Greg Owen

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Texas is keeping a list of trans people & no one will say why

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In August, Texas banned drivers in the state from changing the gender markerson their driver’s licenses to match their gender identities. New reporting reveals that employees at the Department of Public Safety (DPS) continue to document every change request by trans drivers for collection in a state database. At least 42 such attempts — including instances where people asked for guidance about state policies during calls, in-person appointments, and by email — have been reported in the last five months, according to documents shared with The Texas Newsroom.   DPS staff scanned and saved trans drivers’ information, the records show, and sent the […]

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Gay bar defends decision to eject Trump supporters despite their cries of “discrimination”

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On Friday night, a gay bar in Indianapolis was the scene of a heated exchange between Donald Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats and bar staff who say they abused them. The bar staff threw them out. “A group of individuals visited Chatterbox and intentionally misgendered and harassed a Chatterbox employee, resulting in them being asked to leave by our staff,” bar management posted to Instagram over the weekend. “They then continued verbally assaulting patrons and staff, threatened our establishment, and returned to record a video which has now been posted on multiple social media platforms.” The video was recorded and […]

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Phones, COVID, & fascism have pulled us apart. The growing queer bar scene could reconnect us.

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It’s a Thursday night or a Sunday afternoon, and you’re sitting on your couch with your phone in your hand. What are you going to do? That’s the question at the heart of a loneliness crisis that’s overwhelmed the LGBTQ+ community. The rise of social media and “the apps,” a wave of bar closings during the COVID pandemic, and a hostile political environment have conspired to produce a sense of dread for gay Americans that still has a lot of us sheltering in place — alone together. But the obstacles keeping us apart in real life are giving way to […]

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Trump pulls the US out of the United Nations group supporting LGBTQ+ rights worldwide

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The United States has withdrawn from the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, a collection of countries actively supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ and intersex people globally. The U.S. withdrew from the organization on February 14, according to reporting by the Washington Blade, with no public announcement. A State Department spokesperson on Saturday confirmed the withdrawal but did not specify the specific date. “In line with the president’s recent executive orders, we have withdrawn from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group,” the spokesperson said. During Trump’s first term in office, his administration said it established a mission to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide. The administration […]

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Transgender people with autism suffer poor healthcare and high rates of self-harm

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The first large-scale study on the experiences of autistic transgender people finds that they are more likely to have long-term mental and physical health conditions, including alarmingly high rates of self-harm, data from the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University shows. Researchers found that these individuals also report experiencing lower quality health care than both autistic and non-autistic people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. “These findings add to the growing body of evidence that many autistic people experience unacceptably poor mental health and are at a very high risk of suicide-related behaviors. We need to consider how other aspects […]

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Canadian LGBTQ+ group issues U.S. travel ban amid Trump’s anti-trans & tariff threats

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The prominent LGBTQ+ rights organization Egale Canada will boycott events in the U.S. in protest of the Trump administration’s continued assault on the transgender community. “After deep consideration, we have decided not to engage in-person in this year’s Commission on the Status of Women or any other UN, OAS (Organization of American States) or global convergings, including WorldPride, taking place in the United States in the foreseeable future,” a statement from the group reads. WorldPride, which drew five million attendees to its biannual gathering in New York in 2023, is slated to take place in Washington DC at the end of May. […]

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Russia is building an electronic registry of LGBTQ+ citizens

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Russia’s Interior Ministry has plans for a sweeping electronic database of LGBTQ+ people in the country, Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet, revealed this week. Citing anonymous sources at the Interior Ministry, the outlet reported that the Orwellian plan has been in discussion since last year after Russia’s Supreme Court outlawed the so-called “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization” at the urging of President Vladimir Putin. The database will be a “large-scale” system to track members of the LGBTQ+ community at large, according to sources. The plans were corroborated by Dmitry Chukreyev, an official with the Civic Chamber of Yekaterinburg, […]

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Trump administration ends Joe Biden’s efforts to fight book bans

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The Department of Education on Friday ended federal efforts to reign in an epidemic of book-banning in local school districts by right-wing groups. The announcement was made in dismissive, partisan and MAGA-inflected language in a press release titled “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax.” “By dismissing these complaints and eliminating the position and authorities of a so-called ‘book ban coordinator,’ the department is beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “These decisions will no longer be second-guessed by the Office for Civil Rights […]

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Donald Trump freezes Civil Rights division’s work fighting discrimination

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The Trump administration has told the Civil Rights division at the Justice Department to stop pursuing any new indictments, cases, or settlements related to civil rights violations, effectively shutting down the division just days into Trump’s second term. A letter to the acting head of the division obtained by The Washington Postorders her to ensure that civil rights attorneys do not file “any new complaints, motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs, or statements of interest.” The order and a separate memo sent to Kathleen Wolfe, acting supervisor of the Civil Rights division, freezes action on new cases and directs her […]

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Donald Trump orders trans women inmates to be housed with men: “There will be rapes”

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In his latest assault on transgender Americans, President Donald Trump has ordered federal prisons to house transgender women in men’s facilities and halt their gender-related healthcare. The directive follows an executive order Trump issued on his first day in office declaring the federal government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes, male and female.   The executive order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” also applies to immigration detainees in federal facilities. It does not address trans men held in detention. The directive requires all gender-related healthcare for trans women inmates to […]

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