The Associated Press

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Metropolitan Opera season to open with first-ever opera by Black composer

Charles Blow recalls being in the audience at the premiere of the opera based on his memoir, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” and watching the scene that depicts his sexual abuse as a child by an older cousin.

“To be honest,” he said, “it was more uncomfortable watching everybody watching me. Because they were so unnerved by it they worried about my reaction.”

They needn’t have been concerned, Blow said in an interview. “When I wrote the book I’d already dealt with all that,” he said. “I don’t have the residual trauma that a lot of people expect me to have.”

Blow, a columnist for The New York Times, will again be in the audience when the opera opens the Metropolitan Opera season on Sept. 27. It will be the first operatic performance in the house since the pandemic shutdown 18 months ago.

More history-making is the fact that “Fire,” with a score by jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, will be the first opera by a Black musician presented at the Met in its 138 years.

“Of course you’re filled with pride to be labeled with that,” Blanchard said after a rehearsal last week. “But there’s a certain sense of, not guilt, but sorrow, because I know I’m not the first who was qualified.”

For example, Blanchard said he was at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis this summer — where “Fire” premiered in 2019 — and heard a performance of “Highway 1,” a one-act opera by Black composer William Grant Still first performed in 1963.

“I’m sitting there listening to that,” he said, “and I go, like, why couldn’t that be at the Met?”

Blanchard said OTSL artistic director James Robinson had been after him to compose another opera after his first, “Champion,” based on the life of boxer Emile Griffith, premiered there in 2013. When his wife, Robin Burgess, recommended he read Blow’s memoir, Blanchard said it struck a chord.

In his book, Blow, now 51, describes growing up in poverty as a shy, sensitive child in rural Louisiana with four macho older brothers, a philandering drunk for a father and a warm-hearted, hard-working mother who carried a gun in her purse.

“What drew me to this story was the notion of being isolated and different in your own community,” said Blanchard, who was born in New Orleans. “I knew a lot about that growing up, wanting to be a musician and walking to the bus stop on the weekends, carrying my horn and wearing glasses while the other boys were playing football in the street. That was not a popular look.”

To write the libretto, Blanchard enlisted filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, his friend and frequent collaborator. She had never written an opera libretto, though she said it was on a “bucket list” of things she hoped someday to accomplish.

“I didn’t know what the process normally was,” Lemmons said. “I didn’t even know the libretto went first. I thought maybe the music came first.”

For advice, she turned to Robinson who gave her the crucial suggestion that “in an opera, anything can sing.” Inspired by that, she created two characters known as Destiny and Loneliness who accompany Blow at different points in his life. She also has a child in the role of the young Charles on stage at various points alongside the adult character.

Lemmons said she was nervous about how Blow might react to some of her inventions because, “OK, I’ve written this guy’s loneliness as a character. That’s pretty intrusive.

“On the other hand,” she said, “the way he spoke about loneliness in the book was very palpable.”

Once she handed the libretto to Blanchard, he set it to music with few changes. The score is infused with jazz rhythms and filled with lyrical passages, including full-fledged arias for some of the characters.

The Met production is co-directed by Robinson and Camille A. Brown, who is the first Black director on the Met’s main stage. Met music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin will lead a cast that stars baritone Will Liverman as the adult Charles, soprano Latonia Moore as his mother and soprano Angel Blue as Destiny, Loneliness and his girlfriend Greta. There will be eight performances, with the final one on Saturday afternoon Oct. 23 shown live in HD in movie theaters worldwide.

The production is co-commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where it will be presented next spring, and by LA Opera.

In his memoir, Blow describes himself as bisexual and writes frankly about having homoerotic fantasies, which are dramatized in the opera through a dance sequence choreographed by Brown.

Lemmons hopes audiences can see past the trauma Blow endured as a youngster and draw inspiration from his story.

“It’s deeply sad. But the thing that’s not sad is Charles Blow,” she said. “The remarkable aspect of the story is how you can draw strength from pain.”

Blanchard echoes that view: “The mere fact that Charles is such a success in his life indicates how much he overcame,” he said.

“Hopefully some young kid coming to this opera will see that. Hopefully it can really change some people’s lives.”

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Germany compensates 249 persecuted over homosexuality law

German authorities have compensated nearly 250 people who were prosecuted or investigated under a Nazi-era law criminalizing homosexuality that continued to be enforced enthusiastically after World War II.

The Federal Office of Justice said Monday that, up to the end of August, 317 people had applied for compensation and it had been paid out in 249 cases. So far, it has paid out nearly 860,000 euros (just over $1 million).

Fourteen applications are still being processed, 18 were rejected and 36 were withdrawn, the office said. The deadline for applications is July 21 next year.

German lawmakers in 2017 approved the annulment of thousands of convictions under the Paragraph 175 law, which remained in force in West Germany in its Nazi-era form until homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969. They cleared the way for payments of 3,000 euros per conviction, plus 1,500 euros for every year of jail time those convicted started.

In 2019, the government extended compensation to people who were put under investigation or taken into investigative custody but not convicted. It offered payments of 500 euros per investigation opened, 1,500 euros for each year of time in pre-trial custody started, and 1,500 euros for other professional, financial or health disadvantages related to the law.

The law criminalizing male homosexuality was introduced in the 19th century, toughened under Nazi rule and retained in that form by democratic West Germany, which convicted some 50,000 men between 1949 and 1969.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969 but the legislation wasn’t taken off the books entirely until 1994.

In 2000, the German parliament approved a resolution regretting the fact that Paragraph 175 was retained after the war. Two years later, it annulled the convictions of gay men under Nazi rule but not the post-war convictions.

The compensation also applies to men convicted in communist East Germany, which had a milder version of Paragraph 175 and decriminalized homosexuality in 1968.

In all, some 68,300 people were convicted under various forms of Paragraph 175 in both German states.

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Court rules Catholic school wrongfully fired gay substitute

A gay substitute teacher was wrongfully fired by a Roman Catholic school in North Carolina after he announced in 2014 on social media that he was going to marry his longtime partner, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn ruled Friday that Charlotte Catholic High School and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Charlotte violated Lonnie Billard’s federal protections against against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Cogburn granted summary judgment to Billard and said a trial must still be held to determine appropriate relief for him.

“After all this time, I have a sense of relief and a sense of vindication. I wish I could have remained teaching all this time,” Billard said in a statement released Friday by the ACLU, which represented him in court. “Today’s decision validates that I did nothing wrong by being a gay man.”

Billard taught English and drama full time at the school for more than a decade, earning its Teacher of the Year award in 2012. He then transitioned to a role as a regular substitute teacher, typically working more than a dozen weeks per year, according to his 2017 lawsuit.

He posted about his upcoming wedding in October 2014 and was informed by an assistant principal several weeks later that he no longer had a job with the school, according to the ruling.

The defendants said that they fired Billard not because he was gay, but rather because “he engaged in ‘advocacy’ that went against the Catholic Church’s beliefs” when he publicly announced he was marrying another man, the ruling said.

But Cogburn ruled that the school’s action didn’t fit into exemptions to labor law that give religious institutions leeway to require certain employees to adhere to religious teachings, nor was the school’s action protected by constitutional rights to religious freedom.

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California homicides jump 31% in 2020, most in 13 years

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Homicides in California jumped 31% last year, making it the deadliest year since 2007, and Black people accounted for nearly one-third of all victims, according to reports released Thursday.

The 2,202 homicides last year were 523 more than in 2019, while the rate increased by a similar margin — from 4.2 to 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people.

That’s the most slayings since 2,258 people were killed in 2007, and the rate is the highest since 2008. Black people make up 6.5% of California’s population but accounted for 31% of all victims last year. Hispanic people accounted for 45%, while 16% were white.

Last year saw such a stark increase in homicides in part because the number and rate of homicides the year before were so low.

California’s 2019 homicide rate was the lowest since 1966, and violent and property crime rates in 2019 generally were among the lowest since the 1960s, four experts from the University of California, Berkeley’s California Policy Lab said in a related review focusing on cities with more than 100,000 people.

California cities generally did better than those in other states that saw bigger per capita increases in homicides and aggravated assaults, experts said.

Yet last year, California had nearly 300 more homicides than the next most deadly year in the last decade — 2016, which had 1,930 slayings, according to annual reports from the state attorney general’s office.

The jump in California homicides comes amid an erratic year for crime, with a less than 1% increase in overall violent crime and a 7.7% drop in property crime during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the state reports.

The pandemic and its accompanying stay-at-home orders and other restrictions led to erratic changes in crime patterns last year, the experts said in a report to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code.

“Social dislocations, stresses, and alterations to our collective daily routines due to the pandemic have impacted crime rates in California and across the country,” they said.

Property crime also fell more in California cities compared with others nationwide that reported their rates to the FBI. However, the vehicle theft rate was higher in California cities for reasons the experts could not explain.

They cited reduced social interactions from the stay-at-home orders as the likely reason for drops in robbery, rape and larceny.

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California hate crime up 31% in 2020, led by anti-Black bias

Hate crime in California surged 31% in 2020, fueled mainly by a big jump in crimes targeting Black people during a year that saw the worst racial strife in decades, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the state’s attorney general.

Overall hate crimes increased from 1,015 to 1,330 last year, while the number of victims increased 23%, from 1,247 to 1,536. Black people account for 6.5% of the state’s population of nearly 40 million people but were victims in 30% of all hate crimes — 456 overall, up 87% from the previous year.

“What we see from these reports is what we have seen and felt all year — we are in the midst of a racial justice reckoning in this country. It’s multi-faceted, and it cannot be solved overnight.” Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

California saw some of the largest protests following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. And it also saw a surge in attacks on people of Asian descent following the emergence of the coronavirus in China.

Last year’s hate crime reports were the most since 2008, when there were 1,397. That in turn was topped several times in prior years, including 2001, when there were 2,261 hate crimes reported.

While the overall numbers of hate crimes targeting Asians was low — 89 — that was more than double the number in 2019. The most events during 2020 were reported in March and April, just as the statewide shutdown and other pandemic restrictions took hold.

“For too many, 2020 wasn’t just about a deadly virus, it was about an epidemic of hate as well,” Bonta said while speaking in Oakland’s Chinatown..

While the pandemic is easing, that fear still resides in the Asian American community, said Bonta, the state’s first Filipino American attorney general. He related that he feared even for his mother going alone into an urban area.

“There was a surge in anti-Asian violence correlated with the words of leaders who sought to divide us when we were at our most vulnerable,” Bonta, a Democrat, said in an apparent reference to former President Donald Trump.

Violent crime incidents driven by anti-Asian hate increased from 32 in 2019 to 72 in 2020, according to a companion report that aims to put that violence into modern and historical context dating to Gold Rush days of the mid-19th century and a history of harmful Asian stereotypes in the United States.

California defines hate crimes as those targeting victims because of their race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender or a disability. The definitions have been expanded at various times in recent years. Each hate crime event can include more than one related offense against more than one victim by more than one offender.

Such crimes targeting Latinos increased from 110 in 2019 to 152 last year, while those against white people rose from 39 to 82.

While hate crimes based on race increased, those prompted by religion dropped 13.5%. Anti-Jewish events fell from 141 in 2019 to 115 in 2020 and anti-Islamic events decreased from 25 to 15.

Those involving sexual orientation fell from 233 to 205. However, those with a gender bias increased, led by a jump in anti-transgender events from 29 in 2019 to 54 last year.

Though Bonta said more than half of hate crimes are believed to go unreported, he said he has confidence in local investigators and prosecutors to address the problem.

He nonetheless distributed a new law enforcement bulletin and guidance for prosecutors intended to help them to help them identify and investigate hate crimes, increase immediate and consistent contact with victims their communities and promote alternative forms of sentencing and restorative justice approaches when dealing with hate crimes.

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Los Angeles passes measure limiting homeless encampments

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The Los Angeles City Council passed a sweeping anti-camping measure Thursday to remove widespread homeless encampments that have become an eyesore across the city.

The measure was billed as a compassionate approach to get people off streets and restore access to public spaces in the city with nation’s second-largest homeless population, though critics said it would criminalize the problem. It wouldn’t be enforced until someone has turned down an offer of shelter.

“I can’t think of any reason why we would not unite in support of what the people of Los Angeles want us to do,” said Councilman Paul Krekorian, coauthor of the measure. “Restore order to our streets, while also uplifting and providing services to those in need.”

Among other limits, the ordinance that passed 13-2 would ban sitting, lying, sleeping or storing personal property on sidewalks that block handicap access, near driveways, fire hydrants and near schools, day care centers, libraries, homeless shelters and parks.

The measure, which won’t take effect until a second vote later this month, replaces a more punitive anti-camping proposal that had stalled in a committee. Under the ordinance approved, police would only get involved if there’s a crime, and people who resist leaving would be fined rather than arrested for a misdemeanor.

The majority of callers during a limited public comment period spoke in support of the measure, describing homeless encounters that included assaults, break-ins and one explaining how children walking to school are forced into a busy street to avoid tents that crowd sidewalks.

People who opposed the measure, including a couple who used profanity, said it lacked compassion and would criminalize a problem the city has failed to solve.

The meeting was closed to the public because of coronavirus restrictions, but a group of advocates for the homeless protested outside City Hall.

Pete White of the LA Community Action Network said the measure is loosely written to allow broad interpretation for enforcement and will make most of the city off-limits to people living on the street.

“Draconian is definitely the correct word,” he said. “It’s impossible to comply.”

White said that an ordinance that limited where people could park RVs and sleep in cars overnight left little more than 5% of streets available for parking.

California is home to more than a quarter of the nation’s homeless people, according to federal data, and it has reached a crisis point in many cities. There are deep disagreements in how to solve a problem that goes beyond economics and is often complicated by mental illness and addiction issues that require treatment and can make people resistant to accepting shelter.

The city of Los Angeles has an estimated homeless population of more than 40,000, which is second only to New York’s.

Encampments have steadily grown over several years and often sprawl entire blocks. They can include barbecues, sofas, recliner chairs and even a shower. Many are crammed with piles of belongings, scavenged junk and covered in tarps.

A federal judge directed the city of LA to offer housing to thousands of homeless people on notorious Skid Row by this fall, though the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put that on hold.

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California bans state travel to 5 states over anti-LGBTQ ‘bigotry’

 California added five more states, including Florida, to the list of places where state-funded travel is banned because of laws that discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community, the state attorney general announced Monday.

Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta added Florida, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia to the list that now has 17 states where state employee travel is forbidden except under limited circumstances.

“Make no mistake: We’re in the midst of an unprecedented wave of bigotry and discrimination in this country — and the State of California is not going to support it,” Bonta said.

Lawmakers in 2016 banned non-essential travel to states with laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The 12 other states on the list are: Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee.

The five states newly added to the list have introduced bills in their legislatures this year that prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, block access to health care and allow the discrimination of the LGBTQ community, Bonta said.

Florida, Montana, Arkansas, and West Virginia passed laws that prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity.

North Dakota signed into law a bill allowing certain publicly-funded student organizations to restrict LGBTQ students from joining without losing funding.

Arkansas passed the first law in the nation to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender minors — regardless of the wishes of parents or whether a physician deems such care to be medically necessary.

These lawmakers “would rather demonize trans youth than focus on solving real issues like tackling gun violence beating back this pandemic and rebuilding our economy,” Bonta said.

The state law has exemptions for some trips, such as travel needed to enforce California law and to honor contracts signed before the states were added to the list. Travel to conferences or out-of-state training are examples of trips that can be blocked.

It’s unclear what effect California’s travel ban will have. Bonta did not have information about how many state agencies have stopped sending state employees to the states on the list or the financial impact of California’s travel ban on those states.

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Political donations lead Stonewall Inn to ban some beers

The Stonewall Inn’s owners say they won’t serve certain beers at the famous LGBTQ bar during Pride weekend to protest manufacturer Anheuser-Busch’s political contributions to some politicians who have supported anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Co-owners Stacy Lentz and Kurt Kelly said they would be instituting the ban on Friday in support of the “Keep Your Pride” campaign, a recently launched effort highlighting five companies that it says advertise support during Pride but have also made contributions to anti-LGBTQ lawmakers.

The campaign, a project of Corporate Accountability Action, used data compiled from the National Institute on Money in Politics to show that Anheuser-Busch contributed more than $35,000 to 29 legislators it described as anti-LGBTQ between 2015 and 2020.

“We just felt Stonewall having the platform, the power to do this, it was important to stand up,” Lentz said. “We really just want Anheuser-Busch to stop donating to lawmakers who are trying to legalize discrimination.”

Flashback: Stonewall Inn Riots of 1969

OCT. 26, 201601:00

In a statement, Anheuser-Busch said, “We support candidates for public office whose policy positions and objectives support investments in our communities, job creation, and industry growth.”

The statement continued, “Together, with our brands, we have a clear role to play in bringing real change and creating an inclusive and equitable world where we cherish and celebrate one another.”

It was at an earlier incarnation of the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 when bar patrons fought with police who had come to carry out a raid, which galvanized gay rights activism around the country and the world.

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Justice Department challenges transgender restrictions in 2 states

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday challenged bans involving transgender people that target athletes in West Virginia and children in Arkansas, slamming them as violations of federal law.

The department filed statements of interest in lawsuits that seek to overturn new laws in those states. In West Virginia, a law prohibits transgender athletes from competing in female sports. Arkansas became the first state to ban gender confirming treatments or surgery for transgender youth.

The DOJ said the laws in both states violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. It also said the West Virginia law violates Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal funds.

And in a third case, West Virginia’s Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated a lawsuit filed on behalf of a transgender male student who said an assistant principal harassed him when he tried to use the boys bathroom.

New legislation could marginalize transgender community

JUNE 16, 202101:55

The American Civil Liberties Union, its West Virginia chapter and LGBTQ interest group Lambda Legal challenged the athlete ban on behalf of an 11-year-old transgender girl who had hoped to compete in cross-country in middle school.

“A state law that limits or denies a particular class of people’s ability to participate in public, federally funded educational programs and activities solely because their gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth violates both Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause,” the Justice Department filing said. The state law “does exactly this.”

In Arkansas, the ACLU filed a lawsuit last month challenging the transgender youth prohibition, which is set to take effect on July 28. It prohibits doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of four transgender youth and their families, as well as two doctors who provide gender confirming treatments. The lawsuit argues the prohibition will severely harm transgender youth in the state and violate their constitutional rights.

“A state law that specifically denies a limited class of people the ability to receive medically necessary care from their healthcare providers solely on the basis of their sex assigned at birth violates the Equal Protection Clause,” the Justice Department filing said. “These restrictions explicitly target transgender people.”

Republican lawmakers enacted the ban in April, overriding a veto by GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The Arkansas governor vetoed the ban following pleas from pediatricians, social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide.

Hutchinson said the law went too far, especially since it wouldn’t exempt youth already receiving the care. Gender confirming surgery is currently not performed on minors in Arkansas.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, also a Republican, asked a federal judge this week to dismiss the lawsuit over the state’s ban. And West Virginia Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Thursday asked a judge to allow him to intervene on the state’s behalf to defend the athlete ban.

Rutledge’s office rejected the Justice Department’s argument, saying the state’s prohibition “absolutely doesn’t discriminate based on transgender status.”

“The Biden Administration’s brief makes the frivolous argument that it does,” Stephanie Sharp, a spokesperson for Rutledge, said in a statement. “But that brief illustrates the weakness of its position — so weak that the Administration resorts to pages of personal attacks against Arkansans’ elected representatives.”

Several other states also have enacted bills this year over school sports participation bans. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem implemented the move by executive order. Other states, including Kansas and North Dakota, passed bans only to have them vetoed by the governor.

In February, the Biden administration withdrew government support for a federal lawsuit in Connecticut that seeks to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls high school sports. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in April.

The West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission, which oversees scholastic sports, said earlier this year that it had not received any complaints about transgender athletes on girls teams.

Several Democrats said the West Virginia bill was discriminatory, but supporters have argued that transgender athletes would have physical advantages in female sports.

Republican Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill despite warnings from some lawmakers that the NCAA could retaliate and decide not to hold college tournaments in the state. Justice had said that while it concerned him that the state could miss out on a sporting event, he believed the benefits of the law “way outweigh the bad part of it.”

In the transgender bathroom case, the West Virginia Supreme Court reinstated some negligence claims and sent the lawsuit back to a lower court for further proceedings. A circuit judge had dismissed the lawsuit, saying the Harrison County school board was immune from liability for the actions of an assistant principal.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of student Michael Critchfield accused the board of failing to create a safe school environment. The ACLU had said Liberty High School Assistant Principal Lee Livengood followed Critchfield into the boys bathroom in November 2018 at the school and said, “You freak me out.” Critchfield said he also was ordered to prove his gender by using a urinal. He was 15 at the time.

An attorney for Livengood had previously argued that his client was unaware of Critchfield’s gender identity and was not told of an arrangement Critchfield had with the principal to use the boys restrooms.

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Baker fined for refusing to make transgender transition cake

A Colorado baker who won a partial victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 for refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to make a birthday cake for a transgender woman, a state judge has ruled.

In Tuesday’s ruling, Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones said Autumn Scardina was denied a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside to celebrate her gender transition on her birthday because of her transgender status in violation of the law. While Jack Phillips said he could not make the cake because of its message, Jones said the case was about a refusal to sell a product, not compelled speech.

He pointed out that Phillips testified during a trial in March that he did not think someone could change their gender and he would not celebrate “somebody who thinks that they can.”

“The anti-discrimination laws are intended to ensure that members of our society who have historically been treated unfairly, who have been deprived of even the every-day right to access businesses to buy products, are no longer treated as ‘others,’” Jones wrote.

The group representing Phillips, Alliance Defending Freedom, said Wednesday that it would appeal the ruling, which ordered him to pay a $500 fine. The maximum fine for each violation of Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act is $500. But it was not clear from the ruling if the fine was for the two attempts that Scardina made to order the cake or just one.

“Radical activists and government officials are targeting artists like Jack because they won’t promote messages on marriage and sexuality that violate their core convictions,” the group’s general counsel, Kristen Waggoner, said in a statement.

Scardina, an attorney, attempted to order the cake on the same day in 2017 that the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips’ appeal in the wedding cake case. Scardina said she wanted to “challenge the veracity” f Phillips statements that he would serve LGBT customers, but her attempt to get a cake was not a “set up” intended to file a lawsuit, Jones said.

One of Scardina’s attorneys, John McHugh, said the case is about how LGBTQ people are treated, not just what happened to her.

“This is about a business that is open to the public that simply says to an entire class of people in the community that your identity, who you are, is something that is objectional,” he said.

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