Tim Fitzsimons

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Democratic Lawmakers Call on ICE to Release Transgender Migrants

A group of 45 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday demanding the agency release all transgender migrants in its custody. “This already vulnerable population faces a heightened and unique set of injustices while in immigration detention,” the letter stated. “Transgender migrants and asylum seekers are particuarly vulnerable to sexual harassment, solitary confinement, physical assault, and medical neglect.” At least two transgender migrants have died in ICE custody in the past two years. Roxsana Hernandez Rodriguez, a Honduran, died of complications from untreated HIV in 2018. Rodriguez did not receive antiretroviral therapy while in ICE custody, despite […]

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Transgender Employees Sue Florida over State’s Trans Health Care Ban

Two transgender women filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida on Monday over its ban on transgender-related health care for state workers, arguing it violates the U.S. Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. “We brought this lawsuit because all people need access to medical care. This is not about special treatment; this is about equal treatment,” said lead counsel Simone Chriss. “Transgender state employees are singled out and explicitly denied coverage for one reason: They are transgender. That is discrimination, and it cannot stand.” The suit, which was brought by Southern Legal Counsel, the ACLU of Florida […]

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Gay Refugees in Kenya Report Repeated Attacks from Locals

For years, Ugandan refugee Mbazira Moses has been typing out emails to dozens of international humanitarian organizations and United Nations officials with a message: LGBTQ refugees at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya need your help. The Kakuma camp and nearby Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, both operated by the U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, are together home to nearly 200,000 refugees from dozens of countries. Many, if not most, have fled overland from Kenya’s conflict-stricken neighbors: Uganda, South Sudan and Somalia. But according to Moses and experts on refugees and migration, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees in Kakuma — many […]

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Judge Orders U.S. to Return Gay Asylum-seeker Deported to Chad

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to return a gay asylum-seeker who was deported to Chad, ruling that the government had not properly considered his asylum claim based on his status as a gay man before deporting him. Oumar Yaide arrived in the U.S. in 2009 and requested political asylum because he was a member of “a disfavored group,” a Chadian ethnic group called the Gorane. His asylum application was denied in 2014, and in December 2018 a judge denied his final appeal. In October, however, two months after officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, […]

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D.C. Council Proposes Making City’s Laws and Regulations Gender-neutral

The Council of the District of Columbia on Tuesday introduced legislation that would strip gendered and “patriarchal” terms from the D.C. code and replace them with gender-neutral language. The Gendered Terms Modernization Amendment Act of 2020 would change instances of “he” or “she” in the law books to “the individual” or “they.” The bill was introduced by David Grosso, an at-large independent member of the council who has been a leader on LGBTQ legislation during his council tenure. “We believe very strongly that language matters, that it actually holds power, and that the language of our laws matters,” Grosso told NBC News. […]

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A Very LGBTQ Decade: Marriage Equality, Trans Rights and a ‘Rainbow Wave’

At the dawn of the year 2010, few Americans could predict that the coming decade would revolutionize the legal and cultural landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. After all, it was only in 2003 that homosexuality was decriminalized across the country, thanks to a landmark Supreme Court ruling. Over the past 10 years, the United States saw the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, the emergence of transgender rights as the central frontier in the LGBTQ rights battle and the introduction of PrEP to fight the HIV epidemic. The decade also saw tragedies and setbacks, like the Pulse […]

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PrEP’s Unexpected Side Effect: Reduced ‘HIV Anxiety’

When HIV first tore into America’s gay male community in the early 1980s, quotidian questions of sex, love, lust and trust transformed into weighty decisions with potential life-or-death consequences. The decision to stop using condoms with a serious partner? Only as reliable an HIV-prevention method as your partner’s fidelity. A single instance of cheating? An indiscretion that carries the risk of an incurable and deadly disease. A random hookup? A nagging sense that, perhaps, this time was the time. Todd Faircloth, 52, remembers those days well. In 1987, when gay men were still dying from AIDS in large numbers, Faircloth moved […]

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Man Sentenced to Death for Killing Transgender Cellmate

A California inmate was sentenced to death Thursday for the 2013 killing of his transgender cellmate in a shocking case that shined a light on the dangers of sexual assault and violence trans people face when they are not housed according to their gender identity. Miguel Crespo, 48, was housed with Carmen Guerrero, a trans woman, at Kern Valley State Prison for just eight hours in October 2013. During that time, Crespo bound, gagged, tortured and murdered Guerrero in their shared cell. A California jury last month found Crespo guilty of first degree murder and assault. At his sentencing, Crespo […]

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U.S. to Give Free HIV-prevention Pills to Uninsured — with One Costly Loophole

The U.S. government will start a national HIV prevention program that will distribute free HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis medication, or PrEP, to uninsured Americans at risk of acquiring the virus, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday. Activists, however, say the plan doesn’t go far enough. Health Secretary Alex Azar called the new “Ready, Set, PrEP” program a “historic expansion of access to HIV prevention medication” and a “major step forward” in President Donald Trump’s Ending the HIV Epidemic plan, which was announced in February and seeks to reduce HIV transmission by 90 percent by 2030. “Thanks to Ready, Set, PrEP, […]

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Leading Experts ‘optimistic’ about Ongoing Trials of HIV Vaccine

The global fight against the human immunodeficiency virus is poised to make important advances thanks to three experimental HIV vaccines that are entering the final stages of testing at sites across the globe. While any of these three late-stage HIV vaccine trials — known as HVTN 702, Imbokodo and Mosaico — could fail, scientists say they are more hopeful than at any time since 1984, when Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler raised hopes by predicting that there would be a test-worthy HIV vaccine within two years. This is “perhaps one of the most optimistic moments we have […]

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