Two San Francisco city supervisors are trying to make it easier for new gay bathhouses to open in the city.
Last week, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district includes the historically gay Castro neighborhood, introduced legislation that would repeal the San Francisco Police Department’s Article 26. According to local Fox affiliate KTVU, the section of the city’s police code puts the burden of permitting new bathhouses on the SFPD.
“We’ve come a long way on the way to bring back gay bathhouses to San Francisco,” Mandelman, who is gay, told KTVU. “It’s encouraging that there are entrepreneurs who are actually trying to open these venues, although it is frustrating that we keep finding new barriers in their way.”
Article 26, Mandelman said, is the reason some potential business owners have spent months waiting for the SFPD to issue permits so they can open gay bathhouses in the city.
Mandelman’s ordinance would also repeal regulations passed at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s that required bathhouses in San Francisco to maintain a daily register of patrons and prohibited locked doors in the venues. Mandelman’s office said that the crackdown on gay bathhouses in the ’80s contributed to the stigma around HIV/AIDS.
“Opening a new business in San Francisco is difficult enough,” Joel Aguero, owner of Castro Baths, said. “Supervisor Mandelman and his office are removing a significant blocker to the permit process, accelerating the opening of Castro Baths, and supporting the growing community of would-be bathhouse operators and attendees who seek to revive San Francisco’s once-thriving bathhouse culture.”
Mandelman previously passed legislation to do away with ’80s era health code restrictions affecting gay bathhouses in 2020, and in 2022 he passed legislation allowing bathhouses to open in LGBTQ+ neighborhoods like the Castro and the Tenderloin.
“I’m thankful to Supervisor Mandelman for his leadership in removing outdated barriers to reopen bathhouses in San Francisco,” said city supervisor Matt Dorsey, who co-sponsored Mandelman’s ordinance.
“The South of Market neighborhood I represent has a long and storied history with these establishments. With hindsight, we now know that restrictions adopted decades ago at [the] advent of the AIDS crisis likely deprived at-risk communities of sex-positive spaces where information about safer sex practices might have saved lives.”
Dorsey, who is also gay and the only openly HIV-positive member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, noted that with advancements in HIV prevention and treatment like antiretroviral therapy and PrEP, “It’s past time for anti-bathhouse restrictions to go.”
A Nigerian distributor of independent gay romance films is fighting to get its YouTube channel back.
Earlier this month, Omeleme TV launched an online petition aimed at getting YouTube to reinstate its original account after the streaming platform removed its channel, claiming Omeleme TV had violated its policy “on spam, deceptive practices and scams.”
But in its petition, Omeleme TV argued it has never violated YouTube’s policies and has “always complied with their rules and regulations accordingly.”
An Omeleme TV spokesperson, who wished to remain anonymous,told The Washington Blade that YouTube has not indicated “the main issue” that resulted in its deplatforming.
In its petition, Omeleme TV notes that “same-sex love is often denied and shrouded in taboo” in Nigeria, where homosexuality is illegal and same-sex relationships are punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the country’s Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act. “Deleting our YouTube page is basically shutting [out] the voice of the queer folks in the region,” the petition states.
As the Washington Blade notes, Omeleme TV launched its YouTube channel last September. At its peak, the channel reportedly had over 5,000 subscribers and had been monetized.
Its first film, Nearly All Men, directed by Akpos Otubuere, was initially posted in October 2023. By November 4, 2023, the film had garnered 5,500 views according to a post on the channel’s official Instagram account. This past June, the channel premiered its second film, Pieces of Love, which received over 500,000 views in 24 hours, according to a June 22 Instagram post. A screenshot posted on August 2 appears to show that the film had reached 101,000 views.
The following day, nearly 10 months after Nearly All Men went live on YouTube, a post on Omeleme TV’s Instagram page stated that the channel’s operators had chosen to remove the film after the platform “flagged a particular score.”
The channel’s spokesperson told the Washington Blade that Omeleme TV faced an initial copyright claim over a song in one of its films. In the process of settling the copyright issue, they discovered that Nearly All Men had not, in fact, been monetized. According to the Blade, the channel pulled the film and reuploaded it with a new original song.
It’s unclear when this version of the film was posted or how long it remained on YouTube, but on August 15, a post on the channel’s Instagram stated that “after back and forth with YouTube” over the platform’s policies on adult content, Nearly All Men would be reposted the following day, “BUT, the 18+ scenes in the movie will be up soonest in the next few days [sic].”
Omeleme TV’s spokesperson told TheWashington Blade that YouTube flagged the film again on August 18. “This time they claimed it is not ad friendly, but it does not affect the channel and that we can only earn and be viewed by premium subscribers,” they said.
On September 3, Omeleme TV posted another update on Instagram, indicating that Nearly All Men had been flagged several times. Rather than edit scenes out of the film, Omeleme TV announced that Nearly All Men would return to its channel as a “premium” members-only video due to scenes containing nudity.
“We are sincerely sorry that it’s not open to everyone,” the channel wrote in another September 3 post. “Like we said earlier YouTube is strict on nudity and editing out those scenes entirely from the film jeopardizes the aim/purpose of the entire film.”
A September 6 post announced that the film was once again live for premium subscribers.
Two days later, on September 8, Omeleme TV reported via their Instagram account that their channel had been removed from YouTube. A screenshot posted on their @nearlyallmen X account indicates that the platform removed the channel for allegedly violating its policy “on spam, deceptive practices and scams.”
In a September 10 response to the @nearlyallmen X account, @TeamYouTube noted that Omeleme TV had “already appealed & received an email outlining the final decision” not to reinstate the channel.
“We know it wasn’t the outcome you were hoping for, but there’s nothing more we can do on our end as these decisions are made very carefully,” the @TeamYouTube account wrote.
The Omeleme TV spokesperson told the Washington Blade that YouTube “did not in any way specify the actual violation or spam.” They also noted that YouTube had never once given the channel a “strike.” The platform issues “strikes” to channels for a second violation of its policies following an initial warning for a first violation.
Under its “Community Guidelines strike basics,” the platform does note that it “may remove content for reasons other than Community Guidelines violations. For example, a first-party privacy complaint or a court order. In these cases, your channel won’t get a strike.” It also notes that in certain instances “a single case of severe abuse will result in channel termination without warning.”
Omeleme TV has since launched a new YouTube channel, though it has only uploaded Pieces of Love and the trailer for Nearly All Men so far. And with only 98 subscribers, its reach has been drastically reduced and falls far short of the 1,000 subscribers required before it can monetize its content.
And it continues to fight to have its original channel restored. In its petition, which 170 signatures toward its 200 goal, Omeleme TV says that it plays a crucial role in normalizing same-sex relationships, “providing visibility and affirmation for LGBTQ+ individuals, both young and old,” in Nigeria.
“YouTube remains our major source for distribution of these films to queer folks all over the world,” the channel’s spokesperson told the Blade. They continue to believe that YouTube has somehow made a mistake, that the platform, “being a safe space for filmmakers all over the world, will do the right thing by restoring our channel for their esteemed viewers.”
Citing a 2021 Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research study, which found that only four percent of small businesses in the U.S. are owned by queer entrepreneurs, out Supervisor Rafael Mandelman applauded Transgender District for addressing the disparity “by providing valuable support to trans entrepreneurs, who face significant barriers when following their small business dreams.”
Since its inception in 2020, Tenderloin-based Transgender District’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program has helped 37 trans and nonbinary people launch businesses. The annual four-month program provides webinars, mentorship, one-on-one coaching, and more, all free of charge to participants, as well as a $10,000 seed grant to those who finish.
Mandelman went on to praise some of the program’s graduates, who have gone on “to pursue a wide variety of business endeavors.”
“Thanks to support from the district, program graduate Jessica Lamb founded Open Doors HR, an LGBTQ+ and AAPI-led HR team. Avery Zeus started a catering company, Concept Kitchen, which works to create community through food, providing meals for many LGBTQ+ [individuals],” he said.
Carlo Gomez Arteaga, co-executive director of Transgender District along with Breonna McCree, accepted the honor Wednesday, surrounded by participants in the 2024 program as well as Transgender District program director Sam Favela, and members of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives, including Transgender District co-founder Honey Mahogany.
“Our programs are vital,” Arteaga said, noting that of the four percent figure cited by Mandelman “an even smaller percentage of those are trans-led or nonbinary-led businesses.”
“So we really want to uplift the importance of what this funding and these opportunities mean for our community,” he continued, “especially during these years where we’re ‘otherized’ and many in our community are criminalized for just existing when we just want dignity and the ability to have civil rights and liberties as anyone else in the U.S.”
Arteaga noted that San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which provides funding for the program, has been “instrumental in helping us not only further the ideas into fruition of our entrepreneurs but also funding the next stages of what that looks like for us.”
Arteaga went on to highlight the confidence Transgender District’s program builds in its graduates as well as the importance of “the leadership of a city like San Francisco that can work towards expanding the tapestry of what our community businesses look like, and extending that opportunity to our community’s most vulnerable and marginalized residents.”
As The Bay Area Reporter noted, the 2024 Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program is already well underway, concluding next month. Mandelman recognized participants in this year’s program present at City Hall on Wednesday, telling them, “I am so excited to watch you thrive and, in turn, contribute to San Francisco’s vibrant small business community.”
One woman was killed and three others severely injured Monday when a man set fire to the room the four women were sharing in a Buenos Aires boarding house.
While police have not yet specified a motive in the horrendous attack, the Buenos Aires Herald reports that the victims were two lesbian couples. In a statement, the Argentine LGBT Federation called the attack “potentially one of the most abhorrent hate crimes in recent years.”
According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the woman who died has been identified as Pamela Cobas. The three others were taken to local hospitals. On Monday, one remained in critical condition, with burns on 90 percent of her body. The two other women were taken to a separate hospital, where one remained on respiratory assistance Monday with burns covering more than half of her body, while the other was reportedly responding well to treatment but was unable to provide details about the vicious attack.
A 62-year-old man was arrested for the attack and taken to another hospital, where he was treated for what was believed to be a self-inflicted neck wound. He has remained in police custody since being discharged.
Firefighters reportedly found burned rags soaked in flammable liquid at the scene. The fire spread through the building, and in total, seven people were hospitalized for injuries.
Police are treating the crime as a homicide.
In its statement Monday, the Argentine LGBT Federation drew a direct line from the attack on the four women to Argentinian President Javier Milei’s administration plan, announced in February to shut down the country’s National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism.
“Hate crimes are the result of a culture of violence and discrimination, sustained by hate speech currently endorsed by several government officials,” the Federation’s statement read. “The only spaces to which those of us who are victims of these attacks can resort are being emptied or eliminated by the current government, like the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism (INADI).”
The organization vowed to support the victims and their families and to ensure the case is brought to court.
Judy Shepard, the longtime LGBTQ+ activist and mother of anti-gay hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Shepard will receive the award, the U.S.’s highest civilian honor, from President Joe Biden at the White House today along with 19 other recipients, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Al Gore, journalist and talk show host Phil Donahue, and Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh.
“These nineteen Americans built teams, coalitions, movements, organizations, and businesses that shaped America for the better. They are the pinnacle of leadership in their fields. They consistently demonstrated over their careers the power of community, hard work, and service,” the White House said in a statement this morning.
Shepard has been fighting for LGBTQ+ rights for over 20 years. She and her husband, Dennis, were propelled to the forefront of the movement after their son Matthew was brutally beaten and left for dead in an act of horrific anti-gay violence that drew national headlines in 1998. Together, the Shepards founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which runs education, outreach, and advocacy programs to combat anti-LGBTQ+ hate. Judy Shepard served as the foundation’s executive director from 1999 to 2009 and continues to serve as its president and chair of its board.
“Her work has driven tremendous progress in our fight to give hate no safe harbor,” the White House said of Shepard in its Friday announcement.
“This unexpected honor has been very humbling for me, Dennis, and our family,” Shepard said in a statement. “What makes us proud is knowing our President and our nation share our lifelong commitment to making this world a safer, more loving, more respectful, and more peaceful place for everyone.”
“If I had the power to change one thing, I can only dream of the example that Matt’s life and purpose would have shown, had he lived. This honor reminds the world that his life, and every life, is precious.”
Today’s ceremony marks the second time Biden has handed out the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is bestowed on “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.” Out soccer star and LGBTQ+ advocate Megan Rapinoe was among Biden’s last group of honorees in 2022.
Past LGBTQ+ recipients have included tennis champion Billie Jean King, comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, and playwright Tennessee Williams. President Barack Obama also bestowed posthumous awards upon activist Harvey Milk in 2009 and Bayard Rustin in 2013.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed 13 Republican bills on Tuesday, including one that LGBTQ+ advocates say would have erased transgender people from legal recognition in the state.
Senate Bill 1628, the so-called “Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights,” was introduced by state Sen. Sine Kerr (R) in February. Similar to laws introduced in other states like Indiana and Iowa, it would have removed the word “gender” from state law, replacing it with the word “sex,” which it defined strictly according to biology. The proposed law defined gendered terms like “boy,” “girl,” “man,” “woman,” “mother,” and “father” according to biological sex and would have banned trans people from single-sex environments like bathrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, and domestic violence shelters that do not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Critics said the bill would have erased trans and nonbinary people from public life in Arizona.
“This effort to erase trans people and try to force them to fit into boxes that they don’t fit into is totally unacceptable to me,” state Sen. Eva Burch (D) told the Arizona Senate Health and Human Services Committee in February. “I’m not afraid of trans people, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to them if we keep treating them like this.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s Hugo Polanco warned that S.B. 1628 would have also prevented trans people from obtaining legal documents like IDs that accurately reflect their gender identity.
“This bill would force transgender people to live a lie and put them at risk of harm by disclosing the sex they were assigned at birth on documents like drivers’ licenses, marriage licenses, school records and burial paperwork,” Polanco said in February. “All of us, including transgender people, need accurate and consistent identity documents that reflect who we are. That’s what IDs are for.”
Arizona’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved the bill in a 31–28 vote along party lines earlier this month, KJZZ reported. The bill was then sent to Hobbs, who had previously said she opposed it.
“As I have said time and again, I will not sign legislation that attacks Arizonans,” Hobbs said in a statement about her veto of SB 1628 earlier this week.
This is not the first time Hobbs has vetoed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. In April 2023, she vetoed S.B. 1005, which sought to allow parents to sue school districts for enforcing LGBTQ+ supportive policies. In May 2023, she vetoed S.B. 1001, which proposed requiring trans and nonbinary students to obtain written parental permission to use pronouns and names matching their gender identity. Last June, she vetoed two anti-LGBTQ+ bills, one that would have banned trans students from using the correct locker rooms and restrooms at school, and another that she described as “a thinly veiled effort to ban books.”
In June 2023, she also signed two executive orders allowing state employee health insurance plans to cover gender-affirming surgery and banning state agencies from promoting or funding so-called “conversion therapy.”
Minneapolis’s LGBTQ+ community has rallied to support Minnesota’s oldest gay bar after a fire forced it to close last month.
On March 22, a garbage truck hit a utility pole near the beloved 19 Bar in the city’s Loring Park neighborhood, causing electrical wires to ignite the building’s gas supply, Minnesota Public Radio reported. While no one was hurt, damage from the blaze has caused the bar, which first opened in 1952, to close indefinitely.
The loss, which 19 Bar’s management has vowed will only be temporary, has nonetheless hit the local LGBTQ+ community hard.
“It’s just so weird not having that place to go to on the way home from work,” Bubba Thurn, the secretary of Citizens for a Loring Park Community (CLPC) and a 19 Bar regular, told CBS affiliate WCCO.
“As the years go on, we still have struggles, challenges in the community,” 19 Bar manager Craig Wilson said. “And the 19 Bar has always been a safe haven for people to come and be themselves and be okay.”
“It never changes,” Thurn told MPR of 19 Bar. “It doesn’t have the attitude of the regular clubs and gay bars. This one is more of a mix of the community — the neighborhood of Loring Park and the queer community as a whole.”
According to WCCO, the bar’s closure has left eight staff members without jobs. But the community has stepped up to help. Two GoFundMecampaigns have so far raised more than $31,000 combined to support the out-of-work staff. Another local gay bar, The Saloon, has also announced an April 7 fundraiser, with performers and bartenders donating their tips to benefit 19 Bar’s employees.
And last Thursday, the nearby Walker Arts Center hosted a free event honoring 19 Bar. One of the gallery’s current installations happens to be Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s neon-soaked reimagining of San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, the New Eagle Creek Saloon, which Barnette’s father owned from 1990 to 1993. With the artist’s blessing, Walker Arts Center welcomed the city’s LGBTQ+ community into the space to pay tribute to 19 Bar, as bartenders served drinks, a DJ played music, and photos submitted by patrons were projected on the gallery’s wall.
The Walker’s associate director of public relations, Rachel Joyce, said she hoped the evening would provide “a joyful moment to reminisce on good times at the 19 and a way to look toward the future.”
19 Bar manager Wilson is doing just that. “Yes, there’s some fire damage, water damage, but that’s cosmetic, that can be replaced,” he told WCCO, noting that a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which hung in the bar as a nod to the fact that it opened the same year she ascended the throne, had survived the fire.
“The bones of the bar is still standing and strong,” Wilson said, “and that just goes to show we will come back, rebuild, new and improved.”
The Vatican has issued a declaration listing “gender theory,” gender-affirming care, and even surrogacy as “violations of human dignity” alongside war, poverty, human trafficking, and other actual atrocities.
On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of religious discipline for the Catholic Church, released its “Dignitas Infinita.” The 20-page document has been in the works for the past five years and was approved by Pope Francis in March, according to the Associated Press. It calls for unconditional respect for human dignity regardless of “the person’s ability to understand and act freely,” reiterating Catholic teachings opposing abortion and euthanasia.
Notably, it denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.” It quotes Pope Francis’s 2016 “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), in which he stated that “every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.”
At the same time, it quotes a January 2024 address in which Francis described “gender theory” as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”
“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” the document asserts, “amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.” It also claims that “gender theory” denies “the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
It quotes Francis’s “Amoris Laetitia,”, stating, “It needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,’”
In a section on “Sex Change,” Monday’s declaration asserts that gender-affirming care “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” However, it endorses surgical intervention for intersex people, which it describes as people “with genital abnormalities.”
As for surrogacy, it claims the practice violates a child’s “right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin,” and “also violates the dignity of the woman, whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely,” because she “is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”
LGBTQ+ Catholic groups have already slammed the declaration.
Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry told the Associated Press, “While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved,” the document “does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people.”
“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and [God] — might risk or diminish trans people’s dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant,” said Berlin-based activist Mara Klein. “Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people — which if performed without consent especially on minors often cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date — are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further.”
With Republican lawmakers across the U.S. continuing to push restrictions on access to gender-affirming care, Klein slammed the Vatican’s declaration at a time of “rising hostility towards our communities.”
A bill signed into law by Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) will require schools in the state to teach LGBTQ+ history.
First introduced in January, S.B. 5462 requires school districts to “[incorporate] inclusive curricula and [select] inclusive instructional materials that include the histories, contributions, and perspectives of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups.” That includes “people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people … and people with various socioeconomic and immigration backgrounds,” according to the text of the bill.
Under the new law, the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Washington State School Directors’ Association must develop the new inclusive curriculum by June 1, 2025, for introduction during the 2025–2026 school year.
“Our LGBTQ+ youth deserve to see themselves reflected in their education,” the Washington State LGBTQ Caucus wrote in a post on X cheering the new law last week. “And with the signing of #SB5462 into law, that will soon be the reality in public schools across the state.”
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Marko Liias (D), and Danni Askini, Executive Director of National Programs for the Gender Justice League, both pointed to studies showing that students who see themselves represented in their school’s curriculum miss fewer days of school and perform better, according to KOMO News.
However, Brian Noble, Executive Director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, said that the group opposed the bill because it would lead to “the sexualization of children.”
“I think that this is based on a stereotype,” Askini told KOMO News. She argued that simply mentioning LGBTQ+ people is no more a discussion of explicitly sexual matters than mentioning mothers is a discussion of sexual reproduction.
“Acknowledging the existence of LGBT people does not inherently sexualize anybody, and it does not promote sexual behavior,” Askini said.
She also noted that while parents should have a role in the children’s education, LGBTQ+ parents should be included in that discussion as well.
“Those parents should be reflected in the curriculum in our community, which is about, you know, seven to 10% of the population,” Askini said. “We should be able to see ourselves reflected in the educational environment that our children, both LGBT and children who have LGBT parents.”
The idea that LGBTQ+ people are outside or separate from the broader community, she said, is “just absolutely false.”
“Acknowledging the facts of our community, the reality of the world that we live in, and the people that are in that world is not the same as encouraging any type of one type of behavior or one belief,” she added.
Actress Seyi Omooba has been ordered to pay £300,000 ($381,767) in legal costs after losing the religious discrimination case she brought against her former agents and a theater in Leicester, England after being fired from a production of The Color Purple for an anti-LGBTQ+ statement she made on social media.
Omooba was cast to play the lead role of Celie in the Curve Theatre’s 2019 production of the musical based on out author Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel. As in Walker’s novel, Celie’s same-sex romance with blues singer Shug Avery is prominently featured in the musical adaptation. Their romance gradually empowers Celie to stand up to her abusive husband.
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Soon after Omooba was cast in the role however, a 2014 Facebook post in which Omooba wrote that homosexuality goes against “the word of God” resurfaced online.
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“I do not believe you can be born gay, and I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean it’s right,” Omooba wrote in the post. “I do believe that everyone sins and falls into temptation but it’s by the asking of forgiveness, repentance and the grace of God that we overcome and live how God ordained us to, which is that a man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.”
Omooba, who has claimed that she is not homophobic, later said that she was urged by Curve Theatre to publicly disavow the old post, but she refused, saying, “I did not want to lie just to keep a job.” Omooba was dropped from the production of The Color Purple, and she sued the theater and her former agents, who also dropped her, for religious discrimination. “I want to make sure no other Christian has to go through something like this,” she said in 2019.
After hearing testimony in 2021 that Omooba had previously told her agents that she refused to play gay roles and had not bothered to read the script for the musical version of The Color Purple before accepting the role, an employment tribunal dismissed the actor’s religious discrimination claim, The Telegraphreported. The tribunal agreed with Curve Theatre that Omooba had not been fired for her Christian beliefs, but rather because her anti-LGBTQ+ statements would have likely led to “catastrophic” backlash for the theater if she had appeared in the queer role.
Omooba, represented by the Christian Legal Centre and anti-LGBTQ+ organization Christian Concern, appealed the decision.
Earlier this month, an employment appeal tribunal again ruled against Omooba, ordering her to pay £300,000 in legal costs. Justice Jennifer Eady agreed with the previous ruling that the actor had not been dismissed for her Christian beliefs, Leicestershire Live reported.
“Moreover, as the claimant knew she would not play a lesbian character, but had not raised this with the theatre, or sought to inform herself as to the requirements of the role, she was in repudiatory breach of her express obligations and of the implied term of trust and confidence,” Eady said.
“I have long forgiven all those who have sought to ruin my theatre career,” Omooba said in a statement following the ruling, “but the theatre world needs to be told, loud and clear, that canceling people for their Christian beliefs is illegal and wrong.”
According to the BBC, Omooba’s lawyers said they intend to appeal Eady’s decision.
