LGBTQ Nation

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Gender-affirming care clinic burned down in horrific arson: “This is terrorism”

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Firefighters in Decatur, Georgia have determined that an October fire at a local gender-affirming care clinic was intentionally set in a move one activist has labeled “terrorism.”  The fire in the city’s historic Blair Building was “contained to one office and no injuries were reported,” according to a recent statement from the City of Decatur Fire Rescue Department.  The statement expressed that an investigation has determined the fire “to be incendiary in nature, indicating the fire was intentionally set.” No suspects have been identified.  The Blair building houses several medical providers, but a police report confirms that the target of […]

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Transphobia hurts trans women’s health, new HIV research finds

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New research published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that social and economic marginalization, including employment and housing discrimination, increases transgender women’s risk of contracting HIV. The report, published Thursday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, analyzed data from a survey of more than 1,600 transgender women in seven U.S. cities from 2019 to 2020. The goal of the survey was to assess for the first time the factors that have led transgender women—and especially trans women of color—in the U.S. to have disproportionately high rates of HIV infection. Survey participants were also […]

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Massachusetts Senate unanimously passes bill to repeal sodomy ban & anti-trans laws

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While many state legislatures across the country are scrambling to pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation this year, Massachusetts is going in the other direction. The state’s senate passed a bill yesterday — unanimously, as in, even the chamber’s Republicans voted for it — that repeals the state’s ban on gay sex as well as a law known as the “walking while trans” law. “I’m just really happy that it passed. And I hope that it will pass seamlessly in the house. There’s absolutely no reason for it not to pass,” Tanya Neslusan of MassEquality told the Washington Blade.  The state’s criminal code bans “the abominable […]

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Gay man from Chechnya who was tortured in a police station finally escaped Russia

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After months of torture in the basement of a Grozny police station, a gay Chechen man has finally fled the grip of Russia and his native country’s rabid homophobia, the North Caucasus LGBTQ+ rights group SK SOS reported Wednesday. Rizvan Dadayev was detained by police in the summer of 2022 after he was outed by a group of local extortionists in the Chechen capital in a video distributed online, SK SOS told The Moscow Times. He hadn’t been heard from since. The organization said Dadayev had been abused at the hands of law enforcement officials with direct ties to Chechen leader […]

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Maine legislators frantically working to make the state a trans refuge

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A proposed law in Maine would make the state the 15th “trans refuge” as lawmakers push back on attempts by some activist state attorneys general to demand private medical information from health authorities. Texas, in particular, has been at the forefront of attempts to persecute trans youth and their parents, along with hospitals, doctors, and healthcare providers, across state borders. Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has gone so far as to send special investigators across the state border to interrogate children and their families. The bill would protect Texans who flee to the state to seek medical care for their children or […]

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Biden administration allocates $700,000 to sex-ed program for trans boys

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The Biden administration is dedicating approximately $700,000 to a sexual health program aimed at pregnancy prevention for transgender boys.  The Department of Health and Human Services has approved a grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in California, which will spearhead a program focused on sex education and condom usage for trans boys. The grant summary explains that trans boys are “at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable.”  It also said trans […]

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Texas’s anti-LGBTQ+ book ban law blocked by federal court

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A federal appeals court has issued an injunction against part of Texas’ book-banning law that requires book vendors to rate books for “sexually explicit” and “sexually relevant” materials. Vendors must submit those ratings every year to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the agency overseeing public schools. The TEA can then overrule a vendor’s ratings and place vendors on a “noncompliant list,” forbidding schools from buying books from them if the vendors disagree with the TEA’s decisions. Two Texas bookstores — Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop — filed a lawsuit against the 2023 Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources […]

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President Joe Biden on his way to appointing a record number of LGBTQ+ judges

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With two recent judicial nominations by President Joe Biden, his administration could be on track to appointing a record number of LGBTQ+ federal judges.  On Wednesday, Biden nominated Judge Melissa Dubose for the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island. If confirmed by the Senate, she will be the first LGBTQ+ judge and the first person of color to serve on that court.  Also awaiting confirmation is Nicole Berner, whom Biden has nominated for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Berner will also blaze a trail if confirmed, becoming the first out LGBTQ+ judge in the Fourth Circuit. The confirmation of both Berner and Dubose […]

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Maryland to cover unprecedented number of gender-affirming procedures in “groundbreaking” win

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A new law in Maryland requires Medicaid to cover “medically necessary” gender-affirming care for residents — including care well beyond hormones or surgery. The law went into effect on January 1. It requires coverage for “gender-affirming treatment in a nondiscriminatory manner.” Voice therapy and lessons, scar and hair removal, hormone therapy, puberty blockers, fertility preservation, and “alterations” to the abdomen, genitals, chest, buttocks, neck, and face are all included. Patients cannot be denied unless a healthcare professional decides the treatment would be detrimental to their health. “In the state of Maryland, nobody should have to justify their own humanity,” Gov. Wed Moore […]

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17 Republican AGs demand Supreme Court take up case about forcing schools to out trans kids

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A coalition of 17 Republican state attorneys general have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up a case about a school’s policy allowing teachers to not out trans and gender-nonconforming students to their parents.  The brief, filed last week, opposes a lower court decision upholding the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education’s guidelines on student gender identity. First adopted by the district during the 2020–2021 school year, the guidelines do not require school staff to inform parents if a student requests to socially transition at school. Instead, school staff must first “ascertain the level of support the […]

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