Trudy Ring

/ /

New Hampshire Republican governor signs gender-affirming care ban into law

,

New Hampshire has become the first New England state to ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed House Bill 377 into law Friday, The Boston Globe reports. It bars health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone treatment to people under 18 if the medications are used for gender transition. It allows young people already receiving these treatments to continue past the law’s effective date, January 1, 2026. The law calls for disciplinary action by New Hampshire’s medical board for providers who violate it, but not criminal charges. It also lets anyone claiming to be harmed by a violation file suit. Additionally, she signed House Bill 712, which “limits […]

/ /

Kansas public universities end LGBTQ+, DEI programs

,

The University of Kansas and Kansas State University are ending LGBTQ+ and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs due to a new state law. A provision in the latest state budget bill, Senate Bill 125, directs all state agencies, including colleges and universities, to end any programs or activities related to DEl. It also bars state employees from using gender-identifying pronouns or anything related to “gender ideology” in email signatures. It doesn’t define DEI or gender ideology, Inside Higher Ed notes, and takes up just a few lines in a 300-page bill. But the universities are implementing it in their own way. Kansas State announced last week that […]

/ /

This Republican governor vetoed anti-LGBTQ+ book ban and bathroom bills

,

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has gone against her party and vetoed two anti-LGBTQ+ bills and three other far-right ones. Ayotte vetoed the bills Tuesday, while signing 101 others into law. House Bill 324 would have barred schools from distributing books and other materials deemed “harmful to minors.” It was aimed primarily at sexual content and likely would have been used against books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. It also would have required school districts to strengthen the process through which parents could challenge these materials. “Current state law appears to provide a mechanism for parents through their local school district to […]

/ /

Federal HR office sets deadline for government-wide purge of transgender and nonbinary inclusion

,

The Trump administration has issued a new mandate requiring all federal agencies to eliminate recognition of gender identity, reinforcing a rigid, binary definition of sex and gender throughout the executive branch by mid-August. In a July 10 memorandum to department heads, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management directed agencies to implement Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” by revoking gender-inclusive policies, disbanding diversity programs, and enforcing sex-based definitions in all personnel and facility protocols. Agencies have until August 11 to submit a detailed report to OPM outlining the steps taken to comply. The […]

/ /

Andry Hernández Romero, gay asylum seeker disappeared by Trump, part of prisoner swap

,

Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist who sought asylum in the U.S. due to persecution in Venezuela but was deported to a prison in El Salvador, has been released as part of a prisoner swap — but he’s being sent back to Venezuela instead of the U.S. “We have confirmed that he is in Venezuela,” Immigrant Defenders Law Center President and CEO Lindsay Toczylowski told The Advocate. The organization is representing Hernández Romero in legal matters. Under a prisoner swap facilitated by the Trump administration, 10 U.S. citizens who had been held in Venezuela were released and more than 250 Venezuelan […]

/ /

Black trans woman Dream Johnson killed in Washington, D.C.

,

Police in Washington, D.C., are seeking the public’s help in finding the killer of a Black transgender woman who was shot to death about 12:30 a.m. Saturday. Bystanders flagged police down to where Dream Johnson, 28, lay unconscious on a city street, having been shot multiple times, the Washington Blade reports. She was taken to a local hospital, “but all lifesaving efforts failed and the victim was pronounced dead,” says a police statement quoted by the Blade. The police did not identify Johnson as trans, but trans activists and her family said she was. She had planned to legally change her to Dream. Vanna Terrell, Johnson’s aunt, told […]

/ /

Names of Sam Nordquist, Jiggly Caliente, Lady Chablis, and more added to Stonewall Wall of Honor

,

Names of seven transgender trailblazers were added to the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall Inn Thursday night. The Wall of Honor posthumously celebrates LGBTQ+ activists, artists, and others who played crucial roles in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. This year’s inductees are all transgender at a time when trans Americans are under attack from the federal government and elsewhere. They were inducted by the National LGBTQ Task Force and the International Imperial Court Council. “This year’s focus on transgender trailblazers and changemakers underscores the importance of recognizing our history and the current climate for our trans siblings,” Cathy Renna, communications director for the Task Force, said in apress […]

/ /

LGBTQ+ households earn 85 cents for every dollar — What’s behind the disparity?

,

The average LGBTQ+ or intersex household made just 85 cents for every dollar earned by those in other categories in 2024, says a new report from the Center for American Progress. “Over the course of a year, those 15 lost cents add up, amounting to about $12,600 in lost income per year for the average LGBTQI+ household,” says the CAP report, which was published as a column on CAP’s website Tuesday for LGBTQI+ Equal Pay Awareness Day. “That is more than the average household spends on food and gasoline in an entire year.” Discrimination may be a reason for the gap, CAP notes. “In 2024, approximately a […]

/ /

Spa can’t discriminate against trans women, federal appeals court rules

,

A Christian-owned spa in Washington State can’t discriminate against transgender women, a federal appeals court has ruled. Olympus Spa, which has locations in Lynnwood and Tacoma, has historically had a policy of admitting “biological women” only, “excluding, in addition to men, preoperative transgender women who have not yet received gender confirmation surgery affecting their genitalia,” notes the ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. After Olympus turned away a trans woman fitting this description in 2020, the woman filed a complaint with the state’s Human Rights Commission, which enforces the Washington Law Against Discrimination. The law does not explicitly ban […]

/ /

Military vet Gina Ortiz Jones becomes first lesbian elected mayor of San Antonio

,

Gina Ortiz Jones, a lesbian and military veteran who served in President Joe Biden’s administration, has been elected mayor of San Antonio, the second-largest city in Texas and seventh-largest in the U.S. Jones beat Rolando Pablos, a former Texas secretary of state, in a runoff election Saturday. The margin was 54.3 percent to 45.7 percent, according to Ballotpedia. They advanced to the runoff because no candidate out of 27 in the May 3 general election received a majority of the vote. In the general election, Jones led with 27.2 percent and Pablos came in second with 16.6 percent. The current mayor, Ron Nirenberg, could not run again due to term limits. […]

«‹ 2 3 4 5›»