint a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Available at six library locations: Rincon Valley, Rohnert Park- Cotati, Roseland, Cloverdale, Windsor, and Sonoma Valley.
Kids
Magic & Juggling with James Chan Be amazed by 15-year-old James Chan’s astonishing ensemble of tricks. Experience the magic six library locations: Sebastopol, Cloverdale, Sonoma Valley, Rincon Valley, Bayer Farm in Santa Rosa, and Rohnert Park-Cotati.
José-Luis Orozco Bilingual Music Enjoy Spanish bilingual music that will have kids singing, dancing, and clapping along! At six library locations: Cloverdale, Rincon Valley, Sonoma Valley, Healdsburg, Bayer Farm in Santa Rosa, and Central Santa Rosa.
Teens
Art Journaling Workshops with Amanda Ayala Working with collage, ink, and markers, create a beautiful art journal to take home. Advance registration required. Make your journal at six library locations: Healdsburg, Guerneville, Rincon Valley, Rohnert Park-Cotati, Roseland, and Cloverdale.
Join us at the Guerneville Library on Wednesday, July 19, at 6:00 pm for a panel discussion on gender identity and understanding the transgender experience. Panelists include transgender youth, adults, and parents of transgender children who will share their perspectives.
Adults
Veggie Queen Cooking DemosChef Jill Nussinow shows you how to best cook vegetables to bring out maximum nutrition and flavor. Get inspired at four library locations: Northwest Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Cloverdale, and Central Santa Rosa.
Music PerformancesDon’t miss these music performances by Sabor de mi Cuba and the doRiaN Mode Jazz ensemble! Catch a show at six library locations: Cloverdale, Rohnert Park-Cotati, Guerneville, Sebastopol, Rincon Valley, and Sonoma Valley.
A Reminder from Your Library: Upcoming Holiday Closure
All library branches will be closed Tuesday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day. We look forward to seeing you when we reopen on Wednesday, July 5!
Thank you for being a member of the Sonoma County Library community. Visit us online or in person at one of our branches. Be sure to check out open jobs at Sonoma County Library here. Questions? Please call your local library branch or click here to send us a message. Eventos de julio Únase a los eventos de la biblioteca del Condado de Sonoma durante el mes de julio que incluyen música en vivo y reuniones de pintura bilingües. Todos los eventos son gratuitos y no se necesita tarjeta de la biblioteca para asistir. Se requiere registrarse para eventos selectos. ¡Vea algunos de los eventos de julio a continuación!
Para todas las edades
Danza Xantotl de Santa Rosa¡Conéctese con la naturaleza y la comunidad en esta ceremonia de danza azteca y de tambores! Únase a esta celebración en tres localidades: Bayer Park & Gardens en Santa Rosa, biblioteca de Healdsburg y la biblioteca de Rincon Valley.
Reuniones de pinturaInscríbase y aprenda a pintar una pieza de arte única. Disponible en seis localidades: Rincon Valley, Rohnert Park- Cotati, Roseland, Cloverdale, Windsor y Sonoma Valley.
Para los infantes
Magia y malabarismo con James ChanDeje que el mago de 15 años James Chan lo sorprenda con su repertorio de trucos. Experimente la magia en seis localidades: Sebastopol, Cloverdale, Sonoma Valley, Rincon Valley, Bayer Farm en Santa Rosa y Rohnert Park-Cotati.
Música bilingüe de José-Luis Orozco¡Disfrute de la música bilingüe en español que hará bailar, cantar y aplaudir a los niños! Disponible en seis localidades: Cloverdale, Rincon Valley, Sonoma Valley, Healdsburg, Bayer Farm en Santa Rosa y Central Santa Rosa.
Jovenes
Taller para hacer diarios de arte con Amanda AyalaTrabaje con collage, tinta y marcadores para crear un lindo diario de arte para llevar a casa. Se requiere registrarse con anticipación. Fabrique su diario de arte en seis localidades: Healdsburg, Guerneville, Rincon Valley, Rohnert Park-Cotati, Roseland y Cloverdale.
One year later it still feels surreal. I still find myself shaking my head in disbelief that the Supreme Court actually overturned Roe v. Wade, marking the first time it has eliminated rather than expanded a fundamental personal right. How can a constitutional guarantee of liberty not include the right to determine what happens to one’s own body? How can those who profess a commitment to that liberty support forced pregnancy? With its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court demonstrated, as it has in so many areas, how far out of alignment it is with what the majority of people in this country believe and want. The majority does not want the government forcing people to be pregnant against their will. The elections last summer and fall showed that clearly. And yet here we are.
The majority of people in this country also favor equality for LGBTQ people. They don’t want to force us back into the closet with “don’t say gay” bills, censorship of library books, or drag show bans. They celebrate our marriages and support our families. They don’t want us fired from our jobs or denied service in stores and restaurants because of who we are. And yet 2023 is far and away the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ legislation in the states.
Those who want to control others and force us into gendered roles don’t care that their views are deeply unpopular. If anything, the Dobbs ruling has emboldened them. Now, in addition to banning abortion or restricting abortion in many states, this same aggressive minority is succeeding in banning medically necessary health care for transgender youth and, in some states, adults. They’re using the anti-abortion playbook to attack essential medical care and deprive people of established medical treatments. In some instances, they’re seeking to ban both types of care — abortion and transition-related care — in the same bills. And, not content with oppressing those within their own states’ borders, some of these legislators are seeking to enforce these laws even against state residents — effectively health care refugees — who travel to other states to get the care they need.
In recent years, the LGBTQ community has seen historic advances. The Supreme Court has issued decisions recognizing our freedom to marry, enter into same-sex relationships, and work free from discrimination. Public acceptance of our civil rights is at an all-time high. LGBTQ people hold high-ranking positions in the Biden administration and in public office across the land. A growing number of states have banned conversion therapy, the dangerous practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBTQ youth are stepping forward as advocates, not only for LGBTQ rights but also for racial and economic justice, voting rights, and reproductive freedom. We increasingly see LGBTQ people positively represented in the media and celebrated as artists, athletes, and scholars.
The ugly rhetoric and cruel laws that are proliferating now represent a vicious backlash against this progress. While the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, it doesn’t always move in a linear fashion. Those upset by change are grasping for the past, recycling decades-old tropes to demonize LGBTQ people. They are borrowing tactics from the anti-abortion movement — pretending they are trying to protect children, ignoring science and standards of care, criminalizing health care providers, turning people against their neighbors with bounty hunter schemes, and fomenting violence.
In some ways, it makes sense that anti-LGBTQ forces would turn to anti-abortion tactics — because they have worked. Those opposed to progress know that if women truly controlled their reproductive lives, they would be empowered and equal. They talk of being pro-life, but they are in reality pro-control. What do they do to prevent unintended pregnancy? What do they do to reduce maternal mortality, especially among Black women? What do they do to ensure that the children born of these forced pregnancies can actually thrive?
At the National Center for Lesbian Rights we have long understood the fundamental connections between LGBTQ equality and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Unfortunately, our opponents are now seeing it too. But while they want to take us backward, we know that a vision of freedom from gender oppression — a vision that unites the movements for LGBTQ equality and for reproductive justice — is the key to a future of true liberation for all.
We’ve been living in the post-Roe United States for a year, and it is taking its toll on those who need abortion care they can’t get and can’t afford to seek in another state. Families with trans youth are now finding themselves in the same untenable position. The attacks from the gender enforcers keep coming and they seem unstoppable and overwhelming. But we can’t stand down, not now. We can’t get used to it, and we can’t give in to it. We are the majority, and we have power. We can show up at school board meetings, run for office, vote, march, write op-eds, and hold our elected officials accountable. And perhaps most importantly, we can tell our stories and show our humanity, because people tend not to try to hurt those they know.
At this moment of peril, when so many states are resorting to brute force threats of criminal punishment and other jackboot tactics in their efforts to turn back the clock on gender equality, it may be tempting to lie low and hope to ride out the storm. But that would be a terrible mistake, and one that will only further embolden and strengthen the dangerous minority who want to impose their cruel regime on the rest of us. Now, far more urgently than ever, we must not become collaborators in our own oppression. We must not silence ourselves.
Together we can shift the trajectory back toward justice.
Julianna S. Gonen is federal policy director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
A survey has found that a slim majority – just over half – of LGBTQ+ people in the UK feel comfortable being “out” in the workplace.
The study by consultancy firm Deloitte found that 52 per cent of the 402 LGBTQ+ Brits polled were comfortable being openly queer at work, compared to 43 per cent of the 5,474 LGBTQ+ people polled worldwide.
The survey also found that 43 per cent of LGBTQ+ people in the UK fear being seen differently by their straight, cisgender colleagues, compared to 39 per cent of respondents globally.
Deloitte polled queer people from 13 countries for the survey, and nearly half of the British respondents (49 per cent) reported being discriminated against at work due to their sexuality or gender identity.
Thirty-eight per cent said they had come up against homophobic or transphobic behaviour – including sexual jokes – at work.
Phil Mitchell, co-lead for the Deloitte LGBTQ+ staff network Proud, said: “When people feel that their employers aren’t doing enough to support inclusion or are not taking non-inclusive behaviours seriously, many instances go unreported.
“Employers should take action to ensure that they provide a positive culture of LGBTQ+ inclusion, underpinned by respect.”
Of the LGBTQ+ 18 to 25-year-olds polled for the survey, 19 per cent added that they had been bullied in the workplace, while the study also found that LGBTQ+ young people are paid less than their straight, cisgender peers on average.
Amy Ashenden, interim CEO of Just Like Us, said: “Our research shows that the treatment of LGBT+ people in British society today is preventing young adults from thriving at work.
“LGBT+ young people deserve to safely be themselves at school, home and work – there must be no exceptions.”
