Deb Price, a trailblazing lesbian journalist who helped open America’s eyes to LGBT+ lives, has died aged 62.
Price made history when she started writing a column for the Detroit News in 1992 exclusively focusing on gay issues, becoming the first columnist nationwide to do so.
The legendary journalist died on 20 November in Hong Kong from interstitial pneumonitis, an autoimmune condition that causes damage to the lungs.
Price’s wife, Joyce Murdoch, told the Bay Area Reporter that she was diagnosed with the condition 13-years-ago and that it “gradually diminished her lung capacity”.
Murdoch said Price “lived life fully” and continued working at the South China Morning Post right up until she was hospitalised in September as her condition worsened.
There has been an outpouring of grief after trailblazing lesbian journalist Deb Price died.
There has been an outpouring of grief from those who knew and loved Price, with many former co-workers and editors praising her as a trailblazing figure unafraid to tackle LGBT+ issues in her work.
Bob Giles, the editor and publisher who commissioned Price’s first gay-themed column, told the Detroit News: “She gave us a stack [of columns] that were really well done and they seemed to fit into the idea that it was a changing world and Deb had a capacity for expressing that.”
Reflecting on her incredible legacy, Joshua Benton, founder of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter: “I am very sorry to report the death of Deb Price, a tremendous journalist, a Nieman Fellow (Class of 2011), and a real trailblazer for LGBTQ people in newsrooms and around the country.”
Benton said it was “hard to overestimate” how significant her column was.
“This was long before the internet gave Americans a window into any topic or community they wanted. Most people got a huge share of their information about the world from the local daily and local TV news.
“Most Americans in 1992 said they didn’t know a single gay person. Then suddenly there was Deb, on the breakfast table next to the sports section.
“She wasn’t just running in New York City and San Francisco, either – she was reaching people in red states too.”
Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.
Benton shared images of just some of the abuse Price received in letters to the editor written in response to her column, with one reader saying she was “breaking God’s laws”, while another said the newspaper was “morally wrong” to publish her words.
However, he also shared letters written to the editor showing the love LGBT+ readers showed her, while other straight readers thanked the newspaper for educating them on a topic they had not previously understood.
Dana Nessel, attorney general of Michigan, also mourned Price’s death, writing on Twitter: “I was one of your regular readers. Thank you for making me feel less alone and hopeful for a world that might one day embrace LGBTQ people instead of loathing us.
“Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.”
Nate Hurst, a political journalist, also heaped praise on Price’s legacy, writing: “Deb Price was the first coworker I came out to – before I had the courage to tell my friends and family. She also showed me the ropes on Capitol Hill. Deb was a fierce reporter, a humble trailblazer, and an unstoppable force for good in the world.
“She is very much missed.”
Price and her wife later compiled her columns and published them in a book titled And Say Hi to Joyce. They dedicated the book to “all the gay readers who’ve put 25 cents in a newspaper box and found nothing reflecting their own lives inside.”
Speaking to Associated Press in 1992 about her first column, Price said she asked readers how she should “introduce Joyce” to others. A reader suggested that she should introduce Joyce as her “partner in perversity”.
“I think it’s really important for me to remember (and) for other people to remember that if there weren’t hostility and if there weren’t misunderstandings about gay people, there would be no point in doing this column,” she said at the time.
The autumn COVID-19 surge has now spread not only through major urban areas like Los Angeles but across California and even to the far northern rural reaches of the state, a troubling sign as the state faces its greatest challenge from the pandemic yet.
A Los Angeles Times data analysis found that most California counties are now suffering their worst coronavirus daily case rates of the entire COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing even the summer surge that had forced officials to roll back the state’s first reopening in the late spring.
The data suggest California will face new problems in December if the unprecedented rise in cases continues. In earlier phases of the pandemic, different parts of California could help harder-hit areas, like San Diego County and San Francisco taking in patients from Imperial County. But that could be difficult in this wave, with the pandemic worsening in most places across California simultaneously.
“We can’t depend on our counties next to us because they are under the same stress and strain,” said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the Santa Clara County COVID-19 testing officer. “They can’t provide us with beds in their counties. So we are on our own. And our hospitals are hurting at this point.”
The Times analysis also demonstrates how the coronavirus has managed to break free from densely packed neighborhoods in urban areas and farming communities in agricultural valleys, where the virus infected essential workers — many of them Latino — who had no choice but leave home to work.
Now, infections are spreading faster in other communities. In Marin County, health officer Dr. Matt Willis said the pandemic has moved from just hitting predominantly Latino communities. Now, in just the last month, “the majority of cases are among our white residents,” Willis said.
“We’re finding a greater proportion of those cases among people who are gathering indoors, and might have a more reasonable option to avoid those exposures, because they’re based on personal choices,” Willis told the Board of Supervisors. “It’s most discouraging that that’s what is driving it — but also encouraging because we think those are behaviors that people have more control over, because it’s not a matter of economic necessity.”
In just the last week, record average daily coronavirus case rates have hit L.A. and other hot spots like San Bernardino and San Diego counties, the Times’ analysis found, which have already received much attention in recent weeks as hospitals have begun to fill and where, in some cases, the daily death toll has risen. The crisis has only become exponentially worse in recent weeks.
Many other counties are also seeing record highs in their average daily case rate observed just the last week, according to the Times analysis, including Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Sacramento, San Mateo, Solano, and Santa Cruz. Counties across Northern California have also posted record highs in recent days, such as Napa County; Yolo County, home of the University of California, Davis; Nevada, Placer and El Dorado counties, which sprawl from the state capital’s suburbs to Lake Tahoe; and sparsely populated Mariposa County, home to Yosemite Valley.
In all, more than 23 million Californians, living in 31 counties, are currently in what’s shaping up to be the worst wave of the pandemic, the Times analysis found.
Across California, the seven-day average of daily coronavirus cases have more than quadrupled since mid-October, from less than 3,000 a day to nearly 14,000 a day as of Wednesday. In just two weeks, average daily deaths have doubled: every day, 74 Californian COVID-19 deaths are reported on average as of Wednesday, up from an average of 38 a day.
Gay love letters written by Polish composer Frédéric Chopin were deliberately mistranslated by historians to conceal his sexuality, a music journalist has claimed.
According to The Guardian, Swiss music journalist Moritz Weber had been researching letters written by Chopin during lockdown earlier this year when he discovered a “flood of declarations of love aimed at men”.
His findings were explored in the two-hour radio show Chopin’s Men, aired on the arts channel of Swiss broadcaster SRF, and Weber insisted that some of the composer’s writing must have been intentionally mistranslated.
In one letter, Chopin said that rumours about his love affairs were a “cloak for hidden feelings”, and his writing also hints at an interest in “cottaging”, or looking for sex in public toilets.
In one letter to a male school friend, he wrote: “You don’t like being kissed. Please allow me to do so today. You have to pay for the dirty dream I had about you last night.”
There are 22 letters on record from Chopin to the same friend, Tytus Woyciechowski, and he often began them with “my dearest life”, and signed off: “Give me a kiss, dearest lover.”
But the English-Canadian biographer Alan Walker insisted in his 2018 book Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times that the homoerotic love letters penned by Chopin were the result of “psychological confusion”, and added that Woyciechowski was a “bosom friend”.
Chopin gay love letter was edited to suggest it was about a woman.
In an 1829 letter to Woyciechowski, Chopin wrote: “My ideal, whom I faithfully serve, […] about whom I dream.”
However a translation of the letters published by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, Poland, described his “ideal” as a woman, despite the original letter using the masculine version of the Polish noun.
A spokesperson from the institute spoke on the radio show, and admitted that there was no actual proof that Chopin had had relationships with women, only rumours and accounts from family members.
The translator of the 1829 letter told The Guardian: “He was a romantic who definitely didn’t discriminate between men and women in his expressions of ‘love’. But to say that there is some sort of conspiracy behind ‘missing’ letters in the various critical editions is absurd.
“The institute is indeed a politically conservative organisation, but I didn’t find any bowdlerisation in the Polish edition, nor any ‘correction’ of my notes to passages where Chopin’s sexuality was concerned.”
Whether or not the editing of Chopin’s love life was intentional, Weber said he hopes that shining a light on his sexuality will help people better understand his music.
In a letter Woyciechowski, Chopin wrote: “I confide in the piano the things that I sometimes want to say to you.”
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been running for 96 years, but 2020 saw the first-ever performance for an all LGBT+ marching band.
The Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps (LGBAC) was formed in 1979, a decade after the Stonewall uprising, and has been applying to take part in the New York parade for years.
However this year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade organisers made the decision to limit the number of participants and only select local bands from New York and the tri-state area to perform.
The restrictions meant that the LGBAC finally got their chance to perform in the parade, watched by more than 20 million people across the country, with one band member describing the opportunity as “bucket list material”.
The all-queer band performed “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=lilylwakefield&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1331995857156263936&lang=en-gb&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk%2F2020%2F11%2F28%2Flgbt-marching-band-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade-lesbian-gay-big-apple-corps%2F&siteScreenName=PinkNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px
The marching band’s artistic director Marita Begley told NBC New York: “There are families out there in middle America, throughout the country, that are going to see this and it’s going to give hope to young people who are questioning their sexuality, their gender.”
Founding band member Joe Avena added: “People will see that we’re part of them, and part of their lives, and part of what they love.”
Members of the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps march the Annual Mermaid Parade Held In Coney Island on June 22, 2019 in New York City. (Kena Betancur/Getty)
Begley, who joined the LGBT+ marching band in the 1980s, described the LGBAC’s brand of “quiet activism” in an interview with The Atlantic.
She said: “We were quiet activists. No one would invite ACT UP to their parade. But small towns were inviting the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps to march in their Fourth of July parade.”
Begley described attending local parades, and how it would slowly dawn on those watching that the marching band had all LGBT+ members. Some, she said, would give a thumbs down, but others just kept clapping.
She said: “It was almost subversive to use the most mom-and-apple-pie, all-American of mediums, the marching band, to open minds. It really is.”
With COVID-19 cases continuing to spike around the world, most events for World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 have been moved to virtual formats to continue bringing awareness to the AIDS epidemic.
The World AIDS Day organization has scheduled a virtual panel discussion for 9 a.m. on Tuesday with professionals in the field of HIV prevention and treatment to share how communities can reduce the stigma and impact of the disease. On the panel will be Assistant Professor at the University of Florida Richelle Joe, Community Liaison for Janssen Scientific Affairs Samuel Quintero, and Adam Troy, prevention manager at an Orlando-based nonprofit, Hope and Help.
CAMP Rehoboth is slated to hold one of the only in-person events in the region with a World AIDS Day Candlelight Vigil and Service of Remembrance and Hope in Rehoboth Beach.
“This event has been a December tradition in Rehoboth Beach since the mid-1990s and no way is COVID going to stop us from remembering this important day,” the organization said in a statement on its website.
The vigil will start at 7 p.m. and attendees can participate in the candlelight drive-up vigil to watch from the safety of their cars. The service and reading of the names will be held under the outdoor portico at Epworth Methodist Church on Holland Glade Road in Rehoboth. The entire event will also be live streamed on CAMP Rehoboth’s Facebook page. If participants would like to add a name to be read during the service, the organization asks that they call them at 302-227-5620.
Several chapters of Delta Sigma Theta are banding together to host a “Rock the Ribbon” virtual panel presentation on Tuesday to commemorate World AIDS Day. Those who wish to attend can register for the 6:30 p.m. event online.
Youth Stop AIDS — a U.K.-based nonprofit — has scheduled a screening of “After 82: The Untold Story of the AIDS Crisis in the UK,” a documentary focusing on personal stories of the AIDS crisis in the UK. The film features interviews with actor Jonathan Blake who lived with AIDS for more than 30 years. The screening is scheduled for Nov. 29 starting at 12:30 p.m. EST.
AIDS Delaware will stage a free, virtual panel discussion on Dec. 5 with panelists who are currently living with HIV/AIDS and can speak on how the virus has impacted their lives. The panel, which starts at 1 p.m., will feature activist and author Tez Anderson, activist and motivational speaker Hydeia Broadbent, and Emmy Award-winning author Marvelyn Brown.
Anderson coined the term AIDS Survivor Syndrome—ASS—to describe the effects of living with HIV/AIDS in the long term. He also founded Let’s Kick ASS, a San Francisco-based group designed to empower long-term HIV survivors and help them connect with one another. He also coined the term AIDS Survivor Syndrome to describe the effects of living with HIV/AIDS in the long term.
Broadbent was diagnosed with AIDS at age three and now spends her time raising awareness of the virus by promoting safe-sex practices. She became a public speaker at age six and over the next thirty years, she’s appeared in the New York Times, People, the Oprah Show, and Teen People. Ebony Magazine named Broadbent one of the most influential African Americans in 2008 and 2011.
Brown has spoken at hundreds of colleges, universities, and conferences around the world to spread her story of contracting HIV when she was 19. She’s been featured on CNN’s Black America, Frontline’s Endgame, and America’s Next Top Model. In 2007, she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding National Public Service Announcement.
A gay staffer has been appointed to a powerful role by president-elect Joe Biden.
The incoming leader, who this week received the official go-ahead for his transition to power, has been hard at work setting up the team of top officials who will fill his White House.
As he makes a number of cabinet posts and high-profile appointments, Biden has tapped a prominent gay staffer for an important role.
Gay staffer Carlos Elizondo tapped for top White House role
Carlos Elizondo has been named the social secretary for the incoming White House, after previously filling a similar role for Biden for all eight years of his vice presidency under Barack Obama.
The role places him in charge of planning, coordination and execution of official social events at the White House.
Biden said in a statement dated Friday (20 November): “I’m proud to name additional members of our team who will help deliver the change America needs in these difficult times. Their dedication to overcoming the challenges facing our country today are rooted in their diverse backgrounds and experiences. They will serve the American people and help build back better, creating a more just, equitable, and united nation.”
Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain added: “To bring president-elect Biden and vice president-elect Harris’ agenda to life you must have a boundless team of experts ready for day one.
“Today’s appointees are respected leaders who will bring a commitment to serving the American people each and every day. They will support our work to build an administration and White House that represents America and delivers results.”
Joe Biden’s incoming White House social secretary Carlos Elizondo
Elizondo, who has previously worked in events at Georgetown University and Walt Disney World, currently lives with his partner in Washington DC.
Joe Biden administration could have a number of high-ranking LGBT+ staffers
The staffer is likely to be far from the only out figure in a senior White House role. Karine Jean-Pierre, currently chief of staff to vice president-elect Kamala Harris, could become the first out lesbian and first Black woman to be named White House press secretary.
Dr Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s secretary of health and one of the most senior trans officials in the US, has also been touted as an outside chance at a healthcare role.
Meanwhile, former presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is said to be in the running for a potential cabinet appointment, though several of the higher-ranking roles he was initially touted for, such as ambassador to the United Nations, have since been filled with picks prioritising policy experience.
Germany’s government has approved legislation that will offer €3,000 in compensation for gay military personnel who have experienced discrimination.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, said: “I know that we can’t make up for the personal injustice they suffered but, with the lifting of verdicts and the payment of lump-sum compensation, we want to send a signal of redress.”
The new legislation aims to “restore the dignity of these people who wanted nothing other than to serve Germany”, according to Kramp-Karrenbauer.
The legislation still requires paliamentary approval, but Kramp-Karrenbauer is optimistic about getting the support of lawmakers. She hopes to “rehabilitate and compensate those affected next year”.
The ministry previously commissioned a study and found “systemic discrimination” in the military from 1955 to 2000. This included both West Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, and the military of reunited Germany from 1990.
The study found that homosexuality was “viewed as a security risk in the Bundeswehr until the turn of the millennium and made a career as an officer or non-commissioned officer impossible”.
The new legislation will also cover victims of discrimination in East Germany’s National People’s Army. Kramp-Karrenbauer said this was “an important signal” because 2020 marks 30 years since the reunification of Germany.
The government will offer €3,000 in compensation to personnel who received military court verdicts for consensual gay sex. Soldiers who were dismissed, denied for promotions or put under investigation will also be eligible for compensation.
In September, Kramp-Karrenbauer apologised to those who suffered discrimination.
The defence minister said: “I very much regret the practice of discrimination against homosexuals in the Bundeswehr, which stood for the policy of that time. I apologize to those who suffered because of it.”
This comes after the UK Ministry of Defence apologised for similar policies in January. However, the UK has not yet introduced an official compensation scheme for those dismissed from the military on grounds of their sexual orientation.
More than 150 people have sought compensation in the UK, though its thought the true number affected is likely to run into the thousands.
Rudolf Scharping, previously Germany’s defence minister, ended official discrimination in 2000 after an officer took a legal case to Germany’s highest court having been removed from his position. Scharping stated: “Homosexuality does not constitute grounds for restrictions in terms of assignment or status.”
A constitutional amendment before the Hungarian Parliament would effectively ban LGBTQ people from adopting, drawing the ire of human rights activists.
Draft language submitted to parliament this month by Justice Minister Judit Varga states that children must be raised “in accordance with the values based on our homeland’s constitutional identity and Christian culture.”
“The basis for family relations is marriage,” it reads in part. “The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
Under the amendment, only opposite-sex married couples would be eligible to adopt children, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis by Minister of Family Affairs Katalin Novák. The bill effectively bans gay couples, single people and unmarried straight couples from adopting.
It also asserts that the government “protects children’s right to the gender identity they were born with.”
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Brussels on July 17, 2020.John Thys / Pool via Reuters, file
LGBTQ advocates view the proposals, which are expected to pass next month, as yet another assault by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s right-wing party, Fidesz, which has been in power since 2010 and maintains a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
A new constitution enacted in 2012 defines marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman and asserts that the traditional family is “the basis of the survival of the nation.”
Gay people “can do what they want, but they cannot get their marriages recognized by the state,” Orbán said in 2016 interview. “An apple cannot ask to be called a pear.”
In 2019, the speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly, László Kövér, compared same-sex couples wanting to adopt or marry to pedophiles. “Morally, there is no difference,” said Kövér, a founding member of Fidesz and a close ally of Orbán.
Senior party officials even called for a boycott of Coca-Cola when it launched an LGBTQ-inclusive ad campaign that summer. In May, the government reversed regulations allowing transgender and intersex citizens to change the gender listed on legal documents. The new regulations redefined the word “nem” — which in Hungarian can mean either “sex” or “gender” — to refer specifically to a person’s biological sex at birth “based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.”
The law puts trans and intersex people “at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence in daily situations when they need to use identity documents,” according to Human Rights Watch.
Another new proposal would abolish the Equal Treatment Authority, an autonomous agency tasked with investigating discrimination based on sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and other factors.
Some responsibilities would be taken over by the commissioner for fundamental rights, Ákos Kozma, an Orbán loyalist who’s been largely silent on LGBTQ issues. ILGA-Europe, a leading European rights group, said the sole purpose of transferring control to Kozma is to “reduce the efficacy” of anti-discrimination policies.
These measures come as Hungary, like the rest of the world, is battling a deadly pandemic. Tamás Dombos, a board member for the Hatter Society, Hungary’s oldest and largest gay rights group, said the timing is strategic.
“Now the debate focuses on this issue rather than how bad the government is handling the pandemic or the changes they want to make to the electoral process,” Dombos told NBC News. “They create this noise so the opposition can’t focus on one issue.”
The ban on legal recognition of transgender people was passed just as the pandemic’s first wave hit Hungary. To date, the country of 9.8 million has reported 157,000 cases of Covid-19 and 3,380 deaths.
“The government has used the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to grab unlimited power and is using Parliament to rubber-stamp problematic nonpublic-health-related bills,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday.
The new amendments were presented on Nov. 10, the same day Parliament voted to extend a coronavirus-related state of emergency that Orbán had declared a week earlier.
Not only do they further stigmatize transgender people and same-sex couples raising children, Dombos said, they also make outreach to LGBTQ youth nearly impossible.
But the attacks on the LGBTQ community aren’t limited to the corridors of the Hungarian Parliament. “A Fairy Tale for Everyone,” a Hungarian children’s book with well-known tales incorporating gay people and other marginalized groups, was met with a barrage of homophobic vitriol when it was published in September. A leading Fidesz politician tore apart a copy page by page at a news conference, and a petition demanding it be removed from stores garnered more than 85,000 signatures.
“Hungarians are patient and tolerant” of homosexuality, he said. “We also tolerate provocation well, but there is a red line that cannot be crossed.”
The book’s authors, Dorottya Redai and Boldizsár Nagy, said they were disturbed by Orbán’s rhetoric. “When a prime minister says something like this … others will think they can also,” they told Time magazine.
Dombos said while he hasn’t seen physical violence, people on the street are getting more vocal. “Now you get called names. They shout, ‘Hey f—-t!’ That never happened before,” he said. “They feel encouraged now.”
Last month, Redai told Time that a large poster declaring, “Homosexual propaganda publication, which is dangerous for children, is sold here,” was draped outside a bookstore selling “A Fairy Tale for Everyone.”
Even a cosmopolitan city like Budapest, one of the first in Eastern Europe to hold a Pride march, hasn’t been immune. In August, a rainbow flag displayed outside City Hall was ripped down and thrown in the garbage.
Előd Novák, party leader of the extremist group Mi Hazánk, took credit for the vandalism, declaring that the “anti-family symbol has no place on the street.”
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony had been the first to fly the symbol of the LGBTQ community on city property.
Days earlier, nationalist football fans calling themselves Aryan Greens reportedly set fire to a Pride flag outside another municipal building and replaced it with a banner for their favorite team.
The increasing homophobia has had a chilling effect on Hungary’s LGBTQ community.
“The general strategy for people is to stay in the closet,” Dombos said. “More than half aren’t out to their family, and only about 20 percent are out at work.” It has also pushed some to leave the country.
“The reasons why people emigrate are complex, but many LGBTQ people say dealing with discrimination and homophobic language day after day was an important factor,” Dombos said. “It’s quite easy to leave within the E.U. — you can go to Germany or other European countries where the jobs are better and there’s more acceptance.”
For those who stay and fight, countering a party with two-thirds majority is difficult under normal circumstances. During the pandemic, activists can’t have demonstrations, meet with politicians or even even hold in-person gatherings.
“We try to gather online, but it’s just not the same,” Dombos said.
Just days after Hungary announced the latest proposed amendments, the European Union’s executive commission announced its first formal strategy to protect the rights of LGBTQ citizens.
“We will defend the rights of LGBT people against those who have more and more appetite to attack them from an ideological point of view,” E.U. Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said Nov. 13 at a news conference. “This belongs to the authoritarian playbook, and it does not have a place in the E.U.”
The strategy proposes adding anti-gay hate crimes to the list of offenses for which the E.U. could set minimum penalties, including terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering. It would also protect the legal status of same-sex married couples in all member states and tie funding to compliance with E.U. anti-discrimination laws.
Hungary’s Justice Minister Judit Varga attends an EU General Affairs Council in Brussels on Jan. 28, 2020.Francois Lenoir / Reuters file
Varga, the justice minister, condemned the strategy on Twitter, saying Hungary would “not accept any financial threats for protecting the traditional role of family and marriage.”
In any event, the guidelines aren’t binding on member countries. When dozens of Polish cities declared themselves “LGBT-free zones,”the commission could only deny small amounts of funding to a half-dozen towns.
Orbán has forged ideological ties with Poland in rejecting what he sees as an E.U. agenda. At a World War I memorial ceremony in August, Orbán called on central Europe to unite around its Christian roots.
“Western Europe has given up on a Christian Europe,” he warned, “and instead experiments with a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies.”
So far, Hungary’s response to European Union pressure over human rights has been to veto E.U. legislation. Last week, Hungary and Poland united to veto the E.U.’s trillion-euro budget and coronavirus recovery package, because access is linked to countries’ adherence to the rule of law and European values.
Orbán previously vetoed ratification of an E.U. treaty on violence against women and an agreement to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ people.
The prime minister, according to Dombos, enjoys the political theatrics and “likes the idea that he’s shaping the E.U.”
Fidesz actually began as a progressive, youth-oriented party in the late 1980s, Dombos added, but then the political landscape changed and the party filled the vacuum in the right-wing space.
“More and more they became extreme, with statements not just about LGBT people, but about homeless people, Roma, Jews, migrants and asylum-seekers,” Dombos said. “Their strategy is to come up with an enemy, create a campaign around it and pass a law, and then tell us how they’ve rescued us from disaster.”
Trans people who are routinely barraged with anti-transgender media coverage are more likely to experience depression and negative mental health outcomes, a study has found.
Researchers from the The Fenway Institute and Brown University asked 545 participants about their experiences of anti-trans messaging and their mental health.
The study, published in the LGBT Health journal, found that 97.6 per cent of participants reported seeing negative depictions of transgender people in the media in the past 12 months – 93.9 per cent seeing anti-trans coverage in print, 93.8 per cent on television and 83.1 per cent in advertising.
Exposure to anti-transgender messaging was found to correlate strongly with reports of depression, anxiety and psychological distress.
People who are frequently exposed to transphobic media were found to be 18 per cent more likely to be depressed and 28 per cent more likely to experience psychological distress, even when adjusted for other factors.
Anti-trans media coverage is fuelling negative mental health impacts.
Jaclyn White Hughto, assistant professor at Brown University School of Public Health, said: “Nearly all of our study participants reported having seen negative depictions of transgender people in media over the past 12 months.
“But those who reported greater frequency of exposure to these messages were significantly more likely to exhibit clinical symptoms of depression, anxiety, global psychological distress and PTSD.
“The association held even after adjustments were made for variables such as age, race, income and reported experiences of childhood and/or adult sexual or physical abuse, which suggests that negative media messages may have an independent impact on the mental health of transgender populations exposed to such messages.”
British newspapers have generated an endless stream of anti-transgender coverage over the past few years (Getty)
Hughto added: “Given the prevalence of systemic discrimination against transgender people in employment, health care settings, schools, and housing, we have long known that structural interventions are required to target stigma at its source.
“Campaigns designed to encourage accurate, non-stigmatizing depictions of transgender people across all media could serve to mitigate the harms of negative media messages to transgender people.
“In the meantime, clinical interventions can also help transgender people cope with the stress of being exposed to negative transgender-related media.”
The US-based study affirms anecdotal reports from the UK, where a years-long blitz of anti-transgender stories in the media has led to rising demand for mental health and support services for trans people.
Earlier this month, a report from LGBT+ anti-violence charity Galop found that as a result of transphobia, more than half of transgender people in the UK feel less able to go outside and two-thirds say they avoid using public bathrooms.
One respondent said: “The fear is particularly prevalent when public figures – politicians, high profile newspaper columnists etc – demonise trans people in print or on air; it makes the fear more pronounced because you worry someone’s going to act on it.”
Leni Morris, CEO of Galop, said that the report showed the reality of life for British trans people amid increasingly hostile debate about trans rights and toxic, transphobic commentary in the media.
“As the whole LGBT+ community knows from our history, there are real-world consequences to public debates,” Morris said. “Our new report shows how the safety and dignity of trans people is currently at risk.”
Sydney Duncan, 44, an attorney in Alabama, has been so focused on managing the increased legal needs of her clients that she rarely has time to address her own mental health needs, including her anxiety.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Duncan has devoted nearly her whole waking day to her work at Birmingham AIDS Outreach, an Alabama nonprofit. Helping her transgender clients obtain vital name changes has become a prolonged process due to court backlogs piling up, helping them acquire driver’s licenses has become harder while Social Security offices are closed, and increased unemployment among the community she serves has complicated a variety of services her nonprofit provides.
Sydney Duncan.Courtesy Sydney Duncan
“We’re so busy trying to resolve other people’s issues — which objectively are more pressing than anything I have going on in my life — that it’s hard to slow down and feel the weight of the problems in your own life,” Duncan said.
Duncan, who is transgender, is among many LGBTQ Americans grappling with the added strain of the coronavirus crisis as they continue to adjust to a “new normal.” Meanwhile, the United States is poised to deal with a third spike in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations, nine months into the pandemic.
Prior to the global crisis, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans were already at greater risk of mental health problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This elevated risk — due to a host of factors, including stigma and discrimination — combined with a global health crisis that has upended life as we once knew it, is presenting unique challenges for LGBTQ people.
“The physical distancing, economic strain and housing instability caused by Covid-19 have the potential to exacerbate these barriers among LGBTQ young people,” Dr. Amy Green, vice president of research at The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention organization, told NBC News.
‘Barely making it by’
Duncan had hoped to begin the year by supplementing her nonprofit salary by working as a comic-book writer. She made her debut with Dark Horse Comics at the end of last year but said her family is now “barely making it by” as opportunities have dried up.
“I feel like I’m better off than most, so don’t want to take someone else’s place if they need it more,” said Duncan, who added that she has been having “more sleepless nights” amid the pandemic. However, “opportunities seem fewer,” she added, which has affected more than just her finances.
“I’ve buried myself in working constantly to not pay attention to anything, but at some point it’s going to crash, and I don’t know what I’ll do then.”
REBECCA MIX
“To make it to a level and have it erode from beneath you — the loss feels more profound,” she said. “Second chances for someone like me feel further away.”
Many LGBTQ people work in industries that have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, according to research by the Human Rights Campaign. These industries include jobs that have been contracted due to the pandemic, as well as other industries that have put workers at direct risk of exposure to the virus.
The report found that in addition to being at risk for precarious employment conditions, LGBTQ people were less likely to have health insurance, putting them further at risk from Covid-19.
On the other side of the coin, as many work remotely, the lines between work and home life have evaporated, putting an additional strain on mental health.
Rebecca Mix, 25, a queer author from Michigan, said that being overworked has just become a normal part of her routine with little sign of that changing.
“I think I’m barreling towards burnout,” Mix told NBC News. “I’ve buried myself in working constantly to not pay attention to anything, but at some point it’s going to crash, and I don’t know what I’ll do then. But I feel like I don’t have any other option.”
Loss of community
One of the biggest losses Covid-19 has robbed Duncan of is her sense of community. Seeing friends and colleagues on video conferencing has become exhausting, she said, and a poor substitute for having a community to help lift one another up.
“For me, community is support,” Duncan said. “Without community, I feel less supported, less confident in my place in the world. I feel this underlying anxiety every day.”
Many around the country have begun feeling “zoom fatigue,” while working to implement social distancing measures at work and with friends.
There is also worry about the long-term impact that the loss of in-person connections could have on LGBTQ people coming into their own with their sexual orientation and gender identity and presentation. A lack of a supportive community could stunt that formative time for many, according to research from Boston University’s School of Public Health.
A recent poll conducted by The Trevor Project showed that 40 percent of LGBTQ youth across the country said that “Covid-19 impacted their ability to express their LGBTQ identity,” with that number jumping to 56 percent for transgender and nonbinary youth. In addition, another report found that 2 in 5 LGBTQ youth in the United States have “seriously considered” suicide in the past year, highlighting the direness of the situation for many this year.
Access to therapy
The combination of economic strain and lack of available space to express themselves has also conspired against LGBTQ Americans by blocking access to a vital mental health resource: therapy.
Green, of the Trevor Project, said many LGBTQ youth have lost their job amid the pandemic and the health insurance that came with it.
“Finding providers who are not only affordable and available but also well versed in LGBTQ youths’ identities and unique mental health challenges can prove incredibly difficult in many areas of the country,” she said. “And concerns around parental permission, being outed and privacy could be heightened for LGBTQ youth who find themselves confined to unsupportive home environments and isolated from affirming LGBTQ communities.”
One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been the increased access to teletherapy as health care providers shift to remote work. This has been particularly helpful for those who had little access to affirming mental health care in their physical area.
“By and large, I have found it has worked really well,” Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, director of the Fenway Institute’s National LGBT Health Education Center and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, told NBC News this year. “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.”
Remote therapy, while easier to access in some respects, still does not make it accessible for everyone. Mix, for example, began teletherapy during the pandemic, but then had to quit once the costs started piling up.
“At one point, I felt so spiraling-out-of-control depressed and anxious, but I had to stop because I couldn’t afford it,” Mix said. “I’ve noticed everything is harder and more exhausting — things as simple as phone calls to household tasks like laundry and dishes.”
Therapy in addition to medication helped stem feelings of spiraling out of control and depression, but the longer the pandemic rages on the harder it will be to stay on top of certain tasks and remain motivated in day-to-day life, Mix said.
Others, who are sheltering in place with people unsupportive of their LGBTQ identity, may not have a space to privately participate in a mental health video visit. And some may be skeptical of a new platform for accessing health services altogether.
Housing precariousness
A combination of unemployment, unsupportive families and reduced in-person services at LGBTQ centers have created an acute crisis of housing precariousness for the community.
Wren.Courtesy Wren
Wren, 20, who is nonbinary and uses ze/hir pronouns and asked that hir surname not be published to protect hir privacy, has spent the past year moving to different parts of the country to avoid infecting family members, to keep job prospects alive and have space to finish college classes. For Wren, this involved moving in with hir partner on a farm in Appalachia, working in exchange for rent.
For around two months, Wren returned home to see hir family, but that only brought old traumas and threats of violence. Wren is back on the farm with hir partner, trying to navigate an uncertain future amid the pandemic.
“The uncertainty about where I would be living, the worry I felt for my community in the city who were at higher risk for Covid and were facing violence from police during the protests this summer, and stressed family relationships compounded pre-existing mental health issues I have been dealing with for years,” Wren said.
Mental health investment
The implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on the state of mental health care won’t be known for some time, the Trevor Project’s Green added, but the disparities in our current system show that urgent investment is needed before more LGBTQ people get left behind without access to care.
“Investing in mental health and social services is the best strategy for proactively preventing worse mental health consequences in the future,” Green said.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
If you are an LGBTQ young person in crisis, feeling suicidal or in need of a safe and judgment-free place to talk, call the TrevorLifeline now at 1-866-488-7386.
