John Russell

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President ends major HIV vaccine research program, setting progress back a decade

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The current presidential administration has ended funding for the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), a move that researchers say will likely set efforts to end HIV globally back by a decade.   The two teams leading the $258 million vaccine program at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute were informed of the move on Friday, May 30, by officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The New York Times and CBS News reported. A senior NIH official told the Times that the agency’s leadership had reviewed the program and “does not support it moving forward.” The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also […]

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Lesbian moms in Italy just won an important right in a “historic” court victory

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In a major victory for lesbian couples, Italy’s top court ruled this week that the same-sex partners of women who conceive via in vitro fertilization (IVF) have the right to be legally recognized as their children’s parents. As Reuters reports, in a ruling announced on Thursday, May 22, Italy’s Constitutional Court found that it is unconstitutional to deny legal recognition to the nonbiological mother of children conceived abroad via IVF. Doing so, the court said, violates the children of lesbian couples’ rights to care, education, and emotional continuity from both parents. Prior to the court’s decision, a 2004 law prevented the nonbiological […]

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Trump administration deported a gay man to a country where he was raped

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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to return to the U.S. a gay asylum-seeker it wrongfully deported. In his Friday, May 23, ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, noted that the man, identified only by the initials O.C.G., has no known criminal history and was the victim of multiple violent anti-LGBTQ+ attacks in his home country of Guatemala prior to seeking asylum in the U.S. last year. As the Guardian reported, a U.S. immigration judge ruled earlier this year that O.C.G. would likely face persecution and torture if sent back to his […]

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LGBTQ+ grads celebrate “Lavender Graduation” despite universities canceling their events

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Over the weekend, LGBTQ+ college graduates in Utah came together for a “Lavender Graduation” ceremony after their schools canceled their own long-standing events. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lavender Graduations have been held on college and university campuses across the U.S. since 1995, when Dr. Ronni Sanlo held the first event for three students at the University of Michigan. Sanlo, a Jewish lesbian, conceived the ceremony as a way to honor the accomplishments of LGBTQ+ graduates after she was barred from attending her own children’s graduations due to her sexuality.  Lavender Graduations are similar to many specialized commencement events often […]

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Taliban arrests & beats two queer women in Afghanistan. They might get death by stoning.

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LGBTQ+ activists Maeve Alcina Pieescu and Maryam Ravish were arrested by the Taliban last month while trying to flee Afghanistan. According to the U.K.-based human rights non-profit the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the two women face possible torture and execution. “They are expected to be tortured to reveal the names of other LGBTs and sentenced to a long jail term or possibly executed,” said Nemat Sadat, CEO of Afghan LGBT+ network Roshaniya, which is working with the foundation to press for the two women’s release. In a March 31 press release, the Peter Tatchell Foundation said that 19-year-old Ravish and 23-year-old Pieescu, […]

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US Citizenship and Immigration Services implements “cruel & unnecessary” anti-trans policy

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This week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it will only recognize “two biological sexes.” In a Wednesday, April 2, press release, the agency said that it was “updating the USCIS Policy Manual to clarify that it only recognizes two biological sexes, male and female.” The release cited President Donald Trump’s January 20, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”  The president’s anti-trans order similarly declared that the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, and falsely characterized so-called “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex” as fundamental attacks on women […]

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Cops burst into women’s restroom to remove butch lesbian, accusing her of being a man

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A cisgender woman in Arizona is speaking out after she says she was harassed by cops in the women’s restroom of a Tucson Walmart late last month. Kalaya Morton, 19, of Phoenix, says she and her ex-girlfriend were using adjacent stalls in the store’s women’s restroom when two male sheriff’s deputies entered. “They were flashing lights on our feet and saying, ‘You have to get out of here. You have to come out. We need to talk to you,’” Morton told Advocate. Morton, who identifies as a stud — queer slang for a Black masculine-presenting lesbian — says she believes a store employee […]

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Trans landmark added to National Register of Historic Places despite Trump’s anti-trans attacks

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A San Francisco address that was once the site of a pre-Stonewall transgender uprising has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of historic sites, buildings, and objects in the United States. The National Park Service added the building at 101-102 Taylor St. in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to its official list of historic U.S. places worthy of preservation on January 27, without any public statement or press release, The Bay Area Reporter first reported. The address was the location of Compton’s Cafeteria in the 1960s. One night in August 1966, a riot broke out at the 24-hour […]

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The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said that anti-LGBTQ+ oppression in the country is part of the Taliban’s systematic gender oppression

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The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor has filed applications for arrest warrants for two senior Taliban officials, charging them with gender persecution, including of LGBTQ+ Afghans. In a January 23 statement, ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan said that after an investigation of alleged crimes committed against Afghan civilians, his office has determined that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the Supreme Leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhunzada, and the Chief Justice of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,’ Abdul Hakim Haqqani, bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds, under article 7(1)(h) of […]

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People living with HIV in Gaza are running out of medication

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Isreal’s war on Gaza has made finding medication nearly impossible for people trying to survive in the region, and Palestinians living with HIV have been hit particularly hard. According to The Intercept, aid groups like Glia say that HIV medication has specifically been blocked from entering Gaza, though Isreal’s agency for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories denies the allegation. “Israel neither blocks nor limits the entry of medications, including those for HIV, which can be brought in without quantitative restrictions,” the agency told the outlet. But Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Palestinian Canadian emergency physician with Glia told The Intercept that Israel has […]

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