The Advocate

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Why some lesbians and bisexual women experience poverty

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Race and education level factor into poverty among lesbians and bisexual women — but there are some differences between the groups, and that has implications for public policy, according to a new study. “Research has demonstrated that sexual minority populations are more likely to experience poverty than sexual majority populations and that many of these disparities are driven by specific sexual minority subgroups, including cisgender bisexual women,” says the introduction to the study, published inWomen’s Health Issues. “Yet, little is known about the factors associated with economic insecurity that explain the intragroup differences in economic outcomes among sexual minorities, particularly among those of the same gender […]

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Senate to vote on Tommy Tuberville’s anti-trans athlete bill

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The U.S. Senate will vote on Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s bill to bar transgenderwomen and girls from competing in female school sports. Senate Majority Leader John Thune placed the bill on the chamber’s calendar last week, meaning a vote will be held in the next few weeks, The Hill reports. A firm date for the vote has not been set. The bill from Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, would stipulate that under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bans sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds, “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” Tuberville announced its reintroduction last week. He […]

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Supreme Court will decide if insurance companies must cover PrEP for HIV prevention, cancer screenings

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TheU.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a pivotal case that could significantly impact access to preventivehealth care under the Affordable Care Act, including life-saving HIV prevention drugs like pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP. The court granted the petition on Friday. The case, which the federal government petitioned for the court’s intervention, is set to be argued this spring, with a decision expected before the Court’s term ends in June. The Advocate was the first to report on the existence of this case back in 2022 when it was revealed that conservative attorney Jonathan Mitchell was representing Braidwood Management, Inc., aTexas-based business, and other plaintiffs in challenging the ACA’s requirement […]

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Amazon removes ‘equity for Black people’ and ‘LGBTQ+ rights’ from company policies

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Amazon has quietly removed several policies from its public websites aimed at protecting workers, including “solidarity” pledges with its Black employees and health care benefits for transgender workers.  The pages were removed about a month ago, according to The Washington Post. The changes include several to policy, as well as department titles. A section previously called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is now “Inclusive Experiences and Technology,” and the section “advance DEI through technology” is now a pledge to “advance the employee experience.” One of the removed policies includes an outline of the gender-affirming carebenefits provided to employees under Amazon’s health care plan, which it said […]

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Ed Sedarbaum, veteran Queens, N.Y., gay activist, has died at 78

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Ed Sedarbaum, a pioneer in the LGBTQ+ rights movement in New York City’sQueens borough, has died at age 78. Sedarbaum died November 20 in Williamstown, Mass., but his death is just now being reported by New York’s Gay City News. He was the widower of famed gay cartoonist and onetime Advocate contributor Howard Cruse, who died in 2019, aged 75. Sedarbaum was motivated to start Queens Gays and Lesbians United, a.k.a. Q-GLU, in 1991 in response to the murder of Julio Rivera in an antigay crime in Queens the previous year. As the New York City Council had just expanded from 35 to 51 members, “it seemed a […]

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Adult trans bathroom ban heard in Montana — first anti-trans hearing of 2025

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In 2025, the targeting of transgender people in bathrooms has emerged as a top Republican priority. Following the 2024 election, Congresswoman Nancy Mace launched an aggressive hate campaign against the first transgender congresswoman, Sarah McBride. Over several days, Mace posted hundreds of demeaning comments about McBride on social media, demanding that she be banned from using women’s restrooms. Her efforts culminated in Speaker Mike Johnson adopting a policy barring McBride from using such restrooms. Now, Montana Republicans are taking this crusade even further: they have announced that one of the first bills to be considered in 2025 will be a bathroom ban for transgender adults in […]

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California bill introduced to seal adults’ gender transition documents

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A bill being introduced Thursday in California would seal transgender and nonbinary adults’ gender transition court records, giving them the same privacy protections already available to minors. “The incoming Trump administration and Republican congressional leadership have made clear that targeting and erasing trans people is among their highest policy priorities, and California must have our trans community members’ backs,” state Sen. Scott Wiener said in a statement to media outlets. “Making this personal identifying information public after someone transitions, including a person’s deadname, as well as the basic fact that they’re trans or nonbinary, pointlessly exposes trans and nonbinary Californians to harassment and potential violence.” “As transgender people are viciously targeted by right wing […]

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Nancy Mace’s anti-trans Capitol bathroom rules didn’t make the House rules package

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South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace’s latest attack on transgenderrights has hit a wall. Her proposal to bar transgender people from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity in House-controlled spaces didn’t make the cut in the rules package for the 119th Congress. Leaving the measure out of the package marks a setback for Mace’s culture war efforts, even as other anti-LGBTQ+ priorities remain front and center. Mace introduced her bathroom resolution last November, admittedly targeting Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride, the first out trans member of Congress. LGBTQ+ advocates and Democratic lawmakers slammed the proposal as not only discriminatory but also unenforceable. House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican, […]

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Meta blocked teens from seeing LGBTQ+ content on Instagram: report

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Meta, the parent company of Instagram, is under fire for its treatment of LGBTQ+ users after journalist Taylor Lorenz revealed that the platform had restricted LGBTQ-related hashtags for months. The issue, reported in Lorenz’s Substack publication User Mag on Monday, has sparked criticism of Meta’s content moderation practices and repeated failures to support marginalized communities. Lorenz, a journalist known for her reporting on technology and social media in The New York Times and, most recently, The Washington Post, uncovered that Instagram blocked users—especially teenagers—from searching hashtags like #gay, #lesbian, #trans, and #nonbinary under its “sensitive content” policy. The restrictions, which were in effect for months, were applied by default to teen accounts. When […]

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Only 0.1 percent of youth receive gender-affirming meds: study

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While opponents of gender-affirming care for trans youth often act as if such care is common and undertaken thoughtlessly, it’s actually quite rare, according to a new study. The study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, found that “fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents with commercial insurance received gender-affirming medications — puberty blockers or hormones — during a recent five-year period,” the Associated Press reports. Other studies have looked at gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors and concluded it is rare, but the use of medications for gender confirmation is not well-documented, the study’s authors note. “Because age and experience of puberty onset varies by sex assigned at birth and dictates […]

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