When the coronavirus lockdown left a group of transgender sex workers in a beach town near Rome without work, they turned to a local Catholic priest for help to buy food.
But his parish’s resources were already stretched by the health crisis so the priest turned to the cardinal known as “the Pope’s Robin Hood” who runs the Vatican charities. He wired money to the parish for them.
“I don’t understand why this is getting so much attention,” Cardinal Konrad Krajewski told Reuters by phone on Thursday. “This is ordinary work for the Church, it’s normal. This is how the Church is a field hospital.“
Krajewski, whose formal title is “papal almoner,” or distributor of alms, said the sex workers most likely were undocumented, making it difficult for them to seek help from Italian state welfare offices.
“Everything is closed. They don’t have any resources. They went to the pastor. They could not have gone to a politician or a parliamentarian. And the pastor came to us.
“They are really in difficulty because sometimes their passports were taken away by the mafia pimps who control them,” he said. “We follow the gospel.”
Krajewski, at 56, one of the youngest cardinals in the world, said it was what Jesus would have done. And it was not the first time the Polish cardinal has made the news with his sometimes unorthodox ways of distributing the pope’s charities. Last year, he clambered down a manhole, broke a police seal, and re-connected electrical circuit breakers to restore electricity to hundreds of homeless people, many of them immigrants, living in an occupied building in Rome.
Although Krajewski ran afoul of then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and his anti-immigrant policies, an Italian newspaper dubbed him “The Pope’s Robin Hood.“
Although he tries to shun the limelight, Krajewski has become a minor celebrity in Rome. Since Pope Francis named him to the Vatican charity post in 2013, he became known for dressing down into simple layman’s clothes at night and bringing food to the city’s homeless in a white van.
He has also opened shelters near the Vatican where the homeless can wash, get haircuts, and receive medical care.
Idaho governor Brad Little, the person responsible for some of America’s most transphobic laws, has appealed to the Supreme Court to avoid paying for a transgender inmate’s gender confirmation surgery.
Little filed a petition after being ordered to provide surgery for 31-year-old Adree Edmo, a trans woman who is being housed in a men’s facility in Idaho.
She is serving 10 years for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy when she was 22, and is not eligible for parole.
Edmo was diagnosed with gender dysphoria while in prison and her condition has grown so severe that she has reportedly attempted to castrate herself twice.
Denying trans woman surgery ruled ‘cruel and unusual’.
Last year a court of appeals upheld a previous ruling that denying Edmo the surgery constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
But Little is appealing the ruling for a second time as he insists that he “should not have to pay for a procedure that is not medically necessary”.
He has vowed to “vigorously litigate” the ruling by taking it to the country’s highest court after the Ninth Circuit Court refused his request to hear the case for a third time.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision goes against the text and original meaning of the Eighth Amendment and contradicts more than four decades of Supreme Court precedent,” Little said in a release.
“We will vigorously litigate the Ninth Circuit’s unprecedented ruling at the Supreme Court because the taxpayers of Idaho should not have to pay for a procedure that is not medically necessary.”
The state of Idaho is currently being sued by two human rights organisations thanks to a virulent anti-trans campaign spearheaded by Republican governor Brad Little.
In the midst of a pandemic, the governor signed two laws that campaigners say effectively make transgender people second-class citizens.
The first, HB509, bans transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificates, flouting a previous a federal court ruling on the issue.
It asserts that the state will prohibit any changes to gender markers and only recognise a so-called “biology-based definition of sex” based on “immutable biological and physiological characteristics, specifically the chromosomes and internal and external reproductive anatomy”.
The second bill, HB500, bans schools and colleges from letting transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports.
Under the “mean-spirited” law, girls whose sex is “disputed” will be required to subject themselves to invasive testing to show medical evidence of their “internal and external reproductive anatomy”.
In addition, pupils who believe they have been “disadvantaged” by their transgender classmates will be able to sue their schools for damages.
Around 20 LGBTQ immigrants, the majority of whom are transgender women from countries throughout Latin America, are isolated and protected from the threat of the coronavirus in the Jardín de las Mariposas shelter in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.
Jaime Marín Rocha, the shelter’s legal representative, told the Washington Blade in an exclusive interview the shelter has implemented new hygiene and cleaning procedures that include the use of masks, gloves, antibacterial gels, disinfectants and bleach in order to stop the spread of the virus and to protect the health of its residents and clients.
“The local government in Tijuana has not supported us a lot,” lamented Marin. “Only Tijuana’s Health Department came to inspect the facilities. They recommended ways for us to improve, but they left very pleased with its cleanliness.”
All of the refugees who live at the shelter are currently in good health and take all social distancing measures very seriously.
One can appreciate the cleaning procedures the shelter’s residents have done by looking at some of the posts on its Facebook page. Marín also explained the shelter has set aside a part of the house in which anyone who develops coronavirus symptoms can be isolated.
“We would keep them there until we can bring them to the hospital if necessary,” he said.
Marín is nevertheless worried because the shelter does not have a doctor. Refugees only have health insurance coverage for the first three months after their arrival to the country.
“What we want to do is create a fund for people who don’t have health insurance, because when that period ends we have no way to deal with a situation that could develop,” said Marín. “We have to look for support from other organizations in the medical field that can assist us. We really need help with that.”
Jordi Raich, director of the International Committee of the Red Cross for Mexico and Central America, confirmed it is often difficult for immigrants, who are exposed to the disease like any other person, to access the public health care system or humanitarian assistance. They are often unable to receive help because they are victims of violence and discrimination.
“It is important to highlight the fact that the presence of migrants does not generate a higher risk for the disease,” said Raich. “They are exposed to the virus in the same way as nationals from any country.”
Marín said a psychologist worked with the shelter until they had an accident a few days ago.
“We have also been a bit helpless in that regard,” he said. “We would ideally have a psychological program to help overcome many of the traumas that these immigrants have because of the persecution that they have suffered in their countries of origin because of their sexual orientation.”
Most shelter residents live with HIV
Alerts that coronavirus cases among LGBTQ people have skyrocketed since it was declared a global pandemic, combined with the fact this population has a higher percentage of people with HIV and cancer who are more susceptible to the virus, compound Marín’s concerns.
The National LGBT Cancer Network in an open letter signed by the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, GLAAD and other groups expressed their concern as the community confronts barriers when it tries to access medical care.
“Discriminatory attitudes are commonplace among medical professionals and some people avoid or delay visiting the doctor for this reason,” they said.
There is additional concern based on the rate of tobacco use among this population that is 50 percent higher than the general population. The coronavirus is a respiratory disease that has been shown to be particularly harmful to smokers.
Another factor that also increases vulnerability to the virus is the higher rates of HIV and cancer among LGBTQ people, which means there are more people with compromised immune systems that leave them more vulnerable to the pandemic. There are also many cases of people who don’t know they are living with HIV.
Marín says 95 percent of Jardin de las Mariposas’ residents live with HIV, which makes it necessary to take extra precautions. As a result, Marín said the shelter for the time being will not accept new residents.
“We hope to reopen our doors soon,” he said in a Facebook post. “We are following government guidelines to guarantee your personal safety.”
In order to counter all of these logical and economic challenges, Jardín de las Mariposas has received donations from several non-profit organizations that are supporting them during this health emergency. Families Belong Together; the Refugee Health Alliance; the Minority Humanitarian Foundation; the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees; Alight and the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration have extended a supportive hand to those who need it most.
ORAM Executive Director Steve Roth pointed out to the Blade that his organization supports shelters like Jardín de las Mariposas in three ways: “With products to help protect against the coronavirus, information about the virus and how to protect oneself from it and programs to help residents during these difficult times.”
“We are working together with our partner Alight on this,” said Roth. “In the case of Jardín de las Mariposas we bought most of the products on Amazon and sent them directly to the shelter. We had already sent soap, disinfectant, gloves, disinfectant wipes, trash bags, first aid kits, toilet paper, etc. They more or less have enough for the next month and we are going to do another order soon.”
Jardín de las Mariposas is in a large and comfortable house with many bedrooms and is located about 10 minutes from downtown Tijuana.
Local media reports indicate the border city has more than 500 coronavirus cases. Marín said the city in Baja California’s northern state reacted very late, compared to the majority of countries that had already closed their borders.
“Mexico responded very late,” he said.
The city is now under lockdown and the U.S. has temporarily stopped asylum seekers from entering the U.S. The Mexico-U.S. border is open only for essential commercial traffic and authorized people.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, for his part, said that his country will not accept migrants and asylum seekers from third countries who are returned to Mexican territory from the U.S. by the Trump administration
Meanwhile, the nearly 20 LGBTQ immigrants must remain at Jardín de las Mariposas until the lockdown ends. Marín has described the shelter as “a dream we forged by the hard experiences of being different in a society that excludes and points out those who do not accept social labels because they know how to love differently.”
Jardín de las Mariposas is a non-profit organization founded by Yolanda Rocha, Marín’s mother and current director, on April 6, 2011. It always receives anyone who asks for help with addiction or emotional problems because of their sexual orientation with love, respect and without cost.
It is the only center in Tijuana that openly welcomes the LGBTQ community. The organization has lately focused on providing help to asylum seekers and refugees because of increased immigration to the U.S.
A bicameral group of congressional lawmakers led by Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) are calling on the Trump administration to ensure international efforts to assist with the COVID-19 pandemic overseas include relief for LGBTQ people.
In a letter dated May 7 obtained exclusively by the Washington Blade, the 47 members of Congress — all Democrats — make the case the U.S. response to the coronavirus overseas “will be seen as a test of our country’s commitment to the protection of human rights and American values of fairness and equality.”
The lawmakers urge the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to protect LGBTQ human rights overseas during the coronavirus crisis in three ways:
First, the letter calls on the Trump administration to “intervene at senior levels with governments that are using the COVID-19 crisis to persecute or discriminate against LGBTQI and other marginalized communities.”
Also, the lawmakers seek the inclusion of LGBTQ people in both short- and long-term response and recovery programs in addition to calling on partner countries to adopt the same approach.
“Restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19 have placed a large burden on those in the informal economy, cutting off income streams and preventing them from obtaining food or secure shelter,” the letter says. “As a result, the pandemic has heightened the vulnerability of LGBTQI and other marginalized populations to poverty, food insecurity and homelessness.”
Finally, the lawmakers call for access to health services the United States provides overseas, such as “treatment for HIV and other COVID-exacerbating conditions, as well as other necessary healthcare services, including sexual and reproductive health.”
“LGBTQI people and other vulnerable populations face stigma and discrimination in obtaining healthcare services, especially in countries where same- sex sexual conduct or non-normative gender expression is criminalized,” the letter says. “This hinders access to lifesaving healthcare services and puts their lives at even greater risk during this pandemic.”
The State Department declined to comment on the letter, citing a general practice of no comment on congressional correspondence. USAID didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment.
The Bay Area Reporter’s online fundraising appeal has been extended for another month, due to a matching offer from an anonymous donor.
The paper launched the Indiegogo campaign in early April because the coronavirus pandemic has caused grave economic losses for the LGBT publication, which saw a drastic drop off in advertising.
As of Wednesday, May 6, just over $24,000 of the paper’s $30,000 goal has been raised.
“We have extended the deadline because an anonymous donor has pledged to pay for transaction fees if we achieve our goal and to match contributions beyond it until June 1,” publisher Michael Yamashita wrote in an update. “So the amount raised above $30,000 will be doubled to support journalism at San Francisco’s independently owned, legacy LGBTQ+ community news source.”
Yamashita pointed out that over the years, the B.A.R. has focused on stories that mainstream media did not consider important: anti-gay discrimination in employment and housing; bias and fear of people with HIV/AIDS; victims of abuse and anti-gay violence; the plight of at-risk youth; and the unmet needs of LGBT elders.
“We’ve also supported thousands of LGBT artists through the years, with lively features, reviews, and nightlife coverage,” he wrote. “Our publication has given voice to the vulnerable and is a record of our history. But only with your help can we continue to play this unique role.”
David Carter, an author and historian on LGBTQ civil rights who is credited with writing the definitive book about the 1969 Stonewall riots that he said triggered a worldwide “mass movement” for LGBTQ rights, died May 1 at his Greenwich Village apartment in New York City. He was 67.
His brother, Bill Carter, said doctors believe the cause of death was a heart attack.
David Carter’s 2004 book “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution” thrust Carter into the limelight as a leading expert on the June 1969 riots triggered by the now infamous police raid on the Stonewall gay bar in Greenwich Village in which the patrons fought back.
Carter’s book was the basis for the PBS American Experience film “Stonewall Uprising,” which won a Peabody Award. He also played a key role working with the U.S. National Park Service to have the site of the Stonewall bar and surrounding streets designated as a national monument and an historic landmark.
Shortly after his Stonewall book was published, Carter began work on what he considered his next major project – a definitive biography of gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny, the co-founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. in the early 1960s. For more than 10 years, Carter conducted extensive research on Kameny’s role as one of the first known pre-Stonewall activists who declared homosexuals to be a minority group deserving of full civil rights.
It couldn’t immediately be determined whether others might assemble Carter’s findings and documentation on Kameny, including recorded interviews with dozens of people who knew Kameny, into the book Carter was unable to finish.
Carter was born and raised in the Southeast Georgia town of Jesup. He graduated from the town’s Wayne County High School before attending Emory University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in religion and French, according to information provided by his brother.
During his junior year in college he studied at the Paris-Sorbonne University in France. He later attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a master’s degree in 1978 in South Asian Studies, a write-up prepared by his brother says.
Carter, who was gay, first became involved in the gay rights movement while a graduate student in Madison, his brother said in his write-up on Carter. Among other things, Carter organized a 1977 dance that raised more than $1,000 to support a Dade County, Fla., gay rights group that was fighting a campaign by anti-gay advocate Anita Bryant to overturn the Florida county’s gay rights law.
A short time later, Carter co-founded an organization in Madison that led a successful effort to prevent anti-gay advocates from overturning Madison’s gay rights law, making Madison one of the few places in the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s to stop an effort to repeal a pro-LGBTQ nondiscrimination law.
Carter later became involved in the successful lobbying effort that made Wisconsin the first state in the nation to pass a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
He moved to New York City in 1985 shortly before starting work as an editor at Chelsea House Publishers, a publisher of young adult multicultural books, according to his brother Bill Carter. The brother said the company accepted a proposal by David Carter that it publish two separate book series for young adults, “Issues in Gay and Lesbian Life” and “Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians.”
After leaving Chelsea House, Carter began work on the Stonewall book and a separate book consisting of a collection of interviews of famed gay poet Allen Ginsberg that was later published as “Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996.”
“Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution” was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004 with many positive reviews, including from the New York Times. In 1998, six years before the book’s release, Carter received a grant to put together material from his research on Stonewall to support an effort to place the Stonewall riots site on the National Register of Historic Places, where it was placed in 1999. A year later the site was named a National Historic Landmark.
In 2014, Carter served as the historic adviser to the National Park Service in the successful effort to have the Stonewall site become a National Monument.
Beginning in 2006, Carter began work on his planned biography of Frank Kameny. Although he didn’t live to complete that project, Carter talked and wrote about Kameny’s groundbreaking work in the early homophile movement in writings in the gay press and in lectures and other speaking appearances.
Carter talked about Kameny in D.C. in June 2019 before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which invited him to give a presentation on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. As members of the commission and a small audience listened intently, Carter provided detailed historical background on the discrimination and persecution LGBTQ people faced prior to the 1969 Stonewall rebellion.
He noted that contrary to the generally accepted belief that the Stonewall riots triggered the modern gay rights movement, Carter said Stonewall triggered a mass movement for LGBTQ rights that actually began as a civil rights phase of the “homophile” movement started by Kameny and his followers in the early 1960s.
The earlier phase started by Kameny, Carter said, made it possible for activists to convert the spontaneous street protests that followed the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village into a focused and effective political movement for LGBTQ rights.
“The Stonewall uprising is historic for one reason,” he said in his presentation to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. “It inspired the creation of a new phase of the movement for the rights of gay men and lesbians and later for bisexuals and the transgendered, and this new phase, the gay liberation movement, created a mass movement, making most of the gains over the past five decades possible.”
Following publication of the Stonewall book, Carter appeared on national TV news programs, including on CNN and CBS and has written on LGBTQ issues for CNN, Time magazine, the BBC, the Washington Blade, and the Gay and Lesbian Review.
Carter has told the Blade in the past that one reason for the delay in completing the Kameny book was the need to work full time in a regular paying job. Eric Danzer, Carter’s longtime friend in New York, said at the time of his passing Carter was working as senior medical editor at Saatchi & Saatchi, a global communications firm.
“In his medical editing and his LGBT history work, he showed a passion for accuracy,” Danzer said. “In his LGBT history work, he was painstakingly methodical in assembling the facts, passionate about following them wherever they led to make sure that our history is recorded accurately.”
Added Danzer, “He had great respect for the subjects of his work and felt a great responsibility to preserve the legacy of subjects whose contributions were generally not well known, but should be, like Frank Kameny.”
Carter was preceded in death by his parents W. L. and Sarah Carter of Jesup, Ga. He is survived by longtime friend Eric Danzer; his brother William C. Carter and sister-in-law Lynn; three nieces, Josephine Monmaney, Sarah Davis, and Susanna Carter; and five great nieces and great nephews.
Arrangements were being made for David Carter’s burial in Jesup, Ga. A memorial service in Georgia and New York will be held at a later date.
Alis Nicolette Rodriguez is bracing themself, nervously looking over their shopping list and preparing in case someone tries to bar their way at the grocery store. It has happened before.
To keep crowds thin during the coronavirus quarantine, Colombian capital Bogota — like some other places in Latin America — has specified that men and women must go out on separate days. That has turned a routine food shopping trip into an outing fraught with tension for social work student Rodriguez, who is transgender and nonbinary.
From Panama to Peru, transgender people say gender-based quarantine restrictions have exposed them to discrimination and violence from people questioning their right to be out.
In Bogota, women can only go out on days with even-numbered dates and men on odd, while transgender people are allowed to choose.
However, rights group Red Comunitaria Trans said it had received 18 discrimination complaints since the measure began. One of those complaints was from a transgender woman in southern Bogota stabbed by a man who said she was out on the wrong day, a case also reported in local media. The woman is recovering from her injuries.
“The last time I went out things happened that were really tense,” said Rodriguez, 20, who uses neutral pronouns and began hormone treatments four months ago. “My features are still very masculine so people still say ‘I see the body of a man’ and they deny who you are.”
Rodriguez said the previous Sunday an employee stopped them at a grocery entrance and a police officer asked to see their identification, although the mayor’s office has told police not demand ID to prove gender during the quarantine.
A spokeswoman for Bogota’s government department for women confirmed the police do not have the right to question anyone’s gender identity.
In response to questions about the accusations of discrimination, Bogota’s Metropolitan Police sent Reuters a publicity video of officers and members of the transgender community speaking to store employees, explaining that transgender people can choose their shopping day.
Rodriguez was eventually allowed into the store, but at the check-out one cashier asked another why “this man” had been able to shop, they said. Being nonbinary complicates the choice about which day to go out, said Rodriguez, who has chosen the women’s days.
“If you don’t go out with make-up on, with a skirt… If you don’t comply with those stereotypes and gender roles then you can’t identify yourself or be in a public space,” said Rodriguez, who was wearing pink eye shadow and a sparkly silver jacket.
Afraid to report discrimination
Juli Salamanca, communications director for Red Comunitaria Trans, said the coronavirus pandemic had left transgender people particularly exposed.
“They’re trying to protect themselves from the violence of the police, the violence of the supermarkets, the violence of society in general,” Salamanca told Reuters, referring to the physical and emotional toll of discrimination and prejudice.
She said some transgender people may be afraid to report discrimination because of previous police abuse.
Colombia’s second-largest city, Medellin, has restricted outings based on ID numbers rather than gender, a valid alternative to enforce social distancing, Salamanca said.
Colombia is not the only Latin American country where restrictions have stoked fear among transgender people.
The Panamanian Association of Trans People has received more than 40 discrimination complaints since restrictions began in April, director Venus Tejada said, including problems getting into supermarkets or buying medicine.
Transgender people who are immunocompromised are particularly worried, according to Tejada, and some with HIV fear additional discrimination because of their illness.
“If they need anything we’ve advised them to ask a neighbor or someone else to get it,” Tejada said.
In Peru, the government canceled restrictions based on gender after just over a week, as retailers struggled to control crowds on women’s days and LGBT groups complained of discrimination.
Back in Bogota, Rodriguez is piling a shopping cart with items. They avert their eyes when two police officers walk into the store.
The officers escort out an older man who is violating the rules and then stare briefly at Rodriguez before leaving.
Joe Biden has reaffirmed his commitment to LGBT+ healthcare, vowing to make PrEP and gender affirming surgeries covered by insurance plans.
The presumptive Democratic nominee described gender affirming surgeries as “medically necessary” as he vowed to reverse Donald Trump’s attacks on trans and non-binary people during a virtual town hall event with the Human Rights Campaign on Wednesday (May 6).
He also pledged to remove the price barrier which prevents many people from accessing PrEP.
“As president, I’m going to protect and build on Obamacare with a public option,” Biden said.
“That’s the fastest way to get to universal coverage. Reverse Trump’s actions and restore Obamacare protections for LGBTQ Americans.
“And cover PrEP so that people at high risk of getting HIV and AIDS, HIV/AIDS, do have – don’t have to choose between covering their rent and staying alive.
“And make sure insurance companies treat gender confirmation surgery as a medical necessary, which it is.”
Joe Biden wants to reinstate Obama-era LGBT+ healthcare protections.
The presidential hopeful said that he would reinstate the LGBT+ protections Trump had scrapped to ensure that no one is refused healthcare on the basis of their sexuality.
“Trump has been trying to gut these protections since he took office,” Biden said.
“Anyone involved in patient care, from the board of directors to a receptionist in charge of scheduling, could put their beliefs above your healthcare.”
Biden has long been outspoken in his support for LGBT+ healthcare, and his campaign platform To Advance LGBTQ+ Equality in America and Around the World calls for full coverage of care related to transitioning.
In January he stated that trans rights “is the civil rights issue of our time” and said “there is no room for compromise”.
His words and actions earned him the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign, which gave him their backing on the eight-year anniversary of him coming out in support of same-sex marriage.
“His dedication to advancing LGBTQ equality, even when it was unpopular to do so, has pushed our country and our movement forward,” HRC president Alphonso David said in a statement.
Joseph Biden has obtained the official support from a leading transgender rights group, which has endorsed him in his bid to unseat President Trump from the White House.
The National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund signaled on Tuesday its support for Biden in an announcement first reported by The Advocate.
“Joe Biden is the advocate and president we need at this consequential moment,”Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund, said in a statement.
“He has the temperament, the experience and wisdom to lead our country,” Keisling added. “Throughout his career in public service, work as a private citizen through the Biden Foundation, and now his campaign to lead our nation, Biden has demonstrated his commitment to transgender people and the LGBTQ community.”
It’s the first presidential endorsement decision from the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund, which was established in 2017 as a political arm for the 501(c)(3) transgender policy group known similarly as the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Reggie Greer, LGBTQ+ vote director for Biden for President, said in a statement the campaign is “deeply honored” to have the support from the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund.
“NCTE Action Fund has done trailblazing work to change the landscape of America, educate and lobby elected leaders, and empower and mobilize transgender people to ensure their voices are heard at the ballot box,” Greer said. “That record, and network to countless voters on the ground, is especially crucial in this time of uncertainty and upheaval.”
Biden, who built a significant record on LGBTQ rights as vice president, has also made himself known as an ally to the transgender community. The former vice president has repeatedly said transgender rights are “the civil rights issue of our time.”
In contrast, the Trump administration has rolled back protections for transgender people in employment, health care and education in addition to enacting a ban barring transgender people from the U.S. military.
“The Trump administration is really the discrimination administration,” Keisling said. “President Trump has attacked transgender health care, put transgender students unnecessarily at risk and led a consistent and unrelenting effort to rollback protections for LGBTQ Americans. Joe Biden is the clear choice for president of the United States, and the NCTE Action Fund is proud to endorse him.”
Endorsements for Biden continue to pile up, but one LGBTQ organization that has yet to declared its official support is the Human Rights Campaign. The nation’s leading LGBTQ group stayed out the Democratic primary and has yet to Biden, even though he’s now the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The Washington Blade has repeatedly sought an update from HRC on the endorsement decision, but no receive no information.
Lyon-Martin Health Services in San Francisco has served the health needs of lesbians, transgender women and other underserved women in the Bay Area since 1979. Named after pioneering lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the clinic had until recently been seeing 3,000 patients a year for such needs as physical exams, gynecologic services and consultations for gender-affirming surgeries.
Now, however, it is fighting to keep its doors open amid the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to emergency funding from the city and private donors, it will be able to operate until July 1 without deep cuts to its services — which now include screening for COVID-19 — but its future is uncertain after that.
“The city needs to see how long COVID is going to play out,” J.M. Jaffe, the transgender health manager at Lyon-Martin, told NBC News. “They wanted to do a short-term contract so that we could re-evaluate what the situation will be in two months. I think they were just wary to make a commitment to continue to support us, but we did get kind of like a wink and a nod that they would like to support us to the end of the calendar year.”
Lyon-Martin Health Services is one of over 200 LGBTQ health clinics across the United States that provide affirming and competent care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer patients. And like Lyon-Martin, a number of these centers are struggling to adjust to — and in some cases survive — the new normal spawned by the global pandemic.
‘A gap of a support network’
Approximately 13 percent lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals in the U.S. reported getting their regular health care from an LGBTQ-centered clinic, according to a 2019 study from UCLA’s Williams Institute. A separate study found nearly 40 percent of transgender people reported having been to an LGBTQ clinic in the previous five years.
“We provide services to a population that may not seek care elsewhere or even if they do seek it elsewhere, they may not get what they need,” Jaffe said.
Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said if some of these clinics do not survive the pandemic, the void will be felt deeply, especially in areas of the country where LGBTQ people face high levels of discrimination.
“It leaves a gap of a support network, but also may not provide another opportunity or option in some communities to get nondiscriminatory care, which is a concern,” she told NBC News.
LGBTQ discrimination in health care is not uncommon. A 2018 studyfrom the liberal Center for American Progress found 8 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people and 29 percent of transgender people reported that a doctor or health care provider had refused to see them because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The study also found that 9 percent of LGBQ people and 21 percent of trans people reported having a health provider use harsh or abusive language when treating them.
The Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. pandemic, is doing all it can to stay open and provide patient care amid stay-at-home orders and declining revenues.
The COVID-19 crisis has forced the center, which sees over 17,000 patients annually, to pivot to virtual health care and cut a number of services, leading revenues to plummet nearly 60 percent, according to Executive Director Wendy Stark. But with many of their patients not feeling comfortable seeking care elsewhere, Stark said she and her team are “being innovative” to stay open.
“We have lived through traumas and pandemics. We know how to take care of ourselves and each other.”
CALLEN-LORDE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WENDY STARK
Callen-Lorde is currently helping clients by providing a number of online services, including video visits for primary medical care, behavioral health and counseling, along with legal aid and insurance consultation services by phone. The center’s in-person services include appointments for those who do not have access to smartphones or internet connections, and those who are pre-authorized for in-person visits.
The clinic is also working to protect its own front-line workers, approximately 20 percent of whom contracted the coronavirus, according to Stark. She said regular floor nurses are now “acting as intensive care unit nurses,” and everyone’s “being stretched to their maximum clinical capacity” and “having to learn on the spot.”
“I’m sure, deeply rewarding but also deeply frightening,” she added.
While providing health services, Stark and her team are also applying for “every possible” relief fund or grant available to help make it through the crisis.
“We are shapeshifters,” she said. “We have lived through traumas and pandemics. We know how to take care of ourselves and each other.”
In Philadelphia, the Mazzoni Center, which typically sees over 7,500 patients a year, is also trying to adapt. This has meant a combination of limiting in-person appointments on a case-by-case basis, implementing and expanding its remote health care offerings and finding ways to continue as many community programs as possible online.
Larry Benjamin, a spokesperson for the center, said the clinic has had to furlough some staffers and reduce the hours of others to keep it viable “in the short term”.
The center is still allowing abbreviated in-person appointments for things like HIV services and gender-affirming care, but Benjamin said staffers have been careful to ensure “the risks associated with exposure to the coronavirus” from patients to staff and vice versa don’t outweigh the benefit of in-person visits. Behavioral health services, such as medication management, support groups and counseling services, are being offered exclusively online, as are counseling for COVID-19 stressors. Most community programs have also been moved online, but those that cater to the “most vulnerable clients” and their basic needs, like food and shelter, are still operating in-person, according to Benjamin.
Fenway Health in Boston, which saw 33,500 patients in 2019, has also seen a loss in revenue amid the pandemic, leading it to furlough some staffers and operate at an “unsustainable deficit,” according to Chris Viveiros, a spokesperson for the center. To help weather the storm, he said the center has increased its virtual offerings.
“Some medical patients have chosen to reschedule nonurgent appointments, but we have ramped up our medical telehealth capacity so that we can provide care remotely to patients who don’t require an in-person visit,” he said. “We have also moved our behavioral health and addiction and wellness care to telehealth.”
Fenway Health has also changed its Access Drug User Health program from being held in drop-in centers to having staff visit at-risk people in the community to limit contact.
There have been some drawbacks to Fenway’s remote health services: Some patients are sheltering in place with unsupportive people and have nowhere to privately participate in a video visit, while others may be skeptical of a new platform for accessing health services altogether.
“Many of our community served have a history of medical mistrust and ongoing mistrust of the health care system due to structural discrimination and victimization,” explained Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, director of the Fenway Institute’s National LGBT Health Education Center and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Psychiatry Gender Identity Program.
However, Keuroghlian said there have been some silver linings to Fenway’s new remote offerings. Primarily, many patients are able to access health care from the safety and comfort of their own home without having to venture outside, potentially exposing themselves to anti-LGBTQ abuse — or the coronavirus.
“By and large, I have found it has worked really well,” he said. “I’ve had almost no no-shows in my schedule, and patients are answering the phone very appreciative that we can give them care despite what’s happening.”