The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear a major case on homelessness, letting stand a ruling that protects homeless people’s right to sleep on the sidewalk or in public parks if no other shelter is available.
The justices without comment or a dissent said that they would not hear the case from Boise, Idaho, which challenged a ruling by a federal appeals court.
The outcome was a significant victory for homeless activists and a setback for city officials in California and other Western states who argued the ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals undercut their authority to regulate encampments on the sidewalks.
In Trebor Healey’s short story, “Ghost,” included in his newly released collection, Falling, the protagonist states, “Often, I think most of my closest friends are dead writers. I talk to them all the time and they talk to me-through their books mostly. But through my dreams as well. Sometimes.” Inspired by writer Roberto Bolaño, among others, Healey’s protagonist travels to Mexico, embarking “on a pilgrimage to meet the master.” He writes, “Darshan, the Hindus call it, when you spend time with one of your teachers.”
With his sixth book of fiction, Healey is, thankfully, not a dead writer. He is, though, a writer who continues to demonstrate mastery and, therefore, teach. Falling is many things: queer, academic, political, and comedic. Most resonant, Healey’s stories are hopeful.
Numerous themes and settings bind this diverse ten-story gathering. The concept of borders, both literal and metaphorical, punctuate several offerings. “The Fallen Man” is the tale of a man who mysteriously falls off a hotel balcony in Acapulco. “He was just one of hundreds of tourists who fall each year…due to the country’s notoriously-low balcony railings,” Healey writes. With a police captain, swarms of butterflies and a wily bellhop, Healey creates a world where players are boxed in, trapped in their own mess. Readers are left to wonder if, perhaps, true freedom is just over the railing? In “Nogales,” Rick, an immigration attorney continues to nurse the wounds of a recent, middle-aged breakup. Healey writes, “I wondered if all of us have a certain amount of joy, like a certain amount of breaths, or heart-beats, or hard-ons, and when we run out, that’s it and we can only go on by augmenting with some sort of medication like Viagra, statins or insulin…” One afternoon in Mexico, Rick is almost run down by an erratic driver. Instead of merely helping another client, Rick helps himself, finding new possibilities beyond the U.S. border.
Falling also explores familial loss. In “Abilardo and Rodrigo,” The main character’s wife and son were killed in a tragic plane crash. The author writes, “Sometimes a water glass would remind me of her, or both of them-a shirt, a painting, an umbrella, or even a footstool.” Awash in grief, he periodically flees to Mexico. The protagonist, Guillermo, tells readers, “Here the dead are like other people-there are lots of skeletons, and they do everything we do: laughing, painting their faces, killing each other, living and dying. The big ugly wall, like our own border, between life and death is rent.” He begins to volunteer at a refugee house and meets two young brothers desperate for education, guidance and love. Charming them with the promise of coloring books, Guillermo eventually becomes much more than a volunteer. The piece, “Spirited Away,” follows Vic, “a minor bi-polar case” and “a minor painter.” In another custodial outburst, he takes his thirteen-year-old son, Henry, to Mexico for summer break to help him “understand ancient cultures.” While perusing a massive marketplace, Henry pulls from his father’s grip saying, “Dad, I’m not a little kid and you don’t have to hold my hand.” Vic replies, “I just don’t want to lose you, Henry. Maybe you’re holding my hand. Think of it like that.” Somehow, though, Henry does disappear, vanishing in the foreign landscape. Amid devastation, Healey prompts readers to consider the question, “how did it come to this?”
Argentina is the setting for a pair of standout pieces in Falling. In “A Geography of Plants,” readers meet Camila, a former member of the ERP, a “Guerilla group with a solid Marxist ideology…who were vaguely socialist and increasingly undisciplined.” After finding love with a fellow painter, Camila becomes pregnant and is imprisoned in the Dirty War. Many years later, she transforms her life, becoming a nun. She says, “It’s given me the opportunity to be of service with less odds of getting killed…I saw the church as my best opportunity to live a meaningful life attempting to right wrongs. I don’t agree with everything the church does, certainly, but I do appreciate that it uses a lot of its resources to bring relief to the poor, and it is allowed to. I’m still an atheist.” After meeting a young American, her past comes barreling back. Can she, once again, bury the rage and heartache that life has given her? “The Orchid” is a sprawling, gorgeous story that unfolds among the Argentinian political landscape. Felipe is “a political operative, a kingmaker” and campaign producer of sorts. With his sights on Senator Peña, a young, enthusiastic and openly gay candidate, Felipe has visions of creating a modern- day version of Juan and Eva Peron. Enter Evo, a handsome, twenty-something dancer. Felipe begins, like a puppeteer, to craft the destinies of these two men. Healey writes, “And here I was coupling two beautiful people once again, in order to create something else. Playing God. Well, what is an artist? I was either insane or brilliant, or just grief-sick and desperate. A ghost.” “The Orchid” plays with dirty politics, flailing egos and the fall of manufactured kings.
Falling is a sturdy, well-crafted collection of fiction. Healey’s characters are, in fact, plummeting. They cope with myriad misfortunes yet, guided by the author, always find some sense of vindication. In the coming of age story, “Rite of Passage,” Healey’s free-spirited protagonist asks his dying father, “…you were telling me to stop believing that there was a dog at my heels. To be the dog, right?” In Falling, life is hard. In real life, life is hard too. True masters, true teachers, they give us a little bit of hope. With Falling, Trebor Healey does so.
Popular English-language dictionary Merriam-Webster has named the singular pronoun “They” as their Word of the Year for 2019.
Merriam-Webster has been releasing its Word of the Year list since 2003. The top word, along with the rest of the list, is determined by data, specifically the number of lookups received throughout the year and the percentage of increase over lookups from past years.
According to the dictionary’s website:
Our Word of the Year for 2019 is they. It reflects a surprising fact: even a basic term—a personal pronoun—can rise to the top of our data. Although our lookups are often driven by events in the news, the dictionary is also a primary resource for information about language itself, and the shifting use of they has been the subject of increasing study and commentary in recent years. Lookups for they increased by 313% in 2019 over the previous year.
English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years.
More recently, though, they has also been used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary, a sense that is increasingly common in published, edited text, as well as social media and in daily personal interactions between English speakers. There’s no doubt that its use is established in the English language, which is why it was added to the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary this past September.
Nonbinary they was also prominent in the news in 2019. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (WA) revealed in April during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Equality Act that her child is gender-nonconforming and uses they. Singer Sam Smith announced in September that they now use they and them as pronouns. And the American Psychological Association’s blog officially recommended that singular they be preferred in professional writing over “he or she” when the reference is to a person whose gender is unknown or to a person who prefers they. It is increasingly common to see they and them as a person’s preferred pronouns in Twitter bios, email signatures, and conference nametags.
You can read the full top ten Words of the Year list here.
Grindr has announced a rollout of new features designed to help users in countries where the prevailing culture of homophobia, biophobia, and transphobia puts them at risk.
In what it describes as “part of its continued commitment to the safety and security” of its users, the popular dating/hookup app is introducing new features including: 1) the ability for users to “unsend” messages that they want to remove from the conversation; 2) expiring photos that give users the ability to have their personal photos disappear from a conversation as a protective measure; and 3) screenshot blocking for photos, chats, and profiles. The latter is a particularly important feature which allows users to protect their identity when sharing content that could personally identify them in areas where it is illegal or unsafe to be LGBTQ. These new security features are a part of the company’s continued efforts to make user safety a top priority.
Scott Chen, President of Grindr, said in a statement, “As Grindr has grown to become a vital part of the gay, bi, trans, and queer community, we feel a responsibility to provide important information and evolving tools to facilitate our users’ safe dating experience. Our work in improving the well-being for the LGBTQ community around the globe is far from finished, but we are proud of these additional features to help provide a safer platform for our users.”
In addition, Grindr has unveiled a Holistic Security Guide, covering: 1) digital security; 2) personal safety; and 3) emotional well-being. As part of Grindr’s ongoing efforts to enhance its security features, the company has partnered with LGBTQ activists and online safety advocates around the world, such asArticle 19, on this Holistic Security Guide. The Guide will debut in six languages – English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, and Nigerian Pidgin – and can be found in two formats. The first is in the form of a FAQ much like Grindr’s Sexual Health Resource Center (SHRC) and the Gender Identity Resource Center (GIRC). The second is a standalone report written by Azza Sultan, Associate Director of Grindr for Equality, which can be found on Grindr for Equality’s website.
Grindr for Equality (G4E) is an initiative within Grindr focused on the ever-evolving mission to promote justice, health, safety, and more for LGBTQ+ individuals around the globe. G4E works with health, digital rights and LGBTQ/human righs organizations as well as local community leaders and queer activists to find ways of using the Grindr app, technology and platform to mobilize, inform, protect and empower Grindr users. Grindr for Equality also recently announced that it granted $100,000 to LGBTQ activists and organizations in the Middle East-North Africa region.
The director of Grindr for Equality, Jack Harrison-Quintana, said, “We are so proud to introduce these new security features, along with the Holistic Security Guide, as we continue to promote safety and justice for our users around the globe. We are grateful for the feedback from users and the various organizations and activists around the world who have helped us to continue improving the quality of life for Grindr users.”
In addition to Grindr’s efforts to advance user safety and security, Grindr is working towards a kinder, more respectful community. To learn more, visit: https://www.kindr.grindr.com.
Sanna Marin, the newly-elected prime minister of Finland, will be the youngest sitting country leader in the world and is the daughter of same-sex parents.
The Social Democrat, 34, will replace Antti Rinne who resigned last week, making the country’s five-party coalition entirely led by women. Four out of five are in their thirties.
The rest of the coalition is made up of Li Anderson, 32, of the Left Alliance; Maria Ohisalo, 34, of the Green League; Katri Kulmuni, 32, of the Centre party and Anna-Maja Henriksson, 55, of the Swedish People’s party.
Marin is currently Finland’s transport minister but was elected as as the country’s leader on December 8 and will be sworn in this week. She will be the third female prime minister in the Nordic country’s history.
She was the first in her family to go to university, and was raised by a mother in a same-sex relationship, or what she has previously described as a “rainbow family”.
Finland’s government is now led by these five party leaders. #newgeneration
Sanna Marin: New prime minister of Finland said her LGBT+ family felt “invisible”.
Marin told the Finnish site Menaiset in 2015 that she felt her upbringing in a LGBT+ household influenced her values as a politician.
She said: “For me, people have always been equal. It’s not a matter of opinion. That’s the foundation of everything.”
But growing up those around her did not always feel the same way, and she said that growing up with same-sex parents made her feel “invisible” and that they “were not recognised as a true family or equal with others”.
She added: “But I wasn’t bullied much. Even when I was little, I was very candid and stubborn. I wouldn’t have taken anything easy.”
Marin has shot up through ranks of politics in Finland since she became head of the council in Finland’s third largest city Tampere at just 27 years old. She is also mother to an almost two-year-old daughter.
Before coming out as transgender, Nicole Garcia prayed daily that God would “fix” her. When her prayers weren’t answered and the feeling in her gut didn’t go away, she gave up on religion.
Now, nearly four decades later, Garcia stands behind the pulpit at Westview Lutheran Church in Boulder, Colorado, and delivers weekly sermons to a congregation of more than 100 faithful as their ordained pastor.
“Nobody can question my faith, my devotion to Christ, my devotion to the church. That’s why I’m the pastor here,” Garcia,who turned 60 Thursday, told NBC News. “Being trans is secondary.”
Pastor Nicole Garcia had her first service on Dec. 1, 2019.Courtesy Westview Church
Garcia, who delivered her first sermon at Westview earlier this month, is the first known transgender Latina to serve as a pastor within the 4 million-strong Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — an unanticipated position for someone who grew up in the Roman Catholic Church and left religion entirely for nearly 20 years.
‘I had never felt comfortable in my own skin’
One of Garcia’s earliest memories is of her grandmother kneeling on the cold kitchen floor of her Colorado farm, praying the rosary in Spanish while the voice of Francisco “Paco” Sanchez buzzed through the radio. She still has the worn black rosary that her grandmother gave her when Garcia was just five years old.
Growing up in the ‘60s, Garcia said she had a traditionally paramount role as the “oldest son” in a devoutly Roman Catholic Latino family. She went to church two to three times each weekend and played guitar in the choir. But she said something about her life was off-kilter.
As she got older, an uncomfortable feeling loomed over her, though she struggled to put a finger on exactly what it was. As a teenager, Garcia recalled, she loved to dress up in women’s clothing. She’d even stash outfits in hidden spots around her house to make sure that side of her stayed secret.
“I had never felt comfortable in my own skin. I had always been chastised for doing the wrong thing,” Garcia said. “Everything just felt wrong. I did everything my male cousins would do, but it was just awkward and it didn’t come naturally.”
She said she prayed every day that God could take those uncomfortable feelings away, but her prayers continued to go unanswered. In 1982, in her early 20s, Garcia left the church.
For the next few years, Garcia descended into a spiral of alcohol abuse and partying, which she said became her excuse for “dressing up” and dating men. But after years of heavy drinking and hopping between low-paying retail jobs, she found herself living in a cousin’s trailer in Boulder and going through alcohol withdrawals.
“I realized something had gone terribly wrong,” she said. “I decided it was time to change my life.”
‘I had my come-to-Jesus moment’
Garcia moved out of the trailer and into an apartment in nearby Longmont, where she met a woman at karaoke night. The two dated for a year before they married at a Catholic church in 1994. They eventually bought a house in downtown Denver, and Garcia found a new career as a corrections officer.
From the outside, it looked like Garcia had turned her life around. However, she still felt like she didn’t belong in her body. Every morning before work, Garcia said, she wanted to put on women’s clothes, and when it came time to put on her corrections uniform, it felt like a costume.
“As soon as I got home and I took off the uniform, I was exhausted. All my energy was used just to perform that day,” she said. “I’d drink a pint of Jack Daniels and three or four beers just to be able to calm down and relax.”
Garcia’s marriage crumbled after 8 years, and her wife asked for a divorce in 2002. After they separated, Garcia was sitting at her kitchen table, wondering why she had thrown away what seemed like an ideal life.
“I had my come-to-Jesus moment. It wasn’t one of those, “Oh please, oh please, help me,’” she explained. “It was more, “Alright you son of a b—h, if I’m going to come back, you better step it up this time.’”
‘I’ve always been Nicole’
In a fortuitous turn of events, just two days after her “come-to-Jesus moment,” Garcia received a message offering free therapy sessions for corrections officers. After only a few appointments, Garcia unearthed the uneasy feeling she had struggled with her whole life.
“Within a month or so, I told her my deepest, darkest secret: That for my entire life, as long as I can remember, I have always loved wearing women’s clothing,” she said. “I realized in that moment that I’ve always been Nicole; I’ve always been a woman.”
“I knew at that point I had to transition,” Garcia added. “I could finally put a name on what I was going through.”
Garcia’s therapist recommended she visit the Gender Identity Center of Colorado. It was there that she met another transitioning law enforcement officer who encouraged her to attend a service at the Saint Paul Lutheran Church in Denver.
“I was sure I would walk in and they’d say, “Look at that man in a dress,” but they didn’t,” Garcia recalled. “They were lovely; they embraced me. I just felt at home.”
Nicole Michelle Garcia was officially ordained as Pastor Nicole Garcia on Nov. 23rd, 2019 at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Louisville.Courtesy Westview Church
In 2003, shortly after she started her transition, she became a Lutheran, and soon after began working with an organization called Reconciling in Christ, which works toward full acceptance of the LGBTQ community within the Lutheran denomination. Five years later, Garcia was elected to the group’s national board of directors as their transgender representative, and in that position she continued to campaign for the advancement of LGBTQ people into pastoral positions.
While Garcia immediately felt accepted by the Lutheran congregation early in her transition process, she said her mother had a harder time accepting that the “oldest son” in their Roman Catholic family wanted to transition to a woman. For the first few months, she said her mother stopped speaking to her entirely. When they finally reconciled, it was under the pretense that Garcia had to present as male in their home, combing her long hair back into a ponytail and wearing her corrections officer uniform.
During her yearslong transitioning process, Garcia helped take care of her stepfather, Joe Mayes, who had terminal bone cancer. Garcia said Mayes, who died of cancer in 2005, immediately accepted her as Nicole.
“I would ask him, ‘Papa, why were you so accepting and loving?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘Because I finally saw you happy. For so many years you were morose, you were drunk, you were angry, and now you look happy.’”
Pastor Nicole Garcia had her first service on Dec. 1, 2019.Courtesy Westview Church
Though it took nearly a year for Garcia’s mother to accept her as Nicole, her mother was happy to see her child had returned to the church.In 2013, a decade after she started her transition and found her way back to Christianity, Garcia left her position as a corrections officer to attend seminary school.
During her years at seminary, Garcia became the director of congregational care at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Boulder, and her presence in the community became even more formidable. At her ordination in November of this year, over 200 people came to celebrate her trailblazing service as an advocate and leader among Lutherans.
Garcia was then asked to step in at the newly formed Westview Lutheran Church in Boulder as their pastor. The church’s first service was Dec. 1, and Garcia stood before the congregation, a vibrant red stole draped over her shoulders.
Garcia said she hopes her presence behind the pulpit encourages other LGBTQ people and people of color to step forward through faith.
“As a transgender Latina, I bring a breath of fresh air into all the places I walk into,” she said.
Starbucks fired a trans woman from her supervisor job after a police officer was given an order labelled “pig”.
Lola Rose, a trans college student, said she was “made to be a martyr” after the incident went viral and is now considering legal action,
She had been working as a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Glenpool, Oklahoma, on Thanksgiving morning, when a police officer was handed a muffin with “pig” on the label.
Rose told The New York Postthat she’d noticed the label and intervened, thinking, “No, that’s not right.”
“I jumped into action, apologised, then I thanked him for his time and for his service,” she recalled.
Police officer told Starbucks manager ‘pig’ label ‘no big deal’.
Rose said that the officer told her it was “no big deal” and that he was a friend of the employee, who had written the label to prank a co-worker.
“The barista was trying to play a joke on her co-worker to see if this co-worker would call these drinks out [as ‘Pig’],” Rose said.
She was unaware that five cups handed to the officer also had “pig” written on them. These made it back to the station, after which chief of police Johnny O’Mara called to make a complaint.
Rose said she tried to rectify the situation by apologising, thanking the chief for his service and offering to buy food for the entire police department.
O’Mara reportedly declined the offer and instead shared a picture of a cup to Facebook, writing: “What irks me is the absolute and total disrespect for a police officer who, instead of being home with family and enjoying a meal and a football game, is patrolling his little town.”
Trans manager left wondering how she’ll pay for rent and medical treatment.
After the incident Rose spoke to her direct managers and filed a report. The following day she was fired, nine months into the job.
She said that she was “hysterical” as she was reliant on the job to pay for rent and to cover the cost of her hormone therapy.
The company is renowned for giving trans employees comprehensive healthcare insurance and offering college students tuition assistance. Rose had applied more than five times before she secured her “dream job.”
“My whole world crashed in front of me,” she told the Post.
“It was supposed to be my guardian angel. They were supposed to be there for me as much as I am there for them but it’s gone because a small-town officer was offended by something and posted to Facebook.”
Starbucks told the Post that a shift supervisor is no longer working for the company following an admission of involvement in the incident.
A gang of teenage boys were sentenced to 13 years after luring gay men they met on Grindr into a city park before robbing and humiliating them in a homophobic attack.
By using fake Grindr accounts, the teens would target gay men and tempt them into Bordesley Green in Birmingham, England, reported Birmingham Live.
The four victims were left fearing for their life after the teens tied them up, urinated on them and robbed them in a string of attacks from January 5 to March 29.
One Grindr victim was gagged before being forced to walk in dog excrement.
Three victims were bound by their hands and feet and two were urinated on.
In one attack, gagged with a pair of socks, the victim was forced to walk through dog excrement in a deluge of degrading acts.
One victim was told he deserved to be attacked and robbed because he was a “white man responsible for attacks on Muslims in New Zealand”.
The string of attacks occurred in a city park in England in the first quarter of the year. (PinkNews)
Moreover, one man’s torture lasted for around two hours, and one attacker used a screwdriver to repeatedly stab his jacket.
He was then threatened to have the weapon be stabbed in his eye, spat on, urinated on, tied up and his trousers pulled down as the gang snapped photos of his genitals as they demeaned him.
Mohammed Khan, 18, of George Road, Hay Mills and Mohammed Umar, 18, of Denville Crescent, Bordesley Green, had previously admitted conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to commit a burglary.
Qaasim Ahmad, 18, of Heather Road, Small Heath, was found guilty of those charges and also conspiracy to falsely imprison.
The men ‘deliberately degraded and humiliated’ the victims, says judge.
Kham and Ahmad were both sentenced by the Birmingham Crown Court to 13 years and four months detention.
While Umar was given a sentence of 11 years and three months.
Judge Heidi Kubic QC, as she passed the sentence, said: “You deliberately degraded and humiliated your victims.
“They had the courage to come forward and publicise their ordeal
“I am quite satisfied all four men were targeted because they were gay men.
“You had set up fake Grinder accounts to lure them to secluded areas.
“You subjected your victims to serious physical assaults and you threatened them with various weapons, including a large hunting knife, a screw driver and you used a metal bar to inflict injuries.”
The courts heard that the men dragged their victims into the park bushes. One victim was threatened with having their face superimposed on a video of a paedophile.
Sunday, January 26th 2-4 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts Book Launch Series. Local long-time columnist/writer Susan Swartz presents her first novel, Laughing In The Dark. On-stage conversation with close friend/writer Miriam Silver. Q&A, book sales and signing. Free admission, donations happily accepted. Refreshments by donation, beer/wine for sale. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by a convicted murderer who filed a civil rights lawsuit because Texas prison officials denied her request to be considered for gender reassignment surgery.
The justices let stand a lower court’s decision to reject the claim by inmate Vanessa Lynn Gibson that denying the surgery request violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Gibson, 41, who is transgender, was assigned male at birth and has lived as a female since age 15. Gibson was incarcerated in 1995 for aggravated assault, then was convicted of murdering a fellow inmate in 1997. She is eligible for parole in 2021.
Court papers said Gibson was diagnosed in 2014 with gender dysphoria, which medical experts define as distress from the internal conflict between physical gender and gender identity. She has suffered from severe depression, engaged in self-mutilation and attempted suicide several times, court papers said.
Gibson was provided with hormone therapy, but Texas has no policy allowing for “irreversible surgical intervention,” according to the state.
Gibson sued in federal court claiming that by refusing to conduct a medical evaluation for gender reassignment surgery prison officials were deliberately indifferent to her serious medical needs, a form of banned cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that a deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners violates the Eighth Amendment because it is an “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain.”
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March rejected Gibson’s claim. In the decision, Judge James Ho, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said it is not cruel to deny a treatment that no other prison provides.
