Maine banned gay conversion therapy for minors on Wednesday, joining more than a dozen other states that have outlawed the controversial practice.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed the bill Wednesday, and it will take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns next month.
Conversion therapy aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Under the new law, professionals, including school psychologists, pharmacy technicians and social workers, who have advertised, offered or administered conversion therapy to a child could face discipline from licensing boards.
Maine joins 16 other states and the District of Columbia that have banned the practice. Supporters decry it as a harmful and note the American Psychological Association opposes the therapy.
“Conversion therapy is a harmful, widely discredited practice that has no place in Maine,” Mills said. “By signing this bill into law today, we send an unequivocal message to young LGBTQ people in Maine and across the country: We stand with you, we support you, and we will always defend your right to be who you are.”
A law against conversion therapy was signed recently in Massachusetts, while states including North Carolina are considering such legislation this year.
“With this law, Maine is taking seriously its responsibility to ensure youth and parents who seek support are not subjected to fraudulent and dangerous practices under the guise of therapy,” said Mary Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project director for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.
Maine’s former Republican governor vetoed a similar measure last year, but the bill has gained momentum this year under a Democratic-led Legislature. Republicans argued that the bill was unnecessary, while also contending that it would prevent parents from seeking religious counselors for their children.
“There have not been any recorded cases of this happening in Maine,” said state House Republicans spokesman John Bott.
Republicans failed to pass an amendment to exclude talk therapy and counseling from counting as conversion therapy.
Maine’s law exempts treatment that offers acceptance, support and understanding while being neutral on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Trans people have been beheaded, gunned down and stoned to death, according to a new report.
It highlights the 369 trans, non-binary and gender-variant people, at least, who were murdered in the 12 months from 1 October 2017 to 30 September 2018.
28 of the trans murder victims were reported to be teenagers, with some as young as 16.
There were five beheadings. Nine people were stoned to death.The majority of the people killed were trans women of color, often gunned down or beaten to death.
Brazil still has the most reported trans murders in the world
The Trans Day of Remembrance update has seen an increase of 43 cases compared to last year’s update, and 73 cases compared to 2016.
Brazil (167 murders) and Mexico (71), once again, lead the list of the most reported killings of trans women and men.
The United States has seen 28 trans people killed, an increase from last year’s 25.
Other killings have been reported in Pakistan, Colombia, France, the UK, and elsewhere around the world.
But these horrifying numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
Beheaded, gunned down, and shot to death
Media organizations – including normally reputable names – are often guilty of misgendering the victims when they are trans, making it even more difficult to get a real sense of the problem.
And there are multiple countries, many in Africa, where we have little knowledge of the violence happening against trans people. The highest numbers have been found in countries with strong trans movements that carry out professional monitoring.
‘We cannot estimate a number, but indeed what we can register is just a small fraction,’ Lukas Berredo, from Transrespect vs Transphobia Worldwide, told Gay Star News.
The majority of the people killed, 62%, were sex workers.
Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslein, trans and intersex, was a LGBTI rights advocate living in Massachusetts. She was also a founder of the Miss Trans America beauty pageant.
She was found dead in her home on 5 January. Her husband confessed to striking his wife with a hammer before stabbing her in the back. Christa was 42.
Azul ‘Blue’ Montoro, a 26-year-old sex worker, was killed in Cordoba, Argentina.
She was stabbed 18 times in a friend’s apartment. She only died when the final stab, the 19th, came at her throat.
Fernando Lino da Silva, a 21-year-old, was a trans man living in Maceió, Brazil. He was just watching TV when he was shot to death.
Naomi Hersi, 36, was stabbed to death in a London hotel in March. Her murderer was recently jailed for 20 years.
Naomi Hersi
Hajira, in Pakistan, was tortured to death before she was beheaded. She had been dead for several days before being discovered.
A government contractor refused to bury the body. It is unknown why. It may because she was beheaded or she was a transgender woman.
Vanesa Campos was a sex worker in Paris. Immigrated from Peru two years before, she was shot by a mob as she tried to prevent one of her clients from being robbed.
Her killing sparked protests about the treatment of sex workers in France.
S. A. Sánchez López was murdered on 19 November last year. She was 41, deaf, and living in Nicaragua. She was beaten to death for ‘no reason’.
Devudamma Surya Naryana, 47, was electrocuted to death in her home in India.
And Nikolly Silva, a 16-year-old, was stoned to death at dawn in Cabo Frio, Brazil.
Why we remember
These are just a few names and faces of a list that can only begin to imagine the scope of transphobic murders that happen worldwide every year.
Trans people run the risk of losing their lives just for being who they are.
Berredo added: ‘Trans Day of Remembrance is a date in which we remember and honour the trans and gender-diverse people whose lives has been taken away from us.
‘It is a mourning day, and it is also a day to be together with our communities, to keep existing and resisting.’
According to Michael Williams, much better known as “Sister Roma,” the story of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence began in San Francisco on Easter Day of 1979. Back then, just a year before the city’s gay community was struck by the AIDS epidemic, four friends found themselves fed up with what Roma called the “Castro clone look.”
“Gay men in San Francisco in the 70s all presented very masculine, leather jackets, moustaches, sort of like the Marlboro Man, you know?” Roma told NBC News. “So they were very fed up with that, and they thought, ‘Let’s put on these nun’s habits and sort of go out and screw with people and see what happens.’”
As they strolled from the Castro to the city’s gay beach, Roma said, “everywhere they went the reaction was just insane — people had never seen anything like men, most of them with facial hair, in nun’s habits.” They realized they were onto something, so they came up with a name for their group: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Now four decades later, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were clearly ahead of their time, and many of their campy “dragtivism” tactics have inspired others, Roma said. “Little did they know it, but these four queers who went out in these nuns habits actually changed the world,” she said.
“One of the original sisters was Bobbi Campbell, who was Sister Florence Nightmare, who was a registered nurse,” Roma said.
Campbell became well known across America as the self-designated “AIDS poster boy,” a role he took on in an effort to destigmatize the disease.
“The sisters took a very pragmatic, responsible attitude towards the virus, and said, ‘We need to protect the community,’” Roma said. “So the sisters produced a safer sex pamphlet called Play Fair that we still produce today, that was the world’s first-ever safer sex pamphlet.”
In the early 1980s, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence hosted some of the world’s first fundraisers for AIDS victims, many of whom faced financial ruin as the then-unknown pathogen ravaged their bodies. “The sisters were at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS before anyone knew what the disease was,” Roma said.
Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco’s beloved sect of cross-dressing nuns, attend The Hunky Jesus Competition event at Dolores Park in San Francisco on April 1, 2013. John S Lander / LightRocket via Getty Images file
At each anniversary every 10 years, the sisters have had a different focus. In 1989, Roma launched the “stop the violence” campaign, which addressed an uptick of homophobic hate crimes in San Francisco at that time.
“In 1989, queer people were still really fighting for equality and just desiring to be recognized as equal people in the world,” Roma said. “So it was a very basic fight, and we were also crippled with HIV and AIDS, which many people saw as a disease that was killing all the right people.” That year, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence also became an official nonprofit organization.
For their 20th anniversary in 1999, the Sisters closed Castro Street for a massive celebration. “That seemed like a no-brainer to us, but apparently it was quite a major issue for a lot of people in San Francisco, who still at the time … thought that we were very sacrilegious,” Roma said. But support from local politicians got them through the day, and they hosted their street fair, where the Sisters emceed a “hunky Jesus” competition that continues to this day.
Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco’s beloved sect of cross-dressing nuns, attend The Hunky Jesus Competition event at Dolores Park in San Francisco on April 1, 2013. John S Lander / LightRocket via Getty Images file
Because of publicity generated by the opposition, “it was one of the largest celebrations that we had, probably ever in our history,” with around 20,000 to 30,000 people filling Castro street, Roma said.
The Trump administration plans to launch a new panel to offer “fresh thinking” on international human rights, a move some activists fear is aimed at narrowing protections for women and members of the LGBT community.
The new body, to be called the Commission on Unalienable Rights, will advise Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to a notice the State Department quietly published Thursday on the Federal Register.
“The Commission will provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights,” states the notice, which is dated May 22.
The State Department’s media contact for the new commission is former Fox News contributor Kiron Skinner. As many of you surely know, “natural law” is often cited by hate groups in legal briefs opposing LGBT rights.
Ten years ago, Rafeal “Nephew” Bankston landed in solitary confinement in San Quentin State Prison for refusing a gay cellmate.
“Where I grew up, we called it gay bashing,” he said. “We hated them, robbed them,” Bankston added matter-of-factly.
On a Wednesday afternoon in April, he told that story to a classroom of 15 other inmates. About half of them were LGBTQ. Photos of LGBTQ icons — Janet Mock, Ellen Degeneres, James Baldwin — smiled down from a whiteboard at the front of the room.
Rafeal “Nephew” Bankston is an inmate at San Quentin State Prison. Kate Sosin
No one said a word. Lisa Strawn, 60, a transgender woman, was sitting next to Bankston and didn’t move.
Bankston, 37, was smaller than most of the others in the room. He wore plastic-frame glasses and a blue prison shirt that looked several sizes too big. Like many in the room, he has spent more than half of his life behind bars. He entered prison at 18 and said he learned at a young age to hate gay and trans people.
Half a life later, he wants to talk about Jussie Smollett. He wants to know how his LGBTQ peers feel about Smollett now that the TV star’s reported anti-gay hate crime has been refuted by Chicago Police.
“When we walked out of here, here, everybody was pulling for him because it was wrong, how he got treated,” Bankston said. “Do you all still feel that way?”
He posed the question to members of Acting With Compassion & Truth, or ACT, a restorative justice group that meets weekly at San Quentin. Restorative justice is an alternative to punishment, one in which offenders and victims try to heal together.
‘I didn’t know where I fit in’
Each week for a year, LGBTQ and straight inmates meet for two hours in a small yellow classroom. They talk about everything from what it means that Janelle Monáe came out as pansexual to how to respect intersex people. Their goal is simple: heal together and work toward a better world for LGBTQ people.
Inmates Michael Adams and Juan Meza currently lead the group. The lessons have been designed by LGBTQ prisoners.
The group is as diverse as the world on the outside. Ages range from 25 years to late middle age, and races and ethnicities vary. Almost all of the attendees are what are referred to as “lifers,” those convicted of felonies so serious that their sentences range from many years to life in prison. These include murder and sex crimes.
Three of the group’s attendees are transgender women. Lisa Strawn is among them.
Lisa Strawn is a transgender inmate at San Quentin State Prison.Kate Sosin
Strawn, who prefers no pronouns, entered prison 25 years ago on three-strikes burglary charges and has served much of that time at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, another men’s prison. Strawn transitioned to female at age 18 but has always been housed with men.
That’s because in most prisons across the nation, transgender inmates are housed according to their birth sex, despite federal requirements in the Prison Rape Elimination Act that inmates be housed on a case-by-case basis.
Strawn has grown accustomed to navigating men’s prisons as a woman.
San Quentin is California’s oldest prison, built in 1851 by prisoners at the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Marin County. The views from the entrance are so heavenly it is often remarked that it’s astonishing the prison has not been flattened and divided up for real estate.
San Quentin State Prison overlooks the San Francisco Bay.Kate Sosin
The 600-man cell block looms at six levels. There is no air-conditioning in the unit, and fans run in the background. Cells are just wide enough to stand in sideways. They house two people each and the sum of their possessions, crammed into cubbies above bunks. At one end of the cell block, men make calls from a line of pay phones. At the other end, they shower out in the open.
With a blond ponytail and carefully-applied eyeliner, Strawn decidedly stands out at San Quentin.
“Honestly, I’ve had problems, but then I guess myself personally, I think a lot of it is how you carry yourself,” Strawn said. “Every time I walk into a room I better own it.”
San Quentin State PrisonKate Sosin
At Vacaville, Strawn helped establish an LGBTQ group. Leaving that a year ago to come to San Quentin was devastating.
“I hated this place when I got here,” Strawn said. “I didn’t know where I fit in, and I knew where I fit in there. But when I came here, I got into ACT.” Aside from the restorative justice group, Strawn also got into journalism by writing for the San Quentin news outlet, The Beat Within.
Transgender women like Strawn report exceedingly high rates of violence behind bars, according to data from the National Center for Transgender Equality. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that transgender people were nine times more likely than the general prison population to be sexually assaulted by other inmates.
Trans Inmate Holly Stuckey participates in San Quentin’s restorative justice group.Kate Sosin
It was due to that hostility that trans women approached the Insight Prison Project in 2015, where Billie Mizell was then serving as executive director. Inmates asked Mizell to support the formation of an LGBTQ education program at San Quentin. They didn’t want a support group.
“What I kept hearing from them was, ‘We live our lives here every day surrounded by thousands of people who have been for the last 20 or 30 years who haven’t had exposure to the evolution that we know is happening out there,’” Mizell explained, noting that the transgender inmates wanted to “bring that inside” the prison’s walls.
Working with several inmates, Mizell brought a yearlong curriculum to the prison. She has been leading the Acting With Compassion & Truth group as a volunteer at San Quentin ever since.
Billie Mizell leads San Quentin State Prison’s Acting With Compassion and Truth group, a restorative justice program. Kate Sosin
This year, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation allowed her to replicate the program on San Quentin’s death row, which remains intact despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent decision to halt executions. That group, comprised of five people, meets Tuesdays. It is not open to reporters.
ACT is entirely voluntary, although many admittedly come to the Wednesday class because it looks good for the parole board. Mizell, however, won’t let anyone in who is not genuinely committed to the lessons.
Still, the resulting class presents a strange juxtaposition. Prisoners, some convicted of extreme anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, spend a year in close proximity with the prison’s most vulnerable LGBTQ population.
‘I was so ashamed’
Among the group’s founding members is Phil Melendez, who faced 30 years to life in prison for two counts of second-degree murder, partially motivated by animus against a lesbian.
In 1997, Melendez’s father was stabbed while collecting a drug debt. Melendez justified avenging the assault because one of the assailants was a lesbian. On a phone call with NBC News, Melendez, who has since been released from prison, rattles off the slurs he used as he burst into a house and killed two people.
In prison, Melendez said he had a lot of time to think, not just about the crime he committed at 19, but about the homophobia behind it.
“I noticed that there was that element of LGBTQ bias in the slur that I used,” he said. “In that slur, I was actually dehumanizing a human being.”
When the country debated marriage rights for LGBTQ people, he said found himself frustrated.
“I actually took offense at people who were against gay marriage,” he said.
So in 2015, when ACT started forming, Melendez took his own life experiences and used them to help design a curriculum for other straight peers in the class. Two years ago, Melendez was released. He is now a national advocate for restorative justice and LGBTQ rights.
Among those who benefit four years later from his work inside are attendees like Lee Xiong, who was struggling to face his younger brother who he suspected was gay. Trying to grapple with that, Xiong found ACT last year.
“I always thought that transgender or gay were nothing,” he says. “I thought it was a choice.”
Lee Xiong, center, participating in San Quentin’s restorative justice group.Kate Sosin
Xiong has spent more than a year unpacking those feelings. When his brother came to visit him at San Quentin, Xiong asked his brother to come out to him. It took him five minutes to even reach the question.
“I was so ashamed,” he tells the group. “I asked him that question. Is he going to get hurt? Or is he in fear to tell me? But he just came out and said, ‘Yes man, I know what you’re going to ask me.’”
His brother told him that when he came out to their parents, they told him to “get the f–k out” and disowned him.
“I told him that, “You know what, don’t worry man, when I get out, we’ll talk to my mom,’” Xiong said.
This story, of straight prisoners connecting with LGBTQ family because of their time in ACT, is highly common. Bankston’s sister came out to him as transgender.
“I cut off communication,” Bankston said. “I don’t want to talk to you more. I don’t know what to say to you. Nobody likes you.”
But Bankston recently picked up the phone and called his sister. He asked how she was.
“He, excuse me, she ran with the whole rest of the conversation,” Bankston said, correcting himself on his sister’s new pronoun.
“It’s going to take some time and to adjust to my sister’s new lifestyle,” he explained. “I got some struggles with that. I’m not perfect.”
In May, Bankston’s sister agreed to come visit him at San Quentin for the first time since he entered prison 17 years ago.
The planned visit was a moment for the group to reflect on how far Bankston had come, according to Mizell. When he entered ACT, he was looking for a “chrono,” or a positive write-up to help his parole case. “And now I am out here being an ally, raising awareness and answering questions,” he said.
‘I was able to be authentically me’
Straight prisoners aren’t untangling their homophobia and earning parole at the expense of LGBTQ inmates in the group. For those who are LGBTQ, the group can be deeply healing.
“There was a time I would be deathly afraid of someone like Nephew,” 52-year-old Adams, tears pushing at his eyes, said of Bankston.
“This group is the first time I was able to talk about my lived experiences, as related to being a member of the LGBTQ community,” Adams said. “It was the first time I was able to be authentically me and also feel safe. That’s a profound feeling of humanity.”
Adams, who has been incarcerated for 19 years, struggled for years before coming out as bisexual publicly on San Quentin’s podcast, Ear Hustle, last June.
He noted that not a single man in ACT identifies as gay. “In here, it’s life or death,” he said of coming out.
The group aims to ease some of those challenges by adding to the number of allies on the inside.
In order to build this empathy, Meza tries to draws parallels between straight inmates and their LGBTQ peers.
Juan Meza uses “The Genderbread Person” as a learning tool during a session of San Quentin’s Acting With Compassion and Truth group.Kate Sosin
He shows the class “The Genderbread Person,” a visual tool for talking about gender identity that resembles a Gingerbread man. He draws kind of a stick figure on the whiteboard. The group labels the person by distinguishing where different LGBTQ identities live: Anatomy is on your body; gender and sexual orientation are in your heart and brain.
“My culture would say that I’m a ‘two spirit,’ because I have the spirit of the masculine and the feminine at the same time,” Meza explained. “So it just really has to do with how I express myself and how I know myself.”
The group is then asked to rattle off words used to hurt marginalized groups: racist terms, sexist words, anti-LGBTQ slurs and hurtful terms for the incarcerated. Adams and Meza drew lines between the groups of terms, noting that insults hurled against prisoners, like “punk,” are also used to hurt LGBTQ people.
Nythell Collins is an inmate at San Quentin. Kate Sosin
Meza noted that using the wrong pronouns for a transgender person can be just as harmful as a slur.
“We’ve said it many times, when we can’t express ourselves for who we are … a lot of the community ends up killing themselves,” Meza warned.
Class in April goes well over the allotted two-hour time. Egypt Senoj Jones, 25, a transgender, sings a song she composed herself, called “I Know.” She stands in the center of the arranged tables, her arms outstretched, tilts her head up toward the low ceiling vents and closes her eyes.
“I know what I gotta do,” she sang. “Now that I know the truth, there is no excuse.”
She sang about growing up in foster care, transitioning to female, dropping out of college and popping pills. She is snapping her fingers. By the end, the whole group is singing the chorus with her. She finishes and they erupt into applause.
Outside in the yard, Strawn poses for the camera in the sinking sunlight. Strawn beams in a movie-like pose, sunglasses glinting against the glare.
“This is how we do it at San Quentin,” Strawn said playfully.
A recent survey has found 0% of American Muslims identify as gay or lesbian.
The ISPU research interviewed 804 American Muslims.
They found not one identified as gay or lesbian.
Around 4% identified as bisexual and 2% said they were ‘something else’. Another 2% refused to answer the question’.D
There are, of course, LGBTI people who identify as Muslim in the United States.
CNN interviewed members of progressive mosques, like Masjid al-Rabia.
The mosque is intended to be women-centered, anti-racist, LGBTI affirming, and welcoming to many Islamic traditions.
Muslims for Progressive Values have eight ‘inclusive communities’ in the United STates.
Berkeley’s Qal-bu Maryam Women’s Mosque, described as the ‘first all-inclusive’ place of worship, opened in 2017.
Liberal Muslims say a future also looks good for LGBTI people of the Islam faith.‘
Dalia Mogahed, director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, said there is a ‘huge division’ right now.
‘There are a lot of different opinions and, frankly, there is a lack of space to discuss it,’ she said.
‘When you have a community that is so under the microscope and being subjected to litmus tests for civility and tolerance, people become afraid and self-censoring.’
And when asked about the 0% statistic, Mogahed said it can be read a different way.
If 92% of American Muslims identified as straight, she said, then the remaining 8% may be lesbian or gay, even if they’re reluctant say so.
‘The fact that there is a segment of Muslims who identify as something other than straight means that, even though they may not be acting on that inclination or orientation, they have negotiated a space where they can still be Muslim,’ Mogahed said.
‘There is enough space within the theology to be able to do that.’
According to a new survey of LGBTI attitudes in the US workplace, nearly half of all LGBTI employees fear being out will hurt their careers.
Glassdoor, a website specializing in workplace reviews, published the survey on Thursday (30 May).
The Harris Poll conducted the survey from 26 April – 6 May on behalf of Glassdoor, speaking to 6,104 US adults. A total of 515 identified themselves as LGBTI and employed in the survey.
Ultimately, respondents reported witnessing anti-LGBTI attitudes in the workplace, which affects their own anxieties about being out.
Bad attitudes lead to bad workplaces for LGBTI employees
Attitudes are different between LGBTI and non-LGBTI employees, which affect perceptions and feelings.
Over half (53%) of all LGBTI respondents said they’ve experienced or heard anti-LGBTI comments, while only 30% of non-LGBTI respondents reported the same.
Jesus Suarez, Glassdoor’s LGBTQ and Ally Employee Group Leader, stated: ‘Any employer that chooses to ignore implementing supportive working environments and policies risk missing out on hiring quality talent.’
Similarly, 70% of LGBTI employees said they would not apply to a company that doesn’t support its LGBTI staff. 46% of all employed adults (both LGBTI and non-LGBTI) said the same.
These environments — hearing negative comments and stress about company policies — affect LGBTI workers.
Nearly half (47%) said they believe being out would hurt their careers. The makeup of LGBTI employees who are out and not are close — 57% say they feel ‘fully’ out, while 43% said they are not.
What can be done
Naturally, LGBTI employees are more likely (68%) than non-LGBTI employees (48%) to believe their companies can do better. There is evidence to suggest this is true.
‘Still today, 26 states do not protect LGBTQ employees at work,’ said Suarez.
‘Many employers have an opportunity to build or strengthen the foundation for an inclusive culture that encourages employees to bring their full selves to work.’
This reality further highlights the importance of things like the Equality Act, which, if passed, would provide federal protections for people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity in numerous locations, including the workplace.
Gay borrowers are more likely to be denied mortgage loans, and those that do get approved pay higher interest rates and fees, according to a new study from Iowa State University.
Despite being “less risky overall,” same-sex borrowers are 73 percent more likely to be denied when applying for a mortgage loan, according to the report. When they are approved, the study found they have mortgage interest rates that are 0.02 to 0.2 percent higher on average — potentially adding tens of thousands of dollars to their repayments over the lifetime of the loan.
The study, published earlier this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests there may be systemic housing discrimination against gay and lesbian borrowers.
“Our investigation on mortgage performance reveals that same-sex applicants are less likely to prepay mortgages and are no more likely to default than their peers, indicating that they are less risky to lenders,” the report states. “Given the absence of evidence that suggests that same-sex status is a reliable signal for loan underperformance, potential disparate lending practices against sexual orientation might exist in the mortgage market.”
Lei Gao, one of the study’s authors, said he became interested in the experience of same-sex borrowers in the mortgage market after observing the experience of his gay neighbors in Georgia, one of the 26 states across the United States that does not have statewide housing protections for LGBTQ people.
“Their housing purchase experience and my selling experience basically taught me about this,” Gao explained, noting that it seemed “they were treated differently than some other neighbors.”
Since mortgage applications do not ask prospective borrowers about their sexual orientation, the researchers inferred borrowers’ sexuality through the gender disclosure of the applicant and co-applicant. Their data correlated with LGBTQ population estimates conducted by Gallup and the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute.
While Gao said it may be “premature to conclude that there exists discrimination against same-sex couples” in the mortgage lending market, he said the report’s findings should “raise enough concerns and call for a further full-scale investigation.”
“The potentially existing lending discrimination might just reflect a corner of the iceberg,” he told NBC News.
In the report, Gao and his co-authors state that their findings “have direct implications for the urgency of protecting the LGBT community regarding fair credit accessibility.”
Currently, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, federal legislation passed to end racial and religious segregation in home rentals and purchases, does not ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Equality Act, a federal bill reintroduced in Congress last month, would modify the existing law to do so.
After the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, racial and religious housing discrimination became illegal, but it didn’t disappear overnight. Since 1991, the Justice Department has employed “testers” to determine whether landlords, sellers and agents are discriminating against protected classes, the Justice Department writes on its website. “This information may indicate whether a housing provider is complying with fair housing laws.”
More Americans identify as bisexual in a trend led by young women of color, new study shows.
According to the latest biannual General Social Survey (GSS), more than 3% of people in the US identify as bisexual. Significantly, those attracted to and/or dating both genders in 2008 were just 1%.
Sociologists D’Lane Compton and Tristan Bridges have commented on the survey, pointing out that the number of bisexuals seems to increase every year. On the other hand, the number of those identifying as gay or lesbian is stationary.B
They also highlighted that the rise in bisexuals is almost entirely due to women. As more and more young women identify as bi, men dating both genders haven’t increased in number.
More specifically, the upswing has been concentrated among young women of color — black women, especially.
The two sociologists further noted that the data collected by GSS mirrored those by a Gallup survey.
‘Gallup reported that much of the change in LGBT identification between 2012 and 2016 could be accounted for by young people, women, college-educated people, people of color, and those who are not religious,’ the two wrote.
The GSS survey also shows that the number of those identifying as gay or lesbian has decreased between 2016 and 2018.
Homosexuals were nearly 2.5% in 2016, whereas this percentage dropped to slightly more than 1.5% in 2018.
Student activists, Michael Gutierrez and Kaelin Walker, have been the integral voices for the fight against the appointment of Dr. Wilson and ensuring equality for LGBTQ+ students at UTEP.
“The fight isn’t over. This isn’t a done deal,” Kaelin tells GLAAD. “I find it sad that people are looking at it as if it is a done deal. It’s not. We’re not done.”
Michael and Kaelin will continue their optimism after the appointment of Dr. Wilson. Wilson’s appointment does not mean that they lost, it means that the fight for equality and acceptance continues.
GLAAD spoke to Michael and Kaelin last week to talk about the union amongst students, the future of UTEP, and the continuous battle with faculty and staff.
How do you feel about the nomination of Dr. Heather Wilson?
Michael: Oh I’m very I’m very concerned. We just met with her — I met with her personally twice. I had time to ask her questions and she dodged every single one of them. Meeting her twice — it was not what I hoped for. It was very disappointing and to say the least. I’m not looking forward to whatever is going to happen.
Kaelin: As for myself, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, as an immigrant, and as a person of color — I am extremely concerned. I only got to see her once and I didn’t get to ask any questions because we ran out of time. I actually thought that she was going to be better at sweet talking us and saying the stuff we wanted to hear but she actually wasn’t, which kind of to my dismay but also to my to my pleasure.
What do you plan to do moving forward to keep the pressure on Dr. Wilson?
Michael: I heard the news live this morning it didn’t come as a surprise to me — I personally do not accept Wilson as president, but the reality is she’s president. Moving forward I am going to get involved more within UTEP. I will also be getting those who oppose Wilson to run for positions within UTEP. (Student Government Association, Alumni Association, etc.) For those who are in fear Wilson will be held accountable we the student body will look out for one another. The fight is not over, and our voice is stronger than ever.
Kaelin: I am currently running for Vice President of External Affairs for the UTEP’s SGA. If I win the position, I will make sure to stand for Diane Natalicio’s mission of access and excellency when I represent UTEP on a regional level. I also want to develop a communication between myself and Wilson and work on turning her into an involved ally to LGBTQ+ people and the Hispanic community of UTEP. If she cannot rise to the challenge, then she doesn’t belong here and I will keep protesting her.
What steps are student activists at UTEP taking and how are you all collaborating on campus?
Michael: We are all coordinating with each other — we are making our voice heard. We’ve been flooding everybody’s phones, we have been flooding everybody’s e-mails. We recently created We the Students Coalition, which is a group of student students and student organizations within campus. And we are doing things that activists do: We are protesting, we are doing phone banks, we are just trying to make our voices heard. And the community has been with us. The community has backed us 100 percent the way through. The only ones that haven’t been behind our back, I feel, is our university. And I think that’s because they just want us to be silenced… They just want us to accept Dr. Heather Wilson and we’re not going to.
Kaelin: What we’re doing is our best to convince them. And that’s that’s all we can do. I think we’re doing a pretty good job of making our voice heard.
During a press conference at UTEP, Dr. Wilson said her “general approach with respect to LGBTQ issues is to treat everyone with dignity and respect.” How do you feel about that statement?
Kaelin: She has demonstrated that she does not respect LGBTQ+ people. How can you vote against the basic civil rights of these people and then say that you plan on treating them in the future with dignity and respect? You know that’s like I don’t want you to have all the rights that I do. She doesn’t respect LGBTQ+ people — even her anti-LGBTQ+ actions took place as recently as last year in 2018. During her time as Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, where she enforced the trans military ban, that’s not treating people with dignity and respect. I don’t see her changing anytime soon without a big push.
UTEP students protesting in March, 2019. Image credit: Isaac Uribe.
What can this mean for the future of UTEP and the future of LGBTQ+ students?
Michael: I like thinking the best set of things, but this time I’m not too sure when it comes to the future of LGBTQ+ people in UTEP. I don’t know. To be completely honest, the second time I met with her, I asked her a question — I asked her — will you work with me to ensure transgender non-binary individuals receive the dignity and safety they deserve and expecting an in-depth response. Dr. Wilson just simply replied “yes” and just moved on quickly. So I think I deserved more than a “yes.” I think my community deserves more than a “yes.” It just shows me that I don’t know the future for my community but I’m going to try my hardest to make sure that we are protected and nothing happens to us.
Kaelin: As for the future of UTEP, the current standing president right now, Diana Natalicio, has encouraged us by saying, she gave a speech the other day and I was I was lucky enough to be there. She said it’s up to the students, it’s up to the faculty, it’s up to the community to fight for our mission to make sure that we never compromise our community and our beliefs no matter who’s presiding over us and I wholeheartedly, I’m going to take that and run like hell with it. As for the future of LGBTQ+ students I hope, at UTEP, just from what I what I’m feeling right now from amongst the community is that we are not going to stop being heard and we’re not going to hide into the woodwork now that she’s here and if she gets appointed, we’re not hiding. We’re not being silenced or being made invisible.
These replies have been edited and shortened for clarity.
Harold Daniel is a GLAAD Campus Ambassador and senior at Florida International University studying broadcast journalism. He currently serves as an intern for Good Morning America on ABC.
