When Jennifer Eller first began transitioning in 2011, she was an English teacher in Kenmoor Middle School in Maryland. That year, the students began calling her a pedophile. A human resources worker said that her therapist’s note about her transition was “garbage” before insisting that Eller present as male at the school. Another administrator told her not to wear skirts because it’d make others feel uncomfortable.
Eller transferred to Friendly High School, thinking things would get better. They got worse.
Students and parents repeatedly called her a tr***y and a pedophile and misgendered her. Students regularly called Eller “mister,” a “he/she,” an “it,” and “a guy in a dress.” They asked about her genitals. One threatened to rape her and make her “their girlfriend.” She reported the rape threat, but the school principal said he couldn’t do anything about it.
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One parent who accused Eller of “lying to everyone” about her gender came to school to yell at her. The parent had to be removed by school security.
Eller said she filed formal harassment and discrimination complaints with school officials. In response, school officials retaliated against her, she said. The school removed Eller from teaching an advanced English course, accusing her of being too friendly with students. Later, administrators and staff baselessly accused her of shouting at students and making them fear for their safety, Eller said.
She eventually resigned from teaching in 2017, citing a need to protect her own mental and physical health. She later filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EOCC). The EEOC determined that Eller’s claims had merit. She then filed a lawsuit against the Prince George’s County Public School district in 2018, stating that officials had done nothing to stop or address the transphobic abuse.
The school district recently settled with Eller for an undisclosed amount. The district also put into place policies and administrative procedures for handling future transphobia. These changes were part of the settlement agreement, The Washington Post reported.
The changes also include school staff resources that explain trans identity and related terms, pronoun use, policies about bathroom and locker room facilities, dress codes, athletic participation, and other related issues.
“If these policies had been in place when I started my process,” Eller told the Post, “I would have known what my protections were and what I can expect from folks. And that’s not to say everybody’s perfect or that everyone would follow it. But I think that it would have been different. I think it would have been a healthier environment for me.”
Eller currently works as part of the U.S. Navy’s Child & Youth Programs where she is treated with respect, her lawyers said. However, working there, she only earns a fraction of what she made as a teacher.
Bisexual workers report lower rates of workplace discrimination than cisgender lesbians and gay men, a new study has found, but that may be because fewer cis bisexuals are out at work compared to cis lesbians and gay men.
The Williams Institute — a UCLA’s School of Law group that researches sexual orientation and gender identity issues — analyzed survey data collected in May 2021 from 935 LGBTQ adults in the workforce.
Its analysis found that 33.8 percent of gay and lesbian employees experienced at least one form of employment discrimination, namely, being fired or not hired due to their sexual orientation. Comparatively, 24.4 percent of bi employees reported experiencing the same.
The lower overall rates of discrimination may be due to the fact that fewer bisexuals are out at work. Only 19 percent of bi workers are out to all their co-workers, compared to 50 percent of gay and lesbian workers who are out to co-workers.
Only 19 percent of bi workers are out to their coworkers, compared to 50 percent of gay and lesbian workers. Similarly, only 36 percent of bi employees are out to their supervisors, compared to 74.6 percent of gay and lesbian employees.
Bi men and women were also more likely than gay and lesbian employees to report changing their workplace appearance to hide their sexual orientation. Approximately 26.4 percent of bi workers said they had done so, compared to 17.9 percent of gay and lesbian workers.
Interestingly, roughly 60 percent of gay, lesbian, and bi employees said they avoided social events and personal discussions to reduce the likelihood of discrimination and harassment. But when bi employees were out to their coworkers, they reported facing similar or higher rates of discrimination and harassment as out gay and lesbian workers.
The survey also found that gay and bi men typically faced higher rates of employment discrimination, verbal, and sexual harassment than lesbians and bisexual women.
For example, 57.7 percent of bi men experienced verbal harassment, compared to 26.8 percent of bisexual women. While 41.6 percent of gay men experienced verbal harassment, only 29.5 percent of lesbians experienced the same thing. Nearly 50 to 65 percent of all discrimination was religiously motivated, the respondents said.
Workplace sexual harassment was experienced by 34.8 percent of bi men, 33.6 percent of gay men, 29.2 percent of bi women, and 17.4 percent of lesbian women. While 58 percent of out bi men said they had left previous jobs due to workplace discrimination, only 27 percent of out bi women had left previous jobs for the same reason.
These findings came out just before Celebrate Bisexuality Day, an annual day for uplifting the bisexual community, individuals, and their shared history. Today is Celebrate Bisexuality Day.
A 2021 Gallup found that 57 percent of LGBTQ Americans identify as bisexual.
A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that monkeypox disproportionately affects people with HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
The study looked at HIV and STI rates among 1,969 people with monkeypox in eight U.S. jurisdictions.
Of that sample, 38 percent of people with monkeypox had also contracted HIV in the last year. About 41 percent of people with monkeypox also had an STI in the preceding year. About 61 percent of the sample had contracted either an STI or HIV in the previous year.
Researchers said this correlation doesn’t necessarily mean that having HIV or an STI means you’re more likely to contract monkeypox.
In fact, the higher number may be due to a “self-referral bias,” meaning that people who visited a medical professional due to monkeypox symptoms may also already have established healthcare for HIV and STIs. Either that, or sexual health providers may be more likely to recognize and test for the monkeypox virus among men who’ve had HIV and STIs over the past year.
“Persons with monkeypox signs and symptoms who are not engaged in routine HIV or sexual health care, or who experience milder signs and symptoms, might be less likely to have their Monkeypox virus infection diagnosed,” researchers wrote.
HIV-positive people in the study sample were also twice as likely to be hospitalized due to monkeypox compared to HIV-negative people with monkeypox, WTTW reported.
This could mean that people with compromised immune systems — the kinds associated with advanced and under-treated forms of HIV — are more likely to exhibit severe monkeypox symptoms. Despite this, people with HIV aren’t more likely to exhibit worse monkeypox symptoms than HIV-negative people in the general population, according to Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, assistant professor of infectious disease and global health at UChicago Medicine.
The study also found HIV was more prevalent among Black and Latino people with monkeypox, with rates of 63 percent and 41 percent, respectively. These rates were higher than the 28 percent of white people and 22 percent of Asian people who have both HIV and monkeypox.
These racial disparities are particularly concerning considering that numerous studies have shown that Black and Latino men are less likely than white men to be vaccinated against monkeypox and to have access to HIV-related medical care.
In response to the study’s findings, the CDC recommended that medical professionals prioritize people with STIs and HIV for monkeypox vaccination. Additionally, the CDC recommended offering STI and HIV screenings for people who are evaluated for monkeypox.
This last week, White House health officials voiced their belief that “we’re going to get very close” to eradicating monkeypox. As of September 23, there were 24,846 total confirmed monkeypox cases in the United States, the CDC reported.
With Republicans threatening to reverse LGBTQ civil rights and generally undermine democratic elections, there’s a lot riding on the November midterms. But Voter ID laws across the nation could seriously impair transgender people from voting.
New research from The Williams Institute found that out of 878,300 eligible transgender voters in the U.S., as many as 203,700 could be blocked from voting because their government-issued IDs don’t reflect their gender identity — that’s nearly one-fourth of all eligible trans voters.
If a trans person arrives at a polling place with a government-issued ID containing an incorrect gender or name, they may be turned away by poll workers who think they’re trying to “impersonate” another individual.
203,700 disenfranchised trans voters is roughly the entire population of Salt Lake City, Utah; Little Rock, Arkansas; Amarillo, Texas; or Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to U.S. Census data.
Changing an ID isn’t always easy, and “transgender people of color, young adults, people with low incomes, and people with disabilities are more likely to not have accurate IDs for voting,” the Williams Institute wrote.
Trans people face numerous barriers to changing their ID gender markers. The process can take lots of time and money and require access to medical care that many trans people don’t have.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, 10 states require documentation from a medical provider in order to change a trans person’s gender marker; 8 states require proof of surgery, court order, or an amended birth certificate; and 10 states have “burdensome” or “unclear” policies on changing such gender markers.
Changing a birth certificate to get a new ID can also present problems: 12 states require trans people to undergo a gender-affirming surgery before officials will revise a birth certificate; 4 states don’t allow any changing of birth certificate gender markers whatsoever.
Name changes aren’t always easy either. Nine states require people to publicly post their name change requests online, something that can make them a target for harassment or violence.
An estimated 414,000 eligible trans voters live in the 31 states that predominantly have in-person voting and require voter ID. Nearly half of trans voters in those states don’t have an ID that accurately reflects their gender or name. Additionally, 64,800 eligible trans voters live in states that have very strict voter ID laws.
The exclusion of trans voters is particularly concerning as Republicans introduce anti-trans legislation across the country.
Republicans have ostensibly introduced voter ID laws as a way to stop the nearly nonexistent problem of voter fraud. But both the American Civil Liberties Union and The Brennan Center for Justice have called voter ID laws a form of “voter suppression” that mostly disenfranchises Democratic voters.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) has announced his attention to hold a vote “in the coming weeks” on the “The Respect for Marriage Act,” a bill that would help enshrine same-sex marriage rights into law.
In doing so, he’d get Senate Republicans to state whether they support marriage equality before the November midterm elections. Democrats could use Republican opposition to the bill to pummel conservative candidates and convince larger numbers of Democratic voters to come to the polls.
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Democratic and Independent voters have come out against Republicans in greater numbers since the conservative-led Supreme Court overturned the right to abortions nationwide in June. Political commentators think even more voters could come out against Republicans over same-sex marriage, considering that a June Gallup poll found that 71 percent of voters support marriage equality.
“Let me be clear,” Schumer said in a Wednesday press conference, “a vote on marriage equality will happen on the Senate floor in the coming weeks, and I hope there will be 10 Republicans to support it.”
“Our two leading members on this issue, Sen. [Tammy] Baldwin and [Kyrtsten] Sinema, are working with Republicans to see if there are enough votes to pass the bill,” he added.
Thus far, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have all said that they would vote in favor of the bill. The bill needs 10 Republican senate votes to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a guaranteed filibuster and become law.
When asked about the legislation on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “I know there’s a legislative pathway that’s being discussed currently in Congress. We’ll let leadership decide how to move forward with that.”
She added, “The President is proud is a champion of a right for people to marry. They can choose who they love, and he believes it is non-negotiable, and the Senate should act swiftly to get this to the President’s desk.”
However, several Republican senators have come out against the bill.
“Never felt this bill is necessary,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “This is just Democrats opening up a wound that doesn’t need to be opened up. And now that I’ve talked to people there are some very serious concerns on religious liberty…. I would not support it in its current state.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has also said he will oppose the bill due to concerns over “religious liberties.”
“This bill without a religious liberty protection would have massive consequences across our country, weaponizing the Biden administration to go and target universities, K-12 schools, social service organizations, churches and strip them all of their tax-exempt status,” Cruz claimed earlier this week on his podcast Verdict.
Cruz said that he and his allies are encouraging fellow Republicans to vote against the bill. He also said Republicans would push to add an amendment to the bill that would provide “a strong protection of religious liberty.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has also said he’ll oppose the bill, stating, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.”
In mid-July, 47 Republican House lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, helping it pass the lower legislative chamber.
In late July, 83 conservative organizations wrote a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), claiming that the bill will legalize polygamy and incest.
In reality, he Respect for Marriage Act would officially repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that forbade the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex marriages. In its place, the act would require the federal and state governments to recognize same-sex marriages as long as they occurred in states that offer them. If any state refuses to recognize such marriages, the act says, the spouses can sue.
Democrats and Collins introduced the bill after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas indicated that the nation’s highest court should consider overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
In his footnote to the June Supreme Court decision overturning abortion access nationwide, Justice Thomas wrote that the court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the case that granted the right to contraception] Lawrence [the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws], and Obergefell [the case that legalized marriage equality].”
“We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote.
If the court overturns Obergefell, it would essentially leave individual states to decide their own same-sex marriage laws. Nearly 30 states have same-sex marriage bans currently on their books.
The Respect for Marriage Act has the support of LGBTQ and allied national organizations including the ACLU, the Center for American Progress, the Equality Federation, Family Equality, Freedom for All Americans, GLAD, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lambda Legal, the National Black Justice Coalition, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Women’s Law Center, and PFLAG.
On August 30, middle school administrators allegedly pulled a 13-year-old transgender boy out of class so an investigator from the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) could ask him personal questions about his past medical history, gender dysphoria, and past suicide attempt.
The boy — given the pseudonym “Steve Koe” in court documents — was left “shaking and distressed” by the interrogation, The Washington Post reported. Worse yet, the interrogation allegedly occurred after a court told DFPS investigators to stop doing them.
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Now, Koe’s story is a part of supplemental evidence being filed by the LGBTQ-advocacy organizations Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in its lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In February, Abbott ordered DFPS to investigate for child abuse any parents who allow their trans children to access gender-affirming medical care. Abbott based his order on a non-binding opinion from the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton which called such care a form of “child abuse.”
Paxton’s opinions and Abbott’s order both went against the best practices of pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association. These organizations consider gender-affirming medical care necessary in many cases, noting it reduces mental anguish and suicide risk among trans youth.
Soon after issuing his order, several DFPS employees quit and some state attorneys refusedto enforce it. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that neither Abbott nor Paxton had the authority to issue the order. Several families with trans children, represented by Lambda Legal and the ACLU also filed a lawsuit against Abbott.
The presiding district judge in the lawsuit issued a temporary restraining order, effectively stopping DFPS’ investigations while the court prepares to consider the order’s legality in December.
Koe’s story — part of supplemental evidence illustrating how state agencies are handling the alleged child abuse cases — suggested that DFPS continued its investigations of trans families, even after the court ordered it to stop. In a May briefing, state government officials noted that the judge’s ruling to temporarily stop the probes “prevents a state agency from carrying out its statutory duty to investigate reported child abuse,” the Postwrote.
Another woman, identified pseudonymously in court documents as Samantha Poe, said her 14-year-old child became the subject of a DFPS abuse investigation even though the child had received no gender-affirming medical care. The child was only “in midst of exploring what a social transition feels like,” Poe said. But DFPS opened an investigation against the child’s family in February. The stress has left the child with “suicidal ideations,” court documents state.
DFPS employees are speaking out about how Abbott’s order circumvented rule-making procedures at the state agency and made it much harder for its employees to help victims of actual abuse.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) has just adopted a rule change forbidding transgender people from changing the gender listed on their birth certificates.
The rule change is just the latest in an ongoing legal battle between the DPHHS, the state’s Republican-led legislature, and trans Montanans seeking government documents that display their correct gender identities.
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The DPHHS’ new rule says that a person’s sex listed on a birth certificate can now only be changed if it was incorrectly entered by a “data entry error” or if “the sex of the individual was misidentified on the original certificate and the department receives a correction affidavit and supporting documents, … including a copy of the results of chromosomal, molecular, karyotypic, DNA, or genetic testing that identify the sex of the individual.”
The DPHHS implemented this rule five months after a state judge issued a ruling blocking a state law requiring state residents to undergo a non-specified “surgical procedure” before they could change the gender listed on their birth certificates.
Montana’s Republican-led legislature passed this law, S.B. 280, in April 2021. Previous to the law, the DPHHS said that transgender residents could change the gender marker on their birth certificates if they were intersex, had undergone “a gender transition,” or had a certified court order indicating that their gender had been changed.
In July 2021, two transgender state residents sued the state’s Gov. Greg Gianforte (R), DPHHS, and its director, claiming that S.B. 280 had made it virtually impossible for them to change their birth certificates, thus violating their constitutional right to privacy and due process.
“Denying me an accurate birth certificate places me at risk of embarrassment or even violence every time I am required to present my birth certificate because it incorrectly identifies me as male,” said Amelia Marquez, one of the plaintiffs and a trans woman, in a statement.
S.B. 280 also made it impossible for many trans people to get a corrected birth certificate because such surgery is too expensive for many people, not all trans people want or need gender-affirming genital surgery, and many are not good candidates for it for medical reasons.
The state disagreed and said that S.B. 280 was necessary to maintain accurate birth records.
However, in April 2022, state Judge Michael Moses said that the law’s requirement of an unspecified surgical procedure made it impossible for anyone to follow. The judge then issued a temporary injunction against S.B. 280, essentially blocking it from going into effect.
But the state chapter of the ACLU says that Montana government officials have done nothing to comply with the judge’s order. For instance, a gender change form that DPHHS removed from its website after S.B. 280 was passed still hasn’t returned to the website.
“The fact that the state refuses to revert to the previous processes evidences its lack of respect for the judiciary and utter disregard for the transgender Montanans who seek to have a birth certificate that accurately indicates what they know their sex to be,” the ACLU said in their statement. “If the state continues to violate the preliminary injunction, we will have no choice but to seek relief from the court.”
Montana passed several other anti-LGBTQ laws in 2021, including a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports. The state also passed a law requiring schools to give 48-hours notice to parents if they are going to discuss LGBTQ people.
Texas has reported its first death of a person diagnosed with monkeypox.
The unnamed man lived in Harris County, the state’s largest county, containing Houston and several nearby suburbs. He was also “severely immunocompromised,” the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The statement provided no other identifying information about the man.
“The case is under investigation to determine what role monkeypox played in the death,” the department wrote.
In a Tuesday White House press briefing, Dr. Jennifer McQuiston with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expressed sympathy for the man’s passing, and said that the CDC will also conduct an inquiry into the conditions that contributed to the man’s death. She also warned against panicking about other possible monkeypox-related deaths.
“I think it’s important to emphasize that deaths due to monkeypox, while possible, remain very rare,” McQuiston said. “In most cases, people are experiencing infection that resolves over time. And there have been very few deaths even recorded globally. Out of over 40,000 cases around the world, only a handful of fatalities have been reported.”
In mid-August, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there had been 12 deaths of people infected with monkeypox worldwide. Health authorities have urged men who have sex with men (MSM) to get vaccinated against the illness, to reduce sexual partners, and to get tested and quarantine if they experience any symptoms.
The briefing also confirmed that the White House is continuing its strategy of making vaccines and mobile testing facilities available to communities ahead of scheduled public events that are popular with MSM, such as Atlanta Black Pride and Southern Decadence in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“[It’s] a great opportunity to get folks ready for the event in terms of getting some vaccines on the ground early, but also, a great opportunity to reach people who won’t go to a clinic or a vaccine effort, but will feel comfortable in, frankly, less stigmatizing spaces that can occur in the events,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator, said.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced $11 million in funding to domestically produce the Jynneos smallpox vaccine in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The vaccine is being used to limit monkeypox’s spread.
Previously, the global supply of the vaccine came entirely from a tiny company in Denmark called Bavarian Nordic whose distribution had been hampered by a company’s lab renovation and supply chain disruptions.
President Joe Biden declared a national state of emergency for monkeypox in early August. The WHO also declared monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in late July.
In late August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine to be administered intradermally in order to stretch out the supply of available vaccines. The intradermal method could stretch the nation’s vaccine supply fivefold and has been found to be effective when vaccinating against rabies and polio.
Six out, Democratic LGBTQ candidates running for the Florida state legislature all won their primaries this Tuesday. All of them oppose the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year. The candidates worry that, if left unopposed, Republicans will spread similar laws to harm queer youth and families nationwide with their newfound brand of queerphobia.
Adam Gentle and state Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Michele Rayner are all running for the State House. Eunic Ortiz and Janelle Perez are running for the State Senate. State Sen. Shevrin Jones won his re-election campaign this week. Because he has no Republican competitor, he will retain his Senate seat.
Jones became the first openly LGBTQ Black person elected to the Florida legislature when he was elected in 2020.
On the campaign trail, he shared how publicly coming out as gay at age 30 caused members to leave the south Florida church where his father preaches. Friends stopped talking to Jones, families began making jokes about him behind his back, and even his own father expressed disappointment in his sexuality, he said.
So when he spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law — which forbids discussing LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third-grade classes — Jones noted that it takes courage for young people to be themselves. He also said that LGBTQ issues aren’t being taught in the aforementioned grades, and that state Republicans only passed the law to rally their voting base.
“It’s discriminatory on the surface,” Jones said in an interview. “The problem is coming when young people are being treated in a manner that they now have to question who they are, knowing that they already come from households who do not support them… I think that’s the dangerous part, because LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to commit suicide.”
“I think that this is the time for the LGBTQ+ community to see we’re under attack,” he added. “I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s Black people, I don’t care if it’s Indigenous people, I don’t care if it’s the LGBTQ+ community, because we live amongst each other and I feel that when you come for one, you come for all.”
When Michele Rayner first won her election to the state House in 2020, she became the first openly Black queer woman ever elected in Florida at any level.
“I didn’t run for office just to make history,” she said in a video. “I ran because I wanted to make a difference for people.”
“The way that I show up — I’m a Black, gay woman so I think that inspires a lot of folks,” she added in a May 2022 interview.
While she acknowledges that supporters of “Don’t Say Gay” claim it protects children from age-inappropriate discussions of sex, she said, “I don’t want my child not to be able to say that my moms and I went to Disney World or my moms and I went to the beach.”
Meanwhile, Eunic Ortiz, who is running for a state Senate seat, said the ramifications of “Don’t Say Gay” are detrimental to LGBTQ youth.
“We need to be creating solutions for the issues that everyday folks are actually facing,” she said. “Not playing political theater to try to appease a few wealthy donors in the Republican movement that, frankly, are homophobic and hate the LGBTQ community.”
Her district houses St. Petersburg, a city that has received a perfect score for eight years on Human Rights Campaign’s annual Municipal Equality Index for LGBTQ inclusive.
“We have people in the LGBTQ community living in every single county in the state. They are our neighbors and they are our community leaders…. LGBTQ people are the workers that are making our counties and communities run,” she said. “[Floridians] are tired of seeing them take on this cultural war, instead of addressing real issues,” like the environment or rising rents.
Adam Gentle spoke against the law at a political event in early March. At the event, he began his two-minute speech by announcing, “I’m gay.” He then said that schools are often the only safe spaces where LGBTQ youths feel they can safely discuss their queer identities with others.
“Their ability to talk with trusted teachers and administrators is being ripped away from them,” he said.
Rep. Carlos Smith has used his political office to oppose the law. When he debated against the bill in February, he wore a face mask with the word “gay” printed on it in large letters.
In his remarks, he said the bill was “deeply personal” to him as a queer Latino, especially since the law would prevent teachers from discussing important events, like the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting which mostly harmed other queer Latinos.
“A majority of Floridians oppose this proposal that seeks to censor conversations about LGBTQ people in our schools,” he said.
“This bill goes way beyond the text on the page,” he noted. “It sends a terrible message to our youth, that there is something so wrong, so inappropriate, so dangerous about this topic that we have to censor it from classroom discussion…. To all LGBTQ youth — we see you, you’re loved and your lives are worth fighting for!”
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) press secretary Christina Pushaw defended the law by calling its opponents pedophilic “groomers,” Smith responded, “Bigoted attacks like this against LGBTQ people are the worst of the worst…. Literally, it’s the oldest trick in the book against LGBTQ people.”
Smith said that DeSantis only signed the law to advance his political ambitions. He worries about DeSantis’ likelihood of running for president in 2024. “My concern is that he is much smarter and much more calculating than Donald Trump ever was,” he said.
Janelle Perez agrees with Smith. She’s a mother of two, married to a woman, and, if elected, she would be the first LGBTQ parent and the first queer Latina or queer woman ever elected to the Senate.
She worries that the law will subject her own daughter to bullying and prevent her from discussing her own family in school. But even worse, she worries what will happen to when DeSantis runs for president.
“When people in Hollywood, and New York, and in California are looking at the things that Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida, what they need to understand is that Florida is Ron DeSantis’s guinea pig,” she said.
“He is going to run for president in 2024,” she continued. “So if you don’t like what’s happening in Florida, and you don’t want this rhetoric to become the national conversation in 2024, then you need to help us stop it, now. Because it’s going to come after you, and the rest of the country.”
Although DeSantis and other supporters of the law say that it protects parents’ rights to control what their kids are exposed to in schools, Perez said it basically erases queer parents from schools and tells their children to feel ashamed of their families.
“LGBTQ families aren’t going anywhere,” Perez told The Washington Post. “We want to just receive the same rights as every other parent.”
“Republicans in Tallahassee have failed our state and I cannot sit idly by as they make us less safe, restrict our rights and hurt our children,” she added.
The spread of monkeypox is causing men who have sex with men (MSM) to reduce their numbers of sexual partners, according to survey results released this week by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s survey found that 48 percent of respondents had reduced their number of sexual partners, 50 had reduced their number of one-night stands, and 49 percent reduced the amount of sex they had with men that they’d met through hookup apps, The Hill reported.
The publication noted that local public health officials have been hesitant to suggest that people practice sexual abstinence as a key approach to avoiding possible exposure, noting that the strategy may be ineffective even though the federal government championed it during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s.
There are just over 15,000 cases of monkeypox in the U.S. as of Monday, according to the CDC. However, infectious disease experts think this number is likely an undercount. President Joe Biden declared a national state of emergency for monkeypox in early August. The World Health Organization (WHO) also declared monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in late July.
However, one report suggested that the high case numbers among MSM may have to do with the fact that queer men seek medical treatment more often than heterosexual individuals.
The recent increase in cases nationwide has revealed the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have enough vaccine doses available to meet public demand. To help stretch the current reserve, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the vaccine to be administered intradermally — that is, into the skin’s superficial layers — rather than through its usual subcutaneous method which injects the vaccine into the fat and connective tissues between the skin and muscular layers.
The intradermal method could stretch the nation’s vaccine supply fivefold and has been found to be effective when vaccinating against rabies and polio.
However, some LGBTQ individuals have criticized the government for what they say is an inadequate response to the outbreak.
“I’ve been really disappointed in our leaders, especially those who were in office during the onslaught of the AIDS crisis, like President [Joe] Biden and Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi,” nonbinary Queer Eye reality TV star Jonathan Van Ness told USA Today.
“Once again, we’re seeing too little action taken until the situation has ballooned out of control,” they added. “If nothing changes, we’ll continue to experience failures like this response, which has been plagued with too few tests, lack of access to treatments, inadequate vaccine supply, and ambiguous guidance.”
“In many ways, I believe it’s been fueled by homophobia and transphobia,” Ness said. “When an outbreak affects mainly men who have sex with men, some portion of our elected legislators will have no incentive to act… which is obviously messed up because people’s lives are at stake, and there are queer people in all 50 states.”
