Jo Yurcaba

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JD Vance faces criticism from advocates for his ‘cruel’ record on LGBTQ issues

Former President Donald Trump announced Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his vice presidential running mate Monday, sparking near-immediate backlash from some of the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy groups, who called attention to his support for policies and rhetoric targeting the community. Both the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ media advocacy group, released lists of comments Vance had made and policies he had supported relevant to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.  HRC and GLAAD noted that Vance introduced a bill last year called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would have banned transition-related medical […]

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Number of LGBTQ elected officials jumps nearly 200% since 2017, report finds

The number of out LGBTQ people who have won elected office has increased nearly 200% since 2017, according to research published Wednesday and first reported on by NBC News. The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, which works to increase queer and transgender representation in public service, found that there were 1,303 out LGBTQ elected officials as of May, a 10% increase from 1,185 officials last year and a 190.8% increase from the 448 out officials in 2017, according to the organization’s latest annual “Out for America” report. For the first time, there is also at least one out LGBTQ elected official in every state and […]

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Gay couple files first-of-its-kind class action against NYC for IVF benefits

A gay couple filed a first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit against New York City on Thursday alleging that the city’s health insurance plan is discriminatory because it doesn’t cover in vitro fertilization, or IVF, for male couples.  The lawsuit is the latest development in what has become a yearslong effort by the couple to get the city to change its IVF benefits, which the couple argues makes accommodations for heterosexual and lesbian couples, and for single women. Corey Briskin and Nicholas Maggipinto said they have been talking about having children since 2014, ahead of their engagement. They planned to use a […]

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Arkansas trans community center vandalized for 5th time in past year, advocates say

An Arkansas transgender advocacy group’s community center was vandalized this week for at least the fifth time in the past year, the group’s executive director said. InTRANSitive, the only trans community center in the state, has become increasingly visible in recent years due to its activism against a wave of state legislation targeting trans people, Rumba Yambú, the founder and executive director, said. InTRANSitive’s Little Rock-based community center has seen repeated acts of vandalism since it opened in December 2021, said Yambú, who uses they/them pronouns. Starting last year, someone has damaged the pipes outside of the building at least […]

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Several attorneys general made ‘abusive legal demands’ to get trans patients’ medical records, senators allege

Four attorneys general in conservative states have abused their authority to investigate transgender patients and their health care, and hospitals must do more to protect them, a new Senate Finance Committee report argues. The report, titled “How State Attorneys General Target Transgender Youth and Adults by Weaponizing the Medicaid Program and their Health Oversight Authority,” investigates how attorneys general in Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana and Texas have opened investigations into hospitals for alleged Medicaid fraud or violations of consumer protection laws. They opened the investigations, the report argues, “in order to further ideological and political goals,” and there has been “significant […]

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The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics transgender women from competing in women’s sports

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, or NAIA, which oversees more than 83,000 athletes at mostly smaller colleges, has rolled out a new policy that bans transgender women from competing in women’s sports, making it the first major college sports governing body in the U.S. to do so.  The policy states that only student athletes whose assigned sex at birth is female will be allowed to compete on NAIA-sponsored women’s sports teams. The organization’s Council of Presidents voted 20-0 to approve the policy on Monday, and it will take effect Aug. 1. Under the new policy, transgender men and trans masculine students […]

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New research helps explain why lesbians report more orgasms than straight women

Research over the last decade has found that lesbians have more orgasms than straight women, but questions remained as to why.  A new study published this month in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that these differences when it comes to pleasure could be in part due to sexual scripts — or what people expect to happen during sex based on what they’ve seen in movies, television or even pornography. Cisgender women’s expectations for those sexual scripts and for orgasms can vary based on the gender of their partner, the study found.  Past research has found that men have more orgasms than […]

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Federal judge temporarily blocks teacher pronoun restriction in Florida

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a law in Florida that barred a transgender teacher from using pronouns that don’t align with her birth sex. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker granted transgender teacher Katie Wood a temporary injunction against the law, writing in a strongly worded opinion that it violates her First Amendment rights. “Once again, the State of Florida has a First Amendment problem,” Walker wrote. “Of late, it has happened so frequently, some might say you can set your clock by it.” “This time,” Walker continued, “the State of Florida declares that it has the absolute authority to […]

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1 in 3 LGBTQ adults say they’ve been treated unfairly by a health care provider

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer adults are twice as likely as their non-LGBTQ counterparts to report having had negative health care experiences over the last three years, according to a new report. One-third (33%) of LGBTQ adults say they were treated unfairly or with disrespect or had at least one negative experience with a health care provider, compared to 15% of non-LGBTQ adults, according to a new report by KFF, a health care and polling nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.  Of the LGBTQ adults who reported negative experiences, 61% said a provider assumed something about them without […]

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Over a dozen LGBTQ nonprofits among recipients of billionaire MacKenzie Scott’s latest donations

MacKenzie Scott, a billionaire philanthropist and the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is giving $640 million to hundreds of nonprofit groups, including dozens of organizations that support LGBTQ people.  Scott announced Tuesday that the 361 community-led nonprofit groups were selected from a pool of more than 6,000 applications received since last year, when she announced that her organization, Yield Giving, was launching an “open call” for nonprofit groups it could fund. The $640 million is more than double the $250 million Scott pledged to fund at the start of the open call. The nonprofit groups, many of which Scott said “have […]

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