Retired National Football League player Ryan O’Callaghan has said he thinks there is “at least one” gay or bisexual player on every NFL team, but that they do not come out for fear of losing sponsorships or even their jobs.
O’Callaghan came out as gay in 2017, and is soon to release a book titled My Life on the Line: How the NFL Damn Near Killed Me and Ended Up Saving My Life in which he talks about being closeted in the NFL.
He told Reuters: “I can promise you there’s plenty of closeted NFL players.
“I think it’s safe to say there’s at least one on every team who is either gay or bisexual. A lot of guys still see it as potentially having a negative impact on their career.”
Between 2006 and 2011, O’Callaghan played for the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs, and he said he regularly hears from other plays who are too scared to come out.
He continued: “I just don’t think people understand the reality. We can still get fired for being gay or denied services for being trans.”
Former NFL player Ryan O’Callaghan thought of taking his own life before he came out.
He said the NFL has done some things to alleviate the fear felt by LGBT+ players, such as sponsoring New York Pride, but that more needs to be done with contract guarantees and representation.
“It’s going to take a high profile player who’s playing currently, coming out, to really make a difference,” he added.
When O’Callaghan first came out, he told Outsports that while he was still closeted he thought of taking his own life after his football career was over.
He said: “My plan was to end my life after football. I thought that would be it, and I could never be an out gay man.
“I’m just glad there were people who pushed me in the right direction, and I could get help.”
He has since started the Ryan O’Callaghan Foundation “to provide scholarships, support and mentorship for LGBTQ+ athletes, students and youth”.
Sat. Sept. 14 @ 7:30 pm. The Musers & Late for the Train. Occidental Center for the Arts.! The Musers -Tom Kuhn on vocals/bass/percussion plus singer/songwriters Megan Mclaughlin and Anita Bear Sandwina make up this high energy multi-instrumental trio who can make you laugh, cry or stomp your feet with pure joy. Late for the Train is a San Francisco-based 4-piece modern string band that weaves folk, funk and bluegrass into powerful arrangements of original/traditional music that feels both fresh and familiar. $15 Adv/$19 at door. Fine refreshments, dance space. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 707-874-9392. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465. OCA is wheelchair accessible.
The president of an LGBTI advocacy group in Iceland has criticized her country’s government’s decision to host Vice President Pence next month.
Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, president of Samtökin ’78, the National Queer Organization of Iceland, in an op-ed that Vísir, an Icelandic newspaper, published on Aug. 11 wrote Pence is “against our marriages” and is “in favor of us being discriminated against.” Þorvaldsdóttir also noted Pence as governor of Indiana in 2015 signed a controversial religious freedom law that sparked widespread outrage among LGBTI activists and their supporters.
“He feels it is natural for people to deny us service for who we are,” wrote Þorvaldsdóttir.
Þorvaldsdóttir, among other things, notes Pence has “harshly criticized legislation designed to protect us from hate crimes.” Þorvaldsdóttir also highlights the Trump administration’s ban on openly transgender servicemembers in the U.S. military that took effect on April 12.
“Now, the government of Iceland intends to welcome Mike Pence, politely talk to him about business consulations and strengthen relations with the United States,” wrote Þorvaldsdóttir. “All such programs are pure and clever disregard for the community of queer people in Iceland.”
“We will not be silence on the fact that he is welcomed to this country,” added Þorvaldsdóttir. “Not a chance.”
Pence is scheduled to visit Iceland on Sept. 4. A press release from his office says he “will highlight Iceland’s strategic importance in the Arctic, NATO’s efforts to counter Russian aggression in the region and opportunities to expand mutual trade and investment.”
Þorvaldsdóttir on Tuesday reaffirmed criticism of Pence’s visit.
“It is incredibly disrespectful to the LGBTQ+ community in Iceland to invite him here with open arms,” Þorvaldsdóttir told the Blade in an email.
Þorvaldsdóttir said the Trump administration is “highly unpopular in Iceland.” Þorvaldsdóttir nevertheless said many Icelanders “have been very aware of the setbacks in LGBTQ+ rights … under the current U.S. administration or Mike Pence’s problematic history on those matters.”
“I think many more people are aware now,” Þorvaldsdóttir told the Blade.
Þorvaldsdóttir added reaction to the group’s criticism in Iceland “has largely been positive.”
“Obviously, not everyone shares our profound dismay over the fact that our government is receiving Pence in the first place,” said Þorvaldsdóttir. “However, that disagreement doesn’t come from Mike Pence being especially popular. People simply feel that he should be welcomed like any other leader in the name of diplomacy, despite his harmful views and policies.”
“That said, I think most Icelanders share the sentiment that Mike Pence has views that go against our core values here in Iceland,” added Þorvaldsdóttir.
Pence’s scheduled trip to Iceland will take place against the backdrop of continued criticism of the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTI rights record in the U.S. and its overall foreign policy.
Activists in Denmark last August boycotted the U.S. Embassy’s annual Pride month celebration over Trump’s LGBTI rights record. Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, a gay Cuban blogger who writes under the pen name Paquito el de Cuba and works closely with Mariela Castro, the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro who spearheads LGBTI-specific issues as director of the country’s National Center for Sexual Education, in 2017 refused to attend an event at the U.S. Embassy in Havana after the Trump administration expelled two of his country’s diplomats from the U.S.
Richard Grenell, the openly gay U.S. ambassador to Germany, on July 26 hosted a group of LGBTI activists from around the world as part of a Trump administration initiative that encourages countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations. The International AIDS Society’s Conference on HIV Science that took place last month in Mexico City showcased numerous LGBTI-specific HIV/AIDS studies from around the world the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the U.S. Agency for International Development supported.
Þorvaldsdóttir told the Blade she would accept an invitation to meet with Pence under the condition “that I be allowed to wear the rainbow and speak freely about LGBTQ+ rights.” Þorvaldsdóttir then proceeded to once again criticize the Trump administration’s LGBTI rights record, specifically noting more than a dozen transgender of color have been reported killed in the U.S. this year and “the administration doesn’t seem to care or acknowledge that there is a problem.”
“Looking at it from the outside and as someone who has a fondness for the U.S. and friends in the States, seeing the consistent attacks on LGBTQ+ rights right now is chilling,” said Þorvaldsdóttir. “And somehow, the administration’s efforts to undermine and roll back progress that has been made in recent years appears to fall under the radar, likely due to the many bizarre things that come out of the White House every day.”
Zuleika, 25, is a transgender woman from El Salvador’s San Vicente department.
She had been living at Casa Respetttrans, a shelter for LGBTI migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, run by Respetttrans Chihuahua, a local trans advocacy group, for more than a month when the Washington Blade spoke with her on July 16. Zuleika said her ultimate goal was to receive asylum in the U.S.
“The U.S. is a free society,” she told the Blade.
Zuleika is among the tens of thousands of migrants who have traveled to Ciudad Juárez in recent months with the hope they will enter the U.S. and receive asylum. El Paso, Texas, which is across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juárez, remains a flashpoint over President Trump’s hardline immigration policy.
Casa Respetttrans opened in its current location in Ciudad Juárez earlier this year. Zuleika was among the 36 migrants — including Leche Merchant, a trans woman from Mexico’s Guerrero state who had been in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, N.M., for two years until July 15 — were living at the shelter when the Blade visited it.
Casa Respetttrans Director Grecia Herrera noted Respetttrans Chihuahua is a group that advocates on behalf of trans women.
Herrera said the group had to “diversify” because Ciudad Juárez did not have any shelters that specifically served LGBTI migrants. Herrera told the Blade that Respetttrans Chihuahua now provides services to Mexicans of indigenous descent who have been displaced from other parts of the country, people who use drugs and other vulnerable groups.
“This space does not only think about the migrant population,” she said.
Programa Compañeros is another organization in Ciudad Juárez that provides assistance to LGBTI migrants.
The group, which formed in the 1980s in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, distributes feminine hygiene products and other items to migrants in the city. Programa Compañeros also works to promote safer sex practices and fights violence against women in Ciudad Juárez.
People who use drugs who participate in twice-weekly meetings at Programa Compañeros’ offices are able to eat a hot meal, take a shower and receive medical care. Some of men in the program have either had sex with other men in order to support their drug habit or have been deported from the U.S.
Programa Compañeros Director María Elena Ramos on July 16 told the Blade that women and girls who hope to enter the U.S. are frequently forced into prostitution. Ramos said they are also vulnerable to human trafficking.
“Their body is their passport to cross all of these invisible borders that exist,” she said. “They are in a very difficult situation and they exchange sex to buy things they need. It is the only option that they have.”
The New York Times on Sunday reported 5,600 asylum seekers in Ciudad Juárez are on waiting lists to enter the U.S. The New York Times also said more than 13,000 migrants have been returned to Ciudad Juárez under the Trump administration’s controversial “remain in Mexico” program that forces them to remain in Mexico as they await the outcome of their asylum cases.
Advocates on both sides of the border with whom the Blade spoke said Ciudad Juárez remains a dangerous city.
A travel advisory the State Department issued on April 9 urges Americans to “reconsider travel” to Mexico’s Chihuahua state in which Ciudad Juárez is located because of crime.
“Violent crime and gang activity are widespread,” reads the advisory. “While most homicides appear to be targeted assassinations carried out by criminal organizations, turf battles between criminal groups have resulted in violent crime in areas frequented by U.S. citizens. Bystanders have been injured or killed in shooting incidents.”
Imelda Maynard, a lawyer for Catholic Charities of Southern New Mexico, on July 15 told the Blade during an interview at a coffee shop in downtown El Paso that many of her clients in Ciudad Juárez “don’t know who to trust over there” because they are afraid of the Mexican police and kidnappers. Maynard also said some of them have to wait until January for their first hearing before an immigration judge.
“There’s no rhyme nor reason to it,” she said.
Johana “Joa” Medina León, a transgender woman from El Salvador, died on June 1 at Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso.
Medina stayed at Casa Respetttrans before she entered the U.S. at the Paso del Norte Port of Entry between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez on April 11. Medina was detained at the privately-run Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, N.M., until ICE released her from its custody on May 28, three days before her death.
Medina’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
“I really want to know exactly what happened,” Medina’s mother, Patricia Medina de Barrientos, told the Blade on July 22 during an exclusive interview in the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador.
Héctor Ruiz of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, a New Mexico-based group that advocates on behalf of immigrants, told the Blade at his El Paso office that he did not know about Medina until after she died. Nathan Craig of Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (AVID) in the Chihuahuan Desert, an organization in Las Cruces, N.M., that visits migrants who are in detention centers, said one of Medina’s podmates with whom he and other AVID volunteers visited had expressed concern about Medina’s “declining health” in the weeks before her death.
“It’s really unfortunate,” Ruiz told the Blade, referring to Medina’s death. “That’s why we’re trying to make more of an effort to have a regular presence in Juárez, or regular contact with folks on the ground in Juárez to ensure there’s a smooth handoff from the groups that are working there.”
Fernández described the circumstances surrounding Medina’s death as “super shady.” Fernández also told the Blade the Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee supports the abolition of ICE, DHS, Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“We don’t want to just better conditions,” said Fernández, referring to the conditions in which migrants are detained. “We don’t want these detention centers to even exist.”
‘Immigration has been a big tinderbox issue for awhile’
A gunman on Aug. 3 killed 22 people and injured more than two dozen others when he opened fire at a Walmart near El Paso’s Cielo Vista Mall, which is less than two miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The gunman, who was from a Dallas suburb, made anti-immigrant and anti-Latino statements before the massacre. The gunman also reportedly praised Trump and his calls for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump in 2015 described Mexicans as “rapists” when he announced he was running for president.
The president in February defended the wall during a rally he held at the El Paso County Coliseum, which is a few blocks from the Bridge of the Americas that connects El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Trump in the wake of the Walmart massacre condemned white supremacy, but continues to face widespread criticism over his racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Fernández is among those in El Paso who said Trump’s immigration policy is a way for him to appeal to his base ahead of next year’s presidential election.
“Immigration has been a big tinderbox issue for awhile,” said Maynard. “Our system is messed up and it has been for awhile.”
“It didn’t start with the Trump administration,” she added. “But he just found a way to play off of the xenophobia, the otherness of other people and use that and run with it.”
Ramos agreed.
“You have elected a president who has a very aggressive attitude,” she told the Blade. “His campaign slogan … his campaign focus was migrants and at that time the migrants were Mexicans.”
“It’s very bad,” added Ramos. “It is very diabolical.”
Zuleika conceded she was afraid of Trump’s immigration policy, even though she was hopeful the U.S. would grant her asylum. Michelle, a 24-year-old lesbian woman from Soyapango, El Salvador, who was living at Casa Respetttrans with Zuleika, said she hoped to live in California with her partner.
“[El Salvador] is a very dangerous country,” Michelle told the Blade as she sat on a couch next to Willy, a 24-year-old gay man who fled La Ceiba, Honduras, last fall.
“It is very difficult to be a woman in this place,” added Michelle. “There is a lot of vulnerability.”
Herrera on Monday said Willy, Michelle and Zuleika are now in the U.S. Herrera told the Blade that Merchant still lives at Casa Respetttrans.
What to make of the Log Cabin Republicans’ endorsement of Donald Trump’s re-election bid?
The surprise move came in a Washington Post op-ed from Log Cabin chair Robert Kabel and vice chair Jill Homan earlier this month.
It came despite Trump’s well-documented racism and his myriad attacks on the LGBTQ community.
It came despite Log Cabin’s own precedent in how it awards endorsements. Traditionally, a candidate had to meet with Log Cabin to win its support, as George W. Bush did in 2000 and Mitt Romney did in 2012. But Trump didn’t meet with Log Cabin. It’s a safe bet Trump has no idea who Kabel and Homan are or what Log Cabin does. The group has also traditionally withheld its endorsement until after the convention. We don’t even know who Trump’s Democratic opponent will be and just this weekend he picked up a second Republican primary challenger. Yet, Log Cabin rushed its endorsement more than a year before the election. The op-ed was not signed by Log Cabin executive director Jerri Ann Henry, fueling rumors that she has been sidelined by the board.
In their op-ed, Kabel and Homan praised Peter Thiel’s speech at the 2016 GOP convention in which he said from the podium, “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.” It was a nice moment, but talk is cheap. Kabel and Homan conveniently ignore the fact that the Republican platform that year contained the most anti-LGBTQ language in history, including support for “ex-gay” conversion therapy. It was so bad that Log Cabin declined to endorse Trump that year.
They praise Trump for his efforts to end HIV/AIDS in 10 years; to push for decriminalization of homosexuality around the world; and his economic record, which they contend has helped create new LGBTQ-founded small businesses.
Let’s take a closer look. First, on HIV/AIDS, it’s a commendable goal but amid the hoopla around “ending HIV,” Trump’s administration has initiated attacks on LGBTQ patients, with HHS proposing a rule that would allow insurers and providers to discriminate against trans patients. HHS has also sought to roll back ACA protections and enable providers and insurers to deny care and coverage to LGBTQ people based on religious or moral beliefs. As for decriminalization, sure, another worthy goal. But, gee, the bar is awfully low if he wins an endorsement for merely asserting that gays shouldn’t be locked up. Finally, on small business, Kabel and Homan again conveniently ignore that the SBA, which won a prestigious award from Harvard University for its creative and inclusive outreach to LGBTQ entrepreneurs under President Obama, deleted LGBTQ-related content from its website after Trump’s inauguration and only restored the information after an outcry.
The real problem with the endorsement is that it gives cover to a president, a vice president and an administration that continue to attack LGBTQ Americans. Just last week, the Blade’s intrepid Chris Johnson asked Trump a question about his efforts to roll back LGBTQ protections. Trump ignored the substance of the question and instead pivoted to brag about his Log Cabin endorsement. He predictably had trouble recalling the name of the group that had endorsed him. And Trump’s language during the exchange was telling as he deliberately avoided using the word “gay” or the “LGBTQ” acronym. Instead, he said he’s “done very well with that community.”
Then, just three days after the exchange with Johnson at the White House, Trump’s Justice Department submitted a voluntary 34-page brief to the Supreme Court arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn’t apply to cases of anti-gay discrimination. As the Blade reported, with only 21 states having laws barring sexual orientation discrimination, the 2020 high court ruling on the extent of protections under federal law will have a broad impact on gay, lesbian and bisexual workers.
There’s simply no legitimate rationale for an LGBTQ organization — even a Republican one — to endorse Trump. It is the ultimate in white privilege that Kabel and Homan can ignore children in cages, immigrant deaths in U.S. custody, racist Tweets, the trans military ban and so many other attacks and affronts and back Trump in 2020. Rewarding Trump’s cruel record with praise will only inspire more attacks. What a heartless stunt from a soulless and increasingly irrelevant organization.
Lynn Starkey worked at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis for nearly 40 years. In May, however, the Roman Catholic school fired Starkey as a guidance counselor after officials discovered that she is married to a woman.
In July, Starkey, 63, sued the school and the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, claiming, in part, that they discriminated against her on the basis of her sexual orientation.
In May, the school’s principal notified Starkey, who has been married to her spouse since 2015, that her contract would not be renewed, stating in a letter that civil unions are in violation of her contract and “contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church.”
The archdiocese — which is also being sued by a gay teacherwho was recently fired from a different Catholic school in Indianapolis — claims that it has a “constitutional right to hire leaders who support the schools’ religious mission.”
“Catholic schools exist to communicate the Catholic faith to the next generation,” the archdiocese said in a statement sent to NBC News. “To accomplish their mission, Catholic schools ask all teachers, administrators and guidance counselors to uphold the Catholic faith by word and action, both inside and outside the classroom.”
The issue of gay educators being fired by or excluded from employment at religious schools is not new, and since 2014, several cases have come before the courts. It’s also not unique to Indianapolis or Catholic institutions. In January, Karen Pence, the vice president’s wife, said she would return to teaching at a Christian school at Virginia that refuses to hire LGBTQ employees or to educate LGBTQ students.
So, is this legal? While the majority of Americans across all religious groups support employment nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people, according to a recently released PRRI public opinion poll, the law is less straightforward.
“The law is in flux,” said Jenny Pizer, law and policy director for Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights organization. “There are some principles we are sure of and some that are still being developed and sorted out in the courts and state and federal legislatures.”
In order to understand the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer workers employed by religious organizations, one must consider both federal and state law, the Constitution and executive orders.
Federal Law
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin. However, it contains “multiple overlapping exemptions” when it comes to religion, according to Marcia McCormick, a professor of law and gender studies at Saint Louis University.
For one, any employer can discriminate on the basis of religion if religion is considered necessary for the exercise of the job, McCormick explained. For example, a Kosher butcher shop may want to hire only Jewish butchers.
Religious schools can discriminate in hiring in some circumstances. “They get singled out as getting this one provision that talks about schools being able to discriminate if the curriculum is directed toward the propagation of a particular religion,” McCormick said. A school run by Southern Baptists that seeks to encourage more people to convert to the faith could, according to this section of Title VII, hire only Southern Baptists.
Other kinds of religious organizations are also allowed to prefer co-religionists in their hiring — a Catholic charity is allowed to prefer Catholics in the hiring process. However, while religious organizations have leeway when it comes to hiring people of their own faith, they are not supposed to discriminate on the basis of other protected characteristics like sex, race or national origin, McCormick explained.
“That is where there is a big potential clash,” she said, adding that the issue for LGBTQ workers is twofold.
“Title VII has an expansive definition of religion — not just of beliefs but also practices,” she explained. “There are a lot of rules in a lot of religions about how people ought to behave when it comes to what it means to be male and female, or to sexual or romantic activity.”
Then, she added, there is the issue of the definition of “sex” in Title VII. If it is interpreted to include sexual orientation and gender identity, then LGBTQ workers can seek employment protection under federal civil rights law. They have done so in many cases, but the circuit courts are split on the issue. Luckily for Starkey, Indianapolis is covered by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has ruled in the case of Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College that sex discrimination encompasses discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The Supreme Court, however, is scheduled to take up three cases this year that could have a major impact on LGBTQ workers’ nondiscrimination protections.
Title VII’s Ministerial Exception
In Starkey’s case, the archdiocese appears to be drawing on what is called the ministerial exception to Title VII under the First Amendment, which guarantees free exercise of religion.
In 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued an evangelical Lutheran church and a school in Michigan on behalf of a former employee, Cheryl Perich, a “called” teacher that underwent theology training and was considered to be in a ministerial position. Perich was diagnosed with narcolepsy and took disability leave as a result. When she was ready to return the work, the church told her she no longer had a job. The EEOC lost the case before the Supreme Court.
Pizer said this case “validated the ministerial exception, which lower courts had said existed but the Supreme Court had not spoken to.” The exception applies only to employees serving a ministerial function, but it affords the religious employer tremendous protection against claims of discrimination.
Maggie Siddiqi, director of the Center for American Progress’ Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative, told NBC News that in recent cases, employers are claiming that many different types of employees serve ministerial functions.
“That is really expanding the definition beyond its original intent,” which can “open the door for discrimination against all of these employees,” Siddiqi said.
Religious Freedom Restoration Act
An individual or a business may also claim protections under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law that prohibits the government from discriminating on the basis of religion.
RFRA comes up in the case of R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, one of the three LGBTQ workers’ rights cases currently before the Supreme Court. The case involves Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who was fired from a Detroit funeral home after she informed her employer that she was beginning her gender transition.
In district court, the funeral home claimed that to employ Stephens violated the owner’s sincerely held religious beliefs, and for the EEOC to compel him to employ Stephens was an overreach of government authority in contravention of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Circuit Court sided with Stephens, but the Supreme Court will have the last word in the matter.
State Law
In the absence of a federal law that explicitly protects workers from anti-LGBTQ discrimination, a worker can seek redress in state law. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have passed measures prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Three additional states offer some form of LGBTQ workplace protections.
However, more than 20 states — including some of those with explicit state-level LGBTQ worker protections — have religious freedom laws or religious exemptions to their nondiscrimination protections. Indiana, where Roncalli High School is, has such a law. In fact, in 2015, then-Gov. Mike Pence signed Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which spawned significant criticism by those who said it would open the door to anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Executive Orders & Department Rules
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 barring federal contractors who do over $10,000 of business with the government in one year from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion sex or national origin. In 2002, President George W. Bush issued an executive order that added a religious exemption to the measure, using language lifted from Title VII. In 2014, President Barack Obama added sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected characteristics in Johnson’s original order, affording specific protections to LGBTQ workers, but Obama left intact Bush’s protections for religious organizations.
In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued “religious liberty” guidance that elaborates principles such as “religious employers are entitled to employ only persons whose beliefs and conduct are consistent with the employers’ religious precepts.”
This month, the Department of Labor released its own proposed rule expanding religious exemptions available to government contractors and sparking outcry from many LGBTQ advocates. The rule expands the types of organizations eligible for exemptions to “employers that are organized for a religious purpose, hold themselves out to the public as carrying out a religious purpose, and engage in exercise of religion consistent with, and in furtherance of, a religious purpose,” and also allows employers to “condition employment on acceptance of or adherence to religious tenets without sanction by the federal government, provided that they do not discriminate based on other protected bases.”
The Trump administration claims that religious organizations need extra protections from nondiscrimination law, because not having them prevents these organizations from seeking federal contracts.
“It’s not just that they are changing a rule,” Pizer said regarding the impact of the rule, “but the way the change is being done is an explicit signal that this administration favors religious interests over the equality interests of LGBT people and women.”
What’s Next?
The Supreme Court will hear three cases in October that are expected to have a considerable impact on LGBTQ workers’ rights. Two of the cases deal with sexual orientation, the other with gender identity. In the meantime, the Department of Justice made clear in briefs filed this month that LGBTQ workers should not be covered by Title VII protections. In doing so, the DOJ puts itself at odds with the EEOC and the majority of Americans.
Democrats in Congress have responded by reintroducing the Equality Act, a piece of federal legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of classes protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and does not allow religious exemptions to civil rights law under Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The last time someone spat at me in the street, it was the eve of Pride month and I’d just left an LGBT+ pub in east London.
I’d been to see a drag king show with a friend, and as we walked towards the bus stop a man approached us from behind, spat – twice – at us, and walked off.
“That dude was so gross,” I text my friend when I got back to mine. “Hope you got home alright?”
She replied, “Yeah. Asshole. It was because we’re both queer-presenting, right?”
Being spat at isn’t something I’d usually consider worth writing about. As many LGBT+ people could tell you, it’s not exactly uncommon.
When a lesbian couple were beaten up on a night bus in north London on May 30 – the night before I was spat at, in a street a few miles away – politicians were quick to condemn it.
It was “absolutely shocking,” said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Penny Mordaunt, the women and equalities minister, said, “[I’m] appalled to see this kind of homophobic violence in the UK.”
We live in a country where – during Pride month – Ann Widdecombe, an elected MEP, says on national television that science “may yet cure” homosexuality and Michael Gove’s Tory leadership bid is backed in a national newspaper by an openly anti-trans MP.
So, forgive me for not sharing Corbyn’s shock at a homophobic attack. As queer women were quick to point out, violence against lesbians has been happening for years .
As we approach the halfway line of Pride month, we mark the third anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed and 53 injured in what was (then) the US’s deadliest mass shooting. Those killed were overwhelmingly Latinx and queer.
Though what happened in Orlando was at a scale we haven’t seen since, the violence has not stopped.
On June 4, a mayor in Alabama suggested killing LGBT+ people, in a now-deleted Facebook post. When confronted by the media, he first denied writing it, then admitted to it but said he thought he was sending a private message to a friend.
That same day – June 4 – a gay man in Atlanta called Ronald “Trey” Peters was robbed and fatally shot by two men who shouted homophobic slurs at him.
“‘Give him the f***ing bag, f*g,’” one of the men shouted, before opening fire, according to a witness. Police are treating it as a hate crime – although Georgia doesn’t have hate-crime laws, so the homophobic nature of the attack won’t be reflected in the weight of the law used to prosecute his killers.
These violent incidents all happened in the first 12 days of Pride month this year – and sadly this is far from a comprehensive list.
Activists have won a long battle to stop an anti-LGBT+ church operating out of Texas a public school, after protesting every week for more than a year.
Celebration Church, which is openly anti-LGBT+, had been renting space at the Austin Independent School District’s (AISD) Mueller Performing Arts Centre for its services.
Protest organiser and pastor for the AntiFascism NonChristian Church, Candace Aylor, said in a press release: “This was the goal, getting bigots out of public spaces. It goes against our closely held beliefs to abide bigotry and oppression, especially when openly, publicly permitted.
“What we learned today, what we confirmed from what those freedom fighters of the civil rights era taught us, is that direct action protests works.”
The protests were made up of AntiFascism NonChristian Church, as well as other organisations including PFLAG Austin.
Anti-LGBT+ Celebration Church says it is moving out because its congregation has grown.
The church claims the reason for it no longer renting the public school space is that the congregation has grown, and it needs to move to a new building.
According to the Austin Chronicle, church spokesperson Christine Haas said: “Celebration Church has entered into a purchase agreement to buy a building in the Koenig Lane area.
“The growth of our congregation has allowed for this opportunity and we are very excited to have a permanent home for our Mueller Campus.”
However, one protester claimed in a post on Facebook: “They say they are leaving because they’ve grown, but the real reason is because when a group of protestors shows up every week to call them out on their hateful policies, they can’t grow (the protestors know because we counted their attendance every week).”
According to Austin newspaper the Statesman, the school district has not been able to prevent the church from using the space because their hands were legally tied, according to state law and the first amendment.
Instead, earlier this year the AISD used $10,000 of its income from the Celebration Church rental to fund student and staff participation in the Austin Pride Parade.
The Zero for Zeros campaign released today, a new round of companies who receive a perfect 100 rating from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI), but use their corporate PACs to fund elected officials in Congress who lead opposition to LGBT equality. The list of anti-LGBT elected officials includes Reps. Steve King and Louie Gohmert as well as Senators Mike Enzi and Ted Cruz, among others. The campaign aims to pressure companies to review and end their financial support of these extreme anti-LGBT politicians.
Today’s companies are some of the biggest consumer names in the world and include:
● United Parcel Services
● Chevron Corp
● Northrop Grumman
● Pfizer
● General Motors
● Ecolab Inc
● Dow Chemical Co
● Exelon Corp
● Coca-Cola
● Johnson & Johnson
● Bayer AG
● Boston Scientific Corp● General Mills ● Procter & Gamble ● Cargill
● Nationwide Mutual Insurance● Cardinal Health ● Pepsico ● Diageo
● Best Buy ● Whirlpool Corporation● Merck
“Many of America’s biggest brands say they are proud supporters of their LGBT employees and customers, but at the same time, their corporate PACs are contributing to some of the most strident opponents of LGBT equality in Congress,” said Lane Hudson, Zero for Zeros’ campaign manager. “Those contributions enable the worst of the worst in Congress who work everyday to roll back the
progress we’ve fought hard to win, and who block critical protections for LGBT people like the Equality Act. Our ask is simple, these companies should end their corporate PAC contributions to the politicians who work everyday against equality. It is the right thing for their employees, their customers, and their brand.
Zero for Zeros found that 49 companies that received a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s CEI have donated to members of Congress that are the most outspoken against LGBT equality, earning a ZERO rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Scorecard. These companies have contributed a total of $5,837,331 from their corporate PACs to the worst of the worst Members of Congress. Zero for Zeros is asking that the companies’ corporate PACs cease giving to these members of Congress. A summary of the contributions can be viewed on the Zero for Zero’s website.
“As a veteran of the financial industry and politics, I’ve worked to advance equality in corporate America and government. There is no logical rationale for a company that supports the LGBT community to support politicians that work against it,” said Charles Meyers, Chairman of Signum Global Advisors.
“As a corporate leader, my money goes to candidates that align with my values and the values of the company I lead. I would never contribute to candidates that not only don’t hold those values of equality and fairness, but who in fact work against them,” said Mitchell Gold, Co-Founder and Chairman of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams.
The campaign has contacted the CEOs of each of these companies as part of the campaign. A diverse group of leading activists signed on in support of the campaign and is running digital ads anddigital video engaging employees and allies to join the campaign.
The full list of Zero for Zeros companies:
● Microsoft
● Facebook
● AT&T
● T-Mobile
● Google
● Intel
● Amazon
● Visa
● Mastercard
● Cisco Systems
● Dell Inc
● Oracle
● Sap America
● American Airlines
● Wells Fargo
● Morgan Stanley
● JPMorgan Chase
● Capital One FinancialCorp
● Citigroup
● Cigna Corp ● PNC Financial Services● KPMG ● Ernst & Young ● Deloitte ● PricewaterhouseCoopers● Massachusetts Mutual
Life Insurance ● BBVA Compass Bank● United Parcel Services
● Chevron Corp
● Northrop Grumman
● Pfizer
● General Motors
● Ecolab Inc
● Dow Chemical Co
● Exelon Corp
● Coca-Cola
● Johnson & Johnson ● Bayer AG ● Boston Scientific Corp● General Mills ● Procter & Gamble ● Cargill ● Nationwide Mutual
On Sept. 15, 2017, Olivia stepped into a full-body scanner at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
When she stepped out, a female Transportation Security Administration officer approached. On the scanner’s screen was an outline of a human body with the groin highlighted. The officer told Olivia that because of something the scanner had detected, a pat-down would be necessary.
As a transgender woman, Olivia, 36, had faced additional TSA scrutiny before. On those occasions, a manual search at the checkpoint had been enough to assure TSA officers that there wasn’t a weapon or explosive hidden in her undergarments.
This encounter with the TSA went very differently.
After patting down Olivia and testing her hands for explosive residue, the officer said that she still couldn’t clear Olivia to board her flight and that a further search would be required.
Olivia was led to a private room where, she said, the officer patted her down again, running her hands down Olivia’s legs and over her groin.
“I told her: ‘If the issue is what you are feeling, let me tell you what this is. It is my penis,’” said Olivia, who agreed to be interviewed only if she were identified by her middle name because she fears people will treat her differently if they know she is transgender.
Soon after, three other TSA officers, all of them women and at least one of them a supervisor, entered the room, Olivia said.
TSA rules require that passengers be searched by officers of the same gender as they present. But, according to Olivia, the TSA supervisor told her that she would have to be patted down by a male officer.
After Olivia refused to be searched by a man, the officers told her that because she was not consenting to a search, she could not board her flight and would be escorted out of the terminal.
Olivia said she started crying and pleaded with the officers. “Can I just show you?” she recalled asking them.
TSA officers aren’t supposed to allow passengers to remove undergarments. But Olivia said the officers in the room with her did not object when Olivia pulled her ruffled, black and white skirt and underwear down to her ankles.
Olivia was then cleared to continue to her gate.
A Flawed System
What happened that day traumatized Olivia, who is now fearful of airports, and what she experienced reflects the worst fears of many transgender travelers, who say the TSA is failing them.
Shortcomings in the technology used by the TSA and insufficient training of the agency’s staff have made transgender and gender nonconforming travelers particularly vulnerable to invasive searches at airport checkpoints, interviews and a review of documents and data shows.
The TSA says that it is committed to treating all travelers equally and respectfully. But while the agency has known about the problems for several years, it still struggles to ensure the fair treatment of transgender and gender nonconforming people.
To understand the extent of the problem, ProPublica reviewed publicly available complaint data from the TSA’s website and asked transgender travelers to provide accounts of their experiences at airport checkpoints.
The review, which covered civil rights complaints filed from January 2016 through April 2019, found that 5%, or 298 complaints, were related to screening of transgender people, even though they are estimated to make up slightly less than 1%of the population.
This may understate the proportion of complaints from transgender travelers. When Olivia contacted the TSA, her complaint was filed in a different category — a catchall classification called “sex/gender/gender identity – not transgender.” That category accounts for 15% of the civil rights complaints in the period examined by ProPublica, but the TSA said it did not have a more specific breakdown of these complaints and could not say how many were, like Olivia’s, related in some way to gender identity and screening. ProPublica filed a Freedom of Information Act request in April seeking information about each complaint in those categories, but the agency has not yet provided any response.
When ProPublica asked transgender and gender nonconforming people to tell us about their experiences, we received 174 responses, many of them recounting humiliating treatment after being flagged by full-body scanners for additional scrutiny. Of those people, only 14 said they filed a complaint with the TSA. Many of those who did not file complaints said they didn’t know how, were afraid of outing themselves or didn’t want to relive the experience.
Some of the travelers who responded to ProPublica said they were asked by TSA officers to lift clothing to show private parts of their bodies or were pressured to expose their genitals so that TSA officers would allow them to pass through the security checkpoint.
Get Our Top Investigations
Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Serviceapply.
“Transgender people have complained of profiling and other bad experiences of traveling while trans since TSA’s inception and have protested its invasive body scanners since they were first introduced in 2010,” said Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality, or NCTE.
The TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, was created in an overhaul of transportation security after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with the mission to prevent similar tragedies. The agency, replacing a patchwork of private security providers, initially used metal detectors, which had been standard at checkpoints for years. But after a passenger attempted to blow up a plane in 2009 with plastic explosives hidden in his underwear, the agency began using full-body scanners.
The new scanners were designed to detect potential threats that are not necessarily metal. But TSA officers can’t tell by looking at the monitor whether the machine is detecting a weapon, or as in Olivia’s case, a body part that the scanner was not programmed to associate with a woman.
Since implementing the scanning technology, the agency has grappled with privacy and discrimination issues. Like the transgender and gender nonconforming communities, people with disabilities, people who wear religious head coverings and women of color, whose hairstyles trigger the body scanners to alarm more frequently, have raised concerns about profiling and invasive screening.
Jenny Burke, the TSA’s press secretary, said the screening is done “without regard to a person’s race, color, sex, gender identity, national origin, religion or disability.”
In February, the agency rolled out a new online transgender awareness training, mandatory for its 43,000 screeners, and is studying options for better technology, Burke said.
But advocates and some lawmakers said the improvements have taken too long for a federal agency that interacts with the public more than many others. On an average day, TSA officers screen more than 2 million people and manually search many of them.
“For many, TSA is not just the public face of government — but its hands, too. Its success as a security agency depends upon the trust and compliance of a diverse public,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said during his opening statement at a Homeland Security Committee hearing in June.
Transgender people have faced growing uncertainty about whether their civil rights are protected by the federal government. In May, the Trump administration announced plans to roll back protections for transgender people under nondiscrimination laws. Earlier last year, the administration barred transgender people from serving in the military. As ProPublica reported last year, some states bar transgender people from obtaining a state-issued ID that matches their gender presentation unless they provide proof they’ve had surgery.
False Alarms
Most of the incidents ProPublica reviewed for this story started with a body scanner issuing an alarm.
Before a person steps into the full body scanner at an airport, a TSA officer must register the person’s gender, pressing a pink button for a female or a blue button for a male. Generally, the officers make the decision in seconds, based on a person’s appearance.
The body scanner is programmed to look for penises on passengers scanned as male and breasts on passengers scanned as female. If the officer selects the female button and the machine detects something in the passenger’s groin area — like in Olivia’s case — it could interpret a body part as a potential threat, issuing an alarm.
ProPublica also spoke to several cisgender women who said they were flagged for additional scrutiny after a TSA officer scanned them as male, causing their breasts to trigger the alarm. (“Cisgender” describes someone who identifies with the sex they were assigned at birth, meaning they are not transgender.) The women told ProPublica that they believed the officers scanned them as male because they had short hair or, in one case, because they were wearing baggy clothes.
Peter Neffenger, who served as TSA administrator for the last 18 months of the Obama administration, said he heard again and again about the anxiety brought on by the scanners.
“As many in the transgender community explained to me, it’s one of the most stressful parts of the screening process for them,” Neffenger said.
In September 2018, Terra Fox, a transgender woman, was at the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on her way to a conference in Orlando, Florida. When she walked through the body scanner, the machine showed a yellow box over her groin.
Fox said she told the officers at the checkpoint that she is a transgender woman and that the machine was merely detecting her genitals.
Fox asked to be patted down by a woman, but the female officers near her refused to do it.
According to Fox, two male officers brought her to a private room and instructed her to pull down her leggings and show them her genitals. She complied, but the screening lasted so long that she missed her flight. She said the experience has taken a toll on her.
“Every time I travel, I have to cry and feel humiliated,” she said.
Fox has to travel for work frequently and said she doesn’t have the option of avoiding airports.
Allister McGuire, a transgender man who lives on Long Island, N.Y., said he didn’t fly for five years after an experience in the St. Louis Lambert International Airport in 2014. McGuire was taken to a private room after the body scanner went off, displaying a yellow patch on his chest.
“I was very nervous,” McGuire said. “I did not feel safe.”
The two male officers in the room told McGuire to remove his chest binder, a cloth undershirt some trans men and gender nonconforming people use to flatten their chests, and then lifted each of his breasts with their hands, McGuire said. He was eventually allowed to leave, but he said he immediately had to take anxiety medication.
McGuire said he did not file a complaint.
In an interview with ProPublica, McGuire wondered: “If I was coming through as a woman, would [the officers] be touching me like that?”
Burke, the TSA press secretary, said that the agency does not conduct strip searches, but that travelers may be required to “adjust clothing” during the pat-downs. The agency didn’t respond to detailed questions about the allegations made by Fox and McGuire.
Neffenger said that during his time as TSA’s administrator, officers were not supposed to ask people to take off their clothes during a screening. But he acknowledged that it was difficult to keep such an enormous workforce consistently trained.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if you said you discovered that people have asked people to undress,” Neffenger told ProPublica. “It’s a big organization; it’s got a lot of turnover.”
The overall attrition rate for the TSA officers is 17%, which is roughly in line with the federal workforce, according to a report this year by the inspector general for DHS. But officers leave the TSA voluntarily at a higher rate than other federal employees, according to the report, which said “retention and training challenges are contributing factors to airport security weaknesses.”
Neffenger spent 33 years serving in the U.S. Coast Guard before being appointed in 2015 to lead the TSA. He arrived amid fallout from damning revelations about the agency. A leaked government report showed that TSA officers had failed to detect nearly all weapons and explosives smuggled through by DHS investigators during a secret test.
Neffenger said his immediate focus as administrator was to develop a nationwide training program. It was a challenging task, he said, because the intrusive nature of the screening process will inevitably make both passengers and officers uncomfortable.
“Pat-downs are, by definition, invasive,” Neffenger said. “What [TSA officers] are asked to do is stuff people don’t like to do.”
Public Comments
TSA officers would need to do fewer pat-downs if the agency had better technology.
The agency uses a machine called a millimeter wave scanner at nearly every airport in the U.S. The machines, manufactured by L3Harris Technologies, rely on an algorithm to analyze images of a passenger’s body and identify any threats concealed by the person’s clothes.
The TSA has spent about $110 million deploying the machines, which cost about $150,000 each, according to a government report.
Since the TSA began deploying body scanners at airports, LGBTQ advocates have expressed concern that the new screening procedures would disproportionately affect transgender travelers.
In a letter to then-TSA Administrator John Pistole in December 2010, NCTE, the Transgender Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights described two incidents in which transgender men were interrogated by TSA officers because their bodies looked different in the scanners than what the officers expected. The organizations urged Pistole to take immediate action to stop discrimination against transgender people. In a written response, Pistole said the agency was “working hard to respond to the concerns of the traveling public.”
The full-body scanners at airports across the country frequently give false alarms for Afros, braids, twists and other hairstyles popular among black women.
In 2010, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, sued DHS in response to the TSA’s decision to make body scanners the primary screening system at airports. EPIC argued that the agency should have given the public an opportunity to comment on the technology before it was implemented. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled in favor of EPIC in 2011, though the TSA didn’t begin accepting comments until 2013.
“They are now blaming the scanners when part of the rule-making process is to surface these kinds of issues,” said Jeramie Scott, director of EPIC’s Domestic Surveillance Project.
Burke said the agency procures equipment, such as body scanners, that can accommodate the largest demographic possible. Burke said the TSA does not develop its own technology and solicits private companies to develop scanners that meet the agency’s needs.
Neffenger said talking to transgender people and advocates helped him realize that the agency had to do better.
“You really have to design a system that is as close to 100% as possible,” he said.
The TSA and L3Harris Technologies did not respond to questions about how the scanner’s algorithm processes images to determine threats. (In June, L3 Technologies and Harris Corporation merged to form L3Harris, which has about 48,000 employees and is a key government contractor.)
In a written statement, Jennifer Barton, a spokeswoman for L3Harris, said details about the company’s research and development are confidential. She also said the company is working “with the TSA” on new technology and products that meet the agency’s “evolving requirements and the needs of all passengers.”
“We recognize the importance of ensuring that security scanning equipment accommodate all gender identities, and that is why (the company) is developing technology that moves away from the current male/female imagery and will safely screen passengers without the use of gender-specific images,” Barton wrote.
Barton didn’t respond to follow-up questions about when the technology would be ready for use at airports.
Beyond Technology
While Olivia was searched in the private room in Fort Lauderdale, her fiancee, Marguerite, was waiting on one of the benches near the security checkpoint. Olivia, a trial lawyer, and Marguerite, a school psychologist, had been dating for a year and were planning to marry that winter. The couple were on their way to New York for Marguerite’s brother’s wedding, and Marguerite was worried that they might miss their flight.
“I didn’t know if I could call the police,” Marguerite said. “I didn’t know what my rights were.”
Olivia said she is used to people questioning her appearance — and even her right to exist — because she is transgender. Showing her naked body to TSA officers, however, was a level of invasiveness she wasn’t prepared for.
“The whole weekend of the wedding I replayed the situation in my mind. It ruined the trip,” she said. “As a lawyer I am used to being in control of the situation, but that situation just completely went off the rails.”
Days after the incident, she filed a detailed complaint with the TSA. Her account describes actions, such as the directive that she submit to being searched by a man, that would violate TSA policy.
Burke, the TSA press secretary, said transgender people are supposed to be patted down by an officer of the same gender that they present.
A TSA officer, who has worked as a screener since 2016 and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the officers should not have allowed Olivia to expose herself.
“The moment she [Olivia] said she was going to take her clothes off, they had to say: No, we can’t allow that. That is completely against SOP [standard operating procedure],” the TSA officer said.
Olivia said if she’d known she had the right to bring a witness into the private room, Marguerite would have been there with her.
Six weeks after she filed her complaint, on Oct. 31, 2017, Olivia received a letter from the TSA’s Office for Civil Rights and Liberties, Ombudsman and Traveler Engagement. The letter shared the conclusions of the agency’s investigation into the incident: “Our review to date does finds [sic] that the TSA officers and staff did follow Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in the overall screening and the pat down procedures,” it said.
According to the letter, the agency’s investigation involved “a collection and review of eye-witness statements, close circuit television footage, and any other evidence tending to prove or disprove a traveler’s factual allegations.”
The two-page letter didn’t address Olivia’s claim that she had to expose her genitals to TSA officers.
“My complaint came back and it was not at all what I said had happened,” Olivia said.
Eventually, Olivia filed a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request for the evidence the TSA said it reviewed to investigate her allegations. Her request was denied.
“Nobody called me, nobody did anything, they completely blocked my FOIA request,” she said.
ProPublica also submitted a FOIA request for documents related to the investigation into the incident, along with a privacy waiver signed by Olivia to allow ProPublica to access her records. The agency has yet to provide ProPublica with any of the requested records, citing a backlog in FOIA requests.
ProPublica reviewed the narrative that Olivia included in her original complaint to the TSA, as well as photos she took of the officers involved and an audio recording she made at the end of the incident, to corroborate her description of events.
The agency told ProPublica that it does not have cameras in private screening rooms and did not respond to questions about the incident or Olivia’s complaint.
ProPublica contacted one of the officers at her home in South Florida, but she declined to comment. We could not locate the other two officers.
Deficient Training
TSA officers and supervisors started taking a 30-minute online course titled “Transgender Awareness Training” in February. The course is supposed to teach employees how to interact with transgender people respectfully, according to a one-page summary of the training provided by the TSA.
Burke said that the agency would not provide a copy of the training materials because they are “sensitive security information.”
ProPublica reviewed hundreds of posts and comments from a private Facebook group for current and former TSA employees called “TSA Breakroom.” The conversations in the group, which has more than 18,000 members and is not administered by the TSA, shed some light on the content of the training.
In a series of discussions earlier this year, group members, some of them withholding their names, complained about the program. One of the anonymous posts said the course in the Online Learning Center, or OLC, instructed officers to introduce themselves to passengers by stating their name and the pronouns the officer uses.
This kind of introduction is common in the LGBTQ community, but dozens of group members wrote that they didn’t understand the instructions or would not be willing to introduce themselves that way.
Many group members wrote that they worried passengers would be upset if officers asked them about their gender identity.
“I shook my head through that whole dang course,” one member commented in April 2019. “Someone will throat punch me if I say that stupid shit.”
Other group members wrote that the training didn’t address the fundamental problem that the scanners have only male and female options.
“I got a pink button and blue button. Which one you want?” one group member wrote.
The current TSA officer who spoke to ProPublica on the condition of anonymity said that she came up with her own ways to screen transgender passengers.
“I flip a coin in my head and hit a button, wait for the person to walk out of the scan, point at the screen and ask the person: Did I scan you right?” the officer said. “It is sort of a discreet way of asking.” If the passenger’s answer is no, the officer asks the passenger to walk through the scanner again and hits the other button.
Another TSA employee, who has worked for the agency for over a decade and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the gender buttons are stressful for both passengers and officers.
“A lot of the traveling public already hate us,” she said. “We don’t want to offend people by [scanning them] wrong.”
Some members of Congress have tried to address discrimination against transgender people at TSA checkpoints through legislation. In 2018, Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., introduced the Screening With Dignity Act, which proposed funding for TSA training and education and a feasibility study for retrofitting or replacing the millimeter wave scanners. The bill died in the Homeland Security Committee and has not been reintroduced this year.
“It is clear that TSA needs to reassess its technological capabilities and improve its screening procedures to be more inclusive,” said Rice, who was the district attorney for Nassau County, on Long Island, before being elected to Congress. “No one should have to go through airport security scared that they might be humiliated, discriminated against or outed.”
In a 2015 survey of transgender Americans, NCTE found that of respondents who had gone through airport security in the last year, 43% had a problem at the checkpoint related to being transgender.
Many transgender people fear interacting with law enforcement in any setting. According to the NCTE survey, 57% of respondents said they would be afraid to ask the police for help.
Fox, the transgender woman who said she was asked to expose her genitals at the airport in Albuquerque, said her boyfriend encouraged her to file a complaint, but she decided against it.
“Dealing with the legal system is scary,” Fox said.
Lasting Trauma
When Olivia left the private room where she was searched at the Fort Lauderdale airport, she ran to Marguerite, who was waiting for her on the bench, and wept.
“Calm down, calm down, get your stuff together,” Marguerite can be heard telling Olivia in the audio recording Olivia took on her phone near the end of the incident.
From the time Olivia stepped in the body scanner to the time she was allowed to head to her flight, the encounter spanned just 20 minutes. But it’s been impossible to forget.
Marguerite and Olivia, who married last year, have traveled a few times since the September 2017 trip. Marguerite prints the screening procedures from the TSA website and keeps a copy in her purse, in case she has to show it to a TSA officer.
Each time they travel, Olivia panics as she approaches an airport checkpoint.
“I feel my heart speed up. I start thinking: It is going to happen again, it is going to happen again, it is going to happen again,” she said.
This May, while flying back to Florida from North Carolina, a TSA officer asked Olivia to step aside. The airport body scanner issued an alarm in her groin area. The officer patted her over her jeans and allowed her to head to her flight.
When she left the checkpoint, Olivia ran to Marguerite, who held her as she cried.