A Christian wedding photographer who refused to work at same-sex weddings is going to have to do some career soul-searching after a federal court in New York dismissed her lawsuit.
Emilee Carpenter filed the suit in April after she was asked to photograph seven same-sex weddings, arguing that New York’s nondiscrimination laws forced her to betray her faith by snapping photos of happy, same-sex couples or else pay fines of up to $100k.
She claimed her First and 14th amendment rights were being violated.
“Just as the government cannot compel a lesbian baker to create a cake condemning same-sex marriage or an atheist playwright to wax positively about God, New York cannot force Emilee to convey messages she objects to,” the lawsuit argued.
U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. of Western New York said “the Court is not persuaded” as he dismissed Carpenter’s claims Monday.
“The crux of Plaintiff’s claims is that her photography is the product of her unique artistic style and vision. Thus, an exemption for Plaintiff’s unique, non-fungible services would necessarily undermine, not serve, the State’s purpose, as it would ‘relegate [same-sex couples] to an inferior market’ than that enjoyed by the public at large,” Geraci said.
Carpenter was defended by The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian nonprofit advocacy group “that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“ADF also works to develop ‘religious liberty’ legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ people on the basis of religion,” the group adds.
ADF has requested the case be brought before the Supreme Court.
Giving gender-affirming hormone therapy to young trans people who want it significantly decreases the risk of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and depression, according to a landmark study.
Trans youth who take gender-affirming hormone therapy are nearly 40 per cent less likely to have been depressed or attempted suicide in the last year compared with trans youth who want hormones but don’t receive them, the study has revealed.ADVERTISING
More than 9,000 trans and non-binary young people, aged between 13 and 24, took part in the online study last year.
Half of the trans and non-binary youth surveyed were not using gender-affirming hormone therapy but wanted to, while 36 per cent were not interested. Fourteen per cent of those surveyed were taking gender-affirming hormone therapy.
The study also found that parental support of a young person’s trans identity plays a strong role in whether or not they can access gender-affirming hormone therapy, with nearly 80 per cent of those on hormones reporting that at least one of their parents supported their gender identity.
“It’s clear that gender-affirming care has the potential to reduce rates of depression and suicide attempts, while banning this vital care and exposing young people to harmful political rhetoric can cause real harm,” said Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project.
“It’s critical that all transgender and non-binary youth across the country have access to medical care that is affirming, patient-centred and evidence-based.”
The study comes as a wave of Republican-backed anti-trans bills are seeking to restrict trans youth’s access to gender-affirming healthcare in multiple US states.
In a statement about the Trevor Project’s latest study, Dr Amy Green, vice-president of research, said: “This study emphasises the potential benefits of gender-affirming hormone therapy as a mechanism to reduce feelings of gender dysphoria and minority stress among transgender and non-binary youth – thereby working to improve mental health outcomes and prevent suicide.
“These data should serve as a call to action to resist blanket bans on gender-affirming medical care and to invest in more research on this topic so that youth and their families can make evidence-informed decisions regarding care.”
Multiple studies show giving trans kids gender-affirming healthcare saves lives
While it’s the first study of this scale to look at hormone therapy and trans and non-binary youth, the findings are supported by several studies from recent years that also found giving trans youth access to gender-affirming care has a positive impact on their mental health.
These include a 2020 study in Pediatrics that found access to puberty blockers for trans youth who want them reduces their suicide risk in the short- and long-term, as well as reducing their likelihood of developing mental-health problems; a 2021 study in PLOS One that found the majority of trans teens who take puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria are happier and report having a positive experience of the treatment; and a 2021 study in Pediatrics that found shorter gender clinic waiting times – getting trans youth access to gender-affirming healthcare sooner – leads to lower levels of depression and anxiety.
Gender-affirming healthcare includes hormone therapy and surgeries, and also speech therapy, family therapy, counselling, puberty blockers and hair removal.
As the world marks 40 years of the first HIV cases to be diagnosed, an urgent new campaign and storytelling initiative is focusing attention on living with HIV and reforming laws in more than 30 states that treat HIV status as a crime. The Centers for Disease Control says these laws “discourage HIV testing, increase stigma, and exacerbate disparities,” noting they are outdated and do not reflect the significant advances to treat and prevent HIV transmission, such as effective treatments that can suppress the virus to the point of it being undetectable and therefore untransmittable (U=U). President Biden also prioritized reforming the laws in his administration’s strategy for defeating HIV by 2030, announced on World AIDS Day on December 1.
GLAAD 2021 State of HIV Stigma Study, Published August 26, 2021
For nearly two years, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF), in collaboration with Gilead Sciences, Inc, the Health Not Prisons Collective, other national and state coalitions have been working to modernize the outdated laws that continue to criminalize individuals for their HIV status. ETAF’s “HIV Is Not A Crime” initiative uses storytelling to communicate that these laws need to catch up with modern science. GLAAD research shows a dramatic need for such storytelling efforts to educate Americans, increase compassion and decrease stigma: with the finale of Pose this year, there will be zero characters living with HIV in any scripted television or streaming program; on film, GLAAD research notes “a complete absence of stories of people living with HIV from the previous year.”
On December 6, 2021, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation invited Hollywood screenwriters, producers, and studios to a presentation of ‘Unjust,’ a 10 minute, one-act play about the fight to end criminalization against people living with HIV. The event also included the premiere of the Foundation’s latest video in the ‘True (Not) Crime’ series narrated by actress Annaleigh Ashford and a Q&A panel moderated by Variety’s Senior Entertainment Editor Adam Vary.
The play, written by Lee Raines and directed by Jenny Sullivan, offered a fictional account of real struggles around HIV criminalization. The Q&A panel afterward provided an honest and emotional discussion with Hon. Senator Dallas Harris of Nevada, Diana Oliva from Gilead Sciences, Inc, playwright Lee Raines, and Chair of The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation’s Council of Justice Leaders Robert Suttle.
GLAAD:What made you want to tell this story?
LEE RAINES: I embraced this project because combining my experience as an activist and as a playwright felt like the perfect fit. UNJUST was a real passion project. The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation has come up with a very compelling way to present information about the topic of HIV criminalization and to humanize it.
GLAAD: What surprised you most as you were writing the script?
LEE RAINES: I didn’t realize how easily the words would flow. The team came up with a great setting and characters in an initial brainstorming session on zoom. But the more I thought about the characters and their situation, and the more research I did, the more passionate I became. By the time I sat down to write, my blood was up, and the play came gushing out. Which was fortunate – we were on a tight deadline.
GLAAD: What’s the one thing you want people to take away from the play?
LEE RAINES: I want people to feel emotionally connected to the issue of HIV stigma and modernization. There’s a tendency to shut down our emotions when we hear the words “HIV decriminalization.” But there is a terrible human cost.
GLAAD: Why did The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation launch the “HIV Is Not a Crime” initiative, and what are the goals?
CATHY BROWN, Executive Director of The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation: The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation launched the HIV Is Not A Crime campaign in collaboration with Gilead Sciences, Inc in 2020. This campaign reveals the long-outdated laws in many states criminalizing HIV. Our goal is to find a path to modernize or repeal these laws and support those living with HIV. This will allow them to lead their lives without fear. The HIV Is Not A Crime initiative has joined national and grassroots partners to modernize HIV criminal laws across the country. We collaborate with the Health Not Prisons Collective and various other state and national organizations. We have also made it a priority to feature the lived experiences of and voices of individuals living with HIV at the forefront of our work through the Council of Justice Leaders and True (Not) Crime series. Currently, we have been focusing on changing Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee.
GLAAD: Tell us more about the power storytelling has on the ability to convey a message and change the narrative?
CATHY BROWN: The storytelling and impact of both the moderated panel and the play were palpable on Monday evening. The audience in the room was audibly reacting to what they heard about the need to modernize HIV laws. You don’t get to listen to the same emotional reactions over Zoom. Nothing is more powerful than seeing and hearing individuals tell their stories in person with a live audience. Through the HIV Is Not a Crime campaign, ETAF has dedicated resources, time, and unwavering support to the state coalitions working to modernize HIV laws around the country. UNJUST touched on this aspect of the work and folded in the weight of stigma, disclosure, family impact, and health equity into the program.
GLAAD: What surprised you most about the production of UNJUST?
CATHY BROWN: I was most surprised by the real opportunities for collaboration that this event and the community that attended have presented to the organization. To hear statistics around the number of persons living with HIV currently on mainstream television – 0 – is unnerving. The more we share people’s real stories with the entertainment industry, the more we will shift public perception of the virus’ impact. We hope to roll out this production, or a similar one, to states around the country that have activists and coalitions working to modernize laws.
Watch the latest True (Not) Crime video from The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation here, featuring Andre Leaphart’s story with narration from Annaleigh Ashford. Andre was a counselor and minister until he lost everything at the age of 40, as a result of being criminalized for his HIV status. He had never been charged for anything in his life until this point. Today, Andre shares his story to help others avoid his unfair experiences with the criminal justice system and HIV stigma, and has dedicated his advocacy work to improving the lives of people living with HIV.
Anti-LGBT+ lawmakers in Senegal are seeking to toughen the west African nation’s already horrific repression of queer citizens.
A bloc of National Assembly members have drafted a bill that would lengthen potential jail terms for those convicted of same-sex acts.
The penalty is already up to five years imprisonment for “acts against nature” – but lawmakers hope to stretch this out to a decade, they announced Monday (13 December).
People who write, speak or finance any form of advocacy in favour of queer rights could face three-to-five years in prison and a fine of CFA500,000 to five million.
The chilling proposals could also place crosshairs on intersex people, too. Lawmakers wish to criminalise “intersexuality” with up to 10 years in jail.
Supporters for the bill grossly consider being intersex – folk born with sex characteristics that don’t fit neatly into the typical binary – as “being adept at all imaginable sexual orgies”.
The proposals seek to plug the apparent gaps in the country’s laws by comparing LGBT+ people to “bestiality, necrophilia and other related practices”.
According to grassroots activists, the law has been in the pipeline for the last two years, fuelled by anti-LGBT+ lobbying collective Ànd Sàmm Djikko Yi.
Senegal activists recoil in horror at ‘freedom-killing’ anti-LGBT+ bill
Alioune Souaré, an assembly deputy and legal expert who helped draft the bill, told Reuters that he and other lawmakers hope to present the proposal to parliament “before the end of the week”.
Souaré is joined by Ababacar Mboup, Mamadou Lamine Diallo and Moustapha Guirassy in forming the “Say No To Homosexuality Alliance”.
While it remains unclear if the bill would shore up any support, local activists have reached with an uneasy mixture of horror and a lack of surprise to the effort to double prison time for LGBT+ people.
“When individual freedoms, in particular the most sacred – privacy between consenting adults – are attacked, then there is little time left to realise that democracy is in danger,” queer activist Djamil Bangoura told the news wire.
President of Senegal Macky Sall addresses the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. (John Angelillo – Pool/Getty Images)
The Freedom Collective of Senegal dubbed the legislation the “freedom-killing bill” in a statement to the press.
“Homosexuality has always existed in Senegal, as it has everywhere else, and LGBTI people are a full-fledged component of Senegalese society that has the right to respect, just like everyone else,” they wrote.
For years, views held by both the public and politicians and presidents alike have not been thawed in Senegal when it comes to LGBT+ issues.
“Never, under my authority, will homosexuality be legalised in the Senegalese lands,” said president Macky Sall in 2016.
With article 319 of Senegal’s Penal Code looming, arrests of LGBT+ people has risen sharply, according to a 2020 report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
Since 2010, local activists have sought to raise the alarms over an upswing in arrests, many of which go unreported. The police’s high-handed arrests, they said, have fuelled a climate of fear for LGBT+ Senegalese.
The country has been met with bruising words by the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee, with the body repeatedlyrecommending in Universal Period Reviews that the country decriminalise homosexuality.
It is a country, the IGLA said, where “homophobic mobs” regularly tear through towns and president Sall called for LGBT+ people to be “hunted” during the 2019 presidential elections.
But such a crackdown is nothing new, local advocacy group Arc-en-Ciel warned in the report. They have ripped through the country for years and swelled in 2018 – at least 36 gay men were arrested last year alone, IGLA found.
Gabriel Boric has won the Chile election, seeing off far-right anti-LGBT+ rival José Antonio Kast.
At just 35 years old, Gabriel Boric was elected Chile’s youngest-ever president on Sunday (19 December).
His far-right rival, Kast, conceded with 97 per cent of the vote counted, Boric having gained a 12 point lead with 55.8 per cent of the tallied votes.
The left-wing former student leader won the presidency after a fraught election which the LGBT+ community feared could turn the clock back on equality.
Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in Chile this month, and while Boric is committed to improving reproductive and LGBT+ rights as well as gender equality, Kast had decried the “gay lobby” and is viciously opposed to marriage equality and abortion.
Sunday’s (19 December) run-off came after an initial round of voting on 21 November saw Kast receiving 28 per cent of the vote and Boric receiving 26, with neither earning the 50 per cent required to win.
According to The Guardian, Gabriel Boric told a crowd of revellers after his win: “We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business.
“We no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality… The times ahead will not be easy.
“Only with social cohesion, re-finding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance towards truly sustainable development – which reaches every Chilean.”
Boric has vowed to transform Chile through higher taxes, increased public spending, and the dismantling of controversial private pension schemes. He is also determined to block mining initiatives that risk “destroying” the environment, and wants to empower women, indigenous communities, young people and other marginalised groups.
He will be sworn in on 11 March, 2022.
Chile’s outgoing president signed same-sex marriage into law on his way out
With just four months left of his presidency, Chile’s current leader signed same-sex marriage into law as one of his final acts.
The bill had been stuck in congress for four years, despite same-sex civil unions having been legalised in Chile in 2015, but earlier this year Piñera expedited it.
According to Reuters, Piñera said at the time: “All couples who so wish, regardless of their sexual orientation, will be able to live love, marry and form a family with all the dignity and legal protection they need and deserve.”
Transgender people in Thailand have no route to legal recognition of their gender identity, making them vulnerable to various forms of discrimination, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today with the Thai Transgender Alliance.
The 60-page report, “‘People Can’t Be Fit Into Boxes’: Thailand’s Need for Legal Gender Recognition,”found that the absence of legal gender recognition, coupled with insufficient legal protections and pervasive social stigma, limits transgender people’s access to vital services, and exposes them to daily indignities. Thai transgender people said they were routinely denied access to education, health care, and employment. Thailand has a reputation as an international hub for gender-affirming surgery and transgender health care. But this global reputation obscures Thailand’s severely limited legal mechanisms to protect transgender people at home.
“Transgender people in Thailand constantly face harassment and discrimination, and are often excluded from education and employment,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “The Thai government needs to step in and make legal gender recognition a reality in Thailand.”
Human Rights Watch conducted the research for this report between January and May 2020 with individuals in four locations in Thailand: Bangkok, Trang, Chiang Mai, and Ubon. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 62 transgender people, as well as interviews with social workers, scholars, and employees at advocacy and service provision organizations.
Thailand has limited legal provisions that offer some security to transgender people, but they fall far short of comprehensive protections, Human Rights Watch found. In 2007, Thailand’s legislature passed the Persons’ Name Act, which allows transgender people to apply to change their name. The act, however, did not give people the option to apply to change their legal gender. Name change requests are approved at the discretion of individual administrators.
Under the 2015 Gender Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination against people on the basis of gender expression, the legislature attempted to address some forms of discrimination experienced by transgender people. Yet the government has failed to adequately implement the law. The Committee on Determination of Unfair Gender Discrimination, which has the authority to enforce the law, heard 27 cases of alleged discrimination against transgender people between 2016 and 2019. Many of these cases took more than three months to adjudicate, and none of the eight parties found responsible received punishment.
The absence of legal gender recognition in Thailand means that all transgender people carry documents with a gender different from their identity and expression. When transgender people are asked for this documentation, they can feel humiliated. In some instances, transgender people reported that government employees harassed them based on the mismatch.
A 27-year-old transgender man in Bangkok described his humiliation when he tried to replace a lost identification card: “The officials asked how did I get my penis … and whether it’s really possible to become a trans man.” The officials proceeded to compare him with his past photos. “I felt like a caricature for these government officials,” he said.
Many schools have gender-specific dress codes or facilities, and do not allow students to attend school if they dress in ways deemed inconsistent with their legal gender, violating their right to education. The rigid application of gender-specific regulations, including uniforms and sex-segregated facilities, exacerbate bullying of transgender students by classmates and teachers.
“When I started wearing makeup and lipstick to school, my teacher would scold me – call me ‘tud’ [a derogatory Thai term, roughly translated as ‘faggot’],” said a 25-year-old transgender woman who grew up in Ang Thong province in central Thailand. She believed they singled her out because she had started to grow her hair long as well. “I was also beaten at school by teachers, and teachers would instruct the boy classmates to tease me,” she said.
Transgender people also face obstacles in accessing appropriate health care. A 30-year-old transgender woman said that when she was 20, she was hospitalized for appendicitis and needed urgent surgery. “I was placed in the male ward,” she said. “All the bad things like this happen to me because of a single word on my document – my gender marker.”
Many transgender people interviewed said discrimination in medical settings deterred them from seeking care altogether, threatening their mental and physical well-being.
The lack of legal gender recognition also hampers transgender people’s ability to get jobs, often resulting in automatic rejections. Some employers said that transgender people would only be hired if they dressed according to their sex assigned at birth, not their gender identity. Other employers explicitly stated in job applications that transgender applicants would not be considered. Many people interviewed said they feel restricted to niche employment, such as the beauty industry or sex work.
In recent years, the Thai government has begun to engage with civil society organizations and United Nations agencies to develop a legal gender recognition procedure. The process has stalled and needs urgent attention, Human Rights Watch said.
The Thai government has an important opportunity to match its positive global reputation on LGBT issues with its obligations under international human rights law by developing a rights-based procedure for legal gender recognition. This law should enable transgender people to be recognized according to their gender identity and change their legal name and gender without any medical requirements.
“Ensuring transgender people’s rights to nondiscrimination, education, health care, and employment is paramount to any vision of equality,” Knight said. “While legal gender recognition will not ease all the hardships transgender people in Thailand face, it is a crucial step toward equality and nondiscrimination.”
A COVID-19 outbreak in Australia has left the queer community reeling as more than 700 patrons of two Melbourne nightclubs have been forced into quarantine.
The Star-Observer reports that health officials in the nation have ordered partygoers of Peel Hotel and Sircuit Bar–two popular LGBTQ nightlife hotspots–into mandatory quarantine. A fellow clubgoer tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID earlier this week, and confessed to visiting both Peel and Sircuit Bar on Monday (December 10).
“Anyone who attended the Sircuit Bar from 9pm to midnight and the Peel Hotel from 11.30pm to 3am on Friday 10 December needs to quarantine and get tested. The period of quarantine begins from their time of exposure at the venues,” the Victorian Department of Health said in a statement.
“Other patrons who entered Sircuit on 10 December between 6pm and 9pm are being contacted by the Department of Health and asked to self-identify if they were present beyond 9pm. They are also strongly advised to get a standard PCR test and isolate until they get a negative result,” the DoH added.
The Department of Health further stated that vaccinated patrons are only required to quarantine for seven days, as opposed to the standard 14 days for unvaccinated visitors. Anyone who attended should receive a negative PCR test at the end of their quarantine periods before returning to public life.
The Department of Health also stated that neither business has violated any kind of statute or COVID-19 guideline. Still, for Tom McFeely, owner of the Peel hotel, the negative publicity–and mandatory quarantine–present an unneeded headache.
“I can’t understand why my staff and my customers have to go into isolation when every single one of us is double vaxxed,” McFeely told Star Observer. “We were supposed to be living with this thing. There’s nothing anyone could do apart from being double vaxxed. I thought that was the be all and end all and everyone gets to go back and we should be fine. Now there is fear. Does this mean we are going to shut down every time there is a case? They might not use the terminology shut down or closed, but if you don’t have any staff or security, you cannot open.”
McFeely added that the Peel Hotel will reopen this Friday, regardless of the number of staff in quarantine.
The news of the nightclub quarantines in Australia comes amid concerns over the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and if existing vaccines offer adequate protection against it. In the United States, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has recommended vaccines and booster shots as optimal protection against the variant.
France’s parliament voted on Tuesday to ban so-called conversion therapy, joining a handful of countries that have taken steps to outlaw practices that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Under the French legislation, people offering LGBT+ conversion therapy could be jailed for up to two years and fined 30,000 euros ($33,810), with even tougher sentences if under-18s or vulnerable adults were involved.
The bill, which must be signed by French President Emmanuel Macron before becoming law, was passed days after a similar ban was signed into law in Canada.
Brazil, Ecuador, Malta, Albania and Germany have also passed legislation that either partially or fully outlaws the practice, which has been condemned by medical professionals.
“Very happy with this agreement,” French Equalities Minister Elisabeth Moreno said on Twitter. “No, being yourself is not a crime.”
European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune, who is gay, tweeted that he was “proud of this agreement”.
From injections to electric shocks, prayer to rape, the myriad methods used to try to change or suppress the sexual desire or gender identity of LGBT+ people have been condemned as harmful and ineffective by numerous medical groups globally.
Bans on conversion therapy have been proposed in at least another 11 countries, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation research, including New Zealand, Mexico, Spain and Britain. ($1 = 0.8873 euros)
A swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania is the latest target in the culture-war debate over whether transgender girls and women should be allowed to participate on female sports teams.
Lia Thomas, who came out as trans in 2019, set three school records and two national records at a meet this month.
Since then, Thomas has faced criticism and verbal attacks from anti-trans groups, conservative media and, reportedly, even two teammates.
Lia Thomas.Penn Athletics
Some of the headlines about Thomas’ wins said she “smashed” the records and continued her “dominant” season alongside pre-transition photos of her and using her previous name and male pronouns — practices known as deadnaming and misgendering.
Transgender advocates have condemned that coverage and some of the conversation about Thomas as transphobic. They said it mischaracterizes her victories to make it appear that transgender women are cheating just by being trans and implies that one trans woman winning means trans women generally are dominating women’s sports. They note that Thomas is competing within guidance issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Thomas’ critics have varying views. Some have used explicitly anti-transgender language and argue that trans women should be completely banned from women’s sports, while others argue that the NCAA’s policy regarding trans athletes’ participation isn’t strict enough.
Thomas declined an interview with NBC News and has done only one recent interview, with the podcast SwimSwam. In that interview, she said she and her coaches expected that there would be “some measure of pushback” in response to her competing, but not “quite to the extent that it has blown up.”
“I just don’t engage with it,” she said, regarding the criticism. “It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t, and that’s all I’ll say on that.”
Swimming as her ‘authentic self’
Thomas swam on the men’s team for her first three years at Penn, and for part of that time, she said she was transitioning. She started her medical transition in May 2019 and began gender-affirming hormones, also known as hormone replacement therapy, which for her included testosterone blockers and estrogen. She said she decided to swim out the 2018-19 season on the men’s team without coming out, which “caused a lot of distress for me,” she told SwimSwam.
“I was struggling,” she said. “My mental health was not very good. There was a lot of unease about basically just feeling trapped in my body, like it didn’t align.”
She came out to her coaches and teammates in the fall of 2019, and swam the rest of her junior year, the 2019-20 season, on the men’s team as well — a time she described as “an uncomfortable experience.”
By the summer of 2020, she had been on testosterone suppressants for a full year, meeting a guideline set by the NCAA in 2011. Its handbook for transgender athletes states: “A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.” She said she submitted medical information that included blood tests of her hormone levels. The NCAA approved her request and cleared her to compete on the women’s team that fall.
But then Covid-19 led to nationwide lockdowns, and the Ivy League canceled its swimming season. Thomas said she decided to take the year off to save her eligibility, “given how important it is to me to be able to compete and swim as my authentic self.”
She began competing on the women’s team in November, at the start of the 2021-22 season, and said she has been on hormone therapy for just over two and a half years.
Thomas has performed well at nearly every meet so far this season, but the media firestorm began after her performance at the Zippy Invitational at the University of Akron in Ohio, where she won three events and set three program, meet and pool records, along with two national records. In the 1,650-yard freestyle in particular, she was 38 seconds ahead of teammate Anna Kalandadze, who finished second. Right-wing media outlets have shared video of Thomas winning the race on social media.
Since then, she’s received international media attention, and two of her teammates, speaking anonymously, reportedly told the sports website OutKick that they disagree with her participation, viewing it as unfair. NBC News has been unable to verify these reports. University of Pennsylvania Athletics and several members of the women’s swim team have not responded to requests for comment.
‘Meaningful competition’
Some critics have argued that Thomas’ performance is evidence that she has inherent physical advantages from going through male puberty and having higher testosterone levels. As a result, they argue that the NCAA should bar trans women from female sports teams or change its policy, saying that requiring one year of testosterone suppressants for trans women isn’t enough.
“While the NCAA’s rules demand the use of testosterone suppressants for a specific duration, the current requirements are not rigid enough and do not produce an authentic competitive atmosphere,” John Lohn, editor-in-chief of Swimming World magazine, wrote in an op-ed. “It is obvious that one year is not a sufficient timeframe to offer up a level playing field. Athletes transitioning from male to female possess the inherent advantage of years of testosterone production and muscle-building.”
Some researchers and advocates disagree, including at least one researcher who supports what is widely considered a more middle-of-the-road approach.
Joanna Harper, visiting fellow for transgender athletic performance at England’s Loughborough University, published the first performance analysis of transgender athletes in 2015. Harper, a trans runner who has master’s degrees in physics and medical physics, evaluated the race times of eight trans women distance runners after they transitioned and found that they were no more competitive in the female division than they had been in the male division.
She noted that it was a small study and that it doesn’t apply to any sport other than distance running, but that it was and still is the only published data on transgender athletes. She is currently conducting three studies of how hormone therapy affects transgender athletes, though she said she is still gathering data, which could take years.
In addition to her research, one oft-cited study published last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that transgender women in the Air Force performed better on fitness tests after one year of hormone therapy when compared to cisgender women. After two years, their performance was “fairly equivalent” to cisgender women, the study’s author, Dr. Timothy Roberts, told NBC News this year.
Harper said she’s been following the news about Thomas closely and believes it’s true that trans women will maintain some advantages even after hormone therapy. But she said Thomas — who is swimming slower now than she did pre-transition — is just one person, and she doesn’t represent all trans athletes.
“I have seen trans athletes who undergo transition — and either because they don’t adapt well to the change in their testosterone levels, or they had trouble with the medication, or perhaps their life focus changes somewhat — who are not nearly as successful after transition as they were before,” Harper said. “And we’re never going to hear in the media of those trans women who are less successful after transition than they were before because they’re not successful.”
She said she believes that the NCAA’s guideline of requiring one year of hormone therapy is “perfectly reasonable,” and that it “will result in meaningful competition between trans women and cis women,” or women who are not trans.
She added that the NCAA’s rule has been in place for 10 years, and that trans women “aren’t taking over NCAA sports and are still underrepresented.” She noted that there are more than 200,000 women who compete in the NCAA every year, and that trans people make up about 1 percent of the population. If they were proportionally represented in the NCAA, there should be about 2,000 trans women competing, but she estimates there are less than 100 each year.
“We’ve never seen a transgender NCAA champion, and Lia is not likely to do it either,” Harper said. “But even if she did win an NCAA championship, we should see a few trans women each and every year winning NCAA Division 1 championships. So at some point it has to happen, and this idea that it’s some horrible miscarriage of justice that Lia is successful just doesn’t add up.”
Is the NCAA policy working?
The NCAA’s policy regarding trans women athletes is considered among the strictest of sports governing bodies, especially after the International Olympic Committee nixed testosterone testing and limits for trans women athletes in a new set of guidance released in November.
Anne Lieberman, director of policy for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates for LGBTQ-inclusive sports policies, said that part of the conversation about Thomas has been focused on whether the NCAA policy is “working.”
“What do we mean by ‘working’? So for many people, working means that it will prevent trans athletes from either succeeding or even participating in college athletics — and I think that that’s an important distinction,” said Lieberman, who uses gender-neutral pronouns. “Trans athletes — Lia, in particular — deserve love, support, care, access to be able to swim. And Lia, like any other athlete, should be able to win and lose.”
Lieberman said they don’t think the conversation about Thomas is just about sports, because, they noted, there hasn’t been an issue with the NCAA policy in the last 10 years. Rather, they said the conversation about Thomas and trans athletes generally is part of the “fuel for the political fire that is absolutely ravaging trans rights in this country.”
Ten states — nine this year — have passed laws that ban trans girls and women from playing on female sports teams. More than 20 additional states considered similar bills. Over two dozen states also weighed legislation that would ban trans minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care such as hormones and puberty blockers. Governors in two states — Arkansas and Tennessee — signed such legislation into law, though a judge blocked Arkansas’ law from taking effect in July.
“While people might think more broadly that this is just about sports, this is really about the broader conversation about the humanity of trans folks and whether or not we deserve to participate in all aspects of life in society, and that includes college sports,” they said.
Gillian Branstetter, press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, added that there are real needs that female athletes have, including equity in funding, safety from harassment, mental health support and making sure they have equitable facilities.
“I don’t know that if you were to poll female athletes the participation of people like Lia Thomas would come up very much,” she said. “There are much bigger issues at hand for female athletes, and people who think that they’re saving women’s sports by putting forward their transphobia have never expressed a single piece of interest in saving women’s sports before.”
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first long-acting injectable medication for use as pre-exposure prevention, or PrEP, against HIV, the agency announced Monday.
Apretude, the new drug, is an injectable given every two months as an alternative to HIV prevention pills, like Truvada and Descovy, which have been shown to reduce the risk of HIV by 99 percent when taken daily.
Two FDA trials analyzing the safety and efficacy of the novel drug found that Apretude was more likely to reduce HIV than the daily oral medications — by 69 percent for cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men and by 90 percent for cisgender women. Apretude’s superior efficacy was apparently driven by the greater ease with which study participants adhered to the every-other-month regimen compared with taking a pill every day.
“Today’s approval adds an important tool in the effort to end the HIV epidemic by providing the first option to prevent HIV that does not involve taking a daily pill,” Dr. Debra Birnkrant, the director of antivirals division at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “This injection, given every two months, will be critical to addressing the HIV epidemic in the U.S., including helping high-risk individuals and certain groups where adherence to daily medication has been a major challenge or not a realistic option.”
While gains have been made in PrEP use over the past several years, only 25 percent of the 1.2 million people for whom PrEP is recommended were prescribed the treatment last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that as of 2019, there were approximately 285,000 people using PrEP, the vast majority of them gay and bisexual men.
The hope is that the newly approved, long-acting injectable — made by ViiV Healthcare, which is majority owned by GlaxoSmithKline — will make adherence easier, help increase PrEP usage and drive down the national HIV rate.
“People who are vulnerable to acquiring HIV, especially those in Black and Latinx communities who are disproportionately impacted in the US, may want options beyond daily oral pills,” Deborah Waterhouse, ViiV Healthcare’s CEO, said in a statement, adding that “Apretude was studied in one of the most diverse and comprehensive HIV prevention trial programs to date, which also included some of the largest numbers of transgender women and Black men who have sex with men ever enrolled in an HIV prevention trial.”
Men who have sex with men accounted for 66 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2019, according to the CDC. When the numbers are broken down by race, Black Americans accounted for the highest percentage, representing 42 percent of all new diagnoses that year.
In July, the federal government announced that almost all insurers must cover the two approved forms of PrEP pills, Truvada and Descovy, as well as the lab tests and clinic visits required to maintain such prescriptions — and to do so with no cost sharing. As it stands, insurers will not be required to cover all costs for the new injectable version of PrEP, which has a list price of $3,700 per dose and is slated to begin shipping to wholesalers and specialty distributors in the U.S. in early 2022.
Kenyon Farrow, the managing director of PrEP4All, an advocacy group that fights to increase access to HIV prevention and treatment, said his organization is “definitely happy to see the FDA approval of another option for people who want to use PrEP.”
However, he said he fears that the “implementation of this option will likely take years to make it real for most people.”
“Due to COVID, public health systems are already overburdened and much of the workforce needed to implement this large scale are leaving the field due to burnout,” he said in an email. “Because it will need to be administered in clinical settings, it won’t be treated as a pharmacy benefit by payers, but instead as a clinical benefit, which will take time to implement the proper coding for billing, as well as education and training for nurses who will likely bear the brunt of the work to implement.”
