The Associated Press

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San Francisco Giants to honor Pride Month with logo on caps and uniforms

The San Francisco Giants will support Pride Month on the field and on their uniforms and caps.

On Saturday against the Cubs, the Giants will feature Pride colors in the SF logo on their game caps along with a Pride patch on the right sleeves of their home uniforms — making them the first major league team to do so.

“Very proud that the San Francisco Giants are taking this step. Very proud to be part of it,” manager Gabe Kapler said Tuesday before San Francisco hosted the Los Angeles Angels. “Looking forward to the impact and the support that we can provide for the LGBTQ+ community.”

The 11 colors represented in the new Pride logo are: red (life); orange (healing); yellow (sunlight); green (nature); blue (serenity); purple (spirit); and black and brown for LGBTQ+ people of color. Light blue, pink and white represent those who are transgender.

“We are extremely proud to stand with the LGBTQ+ community as we kick off one of the best annual celebrations in San Francisco by paying honor to the countless achievements and contributions of all those who identify as LGBTQ+ and are allies of the LGBTQ+ community,” Giants President and CEO Larry Baer said in a statement.

Additionally, the Giants will host Pride Movie Night at Oracle Park on June 11-12.

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German Catholics to bless gay unions despite Vatican ban

Germany’s powerful Catholic progressives are openly defying a recent Holy See pronouncement that priests cannot bless same-sex unions by offering such blessings at services in about 100 different churches all over the country this week.

The blessings at open worship services are the latest pushback from German Catholics against a document released in March by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which said Catholic clergy cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.”

The document pleased conservatives and disheartened advocates for LGBTQ Catholics around the globe. But the response has been particularly acute in Germany, where the German church has been at the forefront of opening discussion on hot-button issues such as the church’s teaching on homosexuality as part of a formal process of debate and reform.

The dozens of church services celebrating blessings of gay unions are the latest escalation in tensions between conservatives and progressives that have already sparked alarm, primarily from the right, that part of the German church might be heading into schism.

Germany is no stranger to schism: 500 years ago, Martin Luther launched the Reformation here.

Pope Francis, who has championed a more decentralized church structure, has already reminded the German hierarchy that it must remain in communion with Rome during its reform process, known as a “synodal path.”

In Berlin, the Rev. Jan Korditschke, a Jesuit who works for the diocese preparing adults for baptism and helps out at the St. Canisius congregation, will lead blessings for queer couples at a worship service May 16.

“I am convinced that homosexual orientation is not bad, nor is homosexual love a sin,” Korditschke told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. “I want to celebrate the love of homosexuals with these blessings because the love of homosexuals is something good.”

The 44-year-old said it is important that gays and lesbians can show themselves within the Catholic Church and gain more visibility long-term. He said he was not afraid of possible repercussions by high-ranking church officials or the Vatican.

“I stand behind what I am doing, though it is painful for me that I cannot do it in tune with the church leadership,” Korditschke said, adding that “the homophobia of my church makes me angry and I am ashamed of it.”

The head of the German Bishops Conference last month criticized the grassroots initiative for gay blessings which is called “Liebe Gewinnt” or “Love Wins.”

Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing said the blessings “are not suitable as an instrument of church political manifestations or political actions.”

However, Germany’s powerful lay organization, the Central Committee of German Catholics, or ZdK, which has been advocating for gay blessings since 2015, positioned itself once more in favor of them. It called the contentious document from Rome “not very helpful” and explicitly expressed its support for ”Love Wins.”

“These are celebrations of worship in which people express to God what moves them,” Birgit Mock, the ZdK’s spokeswoman for family affairs, told the AP.

“The fact that they ask for God’s blessing and thank him for all the good in their lives — also for relationships lived with mutual respect and full of love — that is deeply based on the Gospel,” Mock said, adding that she herself was planning to attend a church service with gay blessings in the western city of Hamm on Monday in which she would pray for ”the success of the synodal path in which we, as a church, recognize sexuality as a positive strength.”

The ZdK has been taking part in the “synodal path” meetings for more than a year with the German Bishops Conference. They are due to conclude in the fall. The meetings include talks about allowing priests to get married, the ordination of women and a different understanding of sexuality, among other reforms. The process was launched as part of the response to revelations of clergy sexual abuse.

“We’re struggling in Germany with a lot of seriousness and intensive theological discourses for the right path,” Mock added. “Things cannot continue the way they did — this is what the crimes and cover-ups of sexual abuse showed us.”

“We need systemic changes, also regarding a reassessment of the ecclesiastical morality of sexuality,” Mock said.

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Reversing Trump, US restores transgender health protections

The U.S. will protect gay and transgender people against sex discrimination in health care, the Biden administration announced Monday, reversing a Trump-era policy that sought to narrow the scope of legal rights in sensitive situations involving medical care.

The action by the Department of Health and Human Services affirms that federal laws forbidding sex discrimination in health care also protect gay and transgender people. The Trump administration had defined “sex” to mean gender assigned at birth, thereby excluding transgender people from the law’s umbrella of protection.

“Fear of discrimination can lead individuals to forgo care, which can have serious negative health consequences,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “Everyone — including LGBTQ people — should be able to access health care, free from discrimination or interference, period.”

It marked the latest step by President Joe Biden to advance the rights of gay and transgender people across society, from military service, to housing, to employment opportunities.

Becerra said in a statement the policy shift will bring HHS into line with a landmark 6-3 Supreme Court decision last year in a workplace discrimination case, which established that federal laws against sex discrimination on the job also protect gay and transgender people. 

Despite that ruling, the Trump administration proceeded to try to narrow the legal protections against health care discrimination, issuing rules that narrowly defined “sex” as biological gender. A federal judge had blocked those rules from taking effect, although Trump administration officials argued that as a legal matter health care discrimination was a separate issue from the employment case the Supreme Court decided.

Monday’s action means that the HHS Office for Civil Rights will again investigate complaints of sex discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Hospitals, clinics and other medical providers can face government sanctions for violations of the law.

The Biden administration action essentially restores the policy established during the Obama years. The Affordable Care Act included a prohibition on sex discrimination in health care but did not include the term “gender identity.” The Obama administration interpreted the law as shielding gay and transgender people as well. It relied on a broad understanding of sex shaped by a person’s inner sense of being male, female, neither or a combination.

Behind the dispute over rights for transgender people in particular is a medically recognized condition called “gender dysphoria” — discomfort or distress caused by a discrepancy between the gender that a person identifies as and the gender assigned at birth. Consequences can include severe depression. Treatment can range from gender confirmation surgery and hormones to people changing their outward appearance by adopting a different hairstyle or clothing.

Under the Obama-era rule, a hospital could be required to perform gender-transition procedures such as hysterectomies if the facility provided that kind of treatment for other medical conditions. 

LGBTQ groups say explicit protections are needed for people seeking gender transition treatment, and even for transgender people who need care for illnesses such as diabetes or heart problems.

More than 1.5 million Americans identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank focusing on LGBT policy at the UCLA School of Law. A bigger number — 4.5% of the population— identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to Gallup.

Professional groups like the American Medical Association, along with civil rights organizations, have supported health care protections for gay and transgender people, while social and religious conservatives sought to narrow their scope. 

HHS is a traditional battleground for conflicts over social issues. During the Trump administration the department clearly bent to the will of conservatives. Other Trump policies applauded by the right restricted abortion referrals and broadened employers’ ability to opt out of providing birth control to women workers covered by their health plans. Under Biden, the policy pendulum has been swinging back in the opposite direction, as officials unwind actions taken in the Trump years.

One of Biden’s first steps after taking office was a Jan. 20 executive order on combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. The new president directed every executive branch agency to examine what it could do to combat such discrimination.

Biden quickly followed that up with another order reversing a Trump-era Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender individuals from serving in the military.

And earlier this spring, the Department of Housing and Urban Development withdrew a Trump policy that would have allowed taxpayer-funded homeless shelters to deny access to transgender people.

At HHS, Biden’s term has seen the Senate confirmation of Dr. Rachel Levine to be assistant secretary for health, a senior position that involves oversight of public health initiatives, HIV/AIDS, women’s health and minority health, as well as other areas including research protections. Levine, formerly Pennsylvania’s top health official, is the first openly transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate.

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Home of San Francisco’s 1st same-sex spouses now a landmark

The hilltop cottage belonging to a lesbian couple who were the first same-sex partners to legally marry in San Francisco has become a city landmark.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to give the 651 Duncan St. home of the late lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin landmark status. The home in the Noe Valley neighborhood is expected to become the first lesbian landmark in the U.S. West, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“They provided a place for lesbians who were really, really, really in the closet to hang out and dance, have holiday potlucks so they wouldn’t have to go home and hang out with their homophobic relatives,” said Shayne Watson, an architectural historian who specializes in LGBTQ heritage conservation and was active in the movement to get the home landmarked.

Martin and Lyon bought the simple one-bedroom house, terraced up the hillside, as a couple in 1955, the same year they co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis, a political and social organization for lesbians.

The group started as a social support organization but quickly transformed into activism and politics.

“The Daughters of Bilitis didn’t have an office space, so 651 was really ground zero for the lesbian rights movement at the time. It was a place where people could be safe and reveal their sexuality,” said Terry Beswick, executive director of the GLBT Historical Society.

Image: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin at their San Francisco home on July 10, 1972.
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin at their San Francisco home on July 10, 1972. San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images file

Lyon was a journalist who met her lifelong love, Martin, while working at a magazine in Seattle. The couple moved to San Francisco in 1953. Besides the political organization, they published a national monthly for lesbians and a book called Lesbian/Woman in 1972.

Gov. Gavin Newsom was a newly elected mayor of San Francisco in 2004 when he decided to challenge California’s marriage laws by issuing licenses to same-sex couples. His advisers and gay rights advocates had the perfect couple in mind to be the public face of the movement.

Lyon and Martin, who had been together more than 50 years by then, were secretly swept into the clerk’s office. They exchanged vows before a tiny group of city staffers and friends.

Martin died in 2008, and Lyon in 2020, and the house was left to Martin’s daughter, Kendra. The property was sold in September 2020.

After the sale, a loose organization called the Friends of Lyon-Martin House was formed to guard against demolition, with the GLBT Historical Society as a financial sponsor.

The new owner, Meredith Jones McKeown, supports landmarking and protecting the cottage, the Chronicle reported.

Within six months, the group will put forth a proposal, with a sidewalk plaque as “a bare minimum,” Beswick said. Beswick and Watson both want to preserve the interior as a student residency, public research facility and center for LGBTQ activism and history.

“No one wants to see a tour bus in front of the house,” said Watson, “but Phyllis and Del affected so many lives, including my own, and I feel strongly that the house where they did it should stay in the community.”

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More than 400 businesses back LGBTQ rights act

More than 400 companies — including Tesla, Pfizer, Delta Air Lines and Amazon — have signed on to support civil rights legislation for LGBTQ people that is moving through Congress, advocates said Tuesday.

The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based LGBTQ advocacy group, said its Business Coalition for the Equality Act has grown to 416 members, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Big names like Apple, PepsiCo, General Motors, CVS, Facebook, Marriott, Capital One, Starbucks and Home Depot pepper the list.

“It’s time that civil rights protections be extended to LGBT+ individuals nationwide on a clear, consistent and comprehensive basis,” said Carla Grant Pickens, IBM’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, in a statement distributed by the Human Rights Campaign.

The Equality Act would amend existing civil rights law to explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identification as protected characteristics. Those protections would extend to employment, housing, loan applications, education and other areas.

The bill passed the U.S. House 224-206 in February, with all Democrats but just three Republicans supporting it. Its fate in the closely divided Senate is uncertain. The House also passed the bill in the last Congress, but it didn’t advance to the Senate.

Among the bill’s opponents is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has said it could force church halls and facilities to host functions that violate their beliefs.

Corporate endorsements of the bill have more than doubled since the House first passed it in 2019, the Human Rights Campaign said.

“We are seeing growing support from business leaders because they understand that the Equality Act is good for their employees, good for their businesses and good for our country,” the Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David said in a statement.

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City of Scottsdale passes anti-discrimination ordinance

The city of Scottsdale has voted to approve a non-discrimination ordinance, becoming the eighth city in Arizona to provide protections to members of the LGBTQ community and other groups.

The Scottsdale City Council unanimously passed the ordinance on Tuesday protecting residents from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, public places and housing.

The ordinance will take effect on May 20 and apply to all elected and appointed city officials, employees and volunteers and all contractors, vendors and consultants of the city. 

“The ordinance represents the city of Scottsdale’s commitment to anti-discrimination and fair treatment of residents, visitors and employees in the Scottsdale community, and the City Council’s support and value for diversity and inclusiveness,” the statement said.

The City Council had discussed a similar ordinance in 2016, but never took it to vote because of disagreements on whether to exempt businesses with fewer than 15 employees.

The newly approved ordinance has multiple exemptions, including federal and state officials, federally recognized American Indian tribes and religious organizations. The ordinance will also not apply to anyone who violates any policy or regulation of any places of public accommodation that applies to everyone.

City officials who violate the ordinance could be subject to multiple “responsive actions,” including termination. People not connected with the city who violate the ordinance could face fines between $500 to $2,500 per violation. 

The city of Mesa adopted a similar anti-discrimination ordinance earlier this year.

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Leslie Jordan parlays Instagram fame with new book and album

Last year at this time, as much of the world was on lockdown due to the pandemic, Leslie Jordan began posting daily videos of himself on Instagram.

The actor known for roles in the “American Horror Story” franchise and “Will & Grace” was staying near family in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was bored.

Many of Jordan’s videos included him asking “How ya’ll doin?” He referred to his followers as “hunker downers.” Sometimes he posted stories about Hollywood or his childhood growing up with identical twin sisters and their “mama,” as he calls her. Other times he did silly bits like complete an indoor obstacle course. He quickly became a bright spot during an otherwise bleak time and his followers grew.

“Someone called from California and said, ’Oh, honey, you’ve gone viral.’ And I said, ’No, no, I don’t have Covid. I’m just in Tennessee,” said Jordan. Celebrities including Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Alba and Anderson Cooper, along with brands such as Reebok and Lululemon, would post comments.

Soon he became fixated with the number of views and followers he had, because there wasn’t much else going on.

“For a while there, it was like obsessive. And I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. Stop, stop, stop.′ You know, it almost became, ’If it doesn’t happen on Instagram, it didn’t happen.’ And I thought, ‘You’re 65, first of all. You’re not some teenage girl.’”

The spotlight led to new opportunities. Earlier this month he released a gospel album called “Company’s Comin’” featuring Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Eddie Vedder and Tanya Tucker. He also has a new book called, “How Y’all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived.” It’s Jordan’s second book. His first, “My Trip Down the Red Carpet” was published in 2008.

“That sort of dealt with all the angst and growing up gay in the Baptist Church and la, la, la, la, la. And this one, I just wanted to tell stories.” In “How Y’all Doing,” Jordan writes about working with Lady Gaga on “American Horror Story,” how meeting Carrie Fisher led to Debbie Reynolds calling his mother, and the Shetland pony he got as a child named Midnight.

Jordan says it was hard to narrow down what he wanted to write about because he’s a storyteller by nature.

“It’s very Southern. If I was to be taught a lesson or something when I was a kid, I was told a story.”

With no shortage of anecdotes, Jordan ends the book with a tease there’s more to come. “This is not goodbye forever,” he writes but won’t say if there is an official plan for more, just that if this book does well, he’d love to write another.

Now that the globe has hit the one year mark of the pandemic, Jordan is less reliant on Instagram. He sometimes has to remind himself to post something new and can scramble for content.

“I didn’t plan it in any way at all,” he said of his quarantine surge in popularity. People say to me, ‘Tell me what you did, because I want to get a lot of followers.’ I have no idea. I remember the day it got to a million. Now it’s almost 6 million. … I’ll tell you where it helps, when they go to negotiate the money,” he laughed.

Jordan, who was most recently in the Fox comedy “Call Me Kat” starring Mayim Bialik and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” says he made a decision when he turned 60 to treat showbiz like a regular job and clock out each evening. “At six o’clock, the curtain goes down. TV and movies, see, that’s my job. I have other things that I do besides that.” These days, Jordan spends much of his spare time taking riding lessons and is preparing for his first horse show in June.

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Conservatives propose revised sex ed rules in LGBTQ pushback

Two years after Arizona lawmakers repealed a ban on any HIV/AIDS instruction that “promotes a homosexual lifestyle” as they faced a lawsuit, they have approved revamping the state’s sex education laws to make them some of the strictest in the nation when it comes to teaching about LGBTQ issues.

The measure pushed by a powerful social conservative group is framed as a parental rights issue and would require schools to get parents’ permission for discussions about gender identity, sexual orientation or HIV/AIDS in sex education classes.

Schools also would need parents to sign off on their children learning about historical events involving sexual orientation, such as a discussion of the modern gay rights movement that sprang from the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York.

The bill passed the Republican-controlled House on a party-line vote Wednesday, with Democrats saying it would harm LGBTQ children. It already passed the Senate and now goes to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

Arizona is among several Republican-led states where lawmakers are considering similar changes to sex education. Moving to give parents more control over what their children may be taught about LGBTQ issues is new and comes amid other efforts pushing back on social changes, including legislation in some states to ban transgender athletes from competing on the school teams of their identified sex, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights group that tracks such legislation.

Arizona is one of five states that already require parents’ permission before a child can attend sex education classes, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The new proposal would essentially require a double opt-in for HIV/AIDS instruction that addresses sexual orientation or gender identity. Additional permission would be needed for LGBTQ discussions in any other class.

Idaho legislation also requires notifications and opt-ins, including for discussion of sexual orientation outside of sex education classes. It has passed the House and awaits Senate action.

Lawmakers in Tennessee and Missouri are considering measures that would require parents to be notified before instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity but would exclude historical references.

In Montana, the Senate is weighing a bill that initially was meant to require parents to opt in to any sex education but was changed after pushback from education groups.

Advocates for comprehensive sex education say such legislation can have far-reaching negative effects under the guise of parental rights by limiting fact-based education that young people need to stay safe.

“They continually call out a need to review curriculum — and any sex education curriculum is already being reviewed,” said Alison Macklin, a senior policy adviser at the progressive group SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. “So these standards are decided by experts who are educators. And there’s always the opportunity for parents to review curriculum.”

The leader of the group backing Arizona’s proposal, the Center for Arizona Policy, said it is about ensuring parents have control over what their children are taught.

“The purpose of Senate Bill 1456 is to look out for parental rights, to ensure that parents have access to learning materials, that parents have the opportunity to opt their child in to classes dealing with human sexuality,” said Cathi Herrod, the group’s president.

She said the same is true whether the class is sex education or a discussion of the ancient Greeks, where homosexuality was common.

“It doesn’t stop those topics from being addressed, but again when we talk sex education, when we talk parental notification, parents deserve the opportunity to make that decision to opt their students in to classroom discussion,” Herrod said.

Macklin called the proposals an effort to reinforce barriers.

“In a way, it’s a subliminal way of trying to get anti-homosexual legislation put in, by saying you can’t speak or talk about it in schools,” she said. “We would never make that type of legislation around other historical movements.”

Opponents of the Arizona legislation pointed to the repealed 1991 law about HIV/AIDS instruction as a motivation for the new proposal. LGBTQ groups sued over the law nearly 30 years later.

The 2019 repeal came after the state’s top school official and attorney general refused to defend Arizona against the lawsuit alleging unconstitutional discrimination and restriction of educational opportunity for LGBTQ students.

Democrats warned during House debate Wednesday that the new proposal has similar constitutional issues.

The legislation has grabbed the attention of a group of college students who say Arizona’s sex education is already backward and the measure moves it even farther away from what young people need to know.

Lee Chiffelle, a junior studying astrophysics at Arizona State University, said she started promoting changes to sex ed policies as a high school student frustrated with the lack of factual, honest education. She said she got the most important lessons from her mom, but not all young people can rely on their parents.

“I was lucky, but a lot of my friends weren’t that lucky,” Chiffelle said. “A lot of parents seem to think that if you don’t talk about it, teenagers won’t have sex, which is definitely not true.”

Arizona’s measure would bar schools from providing sex education before fifth grade, require 60 days’ notice of curriculum changes and mandate public meetings about those revisions, even those required under the new law.

Chiffelle said she agrees that parents should be able to review curriculum but noted that they already can under Arizona law. She was concerned about everything from parents not returning permission slips to the ban on sex ed before fifth grade, which is focused on “good touch-bad touch” skills and how to tell if they’re being abused and how to get help.

The most dangerous aspect of the new proposal, she said, is favoring traditional gender roles and limiting discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity.

“We need this education to promote an inclusive environment, an accepting environment, because LGBTQ-plus teens, they have incredibly high rates of suicide,” Chiffelle said. “But when they are placed in an environment that’s accepting to them and inclusive to them, those suicide rates drop drastically.”

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Reversing Trump, Pentagon releases new transgender policy

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The Pentagon on Wednesday will sweep away Trump-era policies that largely banned transgender people from serving in the military, issuing new rules that offer them wider access to medical care and assistance with gender transition, defense officials told The Associated Press.

The new department regulations allow transgender people who meet military standards to enlist and serve openly in their self-identified gender, and they will be able to get medically necessary transition-related care authorized by law, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal decisions not yet made public.

The changes come after a two-month Pentagon review aimed at developing guidelines for the new policy, which was announced by President Joe Biden just days after he took office in January. 

Biden’s executive order overturned the Trump policy and immediately prohibited any service member from being forced out of the military on the basis of gender identity. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin then gave the Pentagon two months to finalize the more detailed regulations that the military services will follow. 

The new rules also prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Their expected release Wednesday coincides with International Transgender Day of Visibility.MORE STORIES:

Austin has also called for a reexamination of the records of service members who were discharged or denied reenlistment because of gender identity issues under the previous policy. Results of that review have not been released.

Until a few years ago, service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender, but that changed during the Obama administration. In 2016, the Pentagon announced that transgender people already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly, and that by July 2017, they would be allowed to enlist.

After Donald Trump took office, however, his administration delayed the enlistment date and called for additional study. A few weeks later, Trump caught military leaders by surprise, tweeting that the government wouldn’t accept or allow transgender people to serve “in any capacity” in the military. 

After a lengthy and complicated legal battle and additional reviews, the Defense Department in April 2019 approved a policy that fell short of an all-out ban but barred transgender troops and recruits from transitioning to another sex and required most individuals to serve in what the administration called their “birth gender.” 

Under that policy, currently serving transgender troops and anyone who had signed an enlistment contract before the effective date could continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

But after that date, no one with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or had transitioned to another gender was allowed to enlist. Troops that were already serving and were diagnosed with gender dysphoria were required to serve in the gender assigned at birth and were barred from taking hormones or getting transition surgery.

The new policies being released Wednesday are similar to those developed in 2016.

As of 2019, an estimated 14,700 troops on active duty and in the reserves identify as transgender, but not all seek treatment. There are more than 1.3 million active-duty troops and close to 800,000 in the National Guard and Reserves.

Since July 2016, more than 1,500 service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria; as of Feb. 1, 2019, there were 1,071 currently serving. According to the Pentagon, the department spent about $8 million on transgender care from 2016 to 2019. The military’s annual health care budget tops $50 billion.

All four service chiefs told Congress in 2018 that they had seen no discipline, morale or unit readiness problems with transgender troops serving openly in the military. But they also acknowledged that some commanders were spending a lot of time with transgender people who were working through medical requirements and other transition issues.

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EU lawmakers to debate declaring bloc an LGBT ‘freedom zone’

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The European Parliament is scheduled to debate a resolution on Wednesday that would declare the entire 27-member European Union a “freedom zone” for LGBT people.

The move comes largely in reaction to developments over the past two years in Poland, where many local communities have adopted largely symbolic resolutions declaring themselves free of what conservative authorities have been calling “LGBT ideology.” 

These towns say they are seeking to defend their traditional Catholic values, but LGBT rights activists say the designations are discriminatory and make gays and lesbians feel unwelcome. The areas have come to be colloquially known as “LGBT-free zones.”

But the resolution to be debated Wednesday also seeks to address problems faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people across the bloc. 

It says the fundamental rights of LGBT people have been “severely hindered” recently in Hungary due to a de facto ban on legal gender recognition for transgender and intersex people. It cites problems in Latvia, and notes that only two member states — Malta and Germany — have banned “conversion therapy,” a controversial and potentially harmful attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation.

The resolution is the work of the a cross-party group in the European Parliament, the LGBTI Intergroup, which says it has garnered enough support to approve the largely symbolic resolution.

Liesje Schreinemacher, the vice chair of the group and a Dutch lawmaker with Renew Europe, a liberal political group, said the resolution is timed to roughly mark the second anniversary of the first Polish community, Swidnik County, passing an anti-LGBT resolution.

She also referred to problems elsewhere, including suspicions that a man murdered in Belgium on the weekend was the victim of a homophobic attack.

“We wanted to send a strong signal in Poland that we consider all of Europe to be an LGBTI freedom zone,” she told The Associated Press. “But every European country has work to do.”

Dozens of local governments across conservative eastern and southern Poland began in March 2019 to pass either resolutions declaring themselves to be free from “LGBT ideology,” or family charters defending traditional families in the mostly Catholic nation.

They have proven costly to Poland’s international image, and to the finances of local communities. The EU and Norway — a non-EU member that funds some development in EU nations — have cut off funds for policies they view as discriminatory.

Bart Staszewski, a Polish activist who created an art project on the “LGBT-free zones” that drew the ire of the government and conservatives, said he sees the EU resolution as “important and necessary.”

But he also noted that local governments stopped passing such resolutions months ago and some communities have already withdrawn theirs. Others have passed resolutions declaring support for all types of families.

“There is some very good change,” Staszewski said. “I see this as a very good sign for the future.”

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