Trudy Ring

Illinois has become the first state to enact what’s being called a ban on book bans. House Bill 2789, signed into law Monday by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, will deny state funding to public libraries that ban materials because of “partisan or doctrinal disapproval” of the content. “We are not saying that every book should be in every single library,” said Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, according to the Associated Press. “What this law does is it says, let’s trust our experience and education of our librarians to decide what books should be in circulation.” Giannoulias, who also holds the post of […]

LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization GLAAD and EveryLibrary, a national group supporting campaigns against book bans, have announced a new resource to help communities work to defeat book bans and challenges, which predominantly target LGBTQ-inclusive titles and books about race and racism. Book Bans: A Guide for Community Response and Action,released Tuesday, is designed to help citizens “organize, create authentic messages, and work with media to ensure diverse local voices are heard against book bans and in support of LGBTQ people and all people of color,” says a GLAAD press release. 2022 saw the highest number of challenged books in school […]

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has signed three more anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law, including one that activists are calling the “LGBTQ erasure act,” defining sex as binary and determined by reproductive capacity. Gianforte, a Republican, announced Saturday that he had signed the bill. Also, he signed one allowing public schools to out transgender students to their parents and one that will let parents withdraw their children from school if they object to the day’s lesson plan. The “erasure” legislation, Senate Bill 458, defines sex based on their chromosomes and their reproductive characteristics — females by their ability to produce an egg and males by their […]

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed three more anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law Wednesday, maintaining the state’s status as the leader in that regard. Lee, a Republican, signed House Bill 239/Senate Bill 1440, which “defines ‘sex’ as a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth,” according to a summary of the legislation on the state website. The Human Rights Campaign calls this “LGBTQ+ Erasure” and says it will have the effect of excluding LGBTQ+ people from state antidiscrimination laws and enabling discrimination against transgender people in rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, restrooms, locker rooms, and more. […]

Human rights groups are criticizing President Joe Biden’s new policy on asylum-seekers, saying it’s as restrictive as the one enacted by Donald Trump or possibly more so. The policy comes as the pandemic-related restriction known as Title 42 is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. Thursday. Under Title 42, put in place in 2020, immigration authorities could turn back migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and deny them the right to seek asylum, with the rationale being that it was a way to stop the spread of COVID-19. Previously, unauthorized migrants could cross the border and usually remain in the U.S. […]

The U.S. Navy’s top admiral has defended a nonbinary service member against criticism from Republican politicians, and his remarks have been captured in a now-viral TikTok video.  At a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting Tuesday, Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama took issue with statements made by Lt. JG Audrey Knutson. In an Instagram video shared by the Navy last week, Knutson, who is nonbinary, said the highlight of their deployment last fall on the USS Gerald R. Ford, an aircraft carrier, was reading a poem to all their shipmates at an LGBTQ+ spoken word night. “Does it surprise you that […]

LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV experience alarming rates of abuse in the criminal legal system, says a new report from Lambda Legal in partnership with Black and Pink National. The report, “Protected and Served? 2022,” is based on a survey of more than 2,500 people who had interacted with police, courts, jails, prisons, and other governmental institutions, and it includes quantitative data as well. It “provides an unprecedented glimpse into the widespread harm caused to LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV through their interactions with these institutions,” says a Lambda Legal press release. The report is a follow-up to one […]