Despite the massive backlash that follows her work, Rauda Morcos has never hesitated to advocate for LGBTQ+ Palestinians. The human rights lawyer and activist helped create ASWAT, the first organization for Palestinian lesbians, also known as the Palestinian Feminist Center for Gender and Sexual Freedoms.
“I said to myself if I were to die achieving my goal and putting the word out that we are equal within our Palestinian community as women, as lesbians, and as queer, then it’s worth it,” she told LGBTQ Nation.
ASWAT started out as a humble email group back in the late 1990s. Intending to open up the conversation around sexual orientation in Palestine, the organization operates as the first line of support for women, as well as men, who have questions about their sexuality.
Based in Haifa, Morcos has seen many positive changes for LGBTQ+ Palestinians over the last two decades.
“Today you can find Palestinian couples with kids, some who are out and some who are not. It’s your choice.”
Nevertheless, activists like Morcos have paid a high personal cost for fighting against repressive and ingrained societal norms that further marginalize often vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community.
There’s no question many LGBTQ+ Palestinians contend with a complex intersection of identities. Queer Palestinians are simultaneously dealing with the same issues as other Palestinians while also fighting for legal recognition and protection from anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.
“The challenges that face all Palestinians are the same, occupation and a lack of freedoms because of the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians due to the occupation,” she said. “Not only the destruction but the human rights violations against Palestinians are the most stressful at the moment. Not only in the West Bank because Palestinians inside Israel feel very threatened at the moment.”
A complex legal framework
Palestinian activists have endured personal attacks, discrimination and even death threats as they struggle to fight for equal rights in a region already rife with conflict. Yet, there is a marked difference in the legal and social environment for LGBTQ+ Palestinians between the two Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, same-sex sexual acts were decriminalized in 1951 as a result of the annexation of the territory by Jordan and the subsequent ratification of the Jordanian Penal Code. Yet in the Gaza Strip, under the rule of Hamas, conditions are more challenging.
Opinions differ on the extent to which the British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance, which was enacted in 1936 and punishes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature”, is applied to consensual same-sex relations. According to the UK-based NGO Human Dignity Trust, there is “little evidence of the law being enforced, and it appears to be largely obsolete in practice.”
Statistics published by the Global Acceptance Index, which tracks LGBTI social acceptance across the world, show little positive change has happened in Palestine in recent years. The Index ranks Palestine 130 out of 175 countries, with no notable advancement in equal rights over the last decade.
For LGBTQ+ folks in Western countries, groups like Queers for Palestine offer solidarity as a form of intersectional justice. They see queer liberation as linked to Palestinian liberation.
Whereas some LGBTQ+ people feel they can’t support Palestinian rights because of the anti-LGBTQ+ nature of the region, queer advocates for Palestinian liberation criticize Isreal for ‘pinkwashing’ its human rights record in order gain support from queer people in the West.
A global fight
Maisan Hamdan – a Palestinian writer and activist born in the port city of Haifa – has split her time between Haifa and Berlin since 2017. But distance doesn’t make her any less connected to her birthplace.
“I became very much connected, but in a different way,” she told LGBTQ Nation. “Seeing LGBTQ issues in Palestine as a part of a huge international intersectionality showed me that we can’t separate issues when it’s about oppression and resistance.”
Before 2017, Hamdan volunteered with alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, an organization working to improve the rights of LGBTQ+ Palestinians.
Hamdan’s activism has included attending protests in Haifa and participating in internationalist pride in Berlin, where she gave a speech about the experiences of queer people in Palestine.
“Due to the complexity that we live in, it is never normal for us like other queers around the world who might have to fight for their rights but within their country, among their people,” she said. “We fight double oppression – colonialism and patriarchy.”
She added that it’s essential for others to work to understand the complexity that she and other queer Palestinians inhabit.
“As Palestinian queers who live in a place where oppression is part of the daily scene, it is a huge thing to feel that you are not alone,” she said, “that there are spaces where you feel you are part of a community, where you are being listened to, where you can share your thoughts without being afraid and where basically you feel safe.”
Until the repeal of the Buggery Act in 1861, gay sex was a capital offense in England, forcing queer people out of public life. However, even during the extremely hostile environment before the repeal, ‘Molly Houses’, often coffeehouses, pubs or taverns, were created where queer people could meet and socialize.
Named after the slang term molly, which was usually used to refer to effeminate, homosexual men, Molly Houses quickly became the go-to meeting place for queer men in 18th-century England.
In court records from a buggery trial in 1724, a policeman named Joseph Sellers who visited a Molly House reported seeing “a company of men fiddling and dancing and singing bawdy songs, kissing and using their hands in a very unseemly manner.”
What is clear from reports at the time, typically from testimonies given in court cases, are the mock rituals the Mollies would perform. From adopting a female persona, alongside a feminine name and mannerisms, to cross-dressing on Festival Nights and conducting mock births and marriages.
Many of the sexual encounters and rituals were comedic in nature and were aimed at making a masquerade of straight conventions and parodying aristocratic manners.
“They were a forum for comedy and performance, where the whole idea of what’s true and natural gets called into question,” explains Matt Cook, the UK’s first Professor of LGBTQ+ History at the University of Oxford. “They served an important function for people to play with convention, ritual and to explore, have sex and socialize.”
The rise and fall of Mother Clap’s Molly House
Found on Field Lane in Holborn, central London, Mother Clap’s Molly House was arguably the most well-known and infamous molly house in 18th-century London. Run by Margaret ‘Mother’ Clap, this venue regularly accommodated dozens of men with beds being placed in all the rooms, thanks to Mother Clap.
The popularity of Mother Clap’s would ultimately prove to be its downfall, with a member of the puritan Society for the Reformation of Manners, Samuel Stevens, going undercover at the club to expose the patrons.
After visiting Mother Clap’s on November 14th 1725, Stevens said he saw men making love to one another and kissing in a lewd manner. “Then they would get up, Dance and make Curtsies, and mimick the voices of Women. Then they’d hug, and play, and toy, and go out by Couples into another Room on the same Floor, to be marry’d, as they call’d it.”
Police constables descended upon Mother Clap’s in February 1726, blocking all exits and arresting forty men. While most were released due to a lack of evidence, Mother Clap herself and a handful of customers received fines and prison sentences and were put in the pillory.
Three guests, Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright, were found guilty of buggery and hanged on May 9th, 1726.
The limits of inclusion
A handful of other Molly Houses have been identified in London and other cities, including Plump Nelly’s Molly House in London’s Smithfield and a public house on the edge of Warrington, a town near Manchester.
There is no question that the legal climate at the time when Molly Houses existed was deeply repressive towards men who had sex with men. Yet, for Cook, the lack of a distinct homosexual identity during the 18th and 19th centuries makes it a challenge for historians today to say exactly what motivated Molly House patrons.
“There was still a sense of it being an act rather than an identity. We don’t know really what the people who went to the Molly Houses were thinking of themselves,” he explains.
While there are mentions of upper-class men visiting, or slumming it, in Molly Houses, Cook warns against viewing Molly Houses as utopian environments, where class differences in 18th century England simply disappeared.
“If you just look at who was arrested and prosecuted, there are no upper-class men there. I think it’s a mistake to think of them as kind of all-inclusive spaces – I don’t think they functioned like that at all.”
Relying on unreliable storytellers
Despite only being open from 1724 to 1726, Mother Clap’s Molly House and its eccentric owner managed to create a sanctuary in a deeply repressive society. Even its raid and subsequent arrests helped provide historians today with unrivaled insights about gay life in England centuries ago.
The vast majority of primary sources about the Molly Houses are related to court cases or pamphlets distributed at the time. Much of the historical record comes directly from people who infiltrated Molly Houses undercover and then testified in court against customers.
“Often the only times when marginalized lives get reported on is when the law gets involved,” says English playwright Mark Ravenhill, who wrote the 2001 play, Mother Clap’s Molly House, set in part in 1720s London. “The facts available to us have been slightly distorted because they’re all from the prosecution, who are trying to shut down the houses.”
The growth of Molly Houses from around 1690 to 1726, and the following crackdown, interested Ravenhill and led him to set his play in the 1720s.
“After reading the material, I just thought it’s such a fascinating history. But there also seemed to be a very inherent theatrical element to the stories – I could easily see them on a big stage with lots of costume, music and dancing.”
Despite the immense importance these places had in allowing queer people to be themselves and in the process create a distinct subculture, their existence is still not widely known.
“People still on the whole haven’t heard about these places,” concludes Ravenhill. “As soon as you start to tell them about that culture, it just blows their mind and they want to know more about Molly Houses.”
Following a string of violence against Black trans women, LGBTQ activists in New York took to the streets in summer 2020 to draw attention to the deadly issue.
Jason Rosenberg and Marti Gould Cummings were among those who joined the June 2 demonstration in front of the iconic Stonewall Inn.
City officials set a curfew that night, and shortly after the 8 p.m. deadline, a number of the protesters — who were walking arm-in- arm — were arrested and violently attacked, according to Rosenberg, a member of the activist group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
“I felt excessive and violent force on all sides of my body and was knocked unconscious and woke up maybe a minute or two later,” he told NBC News. “My glasses were on the floor, my mask was off and my head was bloody.”
Despite the injuries he allegedly endured at the hands of police, Rosenberg said, he was denied medical treatment while in custody and ended up with a broken arm and 11 staples in his head after seeking treatment following his release.
“My glasses were on the floor, my mask was off and my head was bloody,” Jason Rosenberg said.Courtesy of Jason Rosenberg
“There was even a point where we were all sitting waiting to be transported to whatever detention center we were going to be processed at and people were chanting ‘Medic! Medic! He needs medical attention here,’” he added.
Cummings, a former New York City Council candidate who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said police officers were “really targeting protesters.” Cummings, who was arrested and spent more than 10 hours in police custody before being released, said they were unable to make a phone call and did not hear their Miranda rights.
“This is not an isolated incident, especially from the NYPD,” Rosenberg said. According to the New York City-based Legal Aid Society, 295 people in Manhattan alone had been “languishing in detention for 24+ hours” as of the morning of June 3, 2020, in the aftermath of widespread protests.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment on Rosenberg’s and Cummings’ specific allegations, but the New York City Law Department did issue a statement at the time.
“The accusation that officers are retaliating against New Yorkers who are protesting is disingenuous, exceptionally unfair, and perhaps deliberately ignoring the fact that the Police Department is dealing with a crisis within a crisis,” the department said, according to a report published by the nonprofit news site The Marshall Project.
Treatment like the one Rosenberg and Cummings said they were subjected to are not unique to New York City. Reports can be found across the United States of police allegedly using excessive force against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. There have also been numerous incidents in which LGBTQ individuals said members of law enforcement made disparaging remarks about their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to news reports, lawsuits and academic studies.
These incidents — along with the historically fraught relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community — have led a growing number of police departments across the country to introduce LGBTQ awareness and cultural competency training for their officers. With trainings found from Washington, D.C., to Palo Alto, California, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; rather, departments are crafting programs that take into consideration their specific communities.
‘Lingering effects’
The relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community has long been strained. Perhaps one of the most well-known examples of this rocky relationship is the iconic 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. The multiday protest — widely considered a pivotal turning point in the modern gay rights movement — was triggered by a police raid on the popular Stonewall Inn gay bar.
Throughout much of modern U.S. history, police officers were bound to enforce explicitly anti-gay laws — fromlocal measures outlawing men from “impersonating a female” to the widespread criminalization of same-sex sexual activity. In fact, it wasn’t until the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas that gay sex was decriminalized throughout the country.
“These laws do have lingering effects,” said Christy Mallory, legal director at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ think tank. “It can happen in subtle ways from being ingrained in some people’s heads that somehow same-sex relationships are inferior or should still be criminalized.”
“Given that this history is not so long ago, there are people who remember being wrapped up in that, which can come both on the law enforcement side and within the LGBTQ communities,” she added.
A 2015 report, co-authored by Mallory, highlights the numerous surveys, court cases and academic studies that document the alleged discrimination and harassment of LGBTQ people by law enforcement. Most notably, the report points to a 2013 survey of anti-LGBTQ violence survivors who interacted with police that found almost half (48 percent) reported they had experienced police misconduct in the previous year, including use of excessive force and entrapment.
Within the broader LGBTQ community, transgender individuals and queer people of color are at a particularly high risk of encountering police misconduct, according to other recent reports.
The National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found 58 percent of trans respondents who said they interacted with police in the previous year alleged they had been harassed by law enforcement. The survey also found 57 percent of respondents said they were uncomfortable contacting police for help.
In response to allegations such as these, New York recently repealedan anti-loitering code — dubbed the “walking while trans” law — that transgender advocates said was penalizing trans women for simply walking down the street. A similar anti-loitering code has been on the books since 1995 in California, with state Sen. Scott Wiener recently introducing a bill that would overturn this law.
Black LGBTQ people, too, report more harassment from police.
A study published in June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by Devin English, a public health professor at Rutgers University, found 43 percent of Black sexual minority men experienced police discrimination in the past year. This unequal treatment had a range of negative effects on this community, including high levels of depression and anxiety, according to him.
While many explicitly discriminatory laws and policies targeting LGBTQ people have been repealed, there remains an issue with overpolicing of queer people, according to Mallory. She pointed to a study published by the Williams Institute in May that found lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people are six times more likely than the general public to be stopped by police (data about transgender individuals were not available in the datasets analyzed).
Protesters walk past the Stonewall Inn during a Queer Liberation March in New York on June 28, 2020.Bryan R. Smith / AFP via Getty Images file
One way this historically fraught relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community has manifested over the past several years is in the decision to ban uniformed police officersfrom participating in Pride marches. The bans have been divisive, even within the LGBTQ community — and particularly among openly gay police officers.
One of the Williams Institute’s key recommendations to help bridge the divide, according to Mallory, is the implementation of LGBTQ sensitivity, diversity and specialization trainings within law enforcement departments.
Mallory said there are currently no federal laws that mandate LGBTQ training for law enforcement offers, but two states — California and New Jersey — recently mandated such training. More common, however, are individual police departments instituting these measures, though Malory said there’s no reliable data on how many have such training in place.
‘We can continue to build trust’
A number of law enforcement departments have proactively decided to add LGBTQ programs to their arsenal of training courses. In fact, the largest local police departments in the U.S. — New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington, D.C. — all offer some form of LGBTQ training.
The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — the sixth largest local police department in the U.S. — has been offering LGBTQ training since 2000, though it expanded its curriculum in 2015. Sgt. Nicole Brown, who has been a supervisor for the department’s LGBT liaison unit for the past three years, said her department was the first in the nation to offer such training.
Prior to the start of this training, negative attitudes about the LGBTQ community were reportedly pervasive within the department: In 1996, during a retraining of veteran officers, a word association exercise asked for responses to the word “gays.” The officers’ answers — which elicited no positive or even neutral responses — included “wrong,” “weird,” “faggots,” “AIDS,” “ungodly,” “don’t like ‘em” and “immoral,” according to a reporter for The Washington Post, who was present during the training.
Sgt. Nicole Brown.Courtesy of Nicole Brown
Brown, who has worked as a D.C. police officer for 14 years, said she has seen first-hand the value of effective LGBTQ training for law enforcement. She regularly trains officers across the district in intensive courses ranging from how to approach investigating suspected anti-LGBTQ hate crimes to the importance of using the correct pronouns for transgender people.
But for Brown, there’s no substitute for on-the-beat training in the community, a community she herself is a part of.
“When officers come over to our unit, they get a chance to meet members of the LGBT community and hear their stories. They meet different community leaders that we interact with daily, then they go back to their respective districts and share what they’ve learned with their colleagues,” she said.
Informal, face-to-face meetings, she added, can go a long way to break down preconceived ideas police and LGBTQ community members may have of each other and help foster solid relationships. Brown said she often hears from fellow officers, as well as the people they police, that quick check-ins can open up conversations around similar experiences and make common ground easier to find.
Without building a rapport with LGBTQ residents, trust is hard to build, and awkward encounters are more likely, she said. Once officers get the cultural competency portion of training, they better understand some of the unique issues LGBTQ individuals face in the city and how the department can better support them, according to Brown.
“I think a lot of officers can become a little hung up on the fact that they don’t want to step on any toes and want to be as politically correct as possible,” she said. Following the training, she added, “their approach moves to: “I shouldn’t be nervous that I’m going to say the wrong thing, because I am treating this person like a human being, how I would like to be treated.”
While efforts are being made by the D.C. police to improve the relationship between members of the LGBTQ community and law enforcement, some local activists still have reservations about engaging with police.
Sultan Shakir, executive director of D.C.-based SMYAL, an organization that supports and empowers LGBTQ youths, said that while the training has some benefits, it fails to address the root causes of police misconduct.
“A training will help someone learn how to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, but it’s unlikely to really change someone’s attitude towards an entire group of people, particularly when that attitude is probably based on centuries of what society has told them to think about someone,” he said. “You can’t change that mentality in a two-hour training.”
Shakir said he would prefer a system where first responders are social workers trained on “supporting you from a trauma-informed approach” and “de-escalation.”
“We do our absolute best to try not to engage with the police department,” he said. “When it comes to our work, there’s a lot of very understandable fear, trauma, frustration and anger with a lot of the youth we work with around past engagements with the police.”
While the district has provided some form of LGBTQ-specific training for law enforcement officers for more than two decades, some localities — including Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Grand Forks, North Dakota — have only recently started to incorporate this type of training.
City officials in Grand Rapids approved LGBTQ training for police officers and firefighters in April, at a maximum cost of $20,000 for both departments as part of the one-off scheme. This pilot program includes learning about best practices in de-escalation for LGBTQ individuals, microaggressions, misgendering and the historical relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community.
“We know that historically, the LGBTQ community has been arrested and incarcerated more [than the general public],” said Christin M. Johnson, lead oversight specialist at the Grand Rapids Office of Oversight and Public Accountability. “The point of these training sessions is to make sure that everybody feels welcome and that police are treating people fairly across the board.”
The Grand Forks Police Department recently announced it would launch a Safe Places initiative, which aims to train officers and local businesses to better support LGBTQ victims of hate crimes and harassment. First introduced by the Seattle Police Department in May 2015, Safe Places offers LGBTQ people the ability to report crimes to local businesses and organizations familiar to them that have signed up for the program.
“Some people aren’t comfortable with police coming to them, or them going to a police department,” Officer Brian Samson, the Grand Forks Police Department’s LGBTQ liaison, told the Grand Forks Herald in July. “Seattle found that when people go to a place they’re familiar with, or a local business, the people filing a complaint, or whatever’s going on — it’s easier to communicate with the police better, because it’s a neutral place for both parties.”
After introducing its version of the Safe Places initiative, the Seattle Police Department saw a major increase in the number of reports about harassment and hate crimes in the community. In 2014, 26 anti-LGBTQ crimes were reported to the department, and in 2015, when the Safe Place program had been in place for the last eight months of that year, the department saw 71 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes reported.
“We hope that the LGBTQ and minority communities see that reporting these crimes is important, and that they will be investigated and prosecuted, and that they know they can work with the police department and feel safe in doing so,” Seattle Police Department spokesman Sgt. Randy Huserik said.
‘Institutional hatred’
While some police forces are voluntarily choosing to launch LGBTQ-focused initiatives, others are doing so after being sued by alleged victims of police brutality.
Gustavo Alvarez, a gay resident of Palo Alto, California, settled his lawsuit against its police department after accusing it of violating his civil rights, resulting in a settlement that included a $572,500 payout and a one-off two hours of mandatory LGBTQ-awareness training for all police officers in the department.
Alvarez alleged in his complaint that multiple officers used excessive force and specifically targeted him because of his sexual orientation. A surveillance video recorded Feb. 17, 2018, from Alvarez’s security camera at his home in the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park showed officers slamming him against a car, and one officer, Sgt. Wayne Benitez, pushing Alvarez’s head into the car’s windshield.The complaint says the officers initiated contact with Alvarez because one of them believed he was driving with a suspended license.It also alleges Alvarez was “mocked, made fun of and humiliated because of his sexual orientation” while in police custody.
The microphone worn by Benitez recorded him mocking Alvarez by talking in a “very flamboyant, high-pitched tone when he was pretending to be Mr. Alvarez,” according to Alvarez’s attorney, Cody Salfen.
Following the incident, Benitez was placed on administrative leave and retired from the department in September 2019. As part of the settlement, Benitez was required to make an apology to Alvarez, which reads in full: “I am sorry for my actions during the arrest of Mr. Alvarez. Regrettably I lost my composure, and hope the settlement allows Mr. Alvarez to move forward with his life. Sincerely, Wayne Benitez.”
“Alvarez was very traumatized by their bigotry,” Salfen said. “There was no secret that he was gay, and the officers definitely used that as a way to demean him in their prior contacts with him and also during this contact.”
Introducing LGBTQ awareness training is a starting point, according to Salfen, but it’s not enough to put an end to discriminatory police attitudes.
“When you have a culture that breeds and perpetuates hatred toward the LGBT community, there’s no way that a two-hour class can eradicate that institutional hatred. These institutional norms have existed and persisted for decades, perhaps even longer. You can’t just flip the switch and have that go away,” he said.
In October 2020, Benitez was charged with assault under color of authority and lying on a police report for his alleged actions during the arrest of Alvarez; he pleaded not guilty. The Palo Alto Police Department said it is not able to discuss the specifics of the civil case due to the ongoing prosecution in the related criminal case, according to James Reifschneider, acting captain of the department’s field services division.
Reifschneider, however, affirmed the importance of police officer training and said the department is going beyond the requirements of California’s Assembly Bill 2504, which mandates all new police officers in the state to receive training about the LGBTQ community.
“Our Department proactively chose to expand this training to include all of our sworn personnel (i.e. veteran officers as well) beginning in January 2020,” he said in an email. “We’ll be continuing to do it on an ongoing basis moving forward.”
State mandates
California became the first state to introduce mandatory training on sexual orientation and gender identity for incoming police officers, after former California Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 2504into law in late 2018. The bill requires new recruits to undertake training in five unique areas, including understanding the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity and how these aspects of identity intersect with race, culture and religion, as well as learning appropriate terminology around sexual orientation and gender identity.
How best to respond effectively to hate crimes and domestic violence with LGBTQ victims and ways to create an inclusive workplace for LGBTQ coworkers are also included in the statewide training. While this law came into force on Jan. 1, 2019, it will be some time before all police officers across the state complete LGBTQ awareness education (and there’s currently no deadline for when officers must complete the training).
Greg Miraglia.Courtesy of Greg Miraglia
“Agencies really are just beginning to offer training now — it just got embedded into the basic training academies last October,” said Greg Miraglia, a former deputy police chief who helped draft the bill. Miraglia also serves as president of Out to Protect, a California-based nonprofit that supports LGBTQ officers.
The combination of Covid-19 restrictions and the logistical difficulty of some police agencies to send their agents away to train are driving an increase in online training. Miraglia estimated that about 1,000 officers have participated in the online training so far and approximately 2,000 have taken part in in-person training.
“In-person training is really the best way to go, because you give people a live chance to interact and to get answers to their questions immediately,” he said. “The online course is somewhat interactive with scenarios to respond to and, of course, it has the same components that a face-to-face class has. It’s definitely better than nothing.”
The State of California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training will not certify anything less than two hours on the topic, with Miraglia recommending at least four hours of LGBTQ awareness training.
“We can get the basics done well in four hours. But, in my view, cultural competence training is a perishable skill, and doing refresher training on issues like how to respond to domestic violence and the nuances of dealing with a hate crime victim who happens to be part of the LGBT community, is important moving forward,” he said.
Greg Miraglia trains police academy students in San Francisco.Courtesy of Greg Miraglia
Across the country in New Jersey, on Nov. 20, 2019, Transgender Day of Remembrance, the state’s then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a directive announcing all law enforcement professionals in the state would receive mandated training on how to best interact with transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming individuals. As part of these new rules, officers are directed to address all people by their chosen names and pronouns, even if these don’t match official records. Elements of the directive include the entire LGBTQ community with, for example, police officers required to “not delay responding to, fail to respond to, or treat as less important, any call or request for service or assistance because of the individual’s actual or perceived gender identity or expression and/or sexual orientation.”
Law enforcement officers must also not disclose an individual’s sex assigned at birth unless there is a proper law enforcement purpose. The rise in hate crimes against transgender people was one of the reasons Grewal gave for issuing the directive.
“Building on the extraordinary work of law enforcement agencies across this country and right here in New Jersey, we’re ensuring that our officers will act in ways that promote the dignity and safety of LGBTQ individuals, whether they are victims, witnesses, suspects, arrestees, or other members of the public,” Grewal said in a statement. “Only by having the trust of our diverse communities can we fulfill our mission of protecting all New Jersey residents.”
Mixed reviews
Some experts, like Mallory at the Williams Institute, say the increase in LGBTQ-specific police training is a positive step forward.
“Not only can training help the LGBTQ community, but it can help police departments do their job better, especially those that are really invested in community policing,” she said. “These trainings can really help get to a place where LGBTQ communities feel comfortable working with law enforcement, and actually enable police to do their jobs better and more safely.”
Tailored LGBTQ training is an important development, according to Mallory, but it’s not the final step. She said it’s critical for these initiatives to incorporate the idea that people with multiple marginalized identities can be put at an increased risk of over-policing, resulting in negative outcomes.
“Those LGBTQ people who are in communities of color can see the issues relating to over policing being amplified,” Mallory added. “These issues need to be at the forefront of any kind of reform and training.”
Others, like Rosenberg and Cummings, are less optimistic.
“I don’t think any type of sensitivity training could work,” Rosenberg said. “A lot of us are past the point of any attempt to reform a very corrupt and broken system.”
For Cummings, a ground-up transformation of policing in the U.S. is the only way forward for law enforcement. In New York City — where LGBTQ training is provided by the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) for both new recruits and veteran officers — Cummings wants the police commissioner to be a civilian and rulings from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the NYPD’s oversight agency, be binding.
“We need to take from the inflated police budget and put funding back into violence interrupters and harm reduction efforts in the community,” they said. “Across the board systemic racism and homophobia is in play within policing, so it goes beyond training and budget. This has been going on since the beginning of our country.”
Social-distancing measures and lockdowns have disproportionately increased alcohol use in the LGBTQ community, studies find.
Abigail Mazzarella, 26, often went to gay bars in Baltimore before Covid-19 stay-at-home measures were introduced.
“I don’t live anywhere near my family, so I did depend on that community and friendships to get by and have a type of family here,” she said.
When bars in the state closed, this physical community disappeared as Mazzarella needed its support the most. But the liquor store across her street remained open. Around the same time Covid-19 infection rates were increasing early last March, Mazzarella’s mother unexpectedly died, and exactly one week later she lost her job because of the impact of pandemic restrictions.
Abigail Mazzarella.Courtesy of Abigail Mazzarella
“I started drinking pretty much immediately after all that happened, and didn’t really stop for months,” she told NBC News. “I wasn’t drinking socially; I was just doing it by myself in my house and spending a ridiculous amount of money on it for no reason other than just to get drunk, go to sleep and do it again the next day. I wasn’t functioning for a good half of 2020.”
Mazzarella has not had a drink in more than four months, but her experience with alcohol during the pandemic is far from isolated. Several recent studies investigating how both social-distancing and lockdowns affected LGBTQ people found alcohol use sharply increased.
One study discovered around one-third of men who have sex with men (MSM) reported their substance use or binge-drinking had increased during the Covid-19 lockdown, with another survey of LGBTQ university students in the U.S. by the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center revealing 32 percent were drinking more since the outbreak.
Drinking increased among the wider population during the pandemic, too, but at a lower rate compared to the LGBTQ community. Research published in September found that the frequency of alcohol consumption in the general population since the pandemic started grew by 14 percent above pre-pandemic levels. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reported that 13 percent of U.S. adults said they had started or increased substance use, defined as use of “alcohol, legal or illegal drugs, or prescription drugs that are taken in a way not recommended by your doctor,” to cope with pandemic-related stress or emotions, in late June last year.
At-risk groups
Boredom, isolation and loneliness have been experienced by many Americans amid the pandemic. LGBTQ people, however, also face additional challenges, including increased stress from social prejudice and discriminatory laws, as well as family rejection due to their sexuality or gender identity, which can play a role in using damaging substance-based coping mechanisms.
Some parts of the LGBTQ community have seen particularly sharp rises in drinking over the past 11 months. According to research from John Salerno, who co-wrote the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center study of LGBTQ university students, 46 percent of transgender female students and 35 percent of queer-identifying students reported increased alcohol use since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.
“We found that those that reported an increase in alcohol use were more likely to suffer from greater psychological distress compared to those that did not report an increase in alcohol use,” Salerno, a Ph.D. candidate in behavioral and community health at the University of Maryland, said.
The breaking of social bonds among young LGBTQ adults who are exploring their identity can be especially traumatic. A studypublished in the Emerging Adulthood journal found that after social-distancing guidelines went into effect, LGBTQ people aged 18-29 had “lower levels of hope for the future, higher levels of alcohol use, a lower sense of connection to and pride regarding the LGBTQ community.”
Some LGBTQ students who moved back home as the pandemic spread had to isolate with families who don’t accept their sexuality or gender identity, according to Barrett Scroggs, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University Mont Alto and co-author of the Emerging Adulthood report.
“These emerging adults are folks who might be leaving their college dorm where they’re very comfortable, open and out. Then they return home to a house where they have to go back in the closet or maybe have to be with somebody who is homophobic, biphobic or transphobic,” Scroggs said.
Dianna Sandoval, chief clinical officer of AspenRidge Recovery, a network of rehab centers that offers LGBTQ-specific addiction treatment, explains that LGBTQ people are at a greater risk of being victims of violence and harassment, which can lead to more frequent cycles of distress and depression resulting in addictive behaviors.
“We’re already seeing higher levels of mental health challenges in the LGBT community being compounded with isolation,” Sandoval said. “Because it’s so difficult for folks to connect even to the small communities they’ve built for themselves, due to social distancing, there’s an even greater distance between people in the LGBT community. Some people just don’t feel that same sense of connection over Zoom.”
‘Perfect storm’
Christian Cerna-Parker, CEO of the New York-based nonprofit Gay and Sober, said he has seen the age of people reaching out to his organization dropping since the pandemic hit.
“I’ve seen people as young as 19 come in recently. Normally, people who reach out for help are in their 40s or 50s,” he said.
He added that the number of people seeking help from his organization with their substance misuse and addiction issues has rapidly shot up, too.
“From March until now, we’ve had a 40 percent increase in people wanting our services,” Cerna-Parker said.
He said for many people the combination of job losses, not being to partake in typical everyday activities and social isolation was “a perfect storm for an increase of alcohol and drugs.”
“Before they knew it, some of them found they were predisposed to addiction and things got out of hand,” Cerna-Parker said. “There’s only so much that people can take. If they think: ‘I don’t have a job, I don’t have income, and the government is not sending me unemployment,’ there is lack of hope. That’s a really dangerous place to be because the only thing they need to self-medicate is alcohol.”
Manny Minnie.Courtesy of Manny Minnie
Manny Minnie, 36, has experienced first-hand how the isolation and lack of social contact caused by Covid-19 restrictions can contribute to problematic drinking behavior.
“My thing with alcohol is that I drink a lot more when I’m bored,” Minnie, who lives in Los Angeles, said.
He had recently been diagnosed with AIDS and low immunity levels made it essential for him to enter quarantine. Minnie usually drank only on the weekends, but once lockdown was introduced, he said his drinking spiraled out of control.
“I was drinking every day. I’d start with a box of wine, then have a regular sized bottle of vodka and open a 12-pack of beer,” he said. “When I would wake up, I’d have maybe three beers left. It was a 24-hour thing.”
A check-up visit to his doctor was the catalyst for Minnie to stop drinking.
“Before I even thought about quitting drinking, I was drinking a lot. Then my doctor said: ‘I don’t know what you’re doing to your body. Your immunity is getting lower and lower; you have to stop doing whatever you’re doing.’”
Anxiety, stress and physical withdrawal symptoms — mainly shaking and sweating — made the journey to sobriety a challenge, but Minnie said through painting, he found a way to channel his energy into a positive output, rather than turning to alcohol.
Now, Minnie is using his experience with alcoholism to help newcomers to 1,000 Hours Dry LGBTQIA, an Instagram community for queer people who are on a journey to sobriety or are “sober curious.”
“When I was drinking, it was like my energy source was this broken Bic lighter that would just have a spark,” Minnie said. “When I stopped drinking, the light just grew and grew.”
Restrictions on movement introduced to combat the spread of the coronavirus have already greatly affected the day-to-day lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe. But for victims of domestic abuse, or intimate partner violence, lockdown measures can present serious safety risks.
“During this time of social distancing and for some quarantine, more than ever survivors are isolated,” said Sabrina Santiago, co-executive director of the Network/La Red, a survivor-led social justice organization based in Boston that works to end domestic abuse in LGBTQ communities.
“Being confined with their abuser will lead to escalations of abuse and removes tools of survival such as being able to leave the house to escape or de-escalate abuse,” Santiago added.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently appealed for governments to address the “horrifying global surge in domestic violence,” as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns. In France, reports of domestic abuse have increased 32 percent, and in many American cities there has been a sharp rise in the number of domestic violence calls made to law enforcement agencies.
Sexuality-based control
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey in 2010 found that “sexual minority respondents reported levels of intimate partner violence at rates equal to or higher than those of heterosexuals.” Bisexual women were shown to be at a particular risk of facing intimate partner violence, with 61 percent having experienced physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner.
While many of the same methods of control used by heterosexual domestic abusers are also used by LGBTQ abusers, those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer face unique forms of manipulation related to their sexual orientation or gender identity. For example, by threatening to “out” the victim of intimate partner violence to their family or employer if they attempt to reveal abuse, the abusive partner can make reporting violence to social services far more difficult.
Acute economic hardship and rising unemployment can contribute to instances of domestic violence in every community, but during the current public health crisis LGBTQ people may be among the most at risk of an upturn in intimate partner violence, or IPV. Recent research from LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign found that LGBTQ people are more likely to be employed in highly affected industries and are therefore more exposed to economic insecurity as a result of the pandemic.
“This added stressor could contribute to IPV in the LGBTQ community,” Ellen Kahn, senior director of programs and partnerships at the Human Rights Campaign, told NBC News. “A partner who is prone to committing physical, verbal or emotional abuse is very likely more agitated than usual while confined at home, and that puts the victimized partner at greater risk of more frequent, or perhaps more extreme violence.”
Support networks
Weak family ties as a result of homophobic or transphobic relatives or not being out can make it harder for LGBTQ victims to seek familial support when leaving their abuser.
Mary Case, manager of the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Legal Advocacy Project for Survivors, has seen how the lack of a strong family support network can cause patterns of abuse to continue.
“I worked with a gay man who, after fleeing his highly lethal relationship, went to his parents for support,” Case recalled. “His parents actually called his violent partner to come get their son and told my client: ‘You decided to become gay. This is your fault, and you need to deal with it.’”
Amid the new difficulties facing domestic abuse victims amid the pandemic, LGBTQ community centers and health clinics are working to help those victims who are most vulnerable and feel increasingly isolated since lockdown measures were introduced. While in-person support is increasingly difficult to provide, digital resources and telephone helplines are still accessible.
“The Los Angeles LGBT Centre’s Legal Advocacy Project for Survivors provides remote access to trauma-informed holistic support services to folks experiencing IPV and all other forms of crime victimization,” Case said.
Reaching out for support does not always immediately result in a relationship separation or the start of legal actions but can allow victims to get help by creating safety plans or planning moves to refuges that continue to operate for those most in need.
The LGBT National Help Center operates a range of hotlines that provide peer-support and access to local resources. New York’s Anti-Violence Project serves LGBTQ people who are experiencing violence by offering a 24/7 bilingual (English/Spanish) crisis intervention hotline. A list of additional resources have been compiled by the Human Rights Campaign.
Barriers to access
Persisting stereotypes that domestic violence is an act carried out by men against women can contribute to LGBTQ victims feeling concerned they will not be understood or believed when disclosing abuse. This can be especially challenging for victims in male same-sex relationships, as there may be a perception that because both partners are physically equal, either abuse isn’t possible in this dynamic or the victim should be able to defend himself.
Even when LGBTQ victims report abuse to social services, they can still face additional barriers to getting the necessary support to leave an abusive relationship or environment. Relatively few LGBTQ-focused domestic violence services exist, and mainstream support providers are often not equipped or trained to help nonheterosexual clients, according to Kahn.
“For example, shelters for ‘women’ experiencing domestic violence at the hands of their male partners may not be an option for a gay man, a trans person, a lesbian or bisexual person in a relationship with a woman or other folks in the LGBTQ community that do not see their reality reflected in the messaging or in the programs of these service providers,” Kahn said.
When the impact of the pandemic on accessing domestic violence support services is combined with concerns victims may have about facing prejudice when reaching out for help, LGBTQ people experiencing abuse can be hesitant in taking the first step to seek support, Santiago said.
She pointed to LGBTQ victims being concerned that their issues won’t be taken seriously or fear they might be outed, especially when they may have had negative experiences dealing with government agencies or social support services because of their sexuality or gender identity.
“All of these barriers exist whether real or perceived,” Santiago added. “Not all services will treat LGBTQ survivors this way. There are exceptions. Taking that risk to call the police, go to court or talking to the Department of Children and Families becomes a risk that some are not willing to take.”
