Nevada Democrat Kimi Cole wants to become the country’s first openly transgender politician elected to a statewide office.
Cole, who chairs the Nevada Democratic Rural Caucus, announced plans to run for lieutenant governor in Nevada on Wednesday at an event in the state capital.
“I don’t want to make a big issue about my background as such,” Cole said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press, noting the barrier-breaking potential of her candidacy. “We have really pressing issues in this country. To be able to assess them, address them and take care of them is going to take a lot of conscientious effort.”
There are more than 40 transgender politicians serving in elected office as state lawmakers, judges and city council members, according to a tally from Victory Institute, a group that works to elect LGBTQ politicians. None as of yet have won a statewide race.
Cole, a former construction manager who lives in Carson City, entered politics a decade ago after coming out publicly as transgender and experiencing firsthand what it felt like to be seen differently by the public.
“All of a sudden I was being treated differently or being treated poorly. People steered away from me and everything. That’s when it really hit me like a brick: How does anybody that looks different or talks different deal with life?” Cole said.
Cole has since served as chair of the Douglas County Democrats and volunteered to assist people experiencing homelessness and addiction. Cole has also worked to encourage presidential candidates to pay attention to rural Nevada, despite the fact that Republicans dominates elections outside the state’s major cities.
Nevada has not had a lieutenant governor since Democrat Kate Marshall resigned to accept a White House appointment in August. Gov. Steve Sisolak, who has the power to appoint a successor, has not filled the position.
Three Republicans — former state treasurer Dan Schwartz, perennial candidate Mack Miller and Las Vegas city councilman Stavros Anthony — and one other Democrat, Henderson Mayor Debra March, have announced plans to run for Lieutenant Governor. March was endorsed by the state Democratic Party in August.
Cole said she understands the attention paid to a transgender candidate’s personal story but plans to focus the campaign on kitchen table equity issues like housing affordability and transportation. However, Cole still acknowledges the importance of visibility to many in the transgender community.
“So many people have come up to me and just told me that, by doing what I do and living vocally and openly, it has inspired them … to feel really good about their lives and how they’re living,” Cole said.
SoCo’s LGBT+ Community has lost a beloved community member, Lori Zee. Please come out for a celebration of life for Lori Zee.
Here are the details: November 20, 2021R3 in Guerneville.5-9pm. This would have been Lori’s birthday. Come out and dance to music that Lori played for many years at many events as a wonderful DJ.Come share stories.
In 1986, the Vatican released a letter condemning homosexuality with what The New York Timescalled a “pointed allusion to AIDS.”
A year later, nearly 48,000 Americans had died from the disease.
Even as the death toll rose, the Roman Catholic Church reinforced its stance and also opposed the gay and lesbian rights movement more generally, creating an ongoing tension. Despite this, some nuns and priests went against those teachings and worked behind the scenes to care for and sit at the bedsides of people dying from AIDS-related illnesses.
O’Loughlin, a journalist who lives in Chicago, writes in the first chapter that for as long as he can remember, he’s been on a search. “I am gay and I am Catholic,” he wrote. “And I struggle continuously to reconcile those two parts of my identity.”
Micheal O’Loughlin.Courtesy M. Klein
He wanted to speak with people who had lived through similar struggles, and in 2015 a friend who was a priest suggested that he speak to gay Catholics who lived through the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States. He ran with the idea and began tracking down scientists and doctors involved in AIDS work — nuns and priests who served as caretakers to the ill, and activists, including those from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
He said he chose to focus on stories of compassion because he is interested in “people who had a lot to lose by taking on the power structure of the church but still did the right thing.”
“So, the priests who minister to gay men dying from AIDS, some of whom come out as gay themselves, and challenge the churches to be more welcoming and accepting,” he said. “The nuns who are really scrappy people who find the resources to learn all they can about HIV and AIDS and then do their own ministry. The gay Catholics who find themselves caught between their inclination to be part of the gay activism world but also remain part of the church.”
He said he kept asking himself, “How do they make this work?”
“I’m drawn to those stories because there’s something universal about summoning the courage to do the right thing when it would be much easier to do nothing,” he said, adding that this courage “applies to all sorts of situations even today.”
The book doesn’t attempt to “rewrite history” and also recounts how church leaders advocated against LGBTQ rights. But at the same time, O’Loughlin said he wanted to make sure the people who did extraordinary things and cite their Catholic faith as their motivation were also part of that history.
He noted that many of the people he spoke with said their journeys were complicated. Over 10 years, Sister Carol Baltosiewich, a nun and nurse from a small city in southern Illinois, traveled to Kansas City, Chicago and eventually New York City to care for people living with AIDS. She told O’Loughlin that she didn’t know any gay people before she began her AIDS work, and she had to reconcile the church’s teachings with her drive to care for people.
O’Loughlin said that it was at times painful for the people he interviewed, including Baltosiewich, to take a hard look at their prejudices and biases before their experiences changed them.
“When she began to learn about HIV and how it was affecting the gay community, it was sort of this whole new culture,” O’Loughlin said. “It was this clash between what she had known and something that was foreign to her, so she eventually learned and grew, but I think that some people are maybe hesitant to look honestly at that time, because there was so much stigma and shame that even the most well-intentioned people really couldn’t free themselves without making a conscious decision, which she did ultimately, but many people were just kind of in this culture that looked with such hostility at the LGBT community.”
Some of the people O’Loughlin spoke to experienced that hostility themselves. The Rev. William Hart McNichols, a Jesuit priest and an artist who attended the Pratt Institute in New York City, ministered to people dying from AIDS-related illnesses. In 1989, McNichols came out as gay publicly in a chapter for a book published by New Ways Ministry, a group that ministers to gay and lesbian Catholics.
He asked the permission of his Jesuit superiors at the time, and they told him that it was his choice to make, but that if he came out he wouldn’t be able to work at a Jesuit high school, college or parish. As an illustrator who worked in a hospital, he wasn’t offended by the response and decided to write the chapter.
O’Loughlin said the LGBTQ people he interviewed all made a decision at some point to stay in the church “no matter how strong the headwinds they faced,” because it was their church, too.
“Once people made that decision, there seemed to be something — whether it was grace or just stubbornness — that kept them involved,” he said. “And that kind of spoke to me as I continue to figure out what place I have in the church and as I interview dozens and dozens of LGBT people every year going through something similar, that you have to make that decision to stay and then be prepared to fight to keep your place in an institution that isn’t always welcoming.”
O’Loughlin wrote Tuesday in an op-ed for The New York Timesthat conducting interviews for his book had a “profound effect” on his faith, so much so that he wrote a letter to Pope Francis to tell him about the book and the conversations he had.
In August, the pope wrote back. The letter was written in Spanish but was translated to English.
“Thank you for shining a light on the lives and bearing witness to the many priests, religious sisters and lay people, who opted to accompany, support and help their brothers and sisters who were sick from H.I.V. and AIDS at great risk to their profession and reputation,” Pope Francis wrote.
The pontiff added, “Instead of indifference, alienation and even condemnation, these people let themselves be moved by the mercy of the Father and allowed that to become their own life’s work; a discreet mercy, silent and hidden, but still capable of sustaining and restoring the life and history of each one of us.”
O’Loughlin wrote that the letter won’t heal old or new wounds — the church still won’t bless same-sex marriages and teaches that homosexuality is immoral — but that it gave him hope that church leaders “will be transformed” in how they see LGBTQ people and “others whose faith is lived on the margins.”
Regardless of whether that happens, O’Loughlin said one of his goals for the book is to show LGBTQ people struggling with their faith that they aren’t alone, and that there are many people who came before them.
“By meeting people and learning about the struggles and learning the history, I’ve realized that this is not new at all,” O’Loughlin said. “The reality is, people have been grappling with these questions for forever … and there’s a lot of wisdom in these stories that have helped me realize I’m not alone at all.”
Once last week’s victors are sworn in, the United States will have elected more than 1,000 concurrently serving LGBTQ officials for the first time in history, according to the political action committee LGBTQ Victory Fund.
At least 237 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer candidates were on the ballot — an 18.5 percent increase since the last off-year election, in 2019, according to the Victory Fund.
Races were still being called Tuesday afternoon, but in many states, LGBTQ candidates celebrated historic firsts.
Six out LGBTQ candidates won their races for the New York City Council, which means the number of out representatives on the 51-person council increased from four to six. According to the Victory Fund, it’s the largest group of out LGBTQ council members ever elected in a city, with the previous record being five also in New York.
Crystal Hudson.Katrina Hajagos
Democrats Crystal Hudson and Kristin Richardson Jordan — who will represent District 35 in Brooklyn and District 9 in Upper Manhattan, respectively — will be the first two Black out LGBTQ women elected to the council. Tiffany Cabán and Lynn Schulman — both Democrats who won seats representing District 22 and District 29, respectively, in Queens — will be the first out LGBTQ women elected to a public office that represents Queens, according to the Victory Fund.
In the Midwest, Rebecca Maurer, a Democrat, defeated a 16-year incumbent and became the first out LGBTQ woman elected to the Cleveland City Council, and Gabriela Santiago-Romero, also a Democrat, became the first LGBTQ councilwoman in Detroit and the first Latinx out LGBTQ woman elected in the entire state of Michigan.
Christopher Coburn.Leanna Joy Photography
Across the country, in Montana, Democratic candidate Christopher Coburn became the first Black out LGBTQ person ever elected in the state when he won his race for the Bozeman City Commission, according to the Victory Fund.
Trans candidates also won a number of races Tuesday. Dion Manley became the first trans person elected in the state of Ohio after winning his race for the Gahanna-Jefferson school board in Gahanna, just outside of Columbus.
Xander Orenstein.Bex Tasker
Xander Orenstein, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, became the first nonbinary person elected to a judicial position in the United States after winning their race for the Allegheny County Magisterial District Court in Pennsylvania. They ran unopposed in the general election after defeating incumbent Anthony Ceoffe in the primary by 40 votes.
Thu Nguyen, a Democrat, became the first nonbinary person elected in the state of Massachusetts after winning their race for Worcester City Council, according to the Victory Fund. Orenstein and Nguyen will add to the small pool of nonbinary elected officials serving in the United States, which currently stands at 11.
Though most of Tuesday’s LGBTQ victors are registered Democrats, not all are. Don Guardian became the first out LGBTQ Republican state legislator in New Jersey when he won his election to the General Assembly. New Jersey — until Guardian is sworn in — is one of just six states in the entire country without any LGBTQ people currently serving in the Legislature, according to the Victory Fund.
Andrea Jenkins, vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, speaks to community members on June 7, 2020, in Minneapolis.Jerry Holt / Star Tribune via AP
Some LGBTQ incumbents won re-election Tuesday night, including Danica Roem, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and Andrea Jenkins, who was re-elected to the Minneapolis City Council. Roem became the first out transgender person to serve in a state legislature after her win in 2017 and is now the longest-serving out trans state legislator in U.S. history, after winning re-election for a second time. Jenkins in 2017 became the first Black trans woman elected to public office.
Annise Parker, Houston’s first openly LGBTQ mayor and the current president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, said she has mixed feelings about the outcome of election night. She noted the Victory Fund works with LGBTQ candidates at every level of office, but it focuses more than other national organizations on down-ballot candidates for school board and city council, for example.
“Those candidates had a really good night, just as they did last year, but the closer you get to the top of the ticket where national politics come into play, the more problematic it is,” she said.
Two Victory Fund-endorsed candidates lost their races in the Virginia House of Delegates: Del. Joshua Cole, a Democratic incumbent, lost his race to Republican challenger Tara Durant, and Douglas Ward, a Democratic challenger, lost his race to Republican incumbent Michael Webert.
She said “culture war” issues played a significant role in the races in Virginia, and in many other areas of the country, and that some candidates don’t know how to respond to them.
Danica Roem.Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post via Getty Images file
For example, she said Republican Glenn Youngkin, the projected winner of Virginia’s race for governor, emerged victorious by “hitting Trump themes without including Trump.” LGBTQ issues played a significant role in his campaign: Youngkin faced criticism last month for saying that, though he doesn’t personally supportmarriage equality, he would respect that it is legal in Virginia. He also expressed his opposition to trans girls playing on girls sports teams at school — an issue that has led to 10 states restricting transgender students’ sports participation — and supported Tanner Cross, a Virginia school teacher who was suspended (and later reinstated) after saying he would refuse to use pronouns consistent with transgender students’ gender identities.
“It is easier to convince someone to vote out of fear than out of positive conviction,” Parker said. She said the technique is not new and that LGBTQ candidates and pro-LGBTQ candidates have to know how to redirect the conversation — especially going into the 2022 midterm elections, as these issues are likely to gain traction.
She pointed to Roem, who has run against candidates who have used anti-trans rhetoric three times now, and she’s won every time.
“Danica is focused on the things that matter most to her constituents — bread and butter, basic legislative issues — and does not allow herself to get sidetracked into this culture war red meat stuff,” Parker said.
Breaking with its usual practices on LGBTQ rights and issues, China launched its first medical clinic to treat transgender children and adolescents.
The Chinese state-backed media outlet The Global Times recently reported that the clinic opened at the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, saying that it will “serve as a bridge between transgender children, parents, doctors and the various circles of society.”
The clinic’s opening and its celebratory coverage in Chinese state media comes as the country simultaneously works to limit LGBTQ activism and voices.
Homosexuality has not been illegal in China since 1997, but restrictions for LGBTQ people still remain.
Last week, a Chinese LGBTQ advocacy group that has led many of the country’s legal cases to expand LGBTQ rights announced that it would be halting its work “indefinitely.”
Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform deleteddozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students in July, saying that the accounts had broken Chinese internet rules. But critics argued that the wipeout of the accounts amounted to censoring LGBTQ activism.
And after 11 years in operation, Shanghai Pride canceled its annual LGBTQ celebration last year and said — without explanation — that it would no longer hold the event.
The Global Times reported that research by Chinese scholars linking transgender youths to higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide attempts led doctors to believe that specialized care for trans minors was necessary.
In the United States, advocates and scholars have also been warning about the disproportionate rates of bullying, harassment and mental health issues plaguing trans youths.
A survey of over 35,000 LGBTQ youths and young adults this year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that more than half of transgender and nonbinary respondents seriously considered suicide.
It’s unclear how many children in China identify as transgender, as there is little research from the country on its trans community. However, a 2021 analysis by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that 14 percent of over 1,000 Chinese respondents say that they have transgender acquaintances.
What started as an ordinary Wednesday night in Norfolk, Virginia, turned to tragedy when a gunman shot five women, killing three and injuring two. Among the victims was a lesbian couple attempting to save their teenage daughter.
Nicole Lovewine, 45, and her partner, Detra Brown, 42, were enjoying an evening with friends after coming home from work when the shooting took place, reports The Virginian-Pilot. As they spoke with other adults, approximately a dozen children played nearby, some using a trampoline that Lovewine had bought after a nearby recreation center shut down.
Then, at around 6 p.m., a car pulled up. The newspaper reports that the rear door swung open and Lovewine’s 19-year-old daughter, who was pregnant, jumped out. Shortly after, a man — Ziontay Palmer, 19 — reportedly exited from the passenger side. That’s when shots were fired.
When the shooting stopped, Lovewine and Brown — as well as 44-year-old Sara Costine — were dead. Lovewine’s daughter and a 39-year-old woman were injured and taken to the hospital. Both are expected to recover, according to the newspaper.
Police report that Lovewine and Brown ran outside to render aid when they were shot and killed by Palmer.
“As the community was trying to render aid, this coward shoots them,” said Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone, per 13 News Now.
“We need to start speaking up because this, I’ve never seen this in my 30 years career — five women shot at one time,” he said.
Palmer, who was in a relationship with Lovewine’s daughter, is now in police custody, charged with three counts of second-degree murder, two counts of malicious wounding and several firearm charges. He is being held without bond after his arraignment Thursday in Norfolk General District Court.
Boone adds that police believe this was a domestic issue.
Robin Gauthier, executive director of Samaritan House, a domestic violence support group, told the 13 News Now that she was surprised to see bystanders get hurt, as she’s rarely seen that happen in her 20 years helping domestic violence victims.
“Just a real disturbing trend that the bystanders are also getting hurt or killed,” she said. “It concerns me because people aren’t going to want to help the victims if they are in danger.”
“This is an epidemic and we have to pay attention to our African American women,” Gauthier said. “This is serious. They’re getting killed.”
Lovewine leaves behind four children, three boys and a girl, according to WTKR. The community is grieving the losses of the three who died.
“They loved to dance,” Burt McManus — bartender and manager at 37th & Zen, where the couple were regulars — told the news station. “That’s what I really loved about them. They would love to come and sing karaoke. They came out every Wednesday, like our shrimp night. They were just a big part of our community.”
“I can see them rushing to the scene, probably, even if it wasn’t her daughter because that’s who they were. If something’s happening, they’re going to go see what’s up,” McManus said.
The YouTube channel of My Genderation, an independent trans film project, was deleted without warning on the first day of Transgender Awareness Week (13 November).
“Someone stole the My Genderation YouTube channel and now it’s been deleted,” co-founder and filmmaker Fox Fisher tweeted on 14 November. “I’ve been running that channel for 10 years.”
They added: “I’m feeling so sick about it. It’s literally the most important work of my life, created to help raise awareness of trans issues and celebrate trans lives.”
Fox added that they “don’t know if it is a targeted attack on trans supportive channels”.
My Genderation, an award-winning, trans-led non-profit organisation, was founded 10 years ago, and has made hundreds of films about trans lives, including for Channel 4, the BBC, Stonewall and trans health clinic CliniQ. A documentary about trans healthcare in the 1970s, Inverness Or Bust, is currently in the works.
The organisation’s directors include the journalist Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir and film director Jamie Fletcher. It was founded after Fisher took part in the 2011 documentary My Transsexual Summer, which they left feeling frustrated that their experience hadn’t been portrayed authentically.
It remains unclear how the My Genderation YouTube account was deleted. Fisher posted a screenshot showing the message “your account has been permanently disabled”, which they get when they try to log in to My Genderation’s YouTube account.
A similar message, reading “this page isn’t available”, is displayed when members of the public try to see the channel.
A YouTube spokesperson told PinkNews in an emailed statement: “We take account security very seriously. We are in contact with the creator, and are working to understand what has happened, so that we can resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
The My Genderation deletion comes after Novara Media, an independent left-wing media outlet, had its YouTube channel deleted “without warning or explanation” on 26 October.
The channel was reinstated after 24 hours, with YouTube admitting it made “the wrong call”.
The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday announced a proposal that would rescind a Trump administration rule that expanded a religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws for federal contractors.
The rule, which went into effect in the last days of the administration of President Donald Trump, broadened the exemption to include employers who “hold themselves out to the public as carrying out a religious purpose.” The exemption previously applied to a more narrowly defined set of religious groups.
By rescinding the rule, the department will return to policies consistent with those in place during the administrations of President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush, Jenny Yang, director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in an interview.
“We are proposing a rescission of the religious exemption rule to protect workers from discrimination and safeguard principles of religious freedom,” Yang said.
The Trump administration framed the rule as a necessary step to ensure the full participation of religious organizations in the federal contractor system. But critics of the rule, including LGBTQ groups, warned that it would open the door to discrimination.
In light of pre-existing protections for religious organizations, the OFFCP found the Trump rule to be “unnecessary and problematic,” Yang said. Rescinding the rule would help ensure the exemption is applied consistently, she added.
“The proposed rescission would also promote economy and efficiency in federal procurement by preventing the exclusion of qualified and talented employees on the basis of protected characteristics,” she said. “This ensures that taxpayer funds are not used to discriminate.”
The OFCCP enforces discrimination and wage-and-hour laws against federal contractors. In 2014, the agency banned contractors from discriminating against workers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Just days after 2021 became the deadliest year on record for anti-trans violence, yet another trans woman, Jenny De Leon, has been slain in the US.
De Leon, a 25-year-old with a “bright soul”, was murdered in Tampa, Florida, on 2 November.
With her death comes a grim realisation for activists. That 2021 is the deadliest year for fatal violence against trans folk since national record-keeping began – and with six weeks of the year left, the figure will only continue to climb, they warn.
With De Leon’s death, the death tally has leaped to 46.
Tampa Police Department officers found De Leon dead at around 6am in the 8500 block of North 9th Street in the quiet residential neighbourhood of Sulphur Springs.
Jenny De Leon, trans woman with ‘enough energy to fill any room’, dies aged 25
She was a homeless woman, the city’s force said on Facebook last week, who sought help from Tampa PFLAG, which commemorated her passing on Facebook.
“PFLAG Tampa is devastated to hear of the recent murder of Jenny De Leon,” the organisation said.
“Jenny, like many of the youth we encounter, attended our chapter meetings seeking support in the beginning of her transition, ultimately finding placement in a home through two PFLAG Tampa members.
“Jenny was an enigmatic, bright soul with enough energy to fill any room.”
Equality Florida, the state’s largest queer rights group, said on Facebook that it is “heartbroken” by the news of De Leon’s murder.
Law enforcement and the press often deadname or misgender victims, if they report on the homicide at all, making it challenging to know for sure whether a victim was trans.
This paucity of data means that advocacy groups and grassroots activists must comb through local news reports themselves and talk to family.
But regardless of whether the data is incomplete, activists know one thing – that year on year, violence against trans people, Black trans women, in particular, is surging.
For Black trans women in the exact same age group, the rate rockets to one in 2,600, an investigation by Mic found. If in 2015 all Americans had the same risk of murder as Black trans women, there would have been 120,087 slain instead of 15,696.
Tyianna Alexandra, a 28-year-old Black trans woman, was shot and killed in Chicago in the early hours of 6 January, becoming the first known violent killing of a trans person in 2021.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) adults have higher levels of mental health issues, physical abuse and economic instability than their non-LGBTQ peers, according to a new report.
The study, released last month by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in advance of Native American Heritage Month in November, found 42 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults have been diagnosed with depression, compared to less than a quarter of non-LGBTQ Native people and just 6.7 percent of the general U.S. population.
AIAN LGBTQ adults, particularly women, are also more likely to engage in high-risk health behaviors, including heavy drinking, according to the findings.
Three-quarters of respondents reported not having had enough money to make ends meet in the prior year, compared to less than half of non-LGBTQ AIAN people. And nearly half reported a major financial crisis in the prior year, compared to just 11 percent of heterosexual, cisgender Indigenous people.
“The complex picture of health and economic vulnerabilities of AIAN LGBT people is likely a product of factors shared with all Indigenous peoples, such as the impact of historical trauma, and those shared across LGBT people, such as anti-LGBT stigma,” said lead author Bianca D.M. Wilson, a senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and the report’s lead author, told NBC News.
In the report, Wilson stated that, “It is critical that policies and service interventions consider the LGBT status and multiracial identities of AIAN adults.”
‘Pushed out to the fringes’
Somáh Haaland, who is queer and nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, is the media coordinator for the Pueblo Action Alliance. Haaland also lives with clinical depression.
“The unique intersection of being Native and queer can feel incredibly isolating, both in a displaced urban setting and in our own communities,” they told NBC News.
Haaland said queer Indigenous friends have spoken to them about feeling “like they have to chose one marginalized identity over the other because existing as both simultaneously feels like it is not physically safe or feasible for their mental health.”
“In white queer spaces they experience racism and disconnection, while at home or on their reservation they may feel like being out could exclude them from cultural activities or simply being in community with their people,” said Haaland, whose mother is Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
“Being queer and being Indigenous are both beautiful identities to carry that are sacred when they intersect … But we often must fight twice as hard just to show that we are worthy of living and thriving.”
SOMÁH HAALAND, PUEBLO ACTION ALLIANCE
The Williams Institute study found that violence aimed at LGBTQ American Indians and Native Alaskans was prevalent: More than half of all respondents reported having been physically or sexually assaulted at some point, and 81 percent reported verbal abuse.
Pamela Jumper-Thurman is a retired research scientist in the ethnic studies department at Colorado State University and has researched HIV/AIDS education, substance abuse and mental health in American Indian communities for three decades. Jumper-Thurman said she’s not surprised by the findings.
“In the cities, they may have access to a sense of community, but on the reservations and the rural surrounding areas, they can be ostracized, made fun of and pushed out to the fringes,” she said of LGBTQ American Indians. “They have to be very careful about who they’re out to.”
Tribes are sovereign nations with their own laws and regulations, she added. “If LGBTQ people get assaulted or beaten up in a hate crime on tribal land, it’s often not prosecuted.”
Data on LGBTQ American Indians is extremely limited, but a 2010 survey conducted for the New York State Department of Healthfound nearly 1 in 3 (29.4 percent) reported experiencing hate violence — the highest rate of any LGBTQ demographic in the report.
State initiatives, like anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws and inclusive education programs, often don’t apply on reservations. Even same-sex marriage is not uniformly recognized.
A 2015 report from the National Congress of American Indians found 54 percent of gay and lesbian AIAN students reported being subject to physical violence because of their sexual orientation, and more than 1 in 3 said they missed class at least once in the last month for fear of being bullied or harassed.
“LGBTQ kids don’t have a place to go,” Jumper-Thurman said. “They don’t have family acceptance, and they may not even have a group of friends they feel comfortable with.”
Haaland shared a similar sentiment.
“Being queer and being Indigenous are both beautiful identities to carry that are sacred when they intersect,” they said. “But we often must fight twice as hard just to show that we are worthy of living and thriving.”
Working toward solutions
Jumper-Thurman recently worked with the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University on a series of posterstargeting American Indian families and communities to help support LGBTQ and two-spirit youth. (The phrase “two-spirit” started as an umbrella term in the 1990s for the understanding of gender beyond male and female that many tribes historically embraced before colonization but has come to encompass a diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities.)
Courtesy Family Acceptance Project
The posters show how negative reactions to a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression can have a detrimental impact on their well being.
“You’re part of a group already dealing with racism and historical trauma and, within that group — if you’re queer — you can be alienated from your community and even your family,” said Sharon Day, a member of the Ojibwe nation and executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Forcein Minneapolis. “For people living on reservations, these are small, rural communities that are slower to change.”
Day was one of two children to come out in her family. In 1987, she helped organize the Basket and the Bow, the first national gathering of gay and lesbian American Indians, held at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. (The annual event was later renamed the International Two-Spirit Gathering.)
Today, the Indigenous Peoples Task Force offers a variety of programs but works extensively in HIV education and testing, harm reduction and suicide prevention among Native youth.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Native youths ages 10 to 24, according to the National Indian Council on Aging. A study last year by The Trevor Project found LGBTQ AIAN young people were two-and-a-half times more likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year than their non-Native peers (33 percent to 14 percent).
Sharon Day. Courtesy Sharon Day
Both Day and Jumper-Thurman say acceptance of LGBTQ members varies greatly from tribe to tribe and often depends on religion.
“The communities that have been heavily Christianized are the ones where there’s a lot of inequality and discrimination,” Day said. “In the Ojibwe creation story, men and women came into the world simultaneously. We didn’t come from Adam’s rib. That came with the settlers.”
In the South, especially, Christianity is a big part of Native American life, according to Jumper-Thurman.
“There’s just a lot of religious overtones that have infiltrated and changed the culture so much that being LGBT is seen as a bad thing in their eyes,” she said.
The Williams Institute survey found more than 60 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults reside in the Western and Southern United States.
“In the South, the Church of Christ and Southern Baptist Church are pretty pervasive,” Jumper-Thurman said. “These are not gay-friendly churches, and they’re the ones that have a lot of sway in those areas. In the area where I lived, there were more churches in town than anything else. They may preach in the native language, but they still preach the dogma of white, homophobic Christianity.”
Day founded the Indigenous Peoples Task Force after her brother, Michael, tested positive for HIV in 1987 and they discovered a near total lack of HIV education and prevention programs aimed at the American Indian community.
“We aim to be a safe space, and LGBT people are integrated into everything we do,” Day said.
‘We’ve always been here’
Using data culled from the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey from 2012 to 2017, the Williams Institute estimates that 285,000 AIAN adults identify as LGBTQ. That’s roughly 6 percent of the total Native population — and slightly higher than the 5.6 percent of the general population that identifies as LGBTQ, according to a Gallup poll in February.
AIAN people who identify as part of the LGBTQ community tend to be younger, according the report, with 33 percent between the ages of 18 and 24, compared to just 15 percent of non-LGBTQ AIAN people in that age group.
“Social media has given the youth greater acceptance and more power to express who they are,” Day said. “Because they can belong to a community online, where they may not be able to in the real world. They can reach out to other people.”
For many years, identifying as gay meant leaving the reservation, Day said, for much the same reasons white people who came out left small towns — isolation, alienation and discrimination.
“In the last couple of decades, there are more queer [Native] people who are staying in their home communities,” she said. “Some of that has to do with changing attitudes. I think more and more we see people returning to the cultural values system of our past, and those values are to be kind and loving, to be courageous and honest, to be respectful, to seek wisdom and to be generous.”
“When we’re following that original system,” Day added, “it’s really difficult to not be accepting of other people.”
LGBTQ Natives, she said, “are starting to look at our history and say, ‘We’ve always been here. We’re part of the circle.’”
Haaland called the gender binary “a colonial construct based on European values.”
“Pre-contact, the Native people that we now label as queer and trans were often revered and had sacred roles in their communities,” they said. “It was not until colonialism that the European perspective of gender and sexuality was forced upon our people as a part of the bigger effort to control us and assimilate us into whiteness.”
Day said she tries to remind other American Indian and Alaskan Native people that “these are the values that have been with us since the beginning of time.”
“These are the original instructions,” she said, “and if we follow them it’s really hard to hate anybody.”
