A federal judge extended a temporary order Tuesday for a transgender girl to play soccer for her high school team while considering arguments for a longer-term order and a possible trial as the teen and another student challenge a New Hampshire ban.
The families of Parker Tirrell, 15, and Iris Turmelle, 14, filed a lawsuit Aug. 16 seeking to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law last month. While Turmelle doesn’t plan to play sports until December, Tirrell successfully sought an emergency order allowing her to start soccer practice on Aug. 19.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty found that Tirrell had demonstrated likely success on the merits of the case. She extended that order Tuesday, the day it was expiring, for another two weeks through Sept. 10. McCafferty also listened to arguments on the plaintiffs’ broader motion for a preliminary order blocking the state from enforcing the law while the case proceeds.
McCafferty also raised the possibility of a trial this fall, before winter track season starts for Turmelle, who attends a different school.
Chris Erchull, an attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders representing the the students, said he would be ready for a trial. Michael DeGrandis, an attorney for the state, said he would need to discuss that with the attorney general’s office.
“As soon as Iris walks into school next week, she’s going to be suffering harm because of the way this law impacts her,” Erchull said in a news conference afterward. “She has no guarantees that she will be able to participate in school sports this year.”
The lawsuit said the law violates constitutional protections and federal laws because the teens are being denied equal educational opportunities and are being discriminated against because they are transgender.
Lawyers for the state said the teens’ lawyers haven’t proven their case and they haven’t shown why alternatives, such as participating in coed teams, couldn’t be an option.
The bill signed by Sununu bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity. It require schools to designate all teams as either girls, boys or coed, with eligibility determined based on students’ birth certificates “or other evidence.”
Sununu had said it “ensures fairness and safety in women’s sports by maintaining integrity and competitive balance in athletic competitions.” He said it added the state to nearly half in the nation that adopted similar measures.
The rights of transgender people — and especially young people — have become a major political battleground in recent years as trans visibility has increased. Most Republican-controlled states have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, and several have adopted policies limiting which school bathrooms trans people can use and barring trans girls from some sports competitions.
Missouri residents now must provide proof of gender-affirmation surgery or a court order to update their gender on driver’s licenses following a Revenue Department policy change.
Previously, Missouri required doctor approval, but not surgery, to change the gender listed on state-issued identification.
Missouri’s Revenue Department on Monday did not comment on what prompted the change but explained the new rules in a statement provided to The Associated Press.
“Customers are required to provide either medical documentation that they have undergone gender reassignment surgery, or a court order declaring gender designation to obtain a driver license or nondriver ID card denoting gender other than their biological gender assigned at birth,” spokesperson Anne Marie Moy said in the statement.
Rep. Justin Sparks, R-Wildwood, during a press conference to address a transgender woman using the women’s locker room at the Life Time fitness center in Ellisville, Mo., on Aug. 2. Ethan Colbert / AP
LGBTQ rights advocacy group PROMO on Monday criticized the policy shift as having been done “secretly.”
“We demand Director Wayne Wallingford explain to the public why the sudden shift in a policy that has stood since at least 2016,” PROMO Executive Director Katy Erker-Lynch said in a statement. “When we’ve asked department representatives about why, they stated it was ‘following an incident.’”
According to PROMO, the Revenue Department adopted the previous policy in 2016 with input from transgender leaders in the state.
Some Republican state lawmakers had questioned the old policy on gender identifications following protests, and counterprotests, earlier this month over a transgender woman’s use of women’s changing rooms at a suburban St. Louis gym.
“I didn’t even know this form existed that you can (use to) change your gender, which frankly is physically impossible genetically,” Republican state Rep. Justin Sparks said in a video posted on Facebook earlier this month. “I have assurances from the Department of Revenue that they are going to immediately change their policy.”
Life Time gym spokesperson Natalie Bushaw previously said the woman showed staff a copy of her driver’s license, which identified her as female.
It is unclear if Missouri’s new policy would have prevented the former Life Time gym member from accessing women’s locker rooms at the fitness center. The woman previously told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she has had several gender-affirming surgeries.
Life Time revoked the woman’s membership after the protests, citing “publicly available statements from this former member impacting safety and security at the club.”
The former member declined to comment Monday to The Associated Press.
“This action was taken solely due to safety concerns,” spokesperson Dan DeBaun said in a statement. “Life Time will continue to operate our clubs in a safe and secure manner while also following the Missouri laws in place to protect the human rights of individuals.”
Missouri does not have laws dictating transgender people’s bathroom use. But Missouri is among at least 24 states that have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for minors.
“Missouri continues to prove it is a state committed to fostering the erasure of transgender, gender expansive, and nonbinary Missourians,” Erker-Lynch said.
New federal protections for transgender students at U.S. schools and colleges will take effect Thursday with muted impact because judges have temporarily blocked enforcement in 21 states and hundreds of individual colleges and schools across the country.
The regulation also adds protections for pregnant students and students who are parents, and details how schools must respond to sexual misconduct complaints.
For schools, the impact of the court challenges could be a combination of confusion and inertia in terms of compliance as the academic year begins.
“I think it is likely that school district-to-school district or state-to-state, we’re going to see more or less a continuation of the current status quo,” said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The rights of transgender people — and especially young people — have become a major political battleground in recent years as trans visibility has increased. Most Republican-controlled states have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, and several have adopted policies limiting which school bathrooms trans people can use and barring trans girls from some sports competitions.
In April, President Joe Biden’s administration sought to settle some of the contention with a regulation to safeguard rights of LGBTQ students under Title IX, the 1972 law against sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money. The rule was two years in the making and drew 240,000 responses — a record for the Education Department.
The rule declares that it’s unlawful discrimination to treat transgender students differently from their classmates, including by restricting bathroom access. It does not explicitly address sports participation, a particularly contentious topic.
It also enhances protections for students who are pregnant or have children, widens the scope of the sexual misconduct cases schools must investigate, and removes a Trump administration rule requiring schools to let the accused cross-examine their accusers in live hearings.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court for permission to enforce components of the rule that were not challenged by states, but it’s not clear when the justices might rule.
Meanwhile, Title IX enforcement remains highly unsettled.
In a series of rulings, federal courts have declared that the rule cannot be enforced in most of the Republican states that sued while the litigation continues. In a ruling Tuesday, a judge in Alabama went the other way, allowing enforcement to start in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
A Kansas-based federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump added another wrinkle, asserting power over states led by Democrats: He said the rule cannot be enforced in schools attended by the children of members of Moms for Liberty or colleges with members of Young America’s Foundation or Female Athletes United. That’s keeping the regulation from taking effect in hundreds of colleges and some 1,700 schools in states where it can otherwise be enforced.
In many school districts across the country, the rule is to be enforced in some schools but can’t be followed in others.
“There aren’t many other parallels I can give you of two different sets of rules applying in the very same place, one school on one side of the street operating from a different playbook from a school on the other side of the street,” said Brett Sokolow, chair of the Association of Title IX Administrators.
Administrators have been frustrated by lack of guidance from the Biden administration, he said. When the Education Department recently sent schools information about implementing the new policies, it noted that they don’t apply in many places. Sokolow said some districts may need to consider having two separate teams — one trained on the previous rules, the other on the 2024 version — to be prepared for either scenario.
Jay Warona, the deputy executive director and general counsel for the New York State School Boards Association, said his state already offers transgender students some similar protections, but not all of the other components of the new regulation are addressed in state policy.
Warona said he’s fielding messages from school districts wondering what to do, and he’s telling them to check with their district lawyers.
Caius Willingham, senior policy advocate at the National Center for Transgender Equality, said it’s important to note that the injunctions don’t prevent school districts from having similar policies, even as they bar the federal government from enforcing its new regulations in some places.
Meanwhile, students are facing real impacts. Some people barred from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender hold their bladder all day, avoid hydrating or even drop out of school, he said.
“If you can’t meaningfully participate in the educational systems as your true self,” Willingham said, “you’re not going to be able to thrive.”
For Kaemo Mainard O’Connell, a transgender and nonbinary high school senior in Arkansas, the lack of federal protections seems like a signal to encourage behavior such as deadnaming and bullying.
“It means I’m going to have to work much harder to be respected by teachers and by students,” they said. “What not having federal protection does is, it makes it seem like my issues are not real issues.”
Since Arkansas now prohibits transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, Kaemo has instead been using a single-person restroom at the school, and is required to sign in and often wait before using it.
Similar worries are shared by families of trans kids in Utah, where lawmakers in June passed resolutions instructing state employees to disregard the Title IX directive. Utah is among the states challenging the rules in court but is struggling to enforce its bathroom restrictions meanwhile: A tip form to report possible violations has been flooded with hoax submissions, and the state official tasked with filtering through them has made his lack of enthusiasm known.
“The bathroom law brought unpleasant conversations and definitely made our kiddo feel othered,” said Utah mom Grace Cooper, whose child is nonbinary. “It also brought a lot of allies out of the woodwork, but without federal protections, my worries as a mother are ever-present.”
Kenya and the Central African Republic have declared new outbreaks of mpox as Africa’s health officials race to contain the spread of the disease in a region lacking vaccines.
Nairobi announced the outbreak on Wednesday, after a case was detected in a passenger traveling from Uganda to Rwanda at a border crossing in southern Kenya. The Central African Republic was the first to declare a new outbreak on Monday, saying it extends to its capital of Bangui.
Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus that originates in wild animals and occasionally jumps to people, who can spread it to others.
“We are very concerned about the cases of monkeypox, which is ravaging region 7 of the country,” the Central African Republic’s public health minister, Pierre Somsé, said Monday.
Mpox became a focus of worldwide concern during an international outbreak in 2022 that saw the disease spread to over 100 countries, and has been endemic in parts of central and west Africa for decades.
The World Health Organization said in November it had confirmed sexual transmission of mpox in Congo for the first time. African scientists warned this could make the disease difficult to contain.
Although the mpox epidemics in the West were contained with the help of vaccines and treatments, barely any have been available in parts of Africa where several countries have reported outbreaks in recent months.
The worst hit on the continent is Congo, which has recorded more than 12,000 cases and at least 470 deaths this year in its biggest outbreak. South Africa, which last recorded an mpox case in 2022, has also reported an outbreak this year.
In the Central African Republic, where the infection is most common in remote areas, authorities called for public support to assist efforts being taken by the government to slow the spread of the disease.
The East African Community regional bloc has also issued a statement alerting member states about the disease in Congo, which borders five countries in the region. One of them, Burundi, has already confirmed three cases.
Andrea Aguer Ariik Malueth, the bloc’s deputy secretary general, on Monday urged the group’s partner states to “provide necessary information about the disease and take preventive measures.”
California became the first state to bar school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change under a law signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The law bans school rules requiring teachers and other staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission. Proponents of the legislation say it will help protect LGBTQ students who live in unwelcoming households. But opponents say it will hinder schools’ ability to be more transparent with parents.
The legislation comes amid a nationwide debate over local school districts and the rights of parents and LGBTQ students.
“This law helps keep children safe while protecting the critical role of parents,” Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. “It protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations.”
The new law comes after several school districts in California passed policies requiring that parents be notified if a child requests to change their gender identification. That led to pushback by Democratic state officials, who say students have a right to privacy.
But Jonathan Zachreson, an advocate in California who supports the so-called parental notification policies, opposes the law and said telling parents about a student’s request to change their gender identification is “critical to the well-being of children and for maintaining that trust between schools and parents.”
The California law led to heated debate in the state Legislature. LGBTQ lawmakers have shared stories about how it was difficult for them to decide when to come out to their families, arguing that transgender students should be able to share that part of their identity on their own terms. State Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Republican representing part of Riverside County, is an outspoken opponent of the law. He has criticized Democratic leaders for preventing a bill he introduced last year — that would have required parents to be told of their child’s gender identification change — from receiving a hearing.
In Northern California, the Anderson Union High School District board approved a parental notification policy last year. But the teachers union recommended that teachers not enforce the rule while the union is involved in a labor dispute with the district over the policy, said Shaye Stephens, an English teacher and president of the teachers association at the district.
The notification policies put teachers in an unfair position, Stephens said.
“It’s kind of a lose-lose situation for teachers and administrators or anybody that’s being asked to do this. I don’t think it’s safe for students,” she said. “I do not think that we are the right people to be having those conversations with a parent or a guardian.”
South Korea’s top court ruled Thursday that same-sex couples are eligible to receive the same health insurance benefits as heterosexual couples, a landmark verdict hailed by human rights groups.
The Supreme Court said it ruled that the state health insurance agency’s refusal to provide spousal insurance coverage for gay couples was an act of discrimination that violates the constitutional principle of equality.
Thursday’s ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
“Today’s ruling is a historic victory for equality and human rights in South Korea,” Amnesty International said in a statement. “The court has taken a significant step towards dismantling systemic discrimination and ensuring inclusivity for all.”
A legal battle between a gay couple, So Seong-wook and Kim Yong-min, and the National Health Insurance Service began after the insurance agency revoked So’s registration as a dependent of Kim, prompting So to file an administrative suit.
In 2022, the Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of the insurance agency. But in February 2023, the Seoul High Court overturned the earlier verdict, saying that denying So’s spousal coverage rights without reasonable grounds was discriminatory because such benefits are given to heterosexual spouses.
Public views on gender issues in South Korea have gradually changed in recent years, but critics say the Asian country still has a long way to go compared with other developed countries. South Korea doesn’t legally recognize same-sex marriages.
“While this decision is a major milestone, the case itself is a sobering reminder of the lengthy judicial processes that same-sex couples must endure to secure basic rights that should be universally guaranteed,” Amnesty International said.
So and Kim welcomed the ruling.
“When I listened to the verdict, I was so moved that I couldn’t hold back my tears,” So told reporters outside the court. He said he hopes the ruling will lead to South Korea legally accepting same-sex marriages.
Kim said he is “very happy” because he thinks the court recognized his love for So.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum prepares for her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
For more than three decades, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has led the nation’s largest LGBTQ synagogue through the myriad ups and downs of the modern gay-rights movement — through the AIDS crisis, the murder of Matthew Shepard, the historic civil-rights advances that included marriage equality, and mostly recently the backlash against transgender rights.
She is now stepping down from that role and shifting into retirement. The New York City synagogue that she led for 32 years — Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in midtown Manhattan — will have to grapple with its identity after being defined by its celebrity rabbi for so long.
Her retirement also comes at a challenging moment for the LGBTQ-rights movement. Same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, but conservative politicians are enacting restrictions on transgender healthcare, restricting LGBTQ curriculum in schools, and proposing bans on the performances of drag queens.
“I’ve been blessed and privileged to have the opportunity to use the gifts I have, on behalf of God’s vision for the world,” Kleinbaum said in an interview. “I’m very, very lucky that I’ve been able to do this. I just feel like now is the time to make room for a younger generation.”
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum sings during her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
Embraced by her congregation and left-leaning politicians, Kleinbaum, 65, taught an unapologetic progressive vision for Judaism that resonated beyond the enclave of Manhattan and liberal Judaism. When Donald Trump was elected president, Kleinbaum had the synagogue do outreach to Muslims. The congregation also built an immigration clinic to help LGBTQ refugees in hostile parts of the world get asylum in the U.S.
“It is a religious calling to help the immigrant. I see that it is just as deeply important for (the synagogue) as it is leading Friday night services,” Kleinbaum said.
Congregation Bet Simach Torah, better known as CBST, has roughly 1,000 paying members. About 4,000 Jews, from nonreligious to Orthodox, show up to the temple’s High Holy Day services, historically held in New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center on the West Side of Manhattan.
The temple’s regular congregants have been a Who’s Who of media and LGBTQ historical figures. Edie Windsor, who sued and won to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, was in regular attendance while she was alive. Andy Cohen, of “Real Housewives” fame, is there regularly. Joan Rivers showed up for Yom Kippur. Kleinbaum’s wife is Randi Weingarten, the head of the nation’s biggest teachers union.
Appointed in 1992, Kleinbaum spent much of her first year burying members of her congregation, many of them dying from AIDS. The need for a salaried rabbi to provide pastoral care was among the biggest reasons for CBST to hire its first rabbi. One of her first funeral services was for a member of the search committee that hired her.
The 1990s brought the increased visibility of gay and lesbians in the public sphere, but also brought the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between only a man and a woman.
“She really was doing rabbinical triage work at the beginning, working with a community that ultimately saw (a third) of its members die of AIDS,” said William Hibsher, a member of CBST for several decades who was there when Kleinbaum was appointed.
Hibsher was not an observant Jew in early 1990s, but he said he felt inspired by Kleinbaum’s work as well as the care she provided to his partner, who died from AIDS in the mid-1990s. He later became heavily involved with the synagogue, including serving on its board of directors and helping raise millions for its current location on West 30th Street.
When New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2013, Kleinbaum stood in the park across the street from the marriage bureau and performed same-sex weddings outdoors. Among the couples she married in 2014 were two men who had spent 20 months planning their wedding, which was held in a former Broadway theater.
Kleinbaum hasn’t specified what she plans to do in retirement, but said she’s likely to continue doing social justice work or working in Democratic politics. CBST has given her the title of “senior rabbi emerita” to show a level of connectedness as she steps down, but the bimah at CBST will no longer be hers.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum reads with her daughter during her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
Even people who would be considered her ideological adversaries have found common ground to collaborate with her on issues of religious freedom and human rights.
When President Joe Biden appointed Kleinbaum to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors and researches freedom of religious expression worldwide, she served as a commissioner along alongside Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. The council opposes the LGBTQ-rights movement.
“She’s able to step back and see where (two with strong ideological differences) can meet on core issues, and realize here’s where we can find common ground,” said Fred Davie, an administrator at Union Theological Seminary and a longtime friend of Kleinbaum.
Kleinbaum served two terms on the USCIRF. Her first term ended early in 2020 when she decided to focus attention on her congregation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For her and the congregation, it was familiar territory after the AIDS crisis.
“We knew immediately many of the elements that we had to deal with: isolation, loneliness, fear,” Kleinbaum said. “There were differences, of course, between AIDS, but many things were enough similar that it almost felt like muscle memory.”
For the congregation, there seems to be a degree of uncertainty of what the synagogue will be without her. CBST, like many congregations, skews toward older members; many have been with Kleinbaum since the beginning.
The synagogue named Jason Klein as new chief rabbi earlier this year; he will start on July 1. But the consensus among members seems to be that Kleinbaum is simply irreplaceable.
“I think people, in their heart of hearts, wanted to find a Kleinbaum 2.0 to replace her,” Hibsher said. “There’s a landscape of wonderful progressive synagogues throughout Manhattan. So part of the question for the congregation will be: Is there a need for an LGBT synagogue in the year 2024? I think there is.”
While Kleinbaum laid out her plans to leave CBST a year ago, there were audible gasps at Yom Kippur services last September among the attendees when it was mentioned that CBST would no longer be headed by her. Her second-to-last Shabbat service, held June 21, was a sold-out event. The keynote speaker: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“Most importantly, she has given us a space,” James said, using her hands to point to the synagogue and its standing room only crowed. “This space. Where we can be safe. Where we can be free.”
The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ Pride reaches its exuberant grand finale on Sunday, bringing rainbow-laden revelers to the streets for marquee parades in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere across the globe.
In New York, 10 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at the Pride parade Sunday, according to the NYPD.
Seven people were charged with disorderly conduct. It was not clear what the three other individuals arrested were charged with.
Videos from the parade show protesters being handcuffed by the police, and one person who was carried away. Some of the protesters were chanting “free Palestine.”
Protesters gather outside Stonewall Inn as President Joe Biden’s motorcade passes by during his visit to the historic gay bar in New York City on Friday to mark the 55th anniversary of the riots.Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Already this month, pro-Palestinian activists have disrupted pride parades held in Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia. Several groups participating in marches Sunday said they would seek to center the victims of the war in Gaza, spurring pushback from supporters of Israel.
“It is certainly a more active presence this year in terms of protest at Pride events,” said Sandra Pérez, the executive director of NYC Pride. “But we were born out of a protest.”
The first pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising, a riot that began with a police raid on a Manhattan gay bar.
Hundreds of drag queens and kings filled the streets for the 30th annual New York City Drag March on Friday.Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
In addition to the NYC Pride March, the nation’s largest, the city will also play host Sunday to the Queer Liberation March, an activism-centered event launched five years ago amid concerns that the more mainstream parade had become too corporate.
Another one of the world’s largest Pride celebrations will also kick off Sunday in San Francisco. Additional parades are scheduled in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle.
On top of concerns about protests, federal agencies have warned that foreign terrorist organizations and their supporters could target the parades and adjacent venues. A heavy security presence is expected at all of the events.
In an increasingly divisive political sphere, Becka Robbins focuses on what she knows best — books.
Operating out of a tiny room in Fabulosa Books in San Francisco’s Castro District, one of the oldest gay neighborhoods in the United States, Robbins uses donations from customers to ship boxes of books across the country to groups that want them.
In an effort she calls “Books Not Bans,” she sends titles about queer history, sexuality, romance and more — many of which are increasingly hard to come by in the face of a rapidly growing movement by conservative advocacy groups and lawmakers to ban them from public schools and libraries.
“The book bans are awful, the attempt at erasure,” Robbins said. She asked herself how she could get these books into the hands of the people who need them the most.
Beginning last May, she started raising money and looking for recipients. Her books have gone to places like a pride center in west Texas and an LGBTQ-friendly high school in Alabama.
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Customers are especially enthusiastic about helping Robbins send books to states like Florida, Texas and Oklahoma, often writing notes of support to include in the packages. Over 40% of all book bans from July 2022 to June 2023 were in Florida, more than any other state. Behind Florida are Texas and Missouri, according to a report by PEN America, a nonprofit literature advocacy group.
Book bans and attempted bans have been hitting record highs, according to the American Library Association. And the efforts now extend as much to public libraries as school-based libraries. Because the totals are based on media accounts and reports submitted by librarians, the association regards its numbers as snapshots, with many bans left unrecorded.
PEN America’s report said 30% of the bans include characters of color or discuss race and racism, and 30% have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.
The most sweeping challenges often originate with conservative organizations, such as Moms for Liberty, which has organized banning efforts nationwide and called for more parental control over books available to children.
Moms for Liberty is not anti-LGBTQ+, co-founder Tiffany Justice has told The Associated Press. But about 38% of book challenges that “directly originated” from the group have LGBTQ+ themes, according to the library association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Justice said Moms for Liberty challenges books that are sexually explicit, not because they cover LGBTQ+ topics.
Among those topping banned lists have been Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer,” George Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
An LGBTQ+ related book is seen on display at Fabulosa Books, in the Castro District of San Francisco on Thursday, June 27, 2024. “Books Not Bans” is a program initiated and sponsored by the store that sends boxes of LGBTQ+ books to LGBTQ+ organizations in conservative parts of America where politicians are demonizing and banning books with LGBTQ+ affirming content. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)
Robbins said it’s more important than ever to makes these kinds of books available to everyone.
“Fiction teaches us how to dream,” Robbins said. “It teaches us how to connect with people who are not like ourselves, it teaches us how to listen and emphasize.”
She’s sent 740 books so far, with each box worth $300 to $400, depending on the titles.
At the new Rose Dynasty Center in Lakeland, Florida, the books donated by Fabulosa are already on the shelves, said Jason DeShazo, a drag queen known as Momma Ashley Rose who runs the LGBTQ+ community center.
Becka Robbins, events manager and founder of the “Books Not Bans” program at Fabulosa Books, packs up LGBTQ+ books to be sent to parts of the country where they are censored on Thursday, June 27, 2024 at the Castro District of San Francisco. The bookstore is sending LGBTQ+ books to where they are censored to counter the rapidly growing effort by anti-LGBTQ+ activists and lawmakers to ban queer-friendly books from public schools and libraries. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)
DeShazo is a family-friendly drag performer and has long hosted drag story times to promote literacy. He uses puppets to address themes of being kind, dealing with bullies and giving back to the community.
DeShazo hopes to provide a safe space for events, support groups, and health clinics, and build a library of banned books.
“I don’t think a person of color should have to search so hard for an amazing book about history of what our Black community has gone through,” DeShazo said. “Or for someone who is queer to find a book that represents them.”
Robbins’ favorite books to send are youth adult queer romances, a rapidly growing genre as conversations about LGBTQ+ issues have become much more mainstream than a decade ago.
“The characters are just like regular kids — regular people who are also queer, but they also get to fall in love and be happy,” Robbins said.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday he will use clemency authority to pardon former servicemembers who were convicted of crimes because of their sexual orientations or gender identities.
Biden will issue a proclamation pardoning veterans who were convicted under a provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibiting gay sex, senior administration officials said on a call with reporters.
Service members who meet certain eligibility requirements will be able to obtain certificates of pardon and apply to have their discharge characterizations changed within their branches, officials said.
Biden said the action was aimed at “righting an historic wrong” for many former service members who faced convictions “simply for being themselves.”
“Despite their courage and great sacrifice, thousands of LGBTQI+ service members were forced out of the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Some of these patriotic Americans were subject to court-martial, and have carried the burden of this great injustice for decades,” Biden said in a statement. “This is about dignity, decency, and ensuring the culture of our Armed Forces reflect the values that make us an exceptional nation.”
The pardon would apply to any eligible conviction from 1951 through 2013, when Congress rewrote Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which criminalized sodomy.
Administration officials did not specify how many former service members would be affected, but they estimated that “thousands” were convicted under the provision, which held that any person found guilty of sodomy should be punished as directed by a court-martial. The action would also apply to those who are deceased.
Biden’s re-election campaign has sought to shore up support from LGBTQ voters during National Pride Month as some of his allies worry about dwindling support. A poll conducted in January by the advocacy group GLAAD found 68% of LGBTQ registered voters supporting Biden and 15% backing former President Donald Trump.
Biden and Trump have contrasting records on LGBTQ protections.
During his first days in office, Biden signed an executive order repealing a Trump-era ban on transgender people’s serving openly in the military.
In 2019, Trump rolled back Obama-era health care protections for transgender people and opposed the Equality Act, legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity that gained Biden’s support on the campaign trail in 2020 and that he vowed to prioritize during his first 100 days. The measure failed to pass in the Senate after the House approved it in 2021.
Trump did not recognize Pride Month for the first two years of his term, but in 2019 he became the first Republican president to acknowledge Pride Month, which honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York, after President Bill Clinton first recognized Pride Month in 1999.
Trump has said that if he is elected in November he plans to roll back government programs to protect trans rights and punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors.
