Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration over recent federal guidance issued to protect LGBTQ people in the workplace, including a directive that says employees should be allowed to use the bathrooms, locker rooms and showers that correspond with their gender identity. The guidance also clarifies that misuse of a person’s preferred pronouns could be considered harassment in certain circumstances.
In the lawsuit, filed Monday in the Northern District of Texas federal court, Paxton claims that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it issued a technical assistance document outlining the impact of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year. That ruling prohibited employer discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Title VII prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of sex.
Homophobic chants ground a football match in Mexico to a halt as players were forced off the pitch.
Players left the field for some 10 minutes in the Concacaf Champions League semi-final second leg in Mexico City which saw Cruz Azul fair against Monterrey.
At around the 64-minute mark in Azteca Stadium, the match was frozen as Cruz Azul fans began hurling homophobic insults from the stands.
Cruz Azul was trailing Monterry 4-1 at the time. They had also resorted to similar homophobic language earlier in the match that forced referees to issue a stern warning.
The supporters shouted the “goalkeeper chant”, which typically sees Mexican fans chant “ehhh…” as the opponent’s goalkeeper lines up a goal kick until the kick is followed by a cry of “p**o!” – anti-gay slang for a male sex worker.
Such a slur has long given football chiefs a headache, and Thursday night’s (16 September) game was no exception.
Football body condemns ‘offensive and discriminatory’ homophobic chant
The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, the football association otherwise known as Concacaf, said it will investigate the “offensive and discriminatory” comments.
A “large number” of Cruz Azul fans took part in the chart, Concacaf said in anews release on its website.
“We commend the referees for correctly activating the anti-discrimination protocol and the stadium security for ejecting hundreds of Cruz Azul fans when the match was paused,” the governing body said.
“The Confederation has for several months proactively communicated to fans, through its What’s Wrong Is Wrong campaign, that these types of behaviours have no place in football.
“We are all committed to eradicating the discriminatory ‘goalkeeper’ chant.”
In line with Concacaf’s discriminatory language policy, the game had to be briefly suspended as players from both sides walked off the pitch and returned to their locker rooms.
If fans had continued to chant, referees would have been forced to enter “Step Three” of the policy which sees the match stopped altogether.
The match resumed, however, without a hitch. Ending with Monterrey making it to the finals on a 5-1 aggregate.
A similar incident took place in June when FIFA, the sport’s top regulator, ordered a ban on spectators at two World Cup qualifier matches after Mexico fans refused to stop screaming the homophobic slur “p**o” at opposing players.
A gay man was knocked unconscious and left with severe spinal injuries in ahate crime that has left him deeply shaken and requiring surgery.
Two men reportedly targeted Gersson Saavedra in Barrio Logan, an artistic neighbourhood of San Diego, California, on 12 September.
He told NBC’s San Diego affiliate that he was strolling along the pier by Cesar Chavez park at around 9:30pm when his night spent with friends slipped into violence.
“When we were leaving the event I fell behind my friends, Martin and Sunny,” Saavedra recalled.
“My friend said that these two guys asked me for a lighter,” he said, adding that the men began abruptly hurling homophobic slurs at him.
“By the time they like turned around, I was getting, you know, punched,” said Saavedra. “I was basically hitting the floor at that point.”
As the men set upon him, Saavedra fell unconscious only to awake in hospital hours later. He had suffered injuries to his spinal cord, a fractured nose and a shattered eye socket.
He must now undergo surgery on his nose and will be unable to work for at least six weeks.
“First thing I remember when I woke on the hospital bed is that one of the doctors asked me if I was gay,” Saavedra said.
“I was like, that’s such a weird question to ask, but I said of course. And he was like: ‘Okay, you were a victim of a hate crime’.
“You hear about these things like happening in the gay community, but you know, you can never kind of prepare or expect something like this to happen to you.”
San Diego Police confirmed that the incident is being investigated as a hate crime, coming at a time where crime fueled by hatred towards the LGBT+ community has soared by 15 per cent in the last year, according to data from California’s Attorney General’s Office.
“It’s easy to kind of blame yourself, think could have prevented this, maybe by being less of yourself, but I would definitely say don’t let anyone or even this type of situation dim your light,” Saavedra said.
President Joe Biden on Monday recognized the 10-year anniversary of the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy that forced gay, lesbian and bisexual military service members to hide their sexuality.
Then-President Bill Clinton signed the policy into law in 1993 as a compromise to end the existing ban on gay people serving. In total, over the 17 years the policy was in effect, an estimated 13,000 service members were discharged, according to data the military provided to The Associated Press.
In December 2010, then-President Barack Obama signed a repeal bill, but it didn’t take effect until Sept. 20, 2011.
“Ten years ago today, a great injustice was remedied and a tremendous weight was finally lifted off the shoulders of tens of thousands of dedicated American servicemembers,” Biden said in a statement issued by the White House. “It was the right thing to do. And, it showed once again that America is at its best when we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
Though an estimated 13,000 service members were discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the total number of service members discharged due to their sexual orientation or gender identity is estimated to be much higher: More than 100,000 are thought to have been forced out between World War II, when the U.S. first explicitly banned gay service members, and 2011, when “don’t ask, don’t tell” officially ended.
“As a U.S. Senator, I supported allowing servicemembers to serve openly, and as Vice President, I was proud to champion the repeal of this policy and to stand beside President Obama as he signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act into law,” the president said in Monday’s statement.
Biden said that many of those veterans received what are known as “other than honorable” discharges, which excluded “them and their families from the vitally important services and benefits they had sacrificed so much to earn.”
In fact, the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a policy clarification on Monday stating that veterans who were given other than honorable discharges based on homosexual conduct, gender identity or HIV status may be eligible for VA benefits, such as home loan guaranty, compensation and pension, health care, homeless program and/or burial benefits, among others. The department said the clarification offers guidance to VA adjudicators and to veterans “who were affected by previous homophobic and transphobic policies” who “have not applied for a discharge upgrade due to the perception that the process could be onerous.”
Biden added that he is honored to be commander in chief of the “most inclusive military in our nation’s history,” which he said welcomes LGBTQ service members. He noted that, during his first week in office, he repealed the Trump administration’s ban on transgender service members enlisting and serving openly in the military.
He also said that under his administration, the military is led by LGBTQ veterans. For example, in July, the Senate confirmed Gina Ortiz Jones as under secretary of the Air Force, making her the first out lesbian to serve as undersecretary of a military branch.
It also confirmed Shawn Skelly as assistant secretary of defense for readiness, making her the first transgender person to hold the post and the highest-ranking out trans defense official in U.S. history.
Biden appointed Pete Buttigieg — who served as a Navy Reserve lieutenant in Afghanistan under “don’t ask, don’t tell” — as transportation secretary, making him the first openly gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate.
“On this day and every day, I am thankful for all of the LGBTQ+ servicemembers and veterans who strengthen our military and our nation,” Biden said in the statement.
He added that the country must “honor their sacrifice” and continue to fight for full equality for LGBTQ people, including by passing the Equality Act, which would provide the first federal protections from discrimination for LGBTQ people in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, credit and jury service, among other areas of life. The bill passed the House in April but has since stalled in the Senate.
During a news conference on Monday, Shalanda Baker, a former Air Force officer who was discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” 20 years ago, said the policy prevented her from seeking help while she was in an abusive relationship.
“I’ll never forget my time at the academy or the early years thereafter when I struggled to find my footing in a military that did not accept the whole of me,” said Baker, who is now a secretarial adviser on equity and deputy director for energy justice at the Department of Energy. “We cannot forget the lives of so many who walked the path just like mine. Those who risked and lost their lives for this country and who served in silence. I want to thank them for their service, so that it may never be forgotten.”
The Madrid prosecutor’s office opened an investigation on Monday after a crowd of about 200 people sporting Nazi paraphernalia marched in the Spanish capital’s gay-friendly neighbourhood of Chueca on Saturday shouting offensive anti-LGBT slogans.
The protesters shouted “Out of our neighbourhood” and “Get out of Madrid” prefaced by derogatory words for gay people, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Homophobic hate crimes have been in the headlines in Spain since a man was beaten to death in July over his sexual orientation. The government said this month it would create specialised groups within the Interior Ministry and the police force to prevent hate crimes and support victims.
Around 200 people gathered on Saturday in the gay-friendly neighborhood of Chueca, known as the center of Spain’s annual Pride celebrations, where they shouted insults such as “get fags out of our neighborhood” and “get those sidosos [AIDS-ridden people] out of Madrid,” as they marched toward the city’s landmark Puerta del Sol square.
During the two-hour demonstration, the group set off flares, carried signs with far-right symbols and expressed their contempt for unaccompanied migrant minors and migrants more broadly. As well as the homophobic chants, demonstrators yelled “Here are the nationalists,” a reference to those who supported dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
The participants – who were escorted by riot police and several National Police vans – also waved Spanish flags and symbols of Juventud Nacional (National Youth), an organization linked to the far-right party España 2000 (Spain 2000).
The US Department of Justice is to review Trump-era policies on housing trans inmates in federal prisons.
After the Donald Trump administration, like it sought to across housing, health and education, rolled back trans rights when it comes to the prison system, the Biden administration might just change that.
The federal Bureau of Prisons, the agency that cares for incarcerated Americans, saw its policies pulled into the spotlight when the leader of an anti-government militia, who is trans, was sentenced to 52 years for helming the 2017 bombing of a Minnesota mosque.
Emily Hari, sentenced Monday (13 September), will now see which of the 122 federal prisons she will carry out her jail time decided by the Bureau of Prisons Transgender Executive Council.
The council consists of psychologists, prison experts and correctional officials, but they are currently using a Trump-era manual when it comes to housing trans inmates – meaning that Hari may be forced to serve her prison sentence in a men’s prison.
Under the Trump administration, the Bureau can only assign trans people to the correct prison “in rare cases”, according to the Associated Press.
This was an about-turn from the Obama era, where the council was advised to “house by gender identity when appropriate”.
Justice Department officials told the news agency that they are looking into reviewing these policies, “including providing gender-affirming housing where appropriate”.
“[The Bureau of Prisons] is in the process of reviewing the current version of its policy regarding transgender inmates,” they added.
The council will now decide where Hari is housed, where factors such as her health and safety, history of disciplinary action and the security level of the prison itself are considered.
Of the 156,000 federal prisoners in the US, only 1,200 are trans – a number, while small, is a damning indictment of the higher incarceration figures for trans Americans.
According to Lambda Legal, an LGBT+ advocacy group that provides legal advice, nearly one in six trans Americans – and one in two Black trans people – have been in prison.
Inside, they face disproportionate levels of violence and abuse, both at the hands of fellow inmates and, at times, prison staffers, the group added.
In one harrowing case, a trans military veteran in New York sentenced to a month in jail found herself transferred to a men’s prison in 2019. There, she faced weeks of verbal and physical humiliation.
The Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to go into effect this month that bans abortions after six weeks of gestation.
In the recent legislative session, Texas lawmakers introduced a slew of bills that sought to limit transgender people’s bathroom access and prohibit changes to birth certificates. Many of the bills take aim at young trans people’s access to health care and participation in high school sports. Similar bills have been introduced in at least 19 other states.
Though seemingly unrelated, some LGBTQ rights advocates and abortion rights advocates see parallels.
“The barrage of policy attacks on transgender youth flows from the same hateful, coercive ideology spurring on attacks against abortion rights and voting rights. These attacks on personal liberties are not — and have never been — happening in a vacuum, but rather each as part of a conservative campaign of control,” Ruth Dawson, principal policy associate for the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group, told NBC News in an email. “LGBTQ justice and sexual and reproductive health care are inextricably linked, because they both involve individuals’ autonomy in their most intimate decisions.”
‘A coordinated attack’
Abortion rights advocates and LGBTQ advocates pointed out similarities among recently introduced bills.
“The bills themselves share the same kind of idea. They are really restrictive infringements on bodily autonomy, on individual rights and the state taking an aggressive, moralizing police role,” Jules Gill-Peterson, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, said.
The bills misinterpret or misrepresent medical data, she added, and “claim to do things they don’t, like protect women and children.”
For example, Arkansas passed a law in March that bans access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors, including reversible puberty blockers and hormones. However, puberty blockers have been used for a variety of medical purposes in cisgender young people for decades, said Kara Mailman, senior research analyst at abortion-rights organization Reproaction.
Proponents of the law argued that transition care for minors is “experimental” and that trans minors often change their minds about their genders and detransition later in life. Medical experts say neither of those claims are backed by scientific evidence.
Major medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the American Psychological Association — support gender-affirming care for trans minors and oppose efforts to restrict access. And research has found that access to gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers reduces the risk of suicide among trans youths.
“So much of what they claim is dangerous is heavily tested and extremely safe,” Mailman said.
The same groups pushing for limitations on abortion are also advocating for new laws that limit transgender people’s access to health care, Sasha Buchert, senior attorney at the LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal, said. “It’s a coordinated attack.”
Gill-Peterson agreed. “Anti-trans and anti-abortion legislation are often very similar in terms of the literal bills that come to state legislative floors. They are part of the same political strategy, and they are being funded and ghost-written by the same kinds of groups.”
This year, the conservative organizations Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Policy Alliance partnered in an initiative, Promise to America’s Children, that opposes the Equality Act and provides lawmakers with socially conservative model legislation.
One piece of legislation listed on the site as exemplary is California’s “Protecting Children From Experimentation Act of 2021,” a bill that would criminalize providers of “gender reassignment medical interventions on minors” with up to five years in prison.
The site invites visitors to sign a “promise” that includes “protecting” children’s minds, bodies and relationships to parents: “We believe that America’s children are the nation’s greatest resource. While a culture — and sadly, a government — around us seek to sexualize children for the sake of a political agenda, we seek to protect children and nurture their minds, bodies, and relationships,” the website states.
Among signatories to the promise are Republican lawmakers from over a dozen states.
The Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Policy Alliance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
‘Political grammar’
Proponents of laws restricting abortion and transgender rights present them to the public in a similar manner, according to Gill-Peterson. She said anti-trans bills employ the same “political grammar” tried and tested in anti-abortion politics, which is defense of “an imaginary child in danger.”
“We have seen this since the Reagan revolution,” she continued, “that the unborn child becomes the rallying cry to restrict rights.”
Texas’ new law, for example, refers to “protecting the health of the woman and the life of the unborn child” in its justification.
Gill-Peterson said the groups and politicians advocating for the bills find them to be politically expedient. “Is this a good bill for fundraising? Is it good for the base? Does it turn out the vote? Does it distract people from other issues?”
She described the manipulation of the image of the child in the anti-trans laws as “particularly cruel.”
“This rhetoric of child protection is being used to support politics that target children for severe harm,” she said.
For example, a bill in Texas would classify any gender-affirming care as child abuse, and a Tennessee bill would prohibit several kinds of gender-affirming care for minors, including simply talk therapy.
Nine states — eight this year — have banned trans athletes from participating on the sports teams that align with their gender identity.
The final version of Florida’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed in June, omitted requirements that transgender athletes in high schools and colleges undergo testosterone or genetic testing and submit to having their genitalia examined.
While such legislation purports to be about child protection, Gill-Peterson said, those who are most affected by the law are the most marginalized, with already precarious access to resources.
“It’s no question that a lot of these clinics, especially Planned Parenthood, are also offering gender-affirming care services,” said D. Ojeda, a policy advocate at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “I think that is why the opposition have targeted these two issues.”
Gill-Peterson also sees the spate of anti-trans bills as part of a more widespread political scapegoating of transgender people.
“There is a lot more social stigma and violence directed at trans people right now,” she said.
“Anti-trans politics is a major plank of ethnonational, authoritarian political movements around the world,” she said, citing examples from Brazil, Poland and Hungary.
In June, for instance, Hungary’s Parliament passed legislationbanning content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and transgender issues.
‘War of attrition’
Alex Petrovnia, director of the TransFormations Project, said his trans rights organization is tracking at least 77 anti-trans bills, including over two dozen bills in Texas.
“We expect to see a lot more bills in 2022,” he said.
“They are playing a war of attrition; they are unrelenting. The goal of this is to outlast people. Unless we continue to fight these, the bills will slip through, and we won’t notice,” Petrovnia said. “It’s not about one fight; it’s about 77 this year.”
In the face of an overwhelming number of bills, some advocates and progressive academics are calling for LGBTQ rights and abortion rights groups to work together.
“We cannot address these injustices as if they are siloed; it is crucial that we see and fight these attacks for what they are — part of a broader pattern of coercive, conservative ideology,” Guttmacher’s Dawson said.
One way to do this is to ensure the language used to describe issues is as inclusive as possible, according to Reproaction’s Mailman.
“We’ve used women-centered language for so long,” Mailman said. “Trans people are also part of the community that has abortions. It has kept a lot of trans people from feeling at home in these abortion spaces.”
Ojeda said passage of the Equality Act would help both the trans rights and abortion rights movements.
The Equality Act is a piece of federal legislation that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in numerous arenas, including employment, housing, education, public accommodations, credit and jury service.
Ojeda said it would be “vital in combating these terrible bills at the state level,” adding that the Equality Act “would be an ultimate line of defense.”
In fact, on Wednesday, a coalition of 47 women’s rights and abortion rights groups — including NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Women’s Law Center and Time’s Up Now — announced “unequivocal support for the federal Equality Act” with a statement of solidarity. The groups also pushed back on “false claims that women’s rights groups are divided” over the legislation.
“As women and girls continue to face discrimination and harassment that interferes with their ability to live safely and securely, and as states mount unprecedented attacks on women’s rights and the rights of transgender students, federal legislation protecting people of all genders could not be more important than it is right now. That is why we, the undersigned, express our unequivocal support for the Equality Act,” a statement issued by the groups said in part.
Gill-Peterson said that the impending legal fight over Texas’ abortion bill is an opportunity to rethink strategy around abortion and trans rights and to think more expansively about how to ensure everyone has access to the health care they need.
“Even if we restore the previous norm around abortion access, it will not have solved the prior problems of income inequality and racial discrimination in health care” that prevent many people from accessing abortion services, Gill-Peterson said. “What would it look like for people in favor of abortion rights and in favor of trans rights to combine their visions for reproductive freedom, health care justice and racial justice?”
Sonoma County Art Trails Open Studios are happening today and tomorrow (Sept. 18-19) and next weekend (Sept. 25-26). All around the county, 121 artists – painters, sculptors, ceramicists, glass artists, jewelry makers and more – are awaiting your visit.
Plan your Art Trails itinerary today with our Collectors Guide or get a sense of which studios you’d like to visit by checking out the Sonoma County Art Trails Online Gallery. You can also visit the Art Trails Preview Exhibit at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 High St., where you can see one piece from every Art Trails artist all in one place. So grab a friend and hit the road for Sonoma County Art Trails! So much art, so much fun!
Here’s just a taste of what you’ll see at Sonoma County Art Trails. Works from artists (in rows from top left) Susan Proehl, T Barny, Gen Zorich, Linda Barretta, Terry Sauve, Suzanne Edminster, James Reynolds, Serena Hazard, Teri Sloat, Robert Weiss, Peter Krohn, Michael Constantini, Vicki Folkerts-Coots, Mylette Welch.
Madcap antics from Ginger Beaver and awesome piano playing from Trevor Dorner. And vice-versa!
And now you have three more chances to see it!
6th Street’s production of Murder For Two, which previewed Sept 16 in the GK Hardt Theatre, is adding extra dates–Friday, Oct 8 and Sat, Oct 9 at 7:30 PM and Sunday, Oct 10 at 2 pm!
It’s a blend of Agatha Christie-like intrigue, vaudeville, slapstick and two terribly talented actors—not to mention a piano.
A small-town policeman, who dreams of becoming a full-fledged detective, discovers the murder of a crime novelist. With the nearest detective an hour away, the officer jumps at the chance to prove he’s up on crime-scene protocol.
But whodunnit? Did the novelist’s scene-stealing wife give him a big finish? Is his secret lover, the prima ballerina, the prime suspect? Or did the overly friendly town psychiatrist make a fatal frenemy? The officer has to find the killer before the real detective arrives—but the biggest mystery of all is…who stole the ice cream?
Ginger Beavers plays 13 suspects in this perfect blend of music, mayhem and murder.
A music director of multiple productions at 6th Street Playhouse (Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, Oliver et al.), Ginger is also an accomplished comic actor (Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, and Dottie Otley in Noises Off).
Trevor Dorner has made a name for himself playing iconic musicians who rock out on the piano. He toured nationally as Jerry Lee Lewis in Million Dollar Quartet. He’s well acquainted with the script for Murder For Two, having played the Suspects in more than one other production.
Passengers on the Holland America Cruise Line would recognize his handsome face from multiple cruises..www.trevordorner.com IG: @trevordorner
Beautifully directed by Laura Downing-Lee, and stage managed by Jeff Basham, this crazy and delightful comedy is guaranteed to make you laugh and bring you back to 6th Street Playhouse for a second helping of Murder For Two.
Audience members will be invited to find the weapons from the classic board game Clue® hidden in our beautiful custom artwork panels created by Scenic Artist Amber MacLean.
