A West Virginia assistant principal accused of harassing a transgender student won an appeal to get his job back Monday.
The Harrison County Board of Education voted to reinstate Lee Livengood after voting unanimously last month not to renew his contract at the end of a three-year probationary period, news outlets report.
County Schools Superintendent Mark Manchin said Monday’s decision was difficult and followed “a lot of discussion.”
In November, Livengood allegedly followed transgender teenager Michael Critchfield into the boys bathroom at Liberty High School and said, “You freak me out.” Critchfield said Livengood also ordered him to prove his gender by using a urinal.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter has pushed the county for diversity training to prevent similar incidents.
The ACLU said in a statement Monday that Livengood “has demonstrated he is incapable of conducting himself in a professional manner in any environment with children, and he has shown a troubling lack of remorse for his actions. We will be actively monitoring the situation to ensure Michael and the students of Harrison County are protected moving forward.”
Livengood’s attorney, Alex Shook, had argued that his client was unaware of Critchfield’s gender identity and was not told of an arrangement Critchfield had with the principal to use the boys restrooms.
According to Critchfield, the school band was preparing to take an after-school bus trip to Morgantown in November to watch a performance at West Virginia University. Critchfield said he went to the bathroom and checked to see if anyone was standing at a urinal before he went into a stall.
Livengood then opened the bathroom door and asked if any students were in the stall. Critchfield said he replied and when he left the stall, Livengood was standing in the bathroom doorway and blocked Critchfield from leaving.
Critchfield recalled Livengood repeatedly yelling, “Why are you in here? You shouldn’t be in here.”
Critchfield said he replied that it was his legal right to use that bathroom. He said Livengood used improper pronouns when referring to Critchfield and challenged him to use a urinal to prove that he was a boy.
Grab the remote, set your DVR or queue up your streaming service of choice! GLAAD is bringing you the highlights LGBTQ on TV this week. Check back every Sunday for up-to-date coverage in LGBTQ-inclusive programming on TV.
On Sunday night, CBS will premiere The Red Line, from producers Greg Berlanti and Ava DuVernay. The new even series follows three Chicago families after the shooting of an unarmed black man by a police officer. The show focuses on his husband’s reaction to the tragedy, and the ripples throughout the community. The Red Line: Sunday, 8pm on CBS.
Documentary special The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story airs Monday on ABC. The special will show how the young out singer went on to tour and perform with the historic band Queen. It will include never before seen concert and behind-the-scenes footage as well as exclusive interviews. The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story: Monday, 8pm on ABC.
The 2019 Billboard Music Awards air Wednesday on NBC. Out nominees include Halsey, Lady Gaga, Elton John, and Panic! At the Disco. Click her to see the full list of nominees! Halsey and Panic! At the Disco will also be performing at the awards along with stars like Madonna and Kelly Clarkson. 2019 Billboard Music Awards: Wednesday, 8pm on NBC.
The first time JayCee Cooper walked out onto the platform at a women’s powerlifting competition, everything else fell away: her years-long internal struggle over her gender identity, her decision to leave men’s sports when she began transitioning, her doubts that she would ever feel safe if she returned to competitions.
When she stepped out in front of a hundred people in the gym in Fort Collins, Colorado, last September, all she focused on was the barbell, which she hoisted off the ground. And then she heard the cheers of the crowd: “Come on JayCee!” She had found not only a sport, but also a home.
“In a world that wants to take away our power and strength,” Cooper, 31, said recently by phone from her home in Minneapolis, “powerlifting is a way to gain that strength back and feel powerful and feel ownership of our own lives. It helps us find strength within ourselves and helps us find strength within our bodies.”
Cooper signed up for more competitions, but, to her astonishment, USA Powerlifting, the sport’s biggest federation, told her that she could not compete in the women’s division because of her gender identity.
In an email, USA Powerlifting said she was denied because she had a “direct competitive advantage” over the other women who were competing.
“It took me aback,” Cooper said. “I didn’t want to put myself into a situation where I obviously wasn’t welcome.”
Cooper says powerlifting makes her feel connected to her strength. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
It was just the latest in a growing number of battles over the place of transgender women athletes in competitive sports.
As transgender women have become more visible and sought to participate in women’s sports, athletic organizing bodies have grappled with how to respond, and critics of their inclusion have grown increasingly vocal, as well.
In March, tennis legend Martina Navratilova apologized for calling trans women “cheats” in a Sunday Times op-ed in which she wrote that “letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair.” Weeks later, marathoner Paula Radcliffe told BBC Sport that it would be “naive” not to institute rules. In an interview with Sky News in April, Radcliffe said that if trans people were permitted to compete without regulations, it would be “the death of women’s sport.”
For transgender people watching this issue play out, the debate — often based more in bias and assumptions than in science — is dehumanizing. Those who seek to exclude transgender women from sports sometimes imply that the athletes are adopting their identity to gain an edge in competition, a suggestion many find offensive.
“They don’t understand what it means to be a trans person,” Chris Mosier, a competitive runner and cycler and the first known transgender athlete to make a men’s U.S. national team, said.
“The folks who are improperly reporting on this are making it seem like cis men are pretending to be women to dominate sports,” he added, referring to people who are assigned male at birth and identify as men. “I can say that the amount of discrimination, harassment and challenges trans people face in their everyday lives would never be offset by glory.”
‘IT’S BEEN A ROLLER-COASTER’
Before becoming a powerlifter, Cooper lifted weights as part of her training for other sports. As a teenager growing up in Clarkston, Michigan, she was on the U.S. junior national curling team, competed in track and field in high school and rowed in college.
But she never felt fully comfortable on those all-boys teams.
“It’s been a roller-coaster,” Cooper said. “One of the reasons I stepped away from curling was that I wasn’t being my authentic self, and I was super depressed, and I needed some time away to figure out what that meant for me.”
Four years ago, she began hormone replacement therapy as part of her transition. She now identifies as transfeminine, which she sees as a more expansive identity than simply female.
Cooper first came across powerlifting in high school, but didn’t decide to compete until last year while recuperating from a broken ankle, and she was struck by the sport’s simplicity and supportive atmosphere. In powerlifting, athletes are divided into categories by sex, age and weight, and they compete in three types of lifts: squat, bench press and deadlift. Each movement is a test of static strength, force and focus.
Cooper holds a lifting medal. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
“The barbell for me has been a very empowering way to be in my body, which is politicized every waking second, connect with it, and feel like I’m achieving something,” Cooper said.
“It’s a very almost spiritual feeling in the sense that I’m carrying all of this trauma with me and I’m literally focusing all of that into the barbell. In that moment, I get to control what’s going on.”
To lower her testosterone levels, Cooper takes spironolactone, a drug that is also used to treat high blood pressure and can mask steroid use.
USA Powerlifting, which follows rules set by the World Anti-Doping Agency, requires athletes to apply for an exemption to compete while taking the drug. The group has granted exemptions to powerlifters who have taken spironolactone to treat acne or polycystic ovary syndrome, Larry Maile, USA Powerlifting’s president, said.
As part of her medication exemption application, Cooper provided documentation that her testosterone levels have remained under the International Olympic Committee’s accepted limit for two years. (USA Powerlifting falls under the International Powerlifting Federation, which adopted the IOC’s guidelines that allow transgender women to compete in women’s divisions provided their testosterone is below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months.)
But in December, Cooper’s exemption request was denied. She was told she could not compete in the women’s division of powerlifting because she had a “competitive advantage” as a transgender woman, according to an email exchange obtained by NBC News between Cooper and Dr. Kristopher Hunt, the chair of USA Powerlifting’s committee that reviews applications for medical exemptions.
“Male-to-female transgenders are not allowed to compete as females in our static strength sport as it is a direct competitive advantage,” Hunt said in one email to Cooper.
Pressed for clarification, he wrote a follow-up. “The fact that transgender male to female individuals having gone through male puberty confer an unfair competitive advantage over non-transgender females,” he said.
Cooper hopes to someday compete in powerlifting again. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
In a phone interview, Maile defended the decision and said the organization’s policy of barring transgender women — as well as transgender men who take testosterone — was not new, though it was not posted on USA Powerlifting’s website until this winter after Cooper applied for the exemption. Maile said that the IOC’s guidelines ultimately give organizations the discretion to make their own decisions about fair play. To reach the decision, he said USA Powerlifting researched the physical differences between men and women in terms of muscle density, connective tissue and frame shape.
“We’ve been referred to as bigoted and transphobic and a whole lot of less kind things, but it’s not an issue of that for us,” Maile said. “It’s an issue that we have to consider dispassionately and make our best judgment collectively about what the impact on fair play is for us, and that’s the basis on which we’ve proceeded.”
He added that powerlifting “is really unique, because we’re a high strength and low technique sport” — so the physiology of the competitors is particularly important.
Cooper doesn’t buy that argument, noting that women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes, which may confer advantages for different sports.
“You look at a WNBA player, they’re pushing 6 feet versus someone doing gymnastics who’s 5 feet tall,” she said. “Their bodies are built completely differently. That’s what sports are about.”
‘THE SCIENCE IS IN ITS INFANCY’
The policies governing transgender athletes vary by sport.
The NCAA has policies similar to the International Olympic Committee and does not require athletes to undergo gender-confirming surgery, while USA Gymnastics does require it under some circumstances, according to research compiled by TransAthlete, a database of professional, recreational, college and K-12 sports’ policies on trans athletes.
Others aim to be more inclusive. USA Hockey, for example, offers options for nonbinary athletes who do not identify as male or female, as well as guidance for trans athletes.
While opponents of inclusion point to the “bigger, faster, stronger” argument as the basis of their fear that transgender women are taking over women’s sports, there are few examples of trans women who’ve excelled at a national or world level, according to Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of OutSports, an outlet that reports on LGBTQ athletes.
The scientific research on transgender athletes is in the early stages, and there is disagreement among experts about how to determine fair rules of competitions.
“There’s no simple or even complex biological test you can apply that tells you who’s a man and who’s a woman,” Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, said.
In the absence of such a test, testosterone levels are often used as a proxy to determine whether trans women are eligible to compete in women’s leagues. There is evidence that transgender women who are on hormone therapy have lower muscle mass and less aerobic ability than they did before, said Joanna Harper, a scientist who studies gender-diverse athletes and advises the International Olympic Committee. In a 2015 study she published on trans women who are distance runners, Harper, who is a trans woman and runner herself, found that after being on hormone therapy the women were running more than 10 percent slower.
But testosterone is an imperfect metric. Even among cisgender men and women, there is variance in the amount that is considered normal.
To deny Cooper “the right to compete based on ridiculous fear is completely unfounded,” Harper said.
‘TRANS LIFTERS BELONG HERE’
At the Minnesota State Championship in February — a USA Powerlifting meet where Cooper hoped to compete — almost a dozen athletes and 20 people in the audience protested her exclusion, according to Maxwell Poessnecker, a transmasculine-identified lifter from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Flanked by signs and wearing T-shirts that said, “I support trans lifters” and “trans lifters belong here,” the athletes stood on the lifting platform without competing to show their disapproval of the policy, Poessnecker said.
From little leagues to the Olympics, questions over transgender inclusion will continue to surface. Advocates who say concerns about “competitive fairness” are often rooted in gender stereotypes and scientific research is lacking believe policies should be as inclusive as possible.
“It’s hard to call anything model when it requires an individual to be tested and questioned,” said Breanna Diaz, a powerlifter and co-director of Pull for Pride, a charity deadlifting event that benefits homeless LGBTQ youth. If athletes “have a sincerely held gender identity, that should be sufficient,” she said.
Cooper, who co-directs Pull for Pride, hopes to use her experience with powerlifting as a way to drive the conversation about trans athletes.
On May 9, USA Powerlifting’s national governing body will meet to discuss its transgender inclusion policy.
“I really do love this sport,” Cooper said, “and it’s not fair to genetically eliminate an entire group of people.”
Congratulations on your marriage! After spending the last several months on planning, your special day and the honeymoon have come and gone, and now you’re wondering what’s next. Whether you’re planning on buying a home, having a child, or simply enjoying life as a married couple, it should all start with you and your spouse establishing a financial roadmap, which includes assessing paycheck tax withholding and updating financial beneficiaries.
The first step in establishing a roadmap as a married couple involves your taxes, specifically your paycheck withholding taxes. Due in part to the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017,” signed into law by President Trump, some have experienced confusion and other unpleasant surprises because of changes to the withholding tables. While I always advise reaching out to a tax professional, here is a quick way to do it yourself:
Step one: Determine if it is best to file your taxes married jointly or married separately. This will depend on how close in salary each spouse makes. There are many ‘marriage calculators’ available to you, but the simplest calculator is hosted by the Tax Policy Center.
Step two: The IRS website offers a withholding calculator that determines how much tax you should actually withhold based on your filing status. It’s important to make sure to account for any dividends/interest and short-term capital gains. The calculator will tell you what filing status, how many withholdings (usually 0 or 1) and if you should request an extra specific dollar amount to be withheld. It’s important to note that the IRS expects you to withhold around 90% of your tax due (although this tax season has been different) or face a penalty. To ensure you’re on the right path, it may be smart to do another check-up around November to make sure you’re on track.
Once you have given the IRS calculator’s recommendations to your employer’s payroll team, you will most likely have a new take home pay amount. From here, you’ll be able to use your new combined take home pay to determine your monthly budget.
As newlyweds, approaching budgeting will be a little different than when you were single. For many people, merging finances after being previously financially independent can cause uneasiness. I recommend creating one family budget – this includes housing, groceries, and, most importantly, joint social expenses (evenings out, travel, etc.). To help manage these expenses create a joint cash and credit account, so both partners can see how the family budget is doing. Split the total expected expense in an amount that seems fair relative to each spouse’s income. Many payroll departments allow you to deposit a portion of income into more than one bank account, which makes things a lot simpler.
The balance of your paycheck remains yours to spend or save – and hopefully surprise your spouse with something nice every once and awhile. Overtime, many couples further consolidate their finances, but the above is a good way to begin your life together.
Finally, don’t forget to compare your respective employee benefit plans. Update any beneficiary information on your retirement plans (don’t stop maxing out those contributions!) and determine who has the best health coverage. Do not just look at the per paycheck cost, but rather weigh the different deductibles, health network type (HMO, PPO, etc.), and total coverage. I won’t lie – it can be very confusing, but your human resources representative or current insurance carrier’s customer service are highly trained in describing each policy’s features.
Just remember, financial planning at the start of your marriage will ensure a strong foundation for the future.
(Information contained herein is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or recommendations. Advice may only be provided after entering into an advisory agreement with an Advisor.)
It is also interesting to see a shift from the early gay and lesbian scholarship to a new generation of vibrant queer historical writing. Ryan’s perspective is expansive. He is attuned to issues of queer diversity, as well as to gender, sex, and feminist theory, and he keeps a steady contemporary eye on the flawed narrative assumptions and rush to conclusion that plagued prior historical writings. For example, he immediately points out the paucity of written letters, newspaper articles, archival artifacts, first-hand autobiographical accounts, etc. that were available to document the early queer communities of color. As a result, the early Brooklyn black community of Weeksville proves quite unknowable today. Located in the eastern part of Brooklyn in a discrete area delineated by present-day Troy Avenue, East New York Avenue, Fulton Street, and Ralph Avenue, this forgotten neighborhood was bordered by what is currently Crown Heights, Brownsville, and Bedford Stuyvesant. Ryan writes:
Unfortunately, Weeksville’s history is poorly known. The community was only rediscovered by historians in the 1960s, and records of and by residents are spotty at best. Brooklyn’s major (white) newspapers rarely covered the town, and many of Weeksville’s adults were illiterate. Thus they produced few written records of their own thoughts and experiences.
Ryan surmises, regarding this “legacy of racial exclusion,” that “although there undoubtedly were black people with queer desires in the city’s early years, they don’t show up in historical records until right before the beginning of the twentieth century.”
He points out that Walt Whitman, who cruised the waterfront of Brooklyn and enjoyed its sexually adventurous sailors who populated the raucous, libertine waterfront bars, was free of the “larger structural forces” that “kept women and people of color away from Brooklyn’s waterfront and its opportunities for exploring queer life….” Racism toward POCs’ limited fraternization and Victorian strictures on women discouraged private spaces for same-sex relationships to fully develop.
Whitman’s stature as a gay poet and his great appeal, Ryan explains, “was primarily pitched to and received by queer people who were like him: white, male, cisgender artists.” He goes further to write:
While Whitman professed a love of all people and believed in freedom and equality for men and women, black and white, he was rather disinterested in people who were not white men. He referred to black people as “darkeys” who were “superstitious, ignorant, [and] thievish, “though “full of good nature,” and he seemed surprised when women were interested in Leaves of Grass, since it was so from and for a male perspective.
Focusing on several queer Brooklyn locales–the waterfront, Sands Street, Middagh Street, Coney Island, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Brooklyn Heights–as well as historical events such as the advent of World Wars I and II and their profound societal impact on the traditional American family and the greater visibility of homosexuality, Ryan gives us a rich journey through the birth, decline, and rebirth of a distinct queer community.
By identifying and investigating the histories of several known Brooklyn queer figures and utilizing their correspondences and oral or written histories, Ryan vividly reconstructs an entire lost past: from Loop-the-Loop, a young white trans woman, to Mabel Hampton, a black “Butch” entertainer; from the gay poet, Hart Crane, to the wildly successful gay author, Truman Capote, living at 70 Willow Street. Ryan’s scholarship turns up an abundance of riches.
I was especially captivated by his research into Crane’s love affair with the handsome Danish sailor and journalist, Emil Opffer. Opffer became Crane’s muse, whom the poet nicknamed “Goldilocks and Phoebus Apollo.” I also was greatly interested in 7 Middagh Street aka “February House,” the queer “urban commune” of sorts, “literary menagerie,” and who’s-who collective of international queer artists, that flourished in the 1940s. Ryan writes:
The first wave of residents would include editor George Davis; writer Carson McCullers; poet W.H. Auden; composer Benjamin Britten and his lover, the tenor Peter Pears; and burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. Among later residents were set designer Oliver Smith, married writers Jane and Paul Bowles, and the author Richard Wright and his family. Some of the better-known guests included Erika, Klaus, and Golo Mann; Christopher Isherwood; Jerome Robbins; Janet Flanner and Solita Solano; Dennis de Rougemont; Salvador and Gala Dali; Virgil Thomson; Aaron Copland; Leonard Bernstein; and Lincoln Kirstein.
Ryan’s colorful account of this mélange of eccentric personalities is filled with delicious details about personal squabbles, jealousies, day-to-day living arrangements gone awry, exciting collaborations and professional triumphs, and the ultimate clash of young, brilliant egos. For example, he describes when “Auden demanded that Paul [Bowles] move his piano to the low-ceilinged, dimly lit, dusty basement [“Britten found the music distracting from his own work, while Auden found it simply insufferable.”]. Paul refused, George Davis backed Auden, and the piano was quickly moved.” Other memorable anecdotes include McCullers walking hand-in-hand with Gypsy Rose Lee up the street under the spell of the ever maternal and flamboyant burlesque queen, or Auden creeping into Kallman’s bedroom wrapping “his hands around his lover’s neck” and attempting to strangle him to death.
I was also fascinated by Ryan’s sexual chronicle of William Christian Henry Miller, an “inventor, model, kept boy, advertising executive, furniture designer, visual merchandiser for the Lord & Taylor department store, amateur sexologist, and ‘one of the most gorgeous men in 1940s Manhattan.’”
By demystifying the process of historical research and maintaining a robust self-awareness and open point of view, Ryan’s study stays extremely welcoming and inclusive. His metanarrative, like all good history writing, brings the past vividly alive and makes us excited to learn more about who we were, are, and possibly may be in the future in this dynamic, evolving city many of us call home.
When Brooklyn Was Queer By Hugh Ryan St. Martin’s Press Hardcover, 9781250169914, 320 pp. March 2019
Financial services firm JPMorgan Chase has banned staff from booking into Brunei-owned hotels after the country introduced death by stoning for gay people.
A senior manager at JPMorgan told the newspaper the company had issued a notice on its internal booking system but had “not said anything publicly.”
The company’s decision follows a similar move by Deutsche Bank, who announced the removal of the Dorchester Collection hotel group from its list of suppliers on April 4.
The Dorchester Hotel in London and the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles are among the high-profile hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei.
Actor and activist George Clooney led calls for a boycott of Brunei-owned hotels late last month when news broke that the small southeast Asian country—which has a population of just 400,000 people—was introducing death by stoning for gay people.
In an op-ed for Deadline, Clooney wrote: “Every single time we stay at or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery.”
“Brunei is a Monarchy and certainly any boycott would have little effect on changing these laws. But are we really going to help pay for these human rights violations? Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens?”
His call for a boycott was later supported by celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John.
In the letter, they claimed that executions of gay people will be rare, and said “there appears to be a misconception” about the penal code.
“The criminalisation of adultery and sodomy is to safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage of individual Muslims, particularly women.”
– Brunei letter to the European Union
The letter claims: “The criminalisation of adultery and sodomy is to safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage of individual Muslims, particularly women.
The Sultan of Brunei, who introduced death by stoning for gay people earlier this month (AFP/Getty)
“The offences, therefore will not apply to non-Muslims unless the act of adultery or sodomy is committed with a Muslim.”
It adds that the death penalty has an “extremely high evidentiary threshold (…) to the extent that convictions may solely rest on confessions of the offender.”
MEPs UNimpressed with the letter
The letter did not assuage the concerns of MEPs who voted in favour of a resolution strongly condemning the Sultan of Brunei for human rights violations.
MEP Marietje Schaake said: “The ferocious corporal punishments that have been introduced in Brunei, like punishing gay sex with death by stoning, are repugnant and go against all international human rights legislation.
“Capital punishment could even be imposed on children. We, as Europe, have to respond unitedly.”
The resolution threatens Europe-wide sanctions against Brunei over the law.
GLAAD, the largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today released the following backgrounder to the national media highlighting the pro-LGBTQ record of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld just after he announced his 2020 presidential campaign. Weld’s announcement now marks the first credible primary challenger to President Donald Trump, the most anti-LGBTQ United States President in recent memory.
Weld’s 2020 entry now makes President Donald Trump the only elected leader from a major political party to be fully anti-LGBTQ, lightning-speed progress from just a decade ago.
“Governor William Weld represents what is needed and has been missing within the Republican Party: a campaign message about acceptance for all marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD. “Anti-LGBTQ activists have hijacked the Republican Party for far too long, and it’s past time that voices like Governor Weld’s enter the dialogue. Weld can help usher in a new wave of acceptance for a political party that has been dominated by politicians who have fought against hard-won progress made by the LGBTQ community.”
The Trump Administration has issued more than 100 attacks against LGBTQ Americans in policy or rhetoric since 2017. To see the entire list of attacks on Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ Americans and for more information on GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project, go to www.glaad.org/trump.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION: William Weld’s Pro-LGBTQ Record
—Touted his early leadership on LGBTQ rights: “In office, in my case, even though I was then a Republican and not a Libertarian, I was way out there by myself on gay and lesbian rights, starting my first month in office, in January 1991. And for 10 years, no one followed suit. I appointed the woman who wrote the decision holding equality of marriage as constitutionally compelled, which led to the Supreme Court case holding that.”
— Said “marriage equality is dictated by the due process clause and equal protection clause.”
— Created the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.
— Has delivered homilies at multiple same-sex weddings, as early as 2004. “He could never ever understand why or how anyone could care that I was gay,” remembers [his former college roomate], who had Weld give the homily at his June 2004 wedding to Kevin Smith, a former Weld chief of staff. “And he could never understand how it was anyone else’s business but my own.”
— Signed an amicus brief calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8.
— Supported the Obama administration’s guidance on trans bathroom access: “If bathroom access for transgender people rises to the status of a right that needs protection, then why not?”
President Trump on Thursday announced new ‘conscience’ protections for health providers during a speech in front of faith leaders gathered for the National Day of Prayer.
Ahead of the announcement, conservative groups who have raised what they perceive as religious liberty concerns have welcomed the rule, which was first proposed last year, while LGBT and other civil liberties groups fear it could lead to discrimination and lack of services for some groups as doctors and others could decline to treat gay and transgender people.
The rule expands on the powers of HHS’s Office for Civil Rights — requiring health care entities to maintain records and report and cooperate with OCR requests. “Finally, laws prohibiting government funded discrimination against conscience and religious freedom will be enforced like every other civil rights law,” OCR Director Roger Severino said in a release.
Severino previously worked for two viciously anti-LGBT hate groups: the Becket Fund and the Heritage Foundation.
Actress Judith Light has been named the 2019 recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award for her decades-spanning support for the LGBT+ community.
Light was an early supporter in the fight against HIV and AIDS and worked hard to combat stigma in the early 1980s. She has been involved with numerous LGBT+ organisations over the course of her career, including GLAAD and the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights group.
The award—which is a non-competitive Tony Award and recognises members of the theatre community for their human rights and advocacy work—has previously been awarded to Rosie O’Donnell and Larry Kramer.
“To be so generously acknowledged by The American Theatre Wing, The Broadway League and the Tony Awards, and to be included with these outstanding individuals who have received this honor before me, has been one of the most extraordinary gifts I have ever received in my life,” Light said in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter.
Judith Light spoke out against HIV/AIDS stigma in the early 1980s
Light became one of the first celebrities willing to speak out against anti-gay prejudice and stigma following the birth of the AIDS crisis. Since then, she has been involved in numerous fundraisers for LGBT+ issues and HIV/AIDS causes.
She has also served on the boards of both the Matthew Shepard Foundation—an organisation that was set up in honour of murdered gay student Matthew Shepard—and the LGBT+ scholarship organisation, the Point Foundation.
“The HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ+ communities are inspirations and demonstrations of how to be and live in the world; courageous, honorable and uplifting.”
– Judith Light
In addition, she played Shelly Pfefferman in Amazon’s Transparent for four seasons. The show centred around transgender woman Maura Pfefferman, who comes out later in life, and her family’s journey towards accepting her gender identity.
“The HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ+ communities are inspirations and demonstrations of how to be and live in the world; courageous, honorable and uplifting,” she said in the statement. “They inspire me and it is my privilege to be of service to them. I am humbled by this recognition from my theater family, whom I so respect, honor and love.”
She has been a tireless advocate for LGBT+ people
Light has been a tireless advocate for LGBT+ people for many years. In a 2015 interview with Pride Source, she said that the LGBT+ community had inspired her “to be the kind of person I wanted to be.”
Judith Light (Jemal Countess/Getty)
“I wanted to be authentic and courageous, and for so long I wasn’t,” Light said.
“When I began doing a lot of advocacy work in the early ’80s for HIV and AIDS, I saw the community and the way the community was operating against all odds, against a world and a culture and country that gave them nothing and denigrated them. … I looked at this community and said, ‘This is breathtaking. This is the kind of world and people I want to be around. These are the kind of people I want to be working with.”
The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights laws.
The Equality Act, which U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March, passed the committee by a 22-10 vote margin with all Republican committee members voting against it. The openly gay Rhode Island Democrat in a statement after the vote said “fairness and equality are core American values.”
“This bill affirms those values and ensures members of the LGBTQ community can live their lives free from the fear of legal discrimination of any kind,” said Cicilline.
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the committee, spoke in favor of the Equality Act at the beginning of the markup, which is the first time one has taken place for the perennial bill.
“This is long-overdue legislation that will explicitly prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming Americans and strengthen nondiscrimination protections for women and others,” said the New York Democrat.
Equality Act supporters who spoke on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday agreed with Nadler.
“The American dream is broken when all states are not united,” said Carter Brown, founder of Black Trans Men who said he lost his job in Texas because of his gender identity. “All Americans need permanent, explicit nondiscrimination laws in place and enforced.”
The Equality Act would specifically add gender identity and sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act.
The bill has 240 co-sponsors in the House from both sides of the aisle. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has introduced the Equality Act in the U.S. Senate.
“It’s time for Congress to add explicit federal LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections to our nation’s civil rights laws,” said the Human Rights Campaign in a tweet.
Advocates have urged the full House to approve the Equality Act.