On Saturday morning, members of the Pride Community Center in Gainesville received a call from a real estate office in the same complex about their building being vandalized.
“She told me that she was just informed by somebody that came to her office that the pride center had been vandalized and that the windows were all smashed,” said board member Debbie Lewis. “The reason it’s being investigated as a hate crime is because of the notes that were left.”
Members didn’t want to share the messages due to the ongoing investigation and the community joined in helping board up the windows.
The attack came just weeks before the highly anticipated return of the Gainesville Pride Festival on Oct. 22, which was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Those who showed up at the center helped clean the mess left behind, sweeping up glass and rocks.
“Later I will be angry about this vicious hate crime but right now I’m incredibly sad for every vulnerable person in my community,” County Commission candidate Mary Alford said, adding that she faults some elected Republicans who have shared anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
This week, the daughters of a founder at Christian Grace College in Indiana came forward with a shocking revelation: their father had sexually abused an estimated one to two hundred male students over his 40-year career at the school.
Don Ogden, who died in 2015, was the founder of the school’s music program. His daughters, Diane and Kathleen, disclosed the abuse in a six-page statement shared with The Christian Post.
“Our father used his position, his power, his wit, and persuasion to gain the trust of young men, and later perpetrate crimes against them that would change their lives forever. We realize, looking back, that this was sadly still going on when he was 80 years old.”
Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana officially bans LGBTQ students from attending. The school’s catalog bans “homosexual behavior” and compares it to other sins like adultery, greed, and drunkenness.
The sisters allege Ogden’s predation was an open secret at Grace. In 1993, he was arrested in Kansas for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy, whom he met at a mall and lured to an open field nearby, where he sexually assaulted him.
After reporting the incident to the police, the victim recanted his story and police dropped the matter, describing the encounter as consensual. The age of consent in Kansas is 16.
According to Ogden’s daughters, Grace College was aware of the charge but kept it under wraps both to protect the school’s reputation and continue to benefit from Ogden’s strength as a fundraiser.
“It is with broken hearts that my sister and I are bringing our story forward. After speaking with many Christian experts that handle abuse in Christian institutions, we were told that if there is no public confession and help for the victims given, we must go to the media. After writing eight letters over the last 16 months, we both feel, sadly, that we have absolutely no choice,” the sisters’ statement read.
A whistleblower approached the sisters in February, 2021, leading to their own investigation of their father’s crimes. The pair say they were “mortified” to learn their father’s predation on young boys had spanned more than 40 years.
Ogden “had been molesting boys for over four decades. Incidents occurred touring across the country, in people’s homes, our home, malls, youth conferences, and other places,” the daughters wrote.
Referring to her father’s arrest in Kansas, Ogden’s daughter Diane said the night he was in jail, she spoke with him on the phone, unaware this was just one incident in a decades-long pattern of abuse.
“God will use this, Daddy,” Diane told her father. “You can help someone else that gets wrongly accused someday.”
Ogden replied: “You have too much faith in me.”
“He was admitting to it but my mind would not let me believe it,” Diane said.
Her father added: “No one will want to shake my hand again.”
The 25-year-old translator by day and trans drag performer by night felt overwhelming panic and anxiety when several thousand demonstrators gathered and marched Sunday in Turkey to demand a ban on what they consider gay propaganda and to outlaw LGBTQ organizations.
The Big Family Gathering march in the conservative heart of Istanbul attracted parents with children, nationalists, hard-line Islamists and conspiracy theorists. Turkey’s media watchdog gave the event the government’s blessing by including a promotional video that called LGBTQ people a “virus” in its list of public service announcements for broadcasters.
“We need to make all our defense against this LGBT. We need to get rid of it,” said construction worker Mehmet Yalcin, 21, who attended the event wearing a black headband printed with Islam’s testimony of faith. “We are sick of and truly uncomfortable that our children are being encouraged and pulled to this.”
Seeing images from the gathering terrified Willie Ray, the drag performer who is nonbinary, and Willie Ray’s mother, who was in tears after talking to her child. The fear wasn’t misplaced. The Europe branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association ranked Turkey second to last, ahead of only Azerbaijan, in its most recent 49-country legal equality index, saying LGBTQ people endured “countless hate crimes.”
“I feel like I can be publicly lynched,” Willie Ray said, describing the daily sense of dread that comes with living in Istanbul. The performer recalls leaving a nightclub still in makeup on New Year’s Eve and hurrying to get to a taxi as strangers on the street called out slurs and “tried to hunt me, basically.”
Sunday’s march was the biggest anti-LGBTQ demonstration of its kind in Turkey, where civil rights for a community more commonly referred to here as LGBTI+ — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other gender identities and sexual orientations — have been under assault in the years since an estimated 100,000 people celebrated Pride in Istanbul in 2014.
Turkish demonstrators holding Turkish flags attend an anti-LGBTQ+ protest in Istanbul on Sept. 18, 2022.Khalil Hamra / AP
In a visible sign of the shift, the anti-LGBTQ march went ahead without any police interference. Conversely, LGBTQ groups have had their freedom to assemble severely curtailed since 2015, with officials citing both security and morality grounds.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s views also have grown more stridently anti-LGBTQ over time. Before the 2002 election that brought the Justice and Development Party (AKP) he co-founded to power, a younger Erdogan said at a televised campaign event that he found mistreatment of gay people inhumane and legal protections for them in Turkey a “must.”
“And now, 20 years into this, you have an entirely different president that seems to be mobilizing based on these dehumanizing, criminal approaches to the LGBTQ movement itself,” said Mine Eder, a political science professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul.
The country could become more unwelcoming for the LGBTQ community. The Unity in Ideas and Struggle Platform, the organizer of Sunday’s event, said it plans to push for a law that would ban the alleged LGBTQ “propaganda” that the group maintains is pervasive on Netflix and social media, as well as in arts and sports.
The platform’s website states it also favors a ban on LGBTQ organizations.
“We are a Muslim country and we say no to this. Our statesmen and the other parties should all support this,” said Betul Colak, who attended Sunday’s gathering wearing a scarf with the Turkish flag.
Haunted by “the feeling that you can be attacked anytime,” Willie Ray thinks it would be a “total catastrophe” if a ban on the LGBTQ organizations that provide visibility, psychological support and safe spaces were enacted.
Eder, the professor, said it would be “simply illegal” to close down LGBTQ civil society based on ideological, Islamic and conservative norms — even if Turkey’s norms have indeed shifted to “using violent language, violent strategies and legalizing them.”
The Social Policy, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association, a nongovernmental LGBTQ advocacy and outreach organization in Istanbul commonly known as SPoD, is among the LGBTQ groups that stopped posting their addresses online after receiving threatening calls.
“It’s easy for a maniac to try and hurt us after all the hate speech from state officials,” said SPoD lobbyist Ogulcan Yediveren, 27. “But these security concerns, this atmosphere of fear, doesn’t stop us from work and instead reminds us every time how much we need to work.”
Ogulcan Yediveren in his office in Istanbul on Sept. 19, 2022.Khalil Hamra / AP
Gay activist Umut Rojda Yildirim, who works as SPoD’s lawyer, thinks the anti-LGBTQ sentiments on view Sunday aren’t dominant across Turkish society, but that the minority expressing them seem “louder when they have government funds, when they’re supported by the government watchdog.”
“You can just shut down an office, but I’m not going to disappear. My other colleagues aren’t going to disappear. We’ll be here no matter what,” Yildirim said.
Republican state lawmakers are rallying behind newly introduced anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that would ‘go further’ than Florida’s reviled ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.
GOP politicians held a rally at the Pennsylvania state capitol Tuesday (20 September) to introduce House Bill 2813. The bill shares similarities with Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, which bans discussions of LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms between kindergarten and third grade.
Pennsylvania state representative Stephanie Borowicz, the bill’s primary sponsor, said HB 2813 is “patterned” on the Florida legislation but actually “goes further” than the other measure, according to PennLive.
The bill states that any public or charter school “may not offer instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to a student in kindergarten through fifth grade”.
It would also require schools to notify parents of “health care services offered by the school entity” to students. The legislation would also allow parents to bring civil action against schools that they believe are violating the measure.
Borowicz added she believed the bill could be extended further in the future and wanted to ban classroom discussions on LGBTQ+ topics through high school.
“It really needs to be protected up through 12th grade, we need to go all the way,” she said.
However, the bill is unlikely to pass into law as Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has already promised to veto HB 2813 and other ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills if they land on his desk.
Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has promised to veto HB 2813 as he says it “denies humanity by reinforcing homophobic ideologies”. (Getty)
Wolf wanted lawmakers in the state to focus on the real issues facing Pennsylvanians rather than “engaging in discrimination and bullying”, WHTMreported.
“HB 2813 is an effort to scorch individuality and normalise unacceptance,” Wolf said. “This legislation denies humanity by reinforcing homophobic ideologies.”
Sharon Ward, senior policy advisor for the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, warned this bill – like other ‘Don’t Say Gay’ measures – could “really add to the existing targeting and bullying of LGBTQ kids in schools”.
“The intent of these bills seems to be to wipe out any discussion and pretend that [LGBTQ people] don’t exist,” Ward said.
Pennsylvania lawmakers in the state Senate passed a similar bill, Senate Bill 1278, in June and currently awaits consideration in the House.
SB 1278 would also ban classroom discussions of LGBTQ+ topics for pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students. Instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity would also be prohibited between sixth and twelfth grade unless it is done in an “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” manner.
Campaigners have denounced the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills as they attempt to “wipe out any discussion and pretend that [LGBTQ people] don’t exist”. (Getty)
The NBA has fined basketball star Anthony Edwards $40,000 for using an anti-gay slur.
The player for the Minnesota Timberwolves found himself in hot water earlier this month after a video on his Instagram story depicted him mocking a group of men standing on the sidewalk. The video has since been deleted, but Edwards could reportedly be heard saying, “look at these queer a** n****rs.”
After backlash, he tweeted an apology, writing that what he said “was immature, hurtful, and disrespectful.”
“I’m incredibly sorry,” he continued. “It’s unacceptable for me or anyone to use that language in such a hurtful way, there’s no excuse for it, at all. I was raised better than that!”
NBA Communications confirmed Edwards’s fine in a statement released on social media which said he had used “offensive and derogatory language” and that “Edwards has acknowledged that his actions were inappropriate.”
Players have been fined before for using homophobic language.
In 2021, Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant was fined the largest amount permissible by the NBA for his direct messages to actor and comedian Michael Rapaport.
He used derogatory remarks — criticized as homophobic by some and acknowledged as “inappropriate” by Durant — toward Rapaport. As a result, the NBA announced a $50,000 fine levied against Durant, reportedly the most allowed under the collective bargaining agreement.
A week after the death of a trans man at the hands of a 20 year-old assailant, soccer fans in Germany rallied in support and mourning for the victim at a match in Bremen.
The Bremen team superfans, or ultras, unfurled massive banners at the 60-minute match reading “Queerphobia kills!” (“Queerfeindlichkeit tötet!), “Against all transphobia!” (“Gegen jede Transfeindlichkeit!”) and “Rest in peace Malte.”
Twenty-five-year-old Malte C., identified by police only with his first name and initial in keeping with privacy rules, died a week earlier from injuries sustained at the Christopher Street Day parade in Münster, the city’s annual Pride march held the previous weekend.
According to witnesses, Malte intervened when his attacker started hurling homophobic slurs at a group of women parade-goers. He was struck twice in the face and fell to the ground, hitting his head. He never regained consciousness.
Police apprehended the suspect at Münster’s central train station based on photos and video provided by witnesses, on the same day Malte succumbed to his injuries. The suspect is being held in investigative detention on suspicion of bodily harm resulting in death.
Community leaders in the German city reacted with shock to the violent attack. Roman Catholic bishop Felix Genn called it “barbaric” and an “insane act.”
“Intolerance, exclusion, and hatred must have no place in our society,” he said in a statement.
The German government’s Commissioner for the Acceptance of Sexual and Gender Diversity, or so-called queer commissioner, Sven Lehmann, shared the bishop’s shock.
“Malte has died following a hate attack at the CSD Münster,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’m stunned and sad. My condolences and deep sympathy go to his family and friends. Violence against queer people is a threat that we must all stand up to.”
The soccer demonstration in Bremen came just days after another violent attack on a trans person, when a 57-year-old trans woman was assaulted on a tram in the same city.
Soccer ultras have been outspoken in support of LGBTQ and trans rights. In the U.S., ultra fan group The Uproar, supporters of the North Carolina Courage, rallied against re-signing Jaelene Daniels, who refused to wear the team’s rainbow jersey, while Prideraiser, a coalition of independent soccer ultras, raises money for local LGBTQ charities annually for Pride Month.
Los Verdes, ultras for Austin FC, collaborates with the team’s goalkeeper, Brad Stuver, to fundraise for organizations including Playing for Pride and the Transgender Education Network of Texas.
The Human Rights Campaign announced Tuesday that Kelley Robinson will serve as its ninth president — the first Black queer woman to lead the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization.
Robinson, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said she was honored to lead HRC and its 3 million member-advocates during “a pivotal moment in our movement for equality for LGBTQ+ people.”
“We, particularly our trans and BIPOC communities, are quite literally in the fight for our lives and facing unprecedented threats that seek to destroy us,” Robinson said in a statement Tuesday, using an acronym for Black and Indigenous people of color. “The overturning of Roe v. Wade reminds us we are just one Supreme Court decision away from losing fundamental freedoms including the freedom to marry, voting rights, and privacy.”
She continued, “We are facing a generational opportunity to rise to these challenges and create real, sustainable change. I believe that working together this change is possible right now. This next chapter of the Human Rights Campaign is about getting to freedom and liberation without any exceptions — and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.”
Robinson began her career in 2008 as an organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Missouri, and she has worked in advocacy ever since, according to the HRC. Prior to becoming the executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the advocacy and political arm of the reproductive health care nonprofit group, she served as its national organizing director and as director for youth engagement.
Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson, board chairs for the Human Rights Campaign and its foundation, said in a joint statement that Robinson was at the center of fights to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood.
“These past months have reminded us why equality and liberation work is so important and we believe Kelley Robinson is the exact person to help us lead the fight for all LGBTQ+ people around the world,” Cox and Patterson said.
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A report released in August 2021 by the New York Attorney General’s Office alleged that David was involved in efforts to discredit a woman who accused then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment. David allegedly consulted with the governor’s office in December 2020, while president of HRC, the report said.
However, HRC conducted an internal investigation and found that David’s “conduct in assisting Governor Cuomo’s team, while president of HRC, was in violation of HRC’s conflict of interest policy and the mission of HRC,” the group said last year.
In February, David sued the organization in federal court, alleging that he was underpaid and then terminated “because he is Black.” He also claimed that there is a culture of racism in the organization.
Joni Madison, HRC’s interim president, said in a response that David’s complaint “is riddled with untruths” and described it as retaliation for his firing, which HRC said was the result of his own actions.
Sharply rising cases of some sexually transmitted diseases — including a 26% rise in new syphilis infections reported last year — are prompting U.S. health officials to call for new prevention and treatment efforts.
“It is imperative that we … work to rebuild, innovate, and expand (STD) prevention in the U.S.,” said Dr. Leandro Mena of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a speech Monday at a medical conference on sexually transmitted diseases.
Infections rates for some STDs, including gonorrhea and syphilis, have been rising for years. Last year the rate of syphilis cases reached its highest since 1991 and the total number of cases hit its highest since 1948. HIV cases are also on the rise, up 16% last year.
And an international outbreak of monkeypox, which is being spread mainly between men who have sex with other men, has further highlighted the nation’s worsening problem with diseases spread mostly through sex.
David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, called the situation “out of control.”
Officials are working on new approaches to the problem, such as home-test kits for some STDs that will make it easier for people to learn they are infected and to take steps to prevent spreading it to others, Mena said.
Another expert said a core part of any effort must work to increase the use of condoms.
“It’s pretty simple. More sexually transmitted infections occur when people are having more unprotected sex,” said Dr. Mike Saag, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Syphilis is a bacterial disease that surfaces as genital sores but can ultimately lead to severe symptoms and death if left untreated.
New syphilis infections plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when antibiotics became widely available. They fell to their lowest ever by 1998, when fewer than 7,000 new cases were reported nationwide. The CDC was so encouraged by the progress it launched a plan to eliminate syphilis in the U.S.
But by 2002 cases began rising again, largely among gay and bisexual men, and they kept going. In late 2013, CDC ended its elimination campaign in the face of limited funding and escalating cases, which that year surpassed 17,000.
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By 2020 cases had reached nearly 41,700 and they spiked even further last year, to more than 52,000.
The rate of cases has been rising, too, hitting about 16 per 100,000 people last year. That’s the highest in three decades.
Rates are highest in men who have sex with men, and among Black and Hispanic Americans and Native Americans. While the rate for women is lower than it is for men, officials noted that it’s has been rising more dramatically — up about 50% last year.
That ties to another problem — the rise in congenital syphilis, in which infected moms pass the disease on to their babies, potentially leading to death of the child or health problems like deafness and blindness. Annual congenital syphilis cases numbered only about 300 a decade ago; they surged to nearly 2,700 last year. Of last year’s tally, 211 were stillbirths or infant deaths, Mena said.
The increases in syphilis and other STDs may have several causes, experts say. Testing and prevention efforts have been hobbled by years of inadequate funding, and spread may have gotten worse — especially during the pandemic — as a result of delayed diagnosis and treatment. Drug and alcohol use may have contributed to risky sexual behavior. Condom use has been declining.
And there may have been a surge in sexual activity as people emerged from Covid-19 lockdowns. “People are feeling liberated,” Saag said.
The arrival of monkeypox added a large additional burden. CDC recently sent a letter to state and local health departments saying that their HIV and STD resources could be used to fight the monkeypox outbreak. But some experts say the government needs to provide more funding for STD work, not divert it.
Harvey’s group and some other public health organizations are pushing a proposal for more federal funding, including at least $500 million for STD clinics.
Mena, who last year became director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, called for reducing stigma, broadening screening and treatment services, and supporting the development and accessibility of at-home testing. “I envision one day where getting tested (for STDs) can be as simple and as affordable as doing a home pregnancy test,” he said.
MONKEY POX VACCINATIONSAVAILABLE AT FACE TO FACE~~~TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27th. &WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28th.10:00am – 2:00pm
FIRST & SECOND DOSES AVAILABLE NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY/WALK-IN’S WELCOMED
In partnership with Sonoma County Public Health Department we will be offering the Monkey Pox Vaccine in our office back parking lot area located at 873 Second Street in Santa Rosa nextTuesday & Wednesday, September 27th and 28th between the hours of 10am to 2pm. Monkey pox is caused by a virus that is closely related to the virus that causes smallpox. The vaccine will provide a good level of protection against monkey pox and is an important tool in preventing the spread of the disease.In the past few weeks numbers of Monkey pox have declined. To ensure that this continues it is important for people to get vaccinated. According to the deputy coordinator for the White House efforts to control the outbreak are entering a critical time, a “harder phase of the vaccination campaign,” referring to the need to reach underserved communities.For this reason we are pleased to offer this vaccine to our community here in Sonoma County. Please share this with your friends and people whom you think may be at the highest level of risk.
