Rugby player Israel Folau has drawn anger for linking Australia’s bushfire crisis to the nation’s same-sex marriage and abortion laws. Folau, who was sacked by Australia in May for making anti-gay remarks on social media, described the fires as a “little taste of God’s judgement”.
Six people have died since last month in blazes raging in eastern Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison condemned Folau’s remarks as “appallingly insensitive”.
“He is a free citizen, he can say whatever he likes but that doesn’t mean he can’t have regard to the grievance [and] offence this would have caused to the people whose homes have burnt down,” Mr Morrison told reporters on Monday.
During the 10-minute recording, the 30-year-old says the timing of the bushfire crisis is no coincidence but only a taste of God’s judgment should nothing change. “I’ve been looking around at the events that’s been happening in Australia, this past couple of weeks, with all the natural disasters, the bushfires and the droughts,” he says.
He then reads from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible: “The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.”
Folau links the passage to the twin disasters of bushfire and drought and, in turn, the legalising of same-sex marriage and abortion. “God is speaking to you guys. Australia you need to repent and take these laws and turn it back to what is right.”
As Chick-fil-A expands globally and into more liberal parts of the U.S., the chicken chain plans to change which charities it donates to after years of bad press and protests from the LGBT community.
Beginning next year, Chick-fil-A will move away from its current philanthropic structure, Bisnow has learned. After donating to more than 300 charitable organizations this year, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain will instead focus on three initiatives with one accompanying charity each: education, homelessness and hunger.
“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,” Chick-fil-A President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos said in an interview with Bisnow. “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”
On Thursday, December 5th, 2019 Food For Thought hosts Sonoma County’s 18th annual Dining Out For Life event. This year 75 area restaurants and cafes will participate, donating from 25 to 100 percent of the day’s sales to benefit Food For Thought, a nonprofit organization that provides healing food and nutrition to more than 850 people living with HIV and other serious illnesses in Sonoma County.
“The Dining Out For Life event gives people the opportunity to enjoy a meal at their favorite restaurant, while benefitting their neighbors in need,” said Ron Karp, executive director of Food For Thought. “It is our biggest fundraiser of the year. The proceeds from Dining Out For Life ensure that we are able to continue to provide our life-sustaining services to people living with HIV who are at risk of malnutrition.”
A wide range of restaurants throughout Sonoma County are participating in Dining Out For Life. Diners can enjoy a variety of options from a fast-casual experience to a farm-to-table meal incorporating the best ingredients Sonoma County has to offer. Participating restaurants are located in Bodega Bay, Cotati, Forestville, Geyserville, Guerneville, Healdsburg, Occidental, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Valley Ford and Windsor. For a complete list of participating restaurants visit: FFTfoodbank.org/dofl-restaurants. Whole Foods Market is the presenting sponsor of this year’s Dining Out For Life Sonoma County.
About Food For Thought
Food For Thought is a nonprofit organization that provides healing food and nutrition to more than 850 Sonoma County residents living with HIV and other serious illnesses, who are at risk of malnutrition. Comprehensive nutrition services include healthy groceries (enough for 21 meals per week), prepared meals, nutrition counseling and hands-on healthy cooking classes. Food For Thought’s nutrition services increase the health of its clients, reduce food insecurity, decrease costs to the health care system and improve the lives of hundreds of individuals living in Sonoma County.
About Dining Out For Life
Dining Out For Life is an annual dining fundraising event raising money for community-based organizations serving people living with HIV. It is an international event held in more than 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada.
Pope Francis on Friday compared politicians who use hate speech against LGBTQ people and other minority groups to Adolf Hitler.
“It is not coincidental that at times there is a resurgence of symbols typical of Nazism,” said Francis during an international law conference, according to Reuters. “And I must confess to you that when I hear a speech (by) someone responsible for order or for a government, I think of speeches by Hitler in 1934, 1936,”
“With the persecution of Jews, Gypsies and people with homosexual tendencies, today these actions are typical (and) represent ‘par excellence’ a culture of waste and hate,” added Francis. “That is what was done in those days and today it is happening again.”
Francis made his comments against the backdrop of continued government-sponsored persecution, violence and hate speech based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity in Uganda and dozens of other countries around the world. The Vatican’s tone towards homosexuality and other LGBTQ-specific issues has moderated since Francis assumed the papacy in 2013, but activists have pointed out to the Washington Blade that church teachings on them have not changed.
“It is very important that Pope Francis is speaking out against the resurgence of hate speech that is occurring in many countries, and recognizes that this speech endangers the lives of minorities, including LGBTQ people,” Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, a group of LGBTQ Catholics, told the Blade on Friday in a statement. “I hope that leaders and individuals around the world understand why the Pope is speaking out against this trend, and take stock of their role in creating climates that can lead to violence.”
Duddy-Burke added she hopes “his words are also understood to be applicable within the Church, and that Catholic leaders who say hateful, disparaging and dehumanizing things or act to limit the human rights of LGBTQ people and others immediately change their ways.”
“Ultimately, this kind of statement must lead to a rejection of church teachings that demonize and dehumanize LGBTQ people,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade. “Using words like ‘evil’ or ‘disordered’ when speaking about us must end.”
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based group that ministers to LGBTQ Catholics, in a statement described Francis’ statement as a “long time coming.”
“This simple message will save lives, protect people from harm, help keep families together and work towards eradicating hateful attitudes,” said DeBernardo. “When the Pope speaks, people listen — regardless of faith or political leanings.”
“It is especially important to hear these words from the Pope Francis’ mouth because much of the persecution against LGBTQ people occurs in nations with a strong Catholic population, often with the approval of local Catholic bishops,” added DeBernardo.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Wednesday submitted a letter to HIV drugmaker Gilead Science’s board of directors demanding a shareholder “clawback” policy. The shareholder proposal, if approved by the board, would empower the board to “recoup” some of the money paid to top Gilead executives, like CEO Daniel O’Day.
Stringer, as comptroller of America’s largest city, is responsible for administering New York City’s vast pension funds, estimated in June to comprise $208 billion in investments. Acting as a fiduciary for the funds’ exposure to stocks like Gilead’s, Stringer also represents a large number of the pharma giant’s shareholders. New York City’s pension funds pay the city’s retired teachers, firefighters, police officers and other municipal workers.
The clawback, Stringer said, is in response to allegations — including those made in a class action lawsuit filed in May — that the company engaged in anti-competitive practices in order to charge “exorbitant prices” for its lifesaving HIV drugs. In particular, Gilead is accused of withholding a safer version of tenofovir from the market. Tenofovir is a family of drugs that comprises the backbone of Gilead’s multibillion-dollar suite of HIV treatment and prevention medicines, such as Stribild, Biktarvy and Truvada, which is commonly known as PrEP — or HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis.
“Ethics matter — and companies should hold their employees accountable when they commit misconduct,” Stringer said in a statement. “There is strong evidence that suggests Gilead purposefully raised drug prices to exorbitant levels — and that people living with HIV were denied the medicine they need to survive. It’s outrageous and now the company is facing long-term consequences.”
New York City’s comptroller’s office has proposed 18 clawbacks since 2014, and 11 were enacted. Stringer pointed to his office’s successful effort to recoup Wells Fargo executive pay after it was shown that the company defrauded customers by opening accounts without their knowledge.
In a statement emailed to NBC News, Gilead spokesman Ryan McKeel said the company has “received the proposal and will evaluate it.”
Part of the proposed resolution sent to Gilead’s board notes that the company “is the subject of U.S. congressional and other federal investigations alleging anti-competitive practices to prevent the entry of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) drugs into the market, and the U.S. government has sued Gilead alleging patent infringement relating to its HIV drugs.”
The proposal also alleges that Gilead worked with other companies to “unlawfully extend patent protection” and slow the entry of competitively priced generic HIV drugs to market.
“Such circumstances cause financial and reputational harm,” the proposal reads. “As long-term shareholders, we believe compensation policies should promote sustainable value creation.”
Activists with the PrEP4All Collaboration have for over a year argued that Gilead improperly claimed patent protection — and the right to set a high list price for Truvada tablets exclusively sold by Gilead — since PrEP was approved in 2012. A lawsuit filed this month against Gilead shows that the Department of Health and Human Services agrees with the PrEP4All position, and if Gilead’s patent protections are invalidated by a judge, the HIV-prevention treatment could potentially be made more widely available, a key goal of the Trump administration’s plan to end the HIV epidemic.
Peter Staley, a longtime HIV activist and a plaintiff named in the lawsuit Stringer cited in his letter to Gilead’s board, predicted the clawback resolution would fail but said he “wholeheartedly” endorses the sentiment.
“O’Day lied multiple times to Congress, and his arrogance towards the American taxpayers’ contributions to ending AIDS will cost his company dearly,” Staley said in a statement to NBC News. “Institutional stockholders of Gilead are in for a shock as Staley v Gilead and United States v Gilead play out.”
In May, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., grilled O’Day over the high price of Truvada.
“The list price is almost $2,000 in the United States. Why is it $8 in Australia?” Ocasio-Cortez asked, after noting the company made $3 billion in revenue off the once-a-day pill in 2018.
O’Day responded that “Truvada still has patent protection in the United States, and in the rest of the world it is generic.” He noted that the drug is set to be generically available in the U.S. in September 2020.
“There’s no reason this should be $2,000 a month,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who had pushed for the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. “People are dying because of it, and there’s no enforceable reason for it.”
A ‘Christian’ printing company in Alabama, US, has refused to print an issue of a college magazine because it contains content about LGBT+ people.
Interstate Printing representatives cite their “First Amendment Right” to refuse to print images of drag queens, queer folk, disabled students and people of various religious beliefs on the grounds of religion.
University of South Alabama magazine Due South was denied printing by the Mobile company because their latest issue, which discusses diversity, does not align with their values.
Sydney McDonald, managing editor of the student-ran publication, first broke the story on Due South on Thursday.
Defiant editors have not let themselves be detracted, however, and have sought printing from a different company instead.
Ahead of their Fall 2019 issue, Due South editors were busy approving copy and editing images. With the finished version completed, it was sent to the printers on Wednesday.
“They emailed me back and said they would be exercising their right to decline printing this issue because it does not adhere to their Christian values and they hope to print with us in the future,” said editor-in-chief Sara Boone to AL.com.
The 21-year-old added: “It’s very ironic for me because this particular issue of Due South is a special topics issue on diversity and inclusion.
“And it’s the very first special topics issue that we have ever produced.
“For them to decline printing it because it’s so diverse and the content is incredibly ironic.”
Printing company goes cold over magazine expressing ‘freedom of lifestyles’.
Rupturing the magazine’s seven year-long relationship with the printing company, Boone explained that the company had quoted $5,000 for 3,500 copies of the magazine.
“As the magazine expresses freedom of lifestyles, we must express our freedom by declining to print on the principle that we are a Christian company that does not adhere to the content,” Tracy Smith of Interstate Printing wrote in the email.
“We value the 40-plus years relationship we have with the University of South Alabama, and look forward to continuing our work with USA on other print and mail service projects.”
Interstate Printing’s front-page has a Bible verse on it. It reads: “We are a Christian company that will serve the Lord God Almighty in any way we can.”
The company aims to achieve this by printing bridal magazines or flyers for a local high-school football game, sponsored by Reece’s Pieces.
This isn’t the first time a religion printers has rejected printing material containing LGBT+ content.
In Illinois earlier this year, a print shop denied printing a queer charity’s brochure claiming it “promoted” the gay lifestyle.
For the first time, the LGBT+ community in Hong Kong has been banned by police from marching in its annual Pride parade amidst violent protests in the city.
According to South China Morning Post, organisers of the march were told that the event on Saturday November 16 would be reduced to a standstill gathering.
Director of the parade’s organising committee, Yeo Wai-wai, said the police had informed them just 48 hours before the event, rather than the usual month in advance, so they were left with little time to inform guests.
The police cited disruption in other areas amidst violent protests against the now withdrawn 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill as the cause of the ban.
Yeo Wai-wai said: “The police have been clamping down on freedom. Sexual minorities are no exception.”
She added the annual event, which has been running since 2008, has never before faced a ban by police because it is known for being peaceful and inclusive. The only time the march has not taken place since its inception was in 2010 because of a lack of resources.
The government has also imposed a mask ban to deter violent protesters, but this could discourage people joining the Pride event as LGBT+ people who have not come out to their family and friends often wear masks to protect their identities.
The parade regularly includes lawmakers and diplomats, and Yeo Wai-wai said: “There is a chance that they could not make it because of such a late confirmation.”
Hong Kong’s only openly gay lawmaker Raymond Chan Chi-chuen said that a Pride march has nothing to do with the current political unrest.
He added: “Does that mean the city will no longer have any marches now?”
Amnesty International Hong Kong described the court’s ruling as “a bitter blow” to Hong Kong’s LGBT+ community, who had hoped the city would follow the lead of Taiwan, which recently became the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage.
Right after the Weather, Carol Anshaw’s fifth book, opens in a warehouse in Chicago, where Cate, a forty-something set designer, searches for the perfect desk to “pump up the visuals” of the play she’s currently working on, a play that, in her colleague’s words, “sucks.”
This moment sets the scene for what plays out over the course of the novel. Cate is good at her job, and has stayed in the profession as her “cohort of theater friends… came and went along”—getting married and having children and acquiring steady jobs. She has a nice-enough apartment, though her ex-husband is currently camped out in her spare bedroom recovering from a breakup by obsessing over conspiracy theories. She’s dating a woman she really wants to be “the one” despite the obvious warning signs, and attempting—unsuccessfully—to disentangle herself from an ongoing love affair. All of which is to say, she knows she’s adrift and each effort to anchor herself only pushes her further adrift.
The one sturdy thing in Cate’s life is her long-time friendship with Neale. Neale is beautiful, and sweet, and Cate adores her. So when Cate walks into Neale’s home one afternoon to pick her up for yoga class and discovers a couple of local drug addicts assaulting Neale, the resulting violence irrevocably alters both of their lives, as well as their friendship.
Because fate is as kind as it is cruel, the assault occurs in the same breath as Cate being selected by two lesbian playwrights to put up the set for their next New York show. This unexpected coup has the potential to finally launch Cate’s career—but it also provides an emotional (and physical) escape from the trauma she and Neale lived through in Chicago. Though it is her “big break,” the event and the resulting time away echo Cate’s inability to resolve anything in her life. When she wakes the morning after the assault, “She understands she has arrived on another side of everything. No one is over here with her.” What she claims to want and what she pursues remain at odds.
Set in late 2016 through early 2017, Right after the Weather captures a world in midst of crisis. Politics play a role in the book, along the edges—these characters are upset about the recent election, they worry about the turns the world might take—they are aware that the easy lives they have long led are under threat.
But the novel isn’t about politics, not really. It is about the psychology of ordinary people who are put through extraordinary circumstances. Anshaw’s sentences are beautiful, and her characters are complex; the plot builds towards a slow climax, which then falls into a slow spin and a somewhat abrupt finale. Anshaw’s meticulous attention to the quiet, inevitable impact of the assault on Cate’s life and her friendship with Neale’s gives Right after the Weather its main drive. But despite her best intentions, Cate cannot alter the course that fate has set her on.
Right after the Weather is a sensuous and layered book. Though its pacing is subtle, Anshaw is a deft writer and her details are insightful, intelligent, astute, and subtly humorous. Cate—who may seem hapless to some—perhaps merely lacks the insight to see that the artistic, if sometimes aimless, course of her life is actually a beautiful meander. She remains true to herself, even when it looks ridiculous to those around her. In the final scene, a ripple of an epiphany blows through her—not enough to change her, but perhaps enough to allow her to see she’s doing just fine.
Right after the Weather By Carol Anshaw Atria Books Hardcover, 9781476747798, 272 pp. October 2019
The head of the LGBTQ Victory Institute blamed fundamentalism, populism and nationalism as three factors “eroding democracies” Wednesday night at the welcome reception for its annual conference for international LGBTQ leaders.
Annise Parker, CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund & Victory Institute, said the remarks at the event at the Atlantic Council in a speech welcoming attendees to the 2019 International LGBTQ Leaders Conference.
Parker, asserting LGBTQ people are facing challenges around the globe, said places once considered safe havens have ramped up “marginalization, discrimination and violence” against them.
“I daresay the United States at one point seemed to be on the way to being a safe haven, and we have taken some big steps backward recently,” Parker said. “Fundamentalism, populism and nationalism are eroding democracies from Europe to the Americas and legitimate concerns of citizens are being exploited to target immigrants, people of color, LGBTQI and others who they deem different.”
Parker made the remarks at the end of the first day of the conference, which featured panels on the state of the LGBTQ community at international level. One panel discussed the state of LGBTQ rights in Brazil, where anti-LGBTQ Jair Bolsonaro was recently elected president.
Despite her dire assessment, Parker said “there are really reasons to be optimistic,” citing the election of the first openly gay man and first openly HIV positive person as a lawmaker in Guatemala and the election of the first openly LGBTQI person as mayor of Bogota, Columbia.
In the United States, President Trump has embraced nationalism as a major theme for his administration, using it to justify a more isolationist foreign policy and harsh immigration practices. In a recent speech at the United Nations, Trump said “the future does not belong to the globalists.”
Despite widespread opposition from LGBTQ and civil rights groups, the U.S. Senate confirmed on Thursday a judicial nominee selected by President Trump who as legal counsel in the White House worked with anti-immigrant hawk Stephen Miller.
The Senate narrowly confirmed Steven Menashi to a seat on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 51-41.
A Stanford-educated lawyer who clerked for U.S. Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Menashi most recently worked for the Trump administration, first as a general counsel for the Department of Education, then with Miller at the White House.
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) was among the senators who took to the floor Wednesday to oppose the confirmation of Menashi, arguing he “lacks even the most basic courtroom experience.”
Among other things, Durbin took issue with Menashi’s work with Stephen Miller at the time the travel ban on Muslim countries went into effect, Department of Education policy denying loan relief to students who attended private colleges and pushing for Title IX rules lessening the burden for the accuser in sexual assaults cases on college campuses.
“The Senate should have grave reservations about advancing a nominee to the Second Circuit who currently works in the White House but would not disclose under oath what he does, who has minimal courtroom experience, who has a record of giving troubling legal advice and who has a history of expressing views which were entirely out of the mainstream,” Durbin said.
Defending Menashi on the Senate floor was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
“Even the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which has lately — lately made headlines for treating President Trump’s nominees in a less-than-even handed way, has rated this nominee ‘well-qualified,’” McConnell said.
Menashi is the descendant of Jewish immigrants who fled Iraq and Ukraine for the United States. His maternal grandparents were among the estimated 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust.
Civil rights groups objected to Menashi on the basis he demonstrated hostility to abortion rights, diversity groups for minority students on campus and the Muslim community.
Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement after Menashi’s confirmation “another extremist anti-LGBTQ nominee” put forward by Trump was confirmed to the bench “with the help of Senate Republicans.”
“Steven Menashi has made a career of promoting anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and has used whatever platform he’s handed — from his college newspaper, to legal publications, to a seat at the table at the White House — to undermine our community’s fight for equality,” David said.
Key among the complaints from LGBTQ groups on Menashi was his work as a legal counsel at the Department of Education, where he served when the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era Title IX guidance requiring schools to allow transgender kids to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity.
Prior to the Trump administration, Menashi wrote an article for the Jewish publication Mosaic Magazine in defense of small business owners, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop, that refusing to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples.
“Who, after all, would want to hire a wedding photographer unable to appreciate the ceremony, especially where alternatives are readily available? No one, really,” Menashi wrote. “For the plaintiffs and state regulators in these cases, the apparent motive is not to insure access to photography services or wedding cakes — which could be and were purchased elsewhere — but to vindicate a principle about the status of the photographer’s or the baker’s religious beliefs.”
“In retrospect, criticism of the Human Rights Campaign was unfair,” Menashi wrote. “The murder of Matthew Shepard was a horrifying crime, and it is appropriate for the Human Rights Campaign to call attention to a crime motivated by hatred. I regret the suggestion that it was improper.”
Menashi, however, wouldn’t take back a 2000 writing when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was into effect arguing LGBTQ advocates are hypocritical for wanting housing specific to LGBTQ students on college campuses and openly LGBTQ service in the U.S. military.
In the letter coordinated by Lambda Legal, the 20 legal groups criticized Menashi for refusing to back down on this assertion, asserting it reveals he wouldn’t act impartially as a judge.
“The fact that Mr. Menashi is unable to distinguish between an affirmative policy establishing optional housing for LGBT students where their identities would be affirmed and where they could have some assurance of safety from harassment,” the letter says, “and a discriminatory government policy denying LGB people the opportunity to serve their country based on the prejudice or discomfort of others (whether framed as privacy or ‘unit cohesion’ arguments) is highly revealing of how Mr. Menashi would approach issues affecting LGBT litigants, and causes us grave concern that we would be unable to administer justice in a fair and impartial manner.”
The Blade has placed a request in with the White House seeking comment on opposition to Menashi’s confirmation by LGBTQ and civil rights groups.
The U.S. Senate has confirmed more than 160 judicial nominees nominated by Trump, many of whom with anti-LGBTQ records.