The CEO of an anti-trans clothing company is trying to bribe professional women’s soccer players into speaking out against trans athletes – but none of them are taking her up on it.
Jennifer Sey, a retired artistic gymnast who won the 1986 National Gymnastics Championship, runs the anti-trans clothing company XX-XY Athletics, which donates money from each purchase to organizations fighting against trans inclusion in sports.
Sey regularly spouts anti-trans rhetoric on social media and recently wrote that she’d give $10,000 to the next player in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) “to stand up in defense of keeping women’s soccer female.”
“A full-throated defense,” she emphasized. “A press conference. Nothing mealy-mouthed.”
Her offer aimed to build on an anti-trans New York Postessay by NWSL player Elizabeth Eddy in the wake of her team, the Angel City Football Club, signing an intersex player. Eddy claimed to be fighting for the “integrity of women’s sports.” In other words, she was arguing to exclude trans and intersex players from women’s leagues.
After Sey’s post, others offered to add money to the pot. Two anonymous people added $5,000, and Clay Travis – founder of the anti-LGBTQ+ sports site Outkick – offered $15,000, bringing the total to $35,000.
But according to Out, not a single player has taken Sey up on her offer. What’s more, there are reportedly no trans players currently in the league.
In fact, after Eddy published her essay, Angel City captain Sarah Gorden and vice captain Angelina Anderson spoke out in support of trans athletes.
“That article does not speak for this team and this locker room,” Gorden said during an October 30 press conference.
She said her teammates were “hurt,” “harmed,” and “disgusted” by Eddy’s words.
“We don’t agree with the things written, for a plethora of reasons, but mostly the undertones come across as transphobic and racist as well.” (The essay used a photo of cisgender woman player Barbra Banda, who is from Zambia.)
Anderson added that Angel City “is a place for everyone” and that Los Angeles is “a place that was founded upon inclusivity and love for all people.”
Sey, on the other hand, appeared on Fox News after Eddy published her essay to claim that there are “several males” in the NWSL. She then claimed Banda, who plays for the Orlando Pride, is a man.
The NWSL does not have a formal policy when it comes to gender eligibility, which has earned the league criticism from folks on all sides of the debate.
“You have to take a stance,” sports writer Julie Kliegman told The Athletic. “It has to be clear, it has to be transparent, and it has to be inclusive. Otherwise, this neutral ground isn’t really so neutral, because it’s leaving room for players like Eddy to steer the conversation.”
President Donald Trump just nominated transphobic Indiana attorney Justin Olson to serve as a federal judge in the Indiana Southern District Court. Olson works with the so-called Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) to sue universities and the NCAA for their trans-inclusive sports policies.
In a social media post announcing Olson’s nomination, Trump wrote, “Graduating magna cum laude from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Justin previously distinguished himself at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Indianapolis and, as a litigator, has been fighting tirelessly to keep men out of women’s sports.”
Olson is a lead lawyer in an anti-trans lawsuit financed by ICONS representing three former University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) women swimmers who sued UPenn, Harvard University, the Ivy League (an athletic conference of eight private universities, including UPenn and Harvard), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
The lawsuit alleges that the universities and NCAA violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based educational discrimination, by allowing trans swimmer Lia Thomas to compete on UPenn’s women’s swim team during 2021 and 2022, Daily Journal reported, something which left the plaintiffs “repeatedly emotionally traumatized.” The suit seeks a total ban on trans female athletes — citing opportunities “lost” and “taken” from trans women who allegedly “displaced” cis women “unfairly.”
“The UPenn administrators went on to tell the [plaintiffs] that if the women spoke publicly about their concerns about Thomas’ participation on the Women’s Team, the reputation of those complaining about Thomas being on the team would be tainted with transphobia for the rest of their lives and they would probably never be able to get a job,’” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit wants the NCAA to “render invalid and reassign and revise all awards, records, points, prizes, titles, trophies announcements or other recognition assigned, given announced, communicate or recognized by the NCAA which were based in any way upon the competitive results or participation of any male who competed in women’s events.”
Last June, UPenn stripped Thomas of her athletic swimming records and adopted an anti-trans sports ban, after pressure from the current presidential administration.
Olson is also an attorney in ICONS’ lawsuit against San Jose State University (SJSU) and the Mountain West Conference for allowing a trans volleyball player to participate in collegiate matches. The player — who participated for three seasons without any issues over her participation — didn’t cause any unfair advantage or injuries, but the lawsuit claims her presence still stifled other female athletes’ “free speech.”
The U.S. Department of Education is currently investigating SJSU for the situation.
ICONS has also used its social media to demean three successful high school trans girls, and collegiate track athlete Sadie Schreiner, referring to them as “men” and “cheaters,” even though each was fully eligible to compete by the regulations of the respective governing bodies of their event, Outsportsreported.
Olson’s legal efforts align with that of the Trump administration
This past February, Trump signed an executive order to block federal funding for schools that allow trans girls and women to participate in school sports as their authentic selves, and the order told the DOJ to prosecute schools that allow trans students to play sports. Additionally, the order pressured all national and international governing sports bodies to also ban trans athletes.
President Joe Biden’s administration interpreted Title IX as a law prohibiting anti-trans discrimination since it’s impossible to discriminate on the basis of gender identity without taking sex into account. That is, banning trans girls from playing school sports but not cis girls, solely because of their sex assigned at birth, is the kind of discrimination that Title IX was intended to prevent, the previous administration believed.
The current administration is arguing that allowing trans girls to play school sports takes away “critical visibility for college scholarships and recognition” from cis girls, who are also “denied awards” if trans girls win. Trump and ICONS have baselessly claimed that trans athletes endanger girls and women’s safety, echoing transphobic smears that encourage violence against trans people and their allies.
Aaaaaand he’s back…. Disgraced gay former Congressman George Santos has inserted himself in the presidential election with his “expert” take on hard-right, culture-warring Republicans with a drag-addled past.
The onetime Republican New York representative, who’s facing multiple campaign finance indictments following his expulsion from the U.S. House of Representatives, shared his reaction to the revelation that Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), attended a party while he was a student at Yale Law School dressed as a woman in an interview with TMZ.
According to Santos, the controversy surrounding Vance’s cross-dressing at a costume party is “disingenuous” and “most dudes at some point have played around” dressing up as a woman.
“It’s definitely not drag,” Santos said of Vance’s amateur ensemble.
Photos shared by a former Yale classmate revealed Vance posing seductively wearing a long blonde wig, black knit blouse, a colorful skirt and a chunky chain necklace. In one photo, he carries a black purse over his shoulder.
“Holy crap, is that bad drag,” Santos commented about the photos.
“I mean, the guy went to a costume party, put on a freakin’ cheap wig from Party City, or something similar,” the one-time Brazilian drag queen posited. “To call that drag is disingenuous, and I think most dudes at some have played around with costumes that were gender-bender.”
Straight “couples do that all the time,” Santos claimed. “The wife will dress up as a guy. Husband will dress up as a woman. So it’s not drag. It’s definitely not drag.”
Like the self-loathing Santos, Vance has been consistently hostile to the LGBTQ+ community.
Last year, along with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in the House, Vance introduced legislation in the Senate to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth at the federal level and to make such care more difficult for trans adults to obtain.
Vance has expressed his support for Don’t Say Gay legislation prohibiting discussions of sexual orientation and gender identities in schools, writing, “I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children.”
Vance spoke out against laws protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination following the 2020 Supreme Court Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, which found that anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination is a form of sex-based discrimination. He called the legal reasoning behind the decision a “betrayal of social conservatives and traditionalists.”
Vance also opposes the Equality Act, legislation to include sexual orientation and gender identity in federal anti-discrimination laws.
News of Santos’ own drag past in Brazil — as a pageant queen named Kitara Ravache — surfaced amid a tsunami of larcenous revelations about the Long Island Republican in 2023. The newly-sworn-in rep spent weeks denying the rumors before eventually owning up to his alter ego.
Roz Keith found out her son was transgender on his terms.
The suburban mom was asking about haircuts, and Hunter, just shy of 14 at the time, texted her some photos. “He started texting me pictures of boys with short haircuts. And I said, ‘Oh, these are very masculine. And Hunter said, ‘Uh huh,’ and walked out of the room.”
It was typical teenage behavior, but the conversation that followed was life-changing, Keith said.
“I went upstairs, knocked on his door, and said, ‘What’s going on?’ And that’s when he told me. He said, ‘I’m a boy. I’m transgender.’ That was how he came out to me.”
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Keith was caught off guard on multiple fronts. “All the little things from the time he was super little then became the hammer over the head.” She thought about Hunter playing with boy dolls, preferring time with boys to girls, choosing Narnia’s Prince Caspian over all the Disney princess costumes.
“I saw this one male avatar in a game, this buff, masculine character that he had created, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s a guy.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ You know, no explanation. So, all along, I just kept saying ‘Okay,’ too.”
Keith wasn’t a helicopter parent. “We really encouraged our kids to be independent,” she said, “and we wanted them to be happy and successful and productive, whatever that meant for them.” But she also said a transgender child “just wasn’t in my consideration set.”
“In my world, I didn’t have a friend who had a trans child. We didn’t have any adult in our community who was trans or in the process of coming out or identified in any way remotely that way. So it was really a foreign concept from that perspective.”
While those conversations weren’t happening in Keith’s world, they certainly were in her precocious online teenager’s.
“He figured it out because he was watching YouTube, and he saw a trans person on this show talking about their coming out. And that was his light bulb moment. And he said, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’”
Hunter spent a long time contemplating his revelation and researching what to do about it before he shared anything with his family.
“He’d been researching for two years,” Keith recalled. “He had a checklist of everything he wanted to do.”
With Hunter’s declaration, his state of mind came into focus for his mom.
“Based on things he shared when he was younger, he felt different, and he didn’t know why he felt different, and he didn’t have language to explain it,” Keith realized. “And it created a lot of struggle and conflict, and, I think, anger for him.”
“He said, you know, ‘I just felt like the weird kid.’”
Keith decided to close that gap – for her son and for others.
In 2015, she founded Stand with Trans, a support network devoted to trans kids and their parents and caregivers. The nonprofit provides transgender and nonbinary youth with life-saving programs like mental health services, peer support groups, educational resources, and, most importantly, Keith says, “validation and empowerment.”
Stand With Trans also provides critical support to parents or guardians of trans youth. Its Ally Parents program allows loved ones to text, call, or email other parents of trans youth for connection and advice.
Letting go
“Parents can have a hard time when their child comes out and wants to transition to a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth,” Keith said.
“They struggle to let go of the child they thought they had and the dreams that they had, right? If a child was assigned female at birth, a parent might say, ‘I just imagined her walking down the aisle in the white dress,’ you know? And they grieve this child as if the child has died.”
“I never took that approach,” Keith said, “because I knew that my child was very much alive and that it was my job to make sure that he stayed that way. You know, it was my job to make sure that he was mentally well and that he got what he needed so he could thrive.”
For Hunter and his family, checking off those steps to transition wouldn’t come easily.
“There were no pediatric gender clinics who were seeing trans youth covered by our insurance. There were no therapists who we could find who were trained to see trans adolescents. There were no support groups. There were no parent groups. There was nothing for youth. Like, literally every phone call was a brick wall,” Keith said.
But Hunter wasn’t waiting on the details. He decided to come out on Facebook.
“My daughter came to me and said, ‘Did you see what Hunter posted?’ And I said, ‘No.’”
While Keith and her husband had talked to a few close friends about Hunter, the family hadn’t been sharing much “because it wasn’t our story to share — that was up to him.”
With Hunter’s announcement, “It was like the floodgates had opened,” Keith said.
The family agreed to tell their story.
They began speaking publicly about their experience. “And there was just like this swell of relief, I guess, and joy from families in the community who had been trying to manage this process with their kiddo and had no one to talk to. There was really nobody — medically, psychologically emotionally — just literally no one was there.”
“Families like mine, trans adults, multi-generational families, like, every member of the community were reaching out and saying, ‘Oh, my God, I could have uttered those words. Your son reminds me of my son.’”
Hunter’s story had inspired an outpouring of empathy and recognition, but the story he shared online didn’t address his lingering sense of isolation.
“Even my son said, ‘I don’t know anyone like me.’ And so as we started to meet families,” Keith said.
Stand With Trans founder Roz Keith | Stand With Trans
“I was literally arranging play dates for my 14-15-year-old. Like, I was inviting kids to come over and just hang out, and — fly on the wall — they talked about stupid stuff, like, ‘Oh, don’t you hate getting socks for Christmas presents?’ And it showed these kids that being trans didn’t mean that you weren’t like other kids. You know, you were just another teen.”
Those interactions became the heart of the mission that guides Stand with Trans today.
The rise of parents’ rights
The founding of Stand With Trans accompanied a rising awareness of gender diversity in the 2010s, but with that also came a conservative backlash wrought with anti-trans animus.
Before Hunter came out, “Nobody was talking about bathroom bills and trans girls in sports. Those conversations weren’t happening,” Keith said.
Since then, trans kids like Hunter have been buried under an avalanche of discriminatory legislation, from gender-affirming care bans to a trans-erasing, book-banning frenzy organized by groups like Moms for Liberty to an online hate campaign led by accounts like Libs of TikTok.
Adding fuel to the fire: the president’s obsession with “gender ideology” and his “us” vs “them” politics of division.
The right has hawked its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda under the same, one-sided banner: parents’ rights.
Keith said the phrase is self-serving.
“I don’t think that any government should be allowed to say what my child has or doesn’t have access to, because I’m the parent. They’re not in my home parenting my child, so they don’t know what they’re going through. How do you make that global statement?” she asked.
“It is up to me to make a decision about my child’s medical care,” Keith said. “And as far as my child goes, if he was denied the opportunity to go on testosterone and not medically transition, I think our conversation would be very different.”
Keith points to a perversion of theology as one basis of the far-right’s anti-trans animus.
“I’m not Christian. I was raised Jewish. But my understanding from my friends who are Christian and very affirming and very accepting, their response is, ‘The Jesus I know would open the door for everyone, and would welcome everyone to the table.’ There’s really a disconnect between saying you’re a Christian and then not being open to accepting people as they are, as they show up.”
“Far be it for me to tell anyone what they should believe,” Keith added, “but you don’t get to bring it into my home and tell me how to care for my child, because those aren’t my beliefs. That’s not what I understand, right? It’s a secular society.”
“Your belief system should not infringe on my rights.”
Seeing around the corner
Stand with Trans was born to help protect trans kids from the attacks by providing love, knowledge and support — and power over their own lives.
“Our mission is so simple,” Keith said. “It’s empowering and supporting trans youth and their loved ones. So that’s it. We know that if we educate and support the caregivers, the loved ones, the parents, that the young people are going to do better, and if we find ways to make life better and easier for them, they’re not only going to survive, but they’re going to thrive.
“I know with my own kid, they couldn’t see themselves having a future. I think it’s hard enough for young people who don’t see around the corners, right? It’s hard to even imagine, like, ‘What do I want to be when I grow up.’ But for trans kids, it’s even harder.
“So it’s really important for us to show these young people that they can do whatever they want to do,” Keith said.
“Being trans is one part of their identity. It doesn’t define who they are.”
Stories of anti-trans vitriol dominate the media, which makes it easy to forget just how many folks out there give endless love and support to the trans people in their lives.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of parents across the country fight with all their might to provide their trans kids with love, hope, and a community of support. They fight to shield their kids from pain and to make them feel proud of who they are.
The November Issue of LGBTQ Nation celebrates the incredible parents uplifting their trans children at one of the most challenging times in history for the community. It highlights the passionate, furious, and exhausting behind-the-scenes work these unsung heroes do to give their kids the lives they deserve.
LGBTQ Nation asked these parents a simple question: What do you wish the world knew or understood about your trans child? We received dozens of responses, and will publish some of our favorites every Friday this month (you can also still submit).
In every single message, one thing became clear: These parents want nothing more than for the world to see the humanity in their kids, to see past the pronouns and body parts and understand that they are so much more than their genders.
Here is what 10 of these parents, who we have allowed to remain anonymous, had to say.
He is going to be a veterinarian
“I wish the world knew that my trans kid is just like everyone else. He’s funny, he’s kind, he loves his family and his family loves him. He is going to be a veterinarian when he finishes school and he’s a great student with life goals. He needs the world to see him as the generous young man he is because he is not a sin. He is the greatest gift and we are lucky to have him.“
She’s a loving big sister
“While people on the news are shouting about how trans girls are a threat to women everywhere, my willowy, soft-spoken daughter is here finishing up high school, making plans to study marine biology. She is kind, witty, wise beyond her years, passionate about the environment and human rights, and such a loving big sister. Our trans daughters are our hope for the future, not a threat to it.“
| Shutterstock
They still give the same smiles
“They are still my kids, the same smiles, the same giggles, the same dreams for their future. No one plans on having two trans children. It’s the same way one plans on having a child prodigy in piano or a math genius. A parent adapts to the needs challenges and individuality of their children. Full stop. If you don’t have a math genius, you may not understand the decisions the parents of a math genius would make. You don’t know. Don’t judge.“
He makes a mean candle
“I wish the world understood that his gender identity is the least interesting thing about him. He is intelligent, snarky, funny, loving, kind, generous, resilient, and so much more. He loves cooking, reading, fantasy sports, and, just like any other teen, hanging out with his friends. He speaks Mandarin, rolls sushi, and makes a mean candle.“
He is a community-builder
“He is funny, smart, brave, and caring. He is a community-builder, an activist, a listener, and a friend. He truly puts his whole heart into making the world a better place for everyone!“
| Shutterstock
It’s all for them
“The most important thing I learned was that it wasn’t about me.”
Loving them is easy
“I wish the world knew how hard it was for my child to tell me that they felt different inside and they were scared I wouldn’t love them anymore. I wish the world knew that in that moment, I had never loved them more.”
She can sing
“She is incredibly talented. She can sing and play guitar. She is kind, witty, a brilliant mind and has so much empathy for others. She is just like any teenage girl. That’s the part that’s most important. She’s just trying to get by and find her place in the world like everyone else. Being trans is only a small fraction of who she is.“
| Shutterstock
She loves harder than anyone
“I wish people knew that she is wildly brilliant. She loves Taylor Swift, unicorns, mac and cheese and flared leggings. She hates brushing her hair and when her socks don’t feel just right. Her favorite days are the days she’s building legos, watching Spidey and his Amazing Friends or playing on the trampoline with her friends. She loves harder than anyone I’ve ever met and is filled with so much silliness and joy. She is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I am so proud to be her mom.“
She leads & we follow
“That she is only ever been herself. She leads and we follow. She’s not a trans kid, she’s a dancer, a lego master, a reader, an archer, a harpest, a mentor for english readers, a keen gardener. She’s a big sister, a little niece, a best friend, a granddaughter, my eldest child. She’s sensitive, funny, messy, clever, acrobatic, curious. She’s not a trans kid. She’s a kid, who happens to be trans.“
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Molly Sprayregen is the Deputy Editor of LGBTQ Nation and has been reporting on queer stories for almost a decade. She has written for Them, Out, Forbes, Into, Huffington Post, and others. She has a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from Northwestern University.
During a 1971 Cinco De Mayo event at the Los Angeles gay bar The Closet, Richard Adams (a Filipino-American citizen) met Tony Sullivan (an Australian immigrant). The two began dating and fell in love. But because Sullivan entered the U.S. under a tourist visa, he wasn’t legally allowed to stay long-term.
So, in 1975, in Boulder, Colorado, the two men married. At the time, Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex issued six same-sex marriage licenses with the local state attorney’s understanding that, because the state’s marriage law only specified “any two persons,” it didn’t explicitly forbid same-sex unions.
State Attorney General J.D. MacFarlane soon ordered the practice to stop, saying the licenses were void because they lacked legal standing. However, no Colorado court at the time ruled that the marriages had violated state law. In fact, the couple’s attorney, Lavi Soloway, pointed out that Colorado state law held that the formal opinion of a state attorney general does not carry the same force of law as the state’s pre-existing statutes and would have no impact in a judicial proceeding.
Sullivan petitioned the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for permanent residency, a privilege afforded to the legally married spouses of U.S. citizens. However, INS refused to recognize his marriage license and denied his petition.
You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two fa**ots.U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services’ November 24, 1975 letter to married gay couple Richard Adams and Tony Sullivan
As part of its reasoning, the INS cited the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Boutilier v. INS in which the INS rejected the visa application of Canadian native Clive Michael Boutilier because his homosexual orientation was proof of a “psychopathic personality.”
At the time, the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act listed “sexual deviation” as a legal criterion for denying immigrants entry. In its ruling, the Supreme Court upheld INS’ decision, even though the 1952 law didn’t clearly define what a “psychopathic personality” is. The American Psychiatric Association would later declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973.
A section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that lists homosexuality as a criterion for refusing immigrants into the United States.
“You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two fa**ots,” the INS’s reply to the couple stated. “[A] marriage between two males is invalid for immigration purposes and cannot be considered a bona fide marital relationship since neither party to the marriage can perform the female functions in marriage.”
The couple then filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Their lawsuit said INS had violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal treatment under the law to all Americans.
In a 1979 press conference, Soloway noted that many married women, for various reasons, cannot fulfill marital “female functions.” As such, INS’ reasoning would deny federal marriage recognition and legal residence status to all sorts of opposite-sex couples.
“We’re asking the court either to say that this was a lawful marriage under Colorado law and therefore has to be the proper basis for changing immigration status or, if they’re not willing to say that, then we have to get to the question of, is there a violation of the federal guarantee of equal protection of the laws involved in this situation?” Soloway said in the 1979 press conference. “Obviously, that issue has tremendous ramifications, way beyond just the field of immigration.”
A Los Angeles federal judge eventually upheld INS’s decision in a 1985 ruling against Sullivan. He filed an appeal to stop the impending deportation proceedings, stating it would cause “extreme hardship,” but a court denied that petition, too, Esquire reported.
“My belief was if the press knew what we were doing — if we got in the press and stayed in the press —that gave us a measure of safety from the government,” Sullivan told The Washington Post in 2015. “And I think one of the reasons the press decided to be nice to us was because we were so honest.”
In 1985, the couple traveled around Europe for a year and re-entered the U.S. via Mexico in 1986. Afterward, they began speaking publicly as marriage equality advocates. When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, Soloway asked if they wanted to wed there, but the couple refused, still convinced of the legitimacy of their Colorado union.
A flyer from the March Committee for Lesbian Gay Rights/Los Angeles, “Your Presence Counts: Demonstrate for the Revision of Immigration Laws Affecting Lesbians and Gays,” February 1980. | Sullivan (Anthony Corbett) v. Immigration and Naturalization Service legal records, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.*
Adams eventually became afflicted with cancer, and by 2012, the couple planned to wed in Washington state. However, before they could do so, Adams died on December 17, 2012, at the age of 65.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually legalized marriage equality nationwide. In an interview that year with Los Angeles’ LGBTQ+ publication The Pride, Sullivan said, “I desperately wish Richard was here with me for this.”
In 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) – one of the agencies that replaced INS in 2003 – granted Sullivan permanent residency status. In 2020, USCIS issued him a work permit and a green card, finally recognizing the legitimacy of his marriage.
Then-USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez also responded to Sullivan’s letter requesting a formal apology for the INS’s insulting letter.
“This agency should never treat any individual with the disrespect shown toward you and Mr. Adams,” Rodriguez wrote. “You have my sincerest apology for the years of hurt caused by the deeply offensive and hateful language used in the November 24, 1975, decision and my deepest condolences on your loss.”
Sullivan died in November 2020, but the couple’s decades-long legal struggle was immortalized in the 2015 documentary Limited Partnership, which is currently available to stream online.
In December 2024, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that the Boulder County Courthouse had been designated a National Historic Landmark for being the first U.S. site to issue a same-sex marriage license.
An asylum-seeker who fled anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in Ecuador is now in ICE custody after being arrested as part of a controversial undercover operation targeting men who were allegedly cruising at New York City’s Penn Station.
The man, identified only as Isrrael, told Gothamist this week that he believes federal Amtrak police targeted him because of his appearance and mannerisms.
According to the outlet, which, along with nonprofit news website The City, first reported on the Amtrak Police Department’s sting operation last month, Isrrael was on his way to meet a real estate broker in July when he entered a Penn Station men’s room. In a criminal complaint, police allege that Isrrael exposed himself in “plain view.” But Isrreal told Gothamist that he was merely using a urinal when an undercover cop pinned him against the wall, handcuffed, and arrested him.
Isrrael said he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts at the time, had bleach-blonde hair, and described himself as “very feminine in the way that I walk, that I talk, that I sit.”
“I thought that the U.S. would give me a different opportunity,” he said. “And so I felt very free when I got here. I felt like I could wear my hair the way I wanted to and that no one was judging me and that people were kind to me, and that they treated me well without knowing me.”
According to Gothamist, records show that Isrrael entered the U.S. at a border checkpoint in Hidalgo, Texas, where he applied for asylum. His application reportedly states that in Ecuador, he was harassed and assaulted for being gay and fears getting killed in his home country. He had been in New York City less than a month before he was arrested. Despite being allowed to remain in the U.S. until November 2026 as his asylum claim is processed, Isrrael now faces deportation.
As Gothamist reported last month, among the 200 people arrested in the Amtrak Police Department (APD) cruising crackdown, 20 have been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That’s because while state and city laws ban New York police from handing detainees over to ICE, as a federal police department, the APD is obligated to check whether detainees have been flagged for deportation proceedings and, if so, alert ICE.
Isrrael’s attorney told Gothamist that charges against him were dropped on October 1, but he remains in custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.
“We’re seeing the intersection of both ICE raids and anti-LGBTQ policing in which they can do both at the same time,” Kevin Nadal, a professor at John Jay College who studies the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues and the criminal justice system, told the outlet.
Nadal also noted that he hasn’t seen this type of enforcement of anti-cruising laws in recent years. As Gothamist reported last month, NYPD data indicates only 12 people were arrested for public lewdness in and around Penn Station during the first five months of 2025. Since June, those arrests have skyrocketed thanks to the APD operation.
Amtrak Deputy Police Chief Martin Conway insisted that ADP officers are “not targeting anybody on the way they look.”
“We’re taking action on behaviors, committing criminal acts,” he told Gothamist. “What they look like has no bearing on that.”
New York Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Segal, and New York City Council member Erik Bottcher, have reacted to reporting on the ADP arrests with outrage, demanding explanations from Amtrak President Roger Harris and an end to its alleged targeting of gay men.
Gothamist reports that others who were arrested during ADP’s Penn Station bathroom sting, including one NYPD sergeant, have also had their charges dropped in recent weeks. As Jennvine Wong, a supervising attorney at the Cop Accountability Project for the Legal Aid Society One, told the outlet, the sudden rise in arrests and lack of prosecutions suggest that “the enforcement and cause for arrests may be flawed.”
As for Isrrael, he said that “being detained because of my sexuality” has revived past trauma. “I just feel like a crushed insect that cannot defend itself,” he told Gothamist.
Dr. Richard Isay is a modern hero who opened up the world of psychoanalysis to the LGBTQ+ community. He suffered through what we would call conversion therapy today, but after realizing it didn’t help, Isay fought for psychoanalysis to better serve the queer community.
Not only did he open the profession to gay people, but he also convinced psychoanalysts to stop treating queerness as a problem rather than an innate part of being human. And above all, he convinced the most homophobic psychological professional society to not just change its ways but become the first mental health organization to support gay marriage.
Isay was born in 1938 and attended college in the late 1950s. In his book Becoming Gay, Isay describes an infatuation with a fellow student, “Bob,” but felt it was just “a passing phase that would soon be replaced by an equally passionate interest in girls.” He dated women “infrequently” due to a lack of attraction and threw himself into his studies, partially as a cover for not dating.
“Although Bob and I engaged in casual sexual play, I did not label myself ‘homosexual.’ I did view my attraction to him as a serious neurotic problem since I was uncertain that I fell into the category of those ‘normal’ adolescents who simply had occasional thoughts about other boys,” he wrote.
Isay was very interested in the mind. He knew he wanted to be an analyst since his sophomore year of college, according to the 1994 book Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature by Mark Thompson. The interest wasn’t despite his concerns about his “neurosis,” but rather because of it, fearing he had “something terribly wrong.”
It’s important to note that psychoanalysis is different than other forms of psychotherapy. The kind of therapy most people today are familiar with is based on helping the client get out of harmful thought patterns—it’s the realm of CBT and worksheets. Psychoanalysis is the realm of Freud and focuses more on reconciling conflicting desires to change. Psychology Todayuses a helpful swimming metaphor to explain the difference:
“If you have fallen into a pool or were hit hard by an ocean wave, then you will have to overcome your fear of drowning and learn how to swim. Psychotherapists can help with both. Once you see this fear for what it is (a fear, not a fact) and learn to swim, then you will be more capable of managing your life when you find yourself in water again… [but] some people need an approach that helps them face and work with the fact that, at least in part, they don’t want to learn to swim. They may be frightened of moving forward or do not want to do the hard work it would take. Some might even fight to stay where they are because it suits them in some unconscious way to be drowning.”
As part of his training, Isay started seeing an analyst himself. For the next 10 years, he was subjected to a psychoanalytic version of conversion therapy. He said his analyst had figured out the root cause of his homosexuality, and how to “cure” it: “By becoming aware of the childhood fear of my father’s rage over my closeness to my mother, I would become less frightened of the mortal consequences of my heterosexual desire.”
He even married a woman, Jane, who was a book editor with an interest in psychology; the couple had two children. In 1979, he met his future husband, artist Gordon Harrell, and a year later, he came out to Jane.
“He sat down on the bed and said, ‘I have something I need to tell you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m homosexual.’ At that moment, I saw my future collapse before my eyes. I got the chills and ran to take a hot bath. It gave me time to think and warmed me, but not for long. We spent the night talking and lamenting. On the plane home, we held each other and sobbed and planned. By the time we landed, we had decided to keep his sexual orientation a secret and stay married for the sake of the children,” Jane Isay wrote in a 2011 essay for The New York Times.
While as far as his children and close family knew, he was straight, Isay became a gay activist in his professional life. Isay was involved with the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), and in 1983, he courted controversy with a presentation to the organization titled “New Perspectives on Homosexuality,” where he argued against conversion therapy. He later became APsaA’s first openly gay member, leading some of his colleagues to stop referring patients to him.
In 1986, he wrote an influential book about how psychoanalysts should handle queer patients: Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development. Isay was one of the first to argue that, to paraphrase Lady Gaga, baby, we were born this way. Though the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had stopped considering homosexuality a disease in 1973, the APsaA hadn’t caught up yet, and its analysts commonly still treated being gay as a symptom of arrested development and something to be “cured.”
In addition, the APsaA had homophobic policies. When Isay started his career, gay people couldn’t become analysts at all. Even as that changed, queer analysts were still blocked from training others or advancing in the profession, according to the BMJ. In 1991, Isay ended up threatening to sue the APsaA with the help of the ACLU. APsaA backed down, though for years there seemed to be hard feelings between the organization and Isay. In a 1996 New York Timesarticle, Isay called APsaA “one of the most prejudiced and biased institutions in the country — like the CIA, the FBI, and the military.”
In the same article, APsaA member Dr. Roger McKinnon tried not to give Isay credit for making APsaA change its policy.
“Yes and no. Yes, in that he has been an advocate of it. No, in that he has made pejorative depictions that exaggerate the state of affairs,” McKinnon told the Times.
In his personal life, he came out to his children and divorced Jane in 1989. He was one of the first people in New York state to have a legal same-sex marriage when he wed Harrell in 2011, according to Gay Star News. Always ahead of the curve, he was fighting for gay marriage as early as 1989, far before the issue hit the mainstream. And by 1997, the APsaA had come around, supporting same-sex marriage following Isay’s policy proposal, becoming the first mental health organization to do so. In 2019, the APsaA also became the first mental health organization to apologize for its past homophobia.
Isay died of cancer in 2012. His passing received national coverage due to the impact he had on how the medical establishment saw gay life. Isay was proud to be gay, as he told Thompson in Gay Soul: “Being gay is an adventure because there are no guidelines for living our lives. We make them up as we go along. Sometimes I wonder what will happen when society is more accepting. Will we then become bound by convention? Life wouldn’t be as challenging. I like being a renegade.”
Throughout Ali’s childhood in Iraq, he was repeatedly bullied by students and teachers for what he described as his feminine behavior. During his pre-teen and teenage years, men sexually assaulted him, but he couldn’t report it to the police for fear that he’d be thrown into jail for years since Iraq has criminalized homosexuality.
Ali was afraid to come out or talk about these assaults to his family. Although he wasn’t sure if his father knew he was gay, his dad knew other LGBTQ+ people from his travels abroad for work. His father used to tell him, “One day, we’re gonna go to travel to Europe or America and have a good life,” adding, “You’re gonna be safe and you’re gonna be happy.” But then his father died of a heart attack in 2014, and Ali’s abusive older brother (10 years his senior) assumed control of the family, making Ali terrified for his future.
In November 2023, Ali went out with another man for ice cream. While they were out in the rain, five Iraqi police officers suddenly surrounded and arrested them, believing they were romantically involved. Though Ali lied and told the officers they were just cousins, the officers accused them of being prostitutes and slapped, kicked, and hit them in the streets, eventually taking them to the police station.
At the police station, they took Ali’s phone and found images of male models and some men kissing. Police said that the images confirmed Ali’s intent to conduct sex work. They forced him to sign a confession that he had had sex with another man; one officer tried to coerce Ali into performing oral sex; and the police eventually threw him in jail, leaving his family with no clue as to his whereabouts.
In the remote jail, far from the city where Ali lived, he shared a cold, small, crowded cell with about 15 other people, ranging in age from 15 to 60. The police took Ali’s clothes and gave him dirty ones to wear, along with a small blanket.
“Everyone’s sleeping next to each other [on the floor] so close, and it was just so scary,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “Like, I was thinking an animal can’t even live there.” One guard suggested that he tell other inmates that he was arrested for using counterfeit money, because if he admitted he was gay, they might mistreat him.
“I was ultimately released, but I was terrified for my safety because the police had my home address and personal information and had accused me of being gay. I believed I could be imprisoned at any time,” Ali said in a court documentexplaining his situation. “After my arrest, I knew I had to leave the country to survive. I did not feel that I could trust anyone.”
Ali’s experiences mirror that of other LGBTQ+ Middle Easterners who are entrapped, harassed, detained, and tortured under suspicion of being queer. Ali considered taking his own life to escape the persecution, but he couldn’t go through with it.
A second chance, but with the U.S. government working against him
Ali eventually applied for aid under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), a 1980 federal program that has helped millions of refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries to relocate safely in the United States and build lives, families, and businesses.
Refugee processing and resettlement are lengthy processes requiring participation from numerous governmental and nongovernmental entities. Ali, like thousands of refugees, first underwent extensive security checks and referrals before being approved under USRAP and resettling into a single apartment in the United States.
“When I learned I would be resettled in Dallas, I was so excited that I began screaming with happiness and jumping and dancing,” Ali said.
It’s hard to know exactly how many LGBTQ+ people seek asylum in the U.S., but a 2021 study by the Williams Institute estimated that 11,400 LGBTQ+ individuals did so between 2012 and 2017. Approximately 4,385 of them made asylum claims specifically related to their LGBTQ+ status.
I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
He came to the U.S. with only $120 to his name. Upon arrival, Catholic Charities provided him with a case manager and financial assistance for his first three months, as well as help in finding other programs to assist him in getting a job and obtaining basic necessities. Ali soon applied for a matching grant program that would cover one year of rent and utilities and provide him a monthly allowance, as well as a Refugee Cash Assistance program to provide a monthly stipend for six months and potentially longer.
However, by early February, he was notified that both programs had shut down due to an executive order signed by Donald Trump on January 20, entitled “Realigning the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.” The order claimed that federally funded programs for admitting refugees aren’t in the country’s best interests because they “compromise the availability” of “taxpayer resources” for American citizens.
Trump’s order effectively halted refugee admissions indefinitely, ending USRAP and freezing millions in congressionally appropriated USRAP funding. Trump’s order threw Ali’s life into disarray, stranded thousands of other refugees and separated families who had already been approved under USRAP, and ended the funding of various groups and charities that used federal funding to provide vital survival benefits to refugees.
Ali learned that the case manager helping him secure benefits had been laid off after Trump’s order, and his apartment managers told him he might be evicted if he couldn’t pay the rent. Running out of food, he subsisted on peanut butter.
In response to the chaos, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) filed Pacito v. Trump on February 10 in the Western District of Washington. The case is a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the individuals and major resettlement agencies harmed by Trump’s order. It asserts that, by indefinitely ending USRAP, Trump and federal agencies exceeded their lawful authority and violated both federal law – and rulemaking procedures required under the Administrative Procedure Act – as well as the Constitution. The lawsuit seeks to block the order, restore funding, and enforce long-established protections for refugees.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK USA – March 15, 2025: Pro-Immigration sign at a Stop the Cuts rally against DOGE cuts to federal funding in Lower Manhattan. | Shutterstock
In March, a district court agreed with IRAP’s lawsuit and granted a preliminary injunction against Trump’s order, writing, “The results have been harrowing.” The court noted that refugees have few (if any) rights – they have no right to work; limited access to healthcare, housing, or education; and often face discrimination.
Luckily, a charity helped Ali find a job at a local coffee shop, and he also secured a second job at a local mall. He had learned English, he said, by watching old episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show about an ethnically Armenian celebrity family living in the United States. Now, he has made several good friends and has started building a community by attending a local church.
But other individual refugees who had been approved to come to the U.S. under USRAP after years of processing have either been stranded in the U.S. without homes or work or else trapped in their home or host countries as their scheduled flights to the U.S. were abruptly canceled, the district court wrote in its May decision. This has left the refugees vulnerable to physical danger and financial hardship without stable housing, income, basic necessities, alternative paths to refuge, or access to integration services that would help them become self-sufficient.
Furthermore, Trump’s order effectively defunded congressionally mandated resettlement-support services, making them unable to pay their employees and keep their offices open and undermining decades of work building up infrastructures, relationships, and the associated goodwill to facilitate refugee integration in local communities. The order required these services to furlough or lay off hundreds of staff all over the United States, threatening their continued existence.
The courts are trying to restrain Trump, but he has other plans
In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the federal government a partial emergency stay of the district court’s injunction. While the appeals court has required the government to reinstate resettlement and placement services to refugees for 90 days after their admission into the United States, the court also appointed a magistrate judge to help review individual cases of refugees harmed by Trump’s order, while IRAP’s class action suit continues to be heard by the courts.
“Iraq is a very unsafe place for LGBTQ+ people,” Ali said in his court filing. “When I speak to people back in Iraq, I hide the fact that I’m gay and that the police arrested and abused me for being gay… I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.”
I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me. Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
Ali also worries that, if he criticizes the Trump Administration for ending USRAP, conservative organizations could somehow locate his name and personal information for harassment or violent retaliation. If his name is made public, it could make it even more difficult for him to find employment or could lead to other kinds of anti-immigrant and anti-gay discrimination.
Ali understands that, in this case, he’s not only representing himself, but thousands of other refugees nationwide and across the world. “I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me.”
The Trump Administration is considering a radical overhaul of USRAP that would continue to largely defund the program and reduce the number of refugees allowed annually into the U.S. from 125,000 (the number established by former President Joe Biden) to 7,500. Trump’s plan would give preferred relocation assistance to English speakers, white South Africans, and Europeans who have left their countries after making anti-immigrant statements or supporting anti-immigrant political parties, The New York Times reported on October 15.
“[Trump’s plan reflects] a preexisting notion… as to who are the true Americans,” said Barbara L. Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. “And they think it’s white people and they think it’s Christians.”
In a statement, IRAP wrote, “These actions reflect a broader pattern of President Trump attempting to strong-arm other branches of government into rubber-stamping his political agenda, sidestepping the checks and balances Congress established to ensure refugee policy serves humanitarian – not partisan- ends. Such departures from established process and principle undermine the United States’ legal obligations and moral leadership, sending a dangerous message that access to refuge may depend on identity rather than need.”
A grassroots organization supporting transgender people from South Asia (often known as Hijrah or Kinnar) has opened a physical location in San Francisco after operating for 6 years without one.
Parivar Bay Area opened its brick-and-mortar doors on October 20, during Diwali. The group’s founder, Indian immigrant Anjali Rimi, was brimming with emotion when she cut the ribbon.
“I’m feeling very grateful,” she told KQED. “We have tried many times to see if we can actually have a place where we can belong, we can be ourselves. And being in this physical space, it gives us that rooting.”
“It also looks at our existence as one that is formidable when we are being erased as human beings,” she added.
The center’s director of strategy, Phanny Lun, said it is a critical time to provide legal advice, leadership training, and other support to transgender immigrants, who are being attacked intersectionally by the current administration.
“It’s knowing that there’s community and support,” Lun said. “That’s a really big thing – and making sure that our community knows that there are services out there for us. Not just doom and gloom.”
Lun said the narratives in the media make it easy for trans people to believe there is no support for them. “That’s not true,” Lun emphasized, adding that immigrants and trans people “have a place and a group that will be of assistance to them.”
While the center focuses on trans immigrants from Southeast Asia, Rimi made it clear Parivar is open to immigrants from any country.
The website says the center is the country’s “first & only Kinnar Hijrah led and empowering organization centering Indian South Asian and Global South transgender, gender-diverse, and intersex (TGNCI) immigrants and asylees” with a goal to “advance social, economic, and legal equity through advocacy, arts, direct support, and leadership development.”
“We reclaim spaces beyond cisnormativity,” the site continues, “confront systemic barriers, and build bold, affirming pathways where our communities thrive locally and globally grounded in dignity, belonging, and pride.”
