With fewer than two months remaining in the Trump administration, the Department of Labor went through with making a rule final on Monday that would grant religious institutions a broader exemption under former President Obama’s executive order barring anti-LGBTQ workplace among federal contractors.
Although no notice was seen on the Federal Register website indicating the process is over for implementing the rule, first proposed in August 2019, the website for the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs indicates the regulation has become final. A note in the final rule indicates it will become effective on Jan. 8, days before President-elect Joe Biden is set to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.
The final rule has language stating its purpose to “clarify” the religious exemption under Executive Order 11246 signed by former President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to ban employment discrimination among federal contractors, which Obama amended in 2014 to include a prohibition on anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Recognizing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in employment, was amended in 1972 to expand its religious exemption, OFFCP the regulations under the executive order “should be given a parallel interpretation” with regard to its religious exemption.
“This rule is intended to correct any misperception that religious organizations are disfavored in government contracting by setting forth appropriate protections for their autonomy to hire employees who will further their religious missions, thereby providing clarity that may expand the eligible pool of federal contractors and subcontractors,” the rule says.
As a result of the rule, federal contractors will be to claim a religious exemption to discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment without punitive consequences from OFCCP under Obama’s executive order.
Religious affiliated colleges and universities that contract with the federal government and have histories of anti-LGBTQ discrimination, such as Brigham Young University in Utah, may be the intended beneficiaries of the final rule. However, the definition of a religious institution is so vague virtually any federal contractor could assert a religious view to get out of the requirements against anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Further, the rule makes no distinction between anti-LGBTQ discrimination and other forms of discrimination. Because Obama’s executive order was in the form of an amendment to Johnson’s executive order against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, the final rule open the door to workplace discrimination on the basis of these categories as well as anti-LGBTQ discrimination among federal contractors.
Jennifer Pizer, director of law and policy at the LGBTQ group Lambda Legal, said in a statement “it is hard to overstate the harm that the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is visiting on LGBTQ people, women, religious minorities and others with the sledgehammer it is taking to federal non-discrimination protections.”
“For nearly 80 years, it has been a core American principle that seeking and receiving federal tax dollars to do work for the American people means promising not to discriminate against one’s own workers with those funds,” Pizer added. “This new rule uses religion to create an essentially limitless exemption allowing taxpayer-funded contractors to impose their religious beliefs on their employees without regard to the resulting harms, such as unfair job terms, invasive proselytizing and other harassment that make job settings unbearable for workers targeted on religious grounds.”
OFCCP didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request to comment Monday on why the Trump administration needed to make the rule final with less than two months remaining in the Trump administration and why the final rule doesn’t appear in the Federal Register.
According to the final rule, OFCCP obtained during the 30-day public comment period 109,726 comments on the proposal, which includes more than 90,000 comments generated by organized comment-writing efforts.
The rule is made final days before the Labor Department is expected to produce internal emails on the deliberation behind the regulation. In September, the Washington Blade had filed a lawsuit with attorneys from the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press under the Freedom of Information Act seeking internal emails within OFCCP to uncover information about the motivation behind the rule change. The first batch of emails from the Labor Department is expected to come out Thursday as a result of a joint status report in this lawsuit.
Obama’s executive order now has less importance in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision this year in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, thus illegal in the workforce under Title VII regardless of whether or not a business is a federal contractor. However, the executive order provided additional tools for the OFCCP to root out anti-LGBTQ discrimination proactively without an employee having to file a workplace discrimination lawsuit under Title VII.
OFFCP states in the rule the change is needed to enforce the law consistent with recent Supreme Court decisions in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia and Hobby Lobby, even though cases had nothing to do with employment. Meanwhile, the final rule downplays the importance of the Bostock decision, asserting the “holding itself is not particularly germane to OFCCP’s enforcement of E.O. 11246, which has expressly protected sexual orientation and gender identity since 2015.”
“The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump,” the statement says.
Obama’s executive order covered an estimated 34 million employees working for federal contractors, many thousands who are LGBTQ, and 22 percent of the workforce.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere, however, said any notion the updated regulation undercuts Obama’s executive order is false.
“This rule does not revise, amend or in any way undermine the executive order governing nondiscrimination requirements for federal contractors, and it in no way undercuts the president’s promise and commitment to the LGBT community,” Deere said. “It simply seeks to clarify the scope and application of the religious exemption already contained in the executive order that the previous president signed.”
Now that the Trump administration has made the rule final, the Biden administration cannot easily undo it under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the U.S. government to undertake a deliberative process and engage with the public before making regulatory changes.
Pizer told the Blade via email the Biden administration “will have to do a full rulemaking” process under the Administrative Procedure Act to undo the regulation in the aftermath of the Trump administration making it final.
“We do expect it to be among the many Trump administration rule changes (and still-pending, likely-to-be-finalized, proposed rule changes) that will be top priorities for review and redoing by the new administration,” Pizer said.
Pizer added she can’t predict the timing for that process given the sheer number of Trump-era rules that needed reversing under Biden, especially because that might be affected by litigation that might produce court orders enjoining the U.S. government from enforcing the regulation.
Sasha Buchert, senior attorney with Lambda Legal, said in a statement the final rule not only obstructs LGBTQ people from job opportunities, but may block them from obtaining benefits for a same-sex spouse and child as an employee of a federal contractor.
“This rule effectively allows almost any federal contractor to claim a right to fire a person, deny health benefits or take other forms of discriminatory action for marrying a same-sex partner or coming out as transgender, or who the employer or would-be employer discovers is transgender, for living in accordance with their gender identity,” Buchert said. “The harm to those who already face pervasive discrimination is incalculable.”
A lesbian firefighter has alleged she was fired after enduring years of sexual harassment from a male colleague.
In a lawsuit filed in the Middlesex County Superior Court, Kira Castellon said she was sacked from her role as a fire inspector in Piscataway, New Jersey, because she made an allegation of sexual harassment, according to My Central Jersey.
In the lawsuit, filed against the township, Arbor Hose Company 1 and Fire District 3, Castellon said she joined the fire service in 2015, where she was the only female firefighter on staff.
Her sexuality was “generally known” by her co-workers and did not pose a problem until she was promoted in September 2016.
Following her promotion, a male colleague allegedly began an “almost daily” campaign of sexual harassment against her, beginning in late 2016 and continuing until January 2019.
During this time, the male colleague allegedly kissed and groped her repeatedly. According to the lawsuit, he “thrust his pelvis into (her) from all directions as his way of saying hello and goodbye”.
He also allegedly told Castellon on a number of occasions: “I’ll make you straight again.”
The campaign of harassment reportedly occurred in the presence of other staff members.
“The sexual harassment was open and notorious which became widely known throughout the firehouse,” the lawsuit said.
The sexual harassment continued after Castellon returned to work following surgery. At one point, while on crutches, she struggled “to stay upright as he groped her and thrust his pelvis into her rear-end”.
In her lawsuit, Castellon said she reported the abuse but that the company made no effort to enforce an anti-harassment policy.
Her employment was eventually terminated on 30 October, 2019, after the company accused her of using its tax-exempt status to buy personal goods at a local store. The company alleged that she used the tax exempt code for personal goods, but Castellon said in her lawsuit that the items she bought were used at the the firehouse.
“It is clear that (Castellon’s) prior reports of sexual harassment and her continued efforts to combat the workplace harassment which tortured her experience at the firehouse since she arrived, were a motivating, if not sole factor in (the) decision to terminate her employment,” the lawsuit said.
When she heard a knock on the door, Colin Monahan figured it had to be about the new garage.
Monahan and her wife, Shannon Lastowski Monahan, had just finished dinner. Their guests had all departed, leaving the couple alone at their log home well off the main road in the rural community of Wapiti, a village of a few hundred in northwest Wyoming. Colin had just finished installing a new, prefabricated garage on their property, painted in a shade of brown to complement the waving grasses of the surrounding valley.
Donning their masks and opening the door, the couple were greeted by five people standing on their porch, there to discuss a “neighborhood issue” — presumably, Colin thought, the garage.
It would have been a strange complaint. The couple had received permission to install it from the subdivision’s management, and the area’s lack of a homeowners’ association made concerns over aesthetics questionable at best. The iconic Smith Mansion — a twisting structure looming on a bluff overlooking Highway 14 — is visible from the couple’s porch, while the subdivisions surrounding them feature a broad mix of architectural styles that had sprouted amid a flood of new residents discovering the Wyoming countryside.
The garage, as it turned out, wasn’t the problem, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
Shannon Lastowski Monahan and Colin Monahan sit on the front porch of their home in Wapiti, Wyo. Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.Cayla Nimmo / AP
Looking over the group, the Monahans — a same-sex couple originally from the Chicago area — recognized a familiar face, a man who the couple said had previously harassed them on social media. Both Colin and Shannon, residents of the subdivision four years now, quickly came to realize that the conversation was never about a garage, and was never intended to be.
It was about Colin, who dresses masculine but, in her own words, could be seen as either male or female. She goes by “Colleen” as often as she does “Colin.”
“One of the women said to us, ‘Your kind is not welcome here. You are not welcome in Cody Country and you need to leave,’” Shannon recalled in an interview shortly after the October incident. “She told Colin, ‘You pretend to be a man, and you need to leave.’”
The incident sparked a conversation that reverberated through Wapiti and into the greater Park County community, including Cody, a popular tourist town of 10,000.
Some businesses made clear their support for the LGBTQ community. Sunlight Sports, a sporting goods store on Cody’s main strip, declared on its social media pages that bigots were not welcome inside.
The owners, Wes and Melissa Allen, stressed that they believed that 99 percent of county residents are good people. But they had an unblinking message for the rest.
“If you hate your neighbors so much for who they are — who they love, the color of their skin, where they were born, where they worship, or any of the other things that make up that person — that you need to treat them differently or harass them or make them feel unsafe in their own home, don’t come into our business,” they wrote.
Other businesses began stocking merchandise in solidarity with the couple, producing stickers and buttons with rainbow flags and slogans supportive of the LGBTQ community. But that, in turn, touched off a wave of bigotry on social media, directed at the couple as well as others who publicly supported them. On one local Facebook group, a man described the couple as “liberal socialist democratic homosexual transvestites from Chicago” who “hate this country.” Suggestions of the need for a hate crime bill were described in a letter to the local newspaper as “dangerous” and “Orwellian,” while others cast doubt that the incident happened at all.
“It leads to social justice warriors proclaiming far and wide that Wapiti and all of Wyoming is a racist and homophobic state and needs hate crime laws enacted because all allegations must be immediately and totally believed,” one woman wrote on another Facebook group.
Isolated among a few individuals or not, that response was seen by some as a symptom of a rage brewing among a vocal minority of Park County during a time of dramatic change. But that bigotry also prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”
The question is, will it be?
“We have employees and friends and neighbors who don’t fit the ‘white Caucasian’ profile who have been made to feel uncomfortable in our town in recent months,” Wes Allen said in an interview. “Our perception was that it was getting worse. And we’ve already been having conversations in our community when this happened. But this was the time we knew we had to come out and say something. Because if we weren’t going to say something publicly when something bad happened, we have no right to say anything at all.”
A community in flux
Nestled in the foothills at the end of a winding maze of dirt and gravel, the cabin shared by Colin, Shannon and their two dogs doesn’t stand out much from the rest of the homes in the Cody Country subdivision, which sits between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.
From the small porch of the couple’s slice of land, a herd of elk could be seen resting in the distant prairie. Around them, snow-capped peaks stretch around the periphery of the Shoshone River Valley and the North Fork Highway below.
It’s an easy place to disappear in, and plenty have over the years, drawn by the promise of seclusion and the region’s beautiful surroundings.
Manda Siebert’s family has owned a gas station in Wapiti for decades. In that time she has watched the area grow from a minuscule farming community into a tapestry of subdivided ranchland and new construction, with each new subdivision constructed over the past two decades as controversial as the next. “Cultural issues,” as they were called at the time, were of concern even in 2004, when residents raised an uproar over the development of the Copperleaf subdivision, with one man saying at the time that it was not the subdivision itself that was controversial but “the product anticipated which makes it so contentious.”
“There’s been a little bit of an uproar from people upset that more and more people are moving here,” said Siebert, whose business sits across the street from a former hayfield. “But when I was a kid, this was all open. None of this was subdivided. If somebody hadn’t sold their land, those people would not be living here, either. You have to put the shoe on the other foot: If you were living in these big cities and wanted something different, wouldn’t you want to move out here?”
That change has been accelerating in the region. When a Star-Tribune reporter called the Park County planning office last month, an official there said that inquiries concerning building permits and subdivisions have roughly tripled this year, while the rate of home sales among COVID-19 refugees — like similarly attractive corners of the Mountain West — continues to outpace annual averages. According to reporting by the Enterprise, 2020 presented one of the office’s busiest years on record, with the office processing more applications for building permits and subdivisions through the month of July than it did all of last year.
That, in turn, has created tension among some who fear the new arrivals are spoiling the promise of Wyoming.
“There’s a really strong sentiment of resentment when people are buying property here,” Shannon said. “When you’re used to having the view a certain way and then people move in… There’s even been someone — we don’t know who — who has been tearing up the ‘for sale’ signs by the gate.”
Cody Mayor Matt Hall said the first tinges of such a change were felt with the arrival of rapper Kanye West last year. That feeling, the Cody native says, has been amplified by conservative-leaning newcomers in the last few years who believed they would find a city of like-minded people waiting for them upon their arrival. New businesses in town are attracting new residents as well, changing the fabric of the community.
“I talk to the police chief a lot about making sure that we’re managing people’s reactions to things in a way that is going to be fair for everyone, that we’re not going to pull somebody over just because they don’t look like you or anything like that,” Hall said. “It’s interesting to have to grapple with those kind of issues.”
That feeling has bled into the local politics as well. The area’s Republican primary between Rep. Sandy Newsome and former Hot Springs County Clerk Nina Webber featured some of the most vicious politics seen anywhere in Wyoming this election cycle. Meanwhile, members of the community marching in solidarity with the national Black Lives Matter movement earlier this summer were met with armed residents wary of perceived threats from outside agitators that never coalesced. Community Facebook pages with names such as the “Wapiti Whisper” or “Cody Chit Chat” have been increasingly dominated by political discussions fueled by rage and contempt, with dissenting voices being shouted down.
“They’re just really hard to read,” said Sarah Growney, a local business owner and a Cody resident of nearly two decades who has been an active supporter of the Monahans. “It just creates a culture of acceptance for that kind of language or hate. My honest-to-God opinion is that we are not talking about a lot of people, but they’re just very loud. Most people who live in Wapiti or Cody aren’t bad. I think most are good. It’s just the ones who express this kind of hatred are really loud.”
It’s contributed to a shift in sensibilities local leaders say are as much a byproduct of the current pandemic as it is a symptom of a greater demographic shift in the Equality State. Longtime Wyoming residents such as Hall say his community has grown increasingly conservative in the Trump era, and in particular since the tail end of Gov. Matt Mead’s administration, a trend residents say has been exacerbated by outsiders attracted to the area’s natural beauty as much as the state’s deep red politics.
But some people haven’t realized just how diverse their community has become. When counterprotests emerged in the wake of June’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Hall found himself playing intermediary between marchers and armed residents unconvinced that a fellow Wyomingite could have different politics than they did.
“I was talking to some friends of mine who estimated at least 70% of that crowd was from outside of the area,” said Hall, a lifelong Cody resident. “Almost every one of them was from the Bighorn Basin. I said, ‘Instead of sitting there with your gun waiting for them to give you a reason to try and shoot them, why don’t you try talking to them?’ We all like to live here, we all like to fish and hunt here. I mean … the commonalities probably exist way more than probably the disparities.”
Small towns, long streets
Wyoming is often characterized as a “small town with long streets,” both for its small population and the neighborly disposition of its residents. Given that reality, how can some people be so blind to their neighbors or unwilling to accept people who might be different?
It’s a paradox that some, like Allen, the shop owner whose social media post provoked a considerable response, have come to understand.
“Wyoming’s always been so lightly populated that you don’t get to really choose your neighbors,” he said. “If you’re going to survive here, you need to develop this thing where you can get along with everybody. If you are mad because your neighbor was one thing or another and you only had like three neighbors, and when things got bad if you would antagonize them … there would be nobody for you to fall back on. And so the culture has become one of tolerance in general.”
Park County already has a small but vibrant LGBTQ community, and one that existed prior to the migration that’s brought many new faces to the area of late.
One of the members of that community is Nikki Flowers, a Cody resident who moved to the area as a high school sophomore nearly two decades ago. In 2014, Flowers became one of the first women to be granted a same-sex marriage license in Park County with her spouse, Desiree, whom she first met in the halls of Cody High School. Even with same-sex marriage controversial in Wyoming at the time, Flowers said she received little pushback in the community save for her mother and the county clerk at the time, who refused to perform the ceremony.
Then the incident in Wapiti happened.
“It hurt my heart,” she said. “What happened to that couple was just terrifying. I mean, I don’t know what I would do. If something like that happened to me… It’s scary. And I’ve never felt scared in this town.”
Newcomers still find themselves wary of the state’s legacy, still tainted by memories of the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. Growney, who has two fathers, dealt with it the first time her dad came to visit, fearful of the way he was dressed and of those who weren’t accepting of people like him. Over time, however, her fear subsided with the growing understanding of her neighbors, who had regularly begun to interact with her fathers and over time began to understand that the men were just like them in a plethora of ways.
“I’m a believer in the idea that ignorance breeds fear,” Growney said. “These folks are anti-whatever they are because they don’t know someone gay, they’ve never lived with black people, or they’ve never been away to school. Their whole existence has been here, in Wyoming.”
Changing the conversation
But sheer exposure is not a sufficient antidote for bigotry.
In a converted greenhouse in the atrium of Cody High School, Amy Gerber — a science teacher of 32 years — had just finished a consultation with a student who had run into issues at home when a reporter arrived to talk with Gerber.
For the past several years, she has served as faculty adviser for the school’s Gay Straight Alliance, a role she developed as a way to provide a safe space for students who felt they did not have one either in the classroom or at home.
A mother to a gay son, Gerber herself saw bigotry on its face when a group of her 14-year-old son’s classmates threw a slur at him as they drove through the parking lot.
“It just broke my heart,” she said. “That’s the last thing you want as a mom. You don’t want people to be mean to your kid. You want people to care about you and care about your kid, and not judge them for being gay.”
Her son asked her not to respond, fearing it would put an even bigger target on his back. But she wanted to do something.
Ten years later — long after her son had graduated — she decided to hang a rainbow flag in her room, a sign of solidarity for a group of students she knew existed but had no means of connecting with. That small show of solidarity, she said, eventually grew into the school’s GSA, which today counts several dozen students among its ranks.
It was an unthinkable prospect during the time her son was in school. She knew several members of the local school board would fight her on it, while the effort itself encouraged opponents to come out of the woodwork. One caller into a morning talk show at the time, she recalled, asked why the school needed a club where “boys were liking boys and girls were liking girls.”
“It was ridiculous. But that was the perception,” Gerber said. “For me, I wasn’t sure whether that was the perception of the whole community, or if it was just a handful of people who have this type of worldview and are just really vocal about it? You really just don’t know.”
The incident in Wapiti drew similar feelings. After being quoted in a local news article about what happened, Gerber was barraged with hate mail and comments on Facebook disparaging her, prompting a former student of hers — the one who helped her start the GSA — to tell community members that the hatred he saw emerging was precisely the Cody he knew.
“I would love to say collectively as a community, there’s way more of us who support the live-and-let-live mentality, that you’re welcome here,” Gerber said. “Gay, straight, black, white doesn’t matter. Like, you’re welcome. But the truth is, even if it’s not the majority, there is a fraction of our community that is just loud, and makes the community seem like it stands for something that it doesn’t.”
The aftermath
Several weeks after the incident, Colin and Shannon are both in good spirits, but still on edge.
Colin, a hunter and an owner of several guns, was just days removed from getting fingerprinted for a concealed carry permit, a little extra security should the worst happen. What worries her most, she said, is the prospect of what won’t happen.
In the years since Shepard’s murder set off a national movement for hate crime legislation, Wyoming lawmakers have failed to enact a similar law despite the pleas of various nonpartisan commissions, small businesses and even the LGBTQ community itself. Critics of hate crime legislation say the state’s constitution is sufficient to protect the rights of everyone.
But Colin, who has faced hate up close, doesn’t feel that protection.
“The bigger story is this culture here, and ultimately, why Wyoming needs hate crime legislation,” she said. “They don’t think that they have an issue, and yet they repeatedly have issues here.”
Still, there are growing signs of tolerance and support. People in Cody and Wapiti banded together in their own way to reject what had happened in their communities. A conservative family near the couple brought them fresh vegetables. Newsome, the Republican lawmaker, announced efforts to co-sponsor hate crime legislation in the coming session. Businesses and community members have been vocal in their support. Across from the town hall, a rainbow flag could be seen hanging from a porch. Down the street, Growney’s gift shop, The Thistle, had already sold out of one batch of pro-LGBTQ stickers.
So what happens now? Will the incident that provoked so much debate and consternation lead to real change?
Colin Monahan and Shannon Lastowski Monahan shared their story, and the community stood up to respond. They just hope that the risk they took was not made in vain, and that their experience — a couple singled out for who they love — underscores the need for a greater level of protection for people like them.
“We can’t be protected by weapons,” Shannon said. “We have an alarm system, surveillance cameras, all of that, but that can only help so much. It gives you a small sense of reducing the risks. But the courts aren’t going to protect us. … It’s just a simple trespass. I guess I just never realized before how vulnerable we are.”
The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up an appeal from Oregon parents who want transgender students in their school district to use locker rooms and bathrooms based on their sex assigned at birth.
The decision lets stand a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the district’s policy of permitting trans students to use facilities that align with their gender identity.
“A policy that allows transgender students to use school bathroom and locker facilities that match their self-identified gender in the same manner that cisgender students utilize those facilities does not infringe Fourteenth Amendment privacy or parental rights or First Amendment free exercise rights, nor does it create actionable sex harassment under Title IX,” Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in the February decision for Parents for Privacy v. William P. Barr et al.
The case originated in Dallas, Oregon, an agricultural town 15 miles west of Salem, the state’s capital. In 2017, parents of high schoolers sued over the Dallas School District’s policy of allowing a transgender male student use the boy’s locker room and bathroom. At the time, a lawyer for the parents indicated that cisgender boys would be embarrassed and ashamed to change in the same room as someone who was assigned female at birth.
In 2018, a lower court refused to block the district’s policy, and the 9th Circuit affirmed that ruling earlier this year.
LGBTQ advocates on Monday praised the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the appeal.
“Today’s decision is excellent news for transgender students,” Mara Keisling, executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement. “Trans students deserve an educational environment that is safe, supportive and free from discrimination. The school district’s actions to create that environment have been vindicated.”
Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said with its decision Monday, the high court has “once again said that transgender youth are not a threat to other students.”
“The decision not to take this case is an important and powerful message to trans and non-binary youth that they deserve to share space with and enjoy the benefits of school alongside their non-transgender peers,” Strangio said in a statement. “We will continue to fight in courts, in legislatures, and in our families and communities to ensure that all trans people feel safe and belong.”
Similar lawsuits to the one brought forth in Oregon by Parents for Privacy have been dismissed by courts in other parts of the country.
Saturday, December 19, 2020 @ 7 pm. Occidental Community Choir presents ‘Somewhere To Begin’, A Virtual Concert directed by Gage Purdy . One of West County’s treasured choral communities for 42 years, OCC offers for the winter season a digital collection of songs and spoken word that speaks directly to the heart of our uncertain times. Somewhere to begin… somewhere to resume…. somewhere to make peace. As we enter into this socially-distanced Northern California winter, we invite you to virtually enjoy our ‘ Music From Home’, from wherever you are currently nesting. Directed and digitally mastered by Gage Purdy, OCC offers songs of hope, connection, inspiration, and calls-to-action; some rousing and others poignant, including compelling original songs and spoken word from our own members. Free; donations gratefully accepted at https://www.patreon.com/occidentalchoir. Please visit our website at https://www.occidentalchoir.org to view our virtual concert on Saturday, December 19th at 7pm and click on the YouTube link; available to watch anytime after 12/19 . Thank you for your support, and keep on singing from your heart!
The Dutch government has apologized to transgender people for previously mandating surgeries, including sterilization, as a prerequisite for legal gender recognition. During a Cabinet meeting this week, government officials also announced plans to compensate people who underwent the operations.
This outcome is good news following years of activism demanding the government acknowledge the harm the country’s sterilization law caused trans people in The Netherlands. In 2013, the Council of Europe called for an end to mandatory sterilization for trans people in member states. A 2014 revision to the Dutch law rolled back the sterilization requirement that had been in place since 1985. This provision had mandated that trans people desiring to change their gender on identification documents had to submit to surgery. The revision allowed for legal gender change through administrative processes.
In 2011, Human Rights Watch documented what it was like for trans people in the Netherlands to live under the mandatory sterilization law. “My wish is to live as a woman, and to be treated and accepted as a woman by others,” said one trans woman. “I am lucky with my body, for me it’s possible to live as a woman without surgery and without hormones. Why then should I subject myself to a surgeon’s scalpel?”
Accessible and transparent legal gender recognition procedures, based on an individual’s self-declaration, are increasingly common around the world. The Netherlands is now taking the next step of apologizing for and compensating those who endured medical harms.
During the cabinet’s formal apology, Ingrid van Engelshoven, the country’s Minister of Education, Culture and Science, said, “the law turned out to be a symbol of social rejection for many, and dreams have been lost as a result of the irreversible sterilization,” and law minister Sander Dekker said “[t]he old law could give transgender people a hard, almost impossible choice.”
The Netherlands’ apology should demonstrate to other countries that acknowledging past harms is part and parcel of providing redress to individuals harmed by coercive and discriminatory laws.
President-elect Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed to make LGBTQ rights a priority in his administration. But he won’t be working alone: The former vice president has already tapped LGBTQ appointees for several key roles and gay rights advocates are hopeful that more will be named, including the first out Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate. There’s also a push, should an opening become available, for him to nominate the first openly LGBTQ justice to the Supreme Court.
The Biden-Harris transition team has promoted the president-elect’s “commitment to building an administration that looks like America.”
On Sunday, Karine Jean-Pierre, an out lesbian and chief of staff for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, was announced as deputy press secretary, and Pili Tobar, an immigration rights advocate and former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was named deputy White House communications director. Tobar, a lesbian, also worked as a communications director for the Biden campaign.
In November, Carlos Elizondo, who is gay and was Biden’s social secretary when Biden was vice president, was named White House social secretary.
‘Smart choices’ and ‘intersectionality’
Ruben Gonzales, vice president of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, which trains and advocates for queer candidates at all levels of government, noted that the LGBTQ people named to the incoming administration so far are all people of color.
“I think it speaks to the president-elect’s understanding of intersectionality,” he said.
Karine Jean-Pierre.Gary Gershoff / Getty Images
Gonzales said it’s important to have LGBTQ people in the administration because “we know our lives better — we know what protections mean in health care, in housing, in the workplace.”
“Look at how Trump changed guidance about bathrooms, for example,” he added. “A trans person understands what that means in really stark terms.”
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan became the first openly transgender person to work in the White House when President Barack Obama appointed her to the Presidential Personnel Office in 2015.
She praised the Biden team’s “smart choices,” saying it selected talented candidates with impressive resumes.
“Just because they’re coming in doesn’t mean they’ll be working on LGBTQ issues,” she told NBC News. “When I was in the White House, the vast majority of us weren’t. We were working for the EPA, the Small Business Administration, on security issues. Having LGBTQ people at every table, at every level, is still crucial, though, because we are everywhere and are impacted by everything. You don’t want an initiative to land flat or miss an important segment of the population.”
Beyond an out Cabinet member, Freedman-Gurspan predicts a nonbinary person will be appointed at some level. “I know there are some interviewing,” she said.
Biden has also named LGBTQ personnel to his transition team, including the agency review teams, responsible for scrutinizing federal agencies before he takes office. According to a release from the Biden-Harris team, roughly 40 percent of agency review members members represent “communities historically underrepresented in the federal government, including people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities.”
Chai Feldblum, a former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member who was instrumental in drafting the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Pamela Karlan, co-counsel in United States v. Windsor, which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, are reviewing the Department of Justice and related agencies for the Biden transition team, the Advocate reported, including the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Civil Rights.
Dave Noble, former deputy director of the Presidential Personnel Office for Obama, is part of the teams advising NASA and the Office of National Drug Control Policy for the transition. Shawn Skelly, a transgender Navy veteran and executive secretary for the Department of Transportation under Obama, has been named to the Department of Defense review board.
“Allies are invaluable, but the impact of policies on LGBTQ lives is not always fully understood by someone outside our community.”
ANNISE PARKER, LGBTQ VICTORY FUND
Throughout the campaign, Biden promised to move swiftly to repeal President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members.
He’s also vowed to restore nondiscrimination requirements for federal contractors, advocate for LGBTQ rights on the global stage and sign the Equality Act within his first 100 days in office. The Equality Act, which passed the House last year but was never given a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, education, public accommodation and other sectors.
These are big commitments, which advocates say require input from the community.
“Members of Joe Biden’s Cabinet will have tremendous influence over the policies and direction of the next administration, so it is essential an LGBTQ voice is at the table,” Annise Parker, president of the LGBTQ Victory Institute and LGBTQ Victory Fund, said in a statement. “Allies are invaluable, but the impact of policies on LGBTQ lives is not always fully understood by someone outside our community.”
‘Biden’s legacy on equality’
Part of Ruben Gonzales’ role at the Victory Institute is to oversee its Presidential Appointments Initiative, a nonpartisan endeavor to get LGBTQ staffers into administration roles.
“It began during the Clinton administration with David Mixner leveraging his influence to advocate for LGBTQ appointees, but it was really informal then,” Gonzales told NBC News.
The program became more standardized during the Obama administration, which welcomed a record 330 out staffers, many assisted by the Presidential Appointments Initiative.
The hope is to make Biden’s administration even more inclusive: So far Gonzales’ office has fielded more than 750 resumes, from those applying for Cabinet-level posts to those seeking their first job in government.
He said the ultimate goal is for the Biden White House to have the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet member approved by the Senate.
“An LGBTQ Cabinet appointment will ensure our community is part of decision-making at the highest levels,” Gonzales said, “and would also be a lasting piece of Joe Biden’s legacy on equality.”
In February, Trump appointed a gay man, Richard Grenell, as acting director of national intelligence, making him the first out member of a presidential Cabinet. But Grenell’s appointment, which lasted only three months, was never confirmed by the Senate.
Gonzales is hopeful Biden will break that barrier and says there’s a strong surplus of contenders. The Victory Institute intends to put forward former presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg as a possible secretary of Veterans Affairs and former Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau as secretary of education.
In 2009, Juneau, a lesbian, became the first Native American woman elected to statewide office in the U.S. “As a woman, a former teacher and a Native American, Denise would be such an asset,” Gonzales said.
Other names being floated include Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to head up Health and Human Services and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., for secretary of Veterans Affairs.
At the very top of Gonzales’ personal wish list, though, is Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, one of just a few transgender officials in government. Gonzales would like to see her confirmed as surgeon general.
“Having a transgender person taking that kind of leadership role would be a win on so many levels — from her understanding of the complexities of health care in America to helping people understand trans lives,” he said. “Dr. Levine received unanimous support in Pennsylvania when she was nominated — from Democrats and Republicans both — and we hope the Senate will follow that example.”
Laurie McBride, a beloved LGBT+ leader who became a figurehead for the community during the HIV/AIDS crisis, has sadly passed away at the age of 71.
McBride died of a heart attack on Friday, 4 December, having suffered a stroke in October. She is survived by her wife of 35 years, Donna Yutzy.
The activist will be known to many through her work in defending the rights of HIV-positive people as co-chair of the Californian lobby group Mobilisation Against AIDS.
In 1986 and 1987 she led the successful grassroots campaigns “No on 69” and “No on 64”, bills which would quarantine HIV-positive people and limit their employment.
Together with law student John Duran – who later became mayor of West Hollywood – she drafted the groundbreaking “gay rights” bill, AB 101, which prohibited private employers from discriminating against employees because of their sexual orientation.
“Laurie was a lesbian warrior,” Duran told the Los Angeles Blade, remembering how they drove across California rallying the LGBT+ community to their cause.
“She fought for her brothers with AIDS. So many gay men alive today are deeply indebted to Laurie for saving their lives.
“My heart goes out to her wife Donna,” he added. “She was one of a kind, gentle and fierce at the same time.”
Donna Yutzy confirmed the sad news on Facebook, saying that Laurie had left her “for a new adventure beyond the stars”.
“She was so proud of the culture-changing accomplishments you all worked on together and I know she cherished her friendship with each and every one of you,” she said.
Those wishing to make a donation in her honour are directed to the scholarship programme that was established in McBride’s name at Sacramento State University.
“This scholarship has paid for the tuition of a number of young people to help them on the road to making the world a better place,” Yutzy said.
“She was the light of my life for 35 years and I will hold every single minute of those memories in my heart forever. We will have a big celebration of Laurie’s life in Sacramento post-COVID. I was proud to be Laurie McBride’s wife.”
‘A Promised Land’ By Barack Obama c.2020, Crown $45/768 pages
Most memoirs of politicians are pablum — ghost-written snooze-inducers. At best, good door-stops.
“A Promised Land,” former President Barack Obama’s new memoir, breaks that mold. Though it’s over 700 pages, you won’t be tempted to turn away from this, by turns, measured, moving, detailed, witty, and self-aware volume. The memoir, narrated by Obama, is a great listen (29 hours, 10 minutes) on Audible.
Unlike most politicos, Obama can write! Many of us ink-stained wretches would give anything to have his writing chops. Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama’s critically acclaimed 1995 coming-of-age memoir, came out years before he was a player on the national political stage.
Like many, I knew some of the highlights of Obama’s life before I picked up “A Promised Land”: his spouse and best friend Michelle, his daughters, his dog Bo, his rapid rise from Illinois state senator to U.S. senator to president of the United States.
As a lesbian, I knew of the many things that Obama and his administration did to support LGBTQ rights – from issuing Pride proclamations to the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” At his last press conference, Obama called on Blade reporter Chris Johnson to ask a question. (Obama was the first U.S. president to call on a LGBTQ press reporter at a press conference.) No wonder many of us think of Obama as the “first gay president.”
If this memoir had been hacked out by a ghostwriter for a typical politico (even a queer-friendly politico), I’d probably just skim through it. But, because of Obama’s superb writing, the breadth of his thinking and the wide-ranging events of his administration (from his meetings with foreign leaders to the passage of the Affordable Care Act), I was hooked from the get-go on “A Promised Land.” The Republican opposition to his every move (no matter how bipartisan he tries to be) is an underlying theme.
“For a month, Michelle and I slept late, ate leisurely dinners, went for long walks, swam in the ocean, took stock,” Obama writes in the memoir’s preface of what life was like for him and Michelle after he left office in January 2017, “replenished our friendship, rediscovered our love, and planned for a less eventful but hopefully no less satisfying second act.”
No way could I stop reading after that!
“A Promised Land” is the first of two volumes. It begins with a preface in which Obama says he wants to give an “honest rendering” of the events that happened on his watch and ends with the death of Osama bin Laden.
The first third of the memoir is about his life before he becomes president. Here, Obama writes of his family, youth, college years, law school life, how he met Michelle, his time as a community organizer and political campaigns.
Obama writes personally about his evolving attitudes toward LGBTQ rights. He believes that the “American family” includes LGBTQ people and immigrants. “How could I believe otherwise, when some of the same arguments for their exclusion had so often been used to exclude those who looked like me?” Obama writes.
But, he doesn’t, he writes, dismiss those with differing views on queers and immigrants as bigots. He remembers that his own beliefs weren’t always so “enlightened.”
“I grew up in the 1970s, a time when LGBTQ life was far less visible to those outside the community,” Obama writes.
His Aunt Arlene, “felt obliged to introduce her partner of twenty years as ‘my close friend Marge’ whenever she visited us in Hawaii,” he recalls.
When Obama was a teen, he and his peers used anti-gay slurs. “And like many teenage boys in those years, my friends and I sometimes threw around words like ‘fag’ or ‘gay’ at each other as casual put downs,” Obama writes, “callow attempts to fortify our masculinity and hide our insecurities.”
After nearly four years of Donald Trump, it’s a pleasure to read a presidential memoirs written with intelligence, wit and insight. Whether you’re a political junkie, a lover of gossip or a fan of engaging writing, “A Promised Land” will leave you wanting more.
The only NHS gender clinic for under-18s has stopped referring transgender youth for puberty blockers following a High Court ruling.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs youth gender clinic GIDS, has confirmed that no new referrals will be made to endocrinology services until there is more “clarity” on the situation following the judgment on Tuesday (December 1).
A spokesperson confirmed that no current GIDS patients who take puberty blockers have been contacted yet, due to the a stay on implementation for the time being.
“The court has ruled that there will be a stay on implementation of its judgment until the later of 22 December or the determination of any appeal,” they said.
“This will give us a chance to work through the specific implications of the judgment for different patient groups with our partners, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust.
“We will not be making new referrals to endocrinology until we have more clarity.”
GIDS has published a Q&A for current patients to help ease the uncertainty around the judgment. For those currently taking puberty blockers or HRT, GIDS says “they will be in touch with you once more detail is known to let you know what will happen with regard to your care”.
The verdict came in a case brought by Keira Bell, 23, and the mother of a trans teen. It argued that under-16s cannot give informed consent to puberty blockers, a reversible, “life-saving” treatment that prevents trans kids from going through the wrong puberty.
Transgender under-16s must now understand the nature and implications of puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the likelihood of having gender-affirming surgery before they can be deemed to give their informed consent to blockers, the High Court has ruled.
