The Church of England will refuse to allow same-sex couples to get married in its churches under proposals set out on Wednesday in which the centuries-old institution said it would stick to its teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman.
The proposals were developed by bishops, who form one of three parts of the Church’s governing body known as the General Synod, after the Church of England’s six-year consultation on sexuality and marriage — among other subjects — and will be put to the General Synod at a meeting next month.
The Church of England is central to the wider Anglican communion, which represents more than 85 million people in over 165 countries.
“Same-sex couples would still not be able to get married in a Church of England church,” the statement said, confirming a BBC report overnight that bishops had refused to support a change in teaching to allow priests to marry gay couples.
Under the proposals, same-sex couples could have a service in which there would be “prayers of dedication, thanksgiving or for God’s blessing on the couple” in church after a civil marriage. Gay marriage was legalized in Britain in 2013.
Still, the prayers would be voluntary for clergy to use and could be used in combinations “reflecting the theological diversity of the Church”, the Church of England said, implying spiritual leaders could choose not to offer such blessings.
“I am under no illusions that what we are proposing today will appear to go too far for some and not nearly far enough for others, but it is my hope that what we have agreed will be received in a spirit of generosity, seeking the common good,” said Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Separately, Church of England bishops will be issuing an apology later this week to LGBTQ people for the “rejection, exclusion and hostility” they have faced in churches, according to the statement.
The Church of England, which was founded in 1534, has been divided for years on how to deal with same-sex marriages, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activists fighting for the same rights as heterosexual Christians.
Seeking to address the contentious issue, Welby called on the bishops last year to “abound in love for all,” even as he backed the validity of a resolution passed in 1998 that rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.”
The only HIV vaccine in a late-stage trial has failed, researchers announced Wednesday, dealing a significant blow to the effort to control the global HIV epidemic and adding to a decadeslong roster of failed attempts.
Known as Mosaico, the trial was the product of a public-private partnership including the U.S. government and the pharmaceutical giant Janssen. It was run out of eight nations in Europe and the Americas, including the U.S., starting in 2019. Researchers enrolled nearly 3,900 men who have sex with men and transgender people, all deemed at substantial risk of HIV.
The leaders of the studydecided to discontinue the mammoth research effort after an independent data and safety monitoring board reviewed the trial’s findings and saw no evidence the vaccine lowered participants’ rate of HIV acquisition.
“It’s obviously disappointing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, who as the long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was an integral partner in the trial, said of the vaccine’s failure. However, he said, “there are a lot of other approaches” early in the HIV-vaccine research pipeline that he finds promising.
“I don’t think that people should give up on the field of the HIV vaccine,” Fauci said.
Fauci previously said he did not want to retire from the NIAID until an HIV vaccine had been proven at least 50% effective — good enough, in his view, for a global rollout. Instead, he retired from his post at the end of last month with this dream unfulfilled.
In addition to NIAID and Janssen, which is a division of Johnson & Johnson, the trial was run by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, which is headquartered in the Fred Hutchinson Research Center in Seattle, and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command.
Mosaico’s lack of efficacy was not unexpected, experts said, because of the recent failure, announced in August 2021, of a separate clinical trial, called Imbokodo, which tested a similar vaccine among women in Africa. Between the two trials, NIAID spent $56 million, according to an agency spokesperson.
The vaccines testedin both trials used a common cold virus to deliver what are known as mosaic immunogens, which were intended to trigger a robust and protective immune response by including genetic material from a variety of HIV strains prevalent around the world, according to the National Institutes of Health. Mosaico included an additional element intended to broaden the immune response.
Participants in Mosaico, who were between ages 18 and 60, received four injections over 12 months, either of the vaccine or a placebo. The monitoring board found no significant difference in the HIV acquisition rate between the two study groups.
Fauci said that a critical limitation of the Mosaico vaccine was that it elicited what are known as non-neutralizing — as opposed to neutralizing — antibodies against HIV.
“It is becoming clear,” he said, “that vaccines that do not induce neutralizing antibodies are not effective against HIV.”
The critical problem that has bedeviled HIV vaccine research for decades, Fauci noted, is a crucial weakness that the virus already successfully exploits: The natural immune response to infection is not sufficient to thwart the virus.
“So vaccines would actually have to do better than natural infection to be effective,” he said. “That would be a very high bar.”
A decadeslong effort
In 1984, following the discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS the previous year, President Ronald Reagan’s health secretary, Margaret Heckler, famously claimed a vaccine for the virus would be available within two years.
In the decades since, there have been nine late-stage clinical trials of HIV vaccines, including Mosaico and Imbokodo, plus one, called PrEPVacc, that is still underway in Africa. However, the vaccine in PrEPVacc is not considered to be on a direct path to licensure if it demonstrates efficacy. Only one of these vaccines has shown any efficacy — and only at a modest level, not considered robust enough for regulatory approval — in a trial conducted in Thailand between 2003 and 2006, the findings of which were published in 2009.
In the years since, a phalanx of global researchers has studied the Thai trial in hopes of developing insights to inform further HIV-vaccine development.
The yearslong effort to design the Imbokodo and Mosaico vaccines was in part grounded in an attempt to build on the modest success of the Thai trial.
“We had hoped that we would see some signal of efficacy from this vaccine,” said Dr. Susan Buchbinder, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who co-led the Mosaico trial. She added that, promisingly, as in the Imbokodo trial, there were no evident concerns about the vaccine’s safety.
Buchbinder said it is too early to determine the reasons behind the Mosaico vaccine’s failure. Her team will be analyzing blood samples from participants over the coming months to investigate. They will also seek to determine if there were any subgroups of participants among whom the vaccine did show any efficacy. As with the Thai trial, the hope is to channel research findings into future HIV vaccine development.
Other HIV prevention tools
Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, said the trial’s failure is a “stark reminder of just how elusive an HIV vaccine really is and why this kind of research continues to be important.”
“Fortunately, there are a number of highly effective HIV prevention interventions already,” Kates added. “The challenge is to scale them up to reach all at risk.”
Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, in which people at risk of HIV take antiretroviral medications in advance of potential exposure to the virus, is highly effectiveat preventing infection but remains vastly underutilized in the U.S. and around the world.
Additionally, researchpublishedin the mid-2000s showed that voluntary medical male circumcision lowers the risk of female-to-male HIV acquisition by about 60%. This led to a major effort to promote circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the HIV cases in the world.
In more recent years, an antiretroviral-infused vaginal ring has proven effective at lowering women’s HIV risk. Initial efforts are underway to introduce it in African nations.
And, of course, there is the old mainstay: condoms.
Globally, an estimated 38.4 million people were living with HIV in 2021, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Some 1.5 million people currently contract the virus annually, a figure that has more than halved since its peak in 1996.
It is at least theoretically possible, although extremely challenging, to bring HIV to heel without a vaccine. Fortunately, successfully treating HIV eliminates the risk of transmitting the virus through sex. So HIV transmission has declined in recent years in large part because of the dramatic scale-up of antiretroviral treatment of the virus, which by 2021 reached 28.7 million people.
Mosaico was particularly challenging to design ethically because of the advent of PrEP, which was first approved in the U.S. in 2012. To prove a vaccine works, researchers must recruit participants who remain at substantial risk of HIV over time. So Mosaico first offered PrEP to those seeking to enroll in the trial and only accepted as participants those who adamantly declined the preventive therapy notwithstanding their risk of HIV.
Transgender youths reported more life satisfaction and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety after receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy for two years, according to a new study.
The research, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated 315 transgender youths between 12 to 20 years old, with an average age of 16, over the course of two years while they were being treated with gender-affirming hormone therapy.
The researchers are a group of physicians and professors associated with universities and children’s hospitals in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. The study was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The researchers used scales that measured depression and anxiety, positive emotions and sense of life satisfaction, and appearance congruence — meaning how much a trans person feels their external appearance aligns with their gender identity. Participants rated each of these factors numerically.
Researchers found that, on average, participants reported increases in positive emotions, life satisfaction and appearance congruence. Those increases were associated with decreases in depression and anxiety symptoms.
The findings, researchers wrote, support the use of hormone therapy as an effective treatment for trans and nonbinary youths.
The researchers said their findingsalso suggest appearance congruence is important for trans and nonbinary youths’ well-being. The mental and physical health differences between youth who had undergone substantial “gender-incongruent” puberty — which is the puberty associated with their assigned sex at birth — and those who had not also supported the importance of appearance congruence for well-being.
Only a small subgroup (24 participants) in the study did not undergo extensive gender-incongruent puberty, either because they began puberty blockers at an early stage of puberty, or started gender-affirming hormones when their puberty began later.
“Those who had not gone through substantial gender-incongruent puberty had higher scores for appearance congruence, positive affect, and life satisfaction and lower scores for depression and anxiety at baseline than youth who had undergone substantial endogenous puberty,” meaning the puberty associated with their assigned sex, the researchers wrote.
They also noted that depression and anxiety symptoms decreased significantly and life satisfaction increased significantly among trans and nonbinary youth designated female at birth but not for those designated male at birth. This difference, they wrote, could be attributed to a few factors: First, some physical changes associated with estrogen, such as breast growth, can take between two to five years to reach their “maximum effect.”
As a result, the researchers speculated that a longer follow-up period may be necessary for trans feminine youth to see an effect on mental health.
Second, they wrote that physical changes that result from going through testosterone-driven puberty, such as a deeper voice, might be “more pronounced and observable” than those associated with an estrogen-driven puberty.
Third, the researchers wrote that it’s possible the differences in anxiety and life satisfaction could be related to less social acceptance of transfeminine people, compared with transmasculine people.
Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2021 suggested that transfeminine youth may experience more minority stress, which is stress faced by stigmatized minority groups like LGBTQ people, than transmasculine youth.
The authors of the new study wrote that understanding the effect of gender-affirming hormones on the mental health and well-being of transgender and nonbinary youth “would appear crucial, given the documented mental health disparities observed in this population, particularly in the context of increasing politicization of gender-affirming medical care.”
Over the last two years, state legislatures have considered dozens of bills that seek to restrict access to gender-affirming medical care, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for transgender minors.
Governors in four states — Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Arizona — have signed restrictions on such care into law, but measures in Arkansas and Alabama have been blocked from taking effect by federal judges pending litigation.
So far this year, lawmakers have introduced such legislation in at least 16 states.
Supporters of this legislation argue that the care is experimental and that minors are too young to make decisions about medical care that could have irreversible impacts.
These groups point to the growing body of research that has found the care to have significant positive mental and physical health effects for transgender youth, who have disproportionately high rates of suicide.
A national survey released last year by the Trevor Project, a national youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth (53%) seriously considered suicide in the past year. Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) reported that they had attempted suicide in the past year.
In addition to the New England Journal of Medicine study, about half a dozen others have shown that access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy can improve mental health outcomes, including reducing suicidal ideation, among transgender youths.
Three studies — two published in 2020 and another published in 2021 — found that earlier access to gender-affirming medical care is associated with better mental health.
And a 2021 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, which was based on data from the Trevor Project, found that gender-affirming hormone therapy is strongly linked to a lower risk of suicide and depression for transgender youths between the ages of 13 and 24.
The researchers behind the New England Journal of Medicine Study noted that there were some limitations to their study. For example, they recruited participants from gender clinics at children’s hospitals in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles.
As a result, they said the findings might not apply to youth who cannot access comprehensive gender-affirming care or youth who are self-medicating with gender-affirming hormones.
They also noted that improvement in mental health varied widely, and that some participants continued to report high levels of depression and anxiety and lower levels of positive emotions and life satisfaction.
Two participants died by suicide during the study and six withdrew, according to the researchers. The information gathered before they died or left the study was included in the analyses, they added.
The study did not examine other factors that are known to affect psychosocial functioning among trans youth, such as parental support. The study also lacked a comparison group, which the researchers said limits their ability to establish causality. They plan to study those other factors and will continue to follow the cohort to see whether the improvements are sustained over a longer period of time.
Lingering supply chain issues related to the COVID pandemic are affecting stocks of testosterone available for trans men.
Around the world, sporadic shortages of the hormone are creating anxiety among the trans population over the potential physical and psychological effects of missed doses.
In Mexico, the shortage is having real-world consequences.
“One day, I wrote to all my friends that there aren’t any hormones left at the pharmacy downtown,” Chiapas resident Chiu Palomeque told Global Press Journal. “I told them I would go and check another one and I was like ‘Phew! They have it here. Yes! Come and get it here.’”
But soon after, supplies of the injectable drug ran out. After his first missed monthly dose, Palomeque’s period returned with a vengeance.
“It’s as if knives are stabbing into my stomach,” he said.
The shortage dates back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic when supply chain problems and COVID vaccine manufacturing upended the pharmaceutical industry.
The lack of one affordable option in particular, Primoteston Depot from Bayer AG, hit the uninsured in Mexico hard. A statement from the pharmaceutical giant in July said supply chain disruptions continue to reduce the manufacturer’s ability to produce and supply the drug in Latin America and around the world.
Trans men who have not undergone a hystero-oophorectomy, hysterectomy, or oophorectomy, which involve the removal of the uterus and/or ovaries, are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects. According to Dr. Daniela Muñoz Jiménez, a physician and the founder of the community health organization Trans Salud, the absence of testosterone replacement therapy “becomes catastrophic” for those individuals.
For those who have undergone the procedures, discontinuing hormone therapy increases the risk of decalcification, or the loss of bone calcium.
With or without those surgeries, drastic changes in cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and glucose can occur within days, while the psychological effects can be just as debilitating, reviving the gender dysphoria that hormone therapy addresses.
Trans men in Mexico who are uninsured rely on inexpensive versions of the drug like Bayer’s Primoteston. Alternatives, including Nebido from Grünenthal, can cost ten times as much.
According to Sony Rangel, a founder of trans support service Transmasculinidades MX, trans men and transmasculine individuals are more economically vulnerable than their transfeminine peers, because trans women often start their transition at an older age.
While shortages persist, organizations like Rangel’s and online communities are getting the word out on available supplies and alternatives.
In Canada, Ontario’s trans community on Reddit is sharing helpful information.
“Hi all!” read a post in December. “Just wanted to share that yesterday, I went to pick up my renewal for injectable testosterone at a Shopper’s Drug Mart in Ottawa and was informed that there was a shortage, that it was on back order, and that it wouldn’t be available for a while. They said they have other forms available (gels & capsules) and would fax my doctor to get a prescription for one of those, but heads up if you inject T!”
Republican legislators in Iowa have introduced their version of a “don’t say gay” bill, largely mimicking the one that became law in Florida last year, and a bill that would essentially out transgender and nonbinary students to their parents.
House File 8, introduced Wednesday, would prohibit instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. House File 9, introduced the same day, would bar schools from making accommodations for a student’s gender identity, if different from the one assigned at birth, without the written consent of a parent or guardian. It also says school staff must not encourage students to undergo gender-affirming care or pressure their parents into allowing them to receive it.
House File 9 is partly a reaction to policies like that in Iowa’s Linn-Mar Community School District, which allows students to set up a gender support plan without giving notice to their parents, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports. Parents Defending Education, a right-wing group, has filed a lawsuit against the policy.
“We need to empower parents,” House Speaker Pat Grassley, a Republican who cosponsored both bills, told The Gazette. “In our opinion, that’s what the goal of these [bills] are, making sure conversations are happening with children and their parents, instead of happening in the school system. We feel confident standing in that position.”
Republican Rep. Skyler Wheeler, also a sponsor of both, made a similar comment. “Parents want to know what’s going on,” he told the Dispatch. “They need to know what is happening with their children. They need to be the first one to be helping their children through processes and things that they truly need help with.”
But it’s not as simple as that, LGBTQ+ advocates pointed out. “We absolutely encourage students to come out to their parents on their own time, on their own ground, their own rules, when they are most comfortable,” Damian Thompson, director of public policy for Iowa Safe Schools, told the Dispatch regarding House File 9. “Ultimately, unfortunately, there are parents that are just not affirming people. And that can really put a student in danger get if they are outed, not on their own terms.”
Of House File 8, Keenan Crow of One Iowa told the publication, “It’s taking all the tools that educators have to deal with bullying on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and throwing them up out the window. If we’re saying that you can’t have any materials or announcements regarding gender identity or sexual orientation, that the very antibullying policies that school districts are required to publicize and to create training materials around for students are not going to be able to be shared with the students.”
But Wheeler said the bill wouldn’t have such a deleterious effect. “If a kid has, you know, same-sex parents, nothing prevents them in this bill from mentioning that in class,” he said to the Dispatch. “It just simply says to the teacher, ‘Hey, we’re going to stick to what we’ve been teaching.’”
Sen. Liz Bennett, who is bisexual and was the first queer woman elected to the Iowa legislature, called both bills harmful. “This sends the message to these kids that people think that there is something so wrong” with being part of the LGBTQ+ community, Bennett, a Democrat, told The Gazette. “That’s incredibly harmful.”
“I think it’s really sad that at a time when Iowans are struggling to afford groceries, trying to find jobs, struggling to go the doctor, etc., that we’re seeing more extreme culture war legislation,” she added. “That should not be the priority here in Iowa.”
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking state universities for the number and ages of their students who sought or received gender dysphoria treatment, including sex reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions, according to a survey released Wednesday.
Why he’s conducting the survey wasn’t completely clear. DeSantis has been criticized by LGBTQ advocates for policies seen as discriminatory, including banning instruction on sexual and gender identity in early grades and making it easier for parents to remove books related to the topic in public schools.
“We can see cuts in funding for universities to treat students with this condition, and I think an all-out elimination of services is certainly on the table,” said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell.
The survey was released the same day the university presidents voted to support DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda and to reject “the progressivist higher education indoctrination agenda” and committing to “removing all woke positions and ideologies by February 1, 2023,” according to a Department of Education news release.
The survey is being sent to the university board of trustee chairs by DeSantis’ budget director, Chris Spencer.
“Our office has learned that several state universities provide services to persons suffering from gender dysphoria,” Spencer wrote. “On behalf of the Governor, I hereby request that you respond to the enclosed inquiries related to such services.”
The governor’s office did not respond to emails and a phone call seeking information about the purpose of the survey, which must be completed by Feb. 10. Spencer told the chairs the survey is to be completed as part of their obligation to govern institutional resources and protect the public interest.
Driskell said DeSantis is trying to remake the state’s universities “in his own image” as far as what can be taught and how students can be treated.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s a really terrifying place that we’re at in Florida history,” Driskell said. “What can happen is a brain drain where we have Florida students not want to stay here and attend school at our public colleges and universities.”
The survey is similar to one the governor is forcing state universities to complete regarding spending on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory programs.
The current memo asks universities to “provide the number of encounters for sex-reassignment treatment or where such treatment was sought” as well as data for students referred to other facilities. It says to protect students’ identities when completing the information.
The survey requires a breakdown by age, regardless of whether the student is age 18 or older, of people prescribed hormones or hormone antagonists or who underwent a medical procedures like mastectomies, breast augmentation or removal and reconstruction of genitals.
In response to the flood of anti-trans legislation and anti-LGBTQ+ hatred in the U.S., a transgender woman has founded TRANSport, an organization helping trans people flee the country.
Rynn Azerial Willgohs, a 50-year-old transgender woman, began researching ways to leave the country after two events took place.
First, in March 2021, a man nearly strangled her to death in a public restroom while she was traveling across the state for work — she hasn’t felt safe in public ever since. “There’s like 30 states right now I wouldn’t even drive through,” Willgohs, a North Dakota resident, told VICE News.
Then, in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to legal abortion. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that the court should possibly overturn its past decisions legalizing same-sex marriage, guaranteeing contraception access, and invalidating anti-sodomy laws.
When associates of hers began asking about the likelihood of LGBTQ+ rights being rolled back in the U.S., Willgohs started researching the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees’ guidelines on refugee status based on sexual and gender orientation. She has since begun researching LGBTQ+ organizations in Europe to better understand options for queer relocation.
In 2022, Republicans nationwide introduced over 170 anti-trans bills and over 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state legislatures. In 2023, nine states are already planning to introduce legislation to block transgender youth from seeking gender-affirming care, The Hill reports.If that legislation becomes law, gender-affirming healthcare for young people will be inaccessible in nearly one-fifth of all states.
On top of that, right-wing conservatives have increasingly demonized LGBTQ+ people, allies, and drag performers for “grooming” children for sexual abuse, claiming they subject kids to “gender confusion” and “genital mutilation” (even though gender-affirming surgeries aren’t conducted on minors). The hate speech has led to an increase in hate-motivated attacks, including the recent deadly shooting at the LGBTQ+ bar Club Q in Colorado Springs.
In 2021, there were 1,132 hate crimes based on sexual orientation and 266 based on gender identity, according to FBI data. The latter number represented a 40 percent increase since 2019. Trans people, especially non-white trans people, are more likely than cisgender individuals to face physical and sexual violence, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“All you need to do is look at the news and see how bad it’s going to get in the country,” Willgohs told VICE. “We’re accused of being pedophiles and of grooming children. We’re being accused of being a social contagion that makes every child think they are in the queer community. That’s the farthest from the truth.”
She started TRANSport as a Facebook group, but the group received non-profit status in November 2022, allowing it to accept donations. TRANSport has since been contacted by at least 30 individuals looking for assistance. Willgohs says the organization’s application process probably won’t open until near the end of February, and even then, it’ll primarily serve trans people in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. But she hopes other organizations like hers will emerge in other states.
Willgohs herself is considering relocating to Iceland, a country she’s visited where she felt her trans identity was a “non-issue.” However, it’s unclear to her if other countries’ laws even allow U.S. citizens to claim asylum for anti-trans persecution.
The UN guidelines on LGBTQ+ asylum state that persecution “can be considered to involve serious human rights violations, including a threat to life or freedom as well as other kinds of serious harm” including physical, psychological, and sexual violence. To qualify for asylum, a person doesn’t need to prove that they’ve already been harmed by anti-LGBTQ+ violence.
But European Union statistics on LGBTQ+ refugees are spotty, making it difficult to know whether other UN-member countries are actually accepting queer asylum seekers as required by UN guidelines.
“European cases, when it comes to trans cases, are generally very strict… asylum is really a high-bar process,” human rights researcher Nora Noralla told VICE. “It’s not hard for [Americans] to come to Europe… If any trans Americans want to come they have a lot of options. They don’t need to apply for asylum.”
“It’s still a first world country and strongest economy in the world. You still have rule of law, you still have human rights mechanisms,” Noralla continued.
“To apply for asylum you need to prove that the entire country isn’t safe for you. You need to prove this is a federal policy.”
In the meantime, Willgohs said she hopes her organization can help support some people through their transitions by teaching them how to legally change their names and gender markers on official government IDs. Other state organizations also provide such assistance to trans people, but the associated costs and paperwork can prevent many trans people from ever officially changing their documents, something that can leave them subject to harassment and discrimination.
A federal judge has ruled that a Catholic hospital discriminated against a transgender man when it refused to perform a gender-affirming procedure.
Jesse Hammons sued the University of Maryland Medical System, which owns St. Joseph Medical Center, after the facility canceled a hysterectomy in January 2020. Hammons’s doctor, Steven Adashek, had approved the procedure to treat his gender dysphoria. But St. Joseph’s chief medical officer, Dr. Gail Cunningham, later informed Adashek that the procedure could not be performed at the hospital because it conflicted with the facility’s religious directives.
“We cannot do transgender surgery at St. [Joseph],” Cunningham told Adashek, according to court records.
Hammons received a hysterectomy at another hospital months later after undergoing an additional round of preoperative tests.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Deborah K. Chasanow ruled that St. Joseph’s had discriminated against Hammons on the basis of sex under the Affordable Care Act. The ACA prohibits providers receiving federal funding from discriminating on the “basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex” and includes provisions for “pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”
St. Joseph’s, which is owned by a state institution—the University of Maryland—subject to constitutional non-discrimination requirements, receives federal Medicaid and Medicare funding. The hospital performs hysterectomies for cisgender women as prescribed treatment for medical conditions, and thus discriminated against Hammons on the basis of sex when it refused to perform the procedure, which was prescribed to treat his gender dysphoria.
As Gay City News notes, numerous federal courts have concluded that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition.
According to court documents, Cunningham testified that “the fact that it was a gender transition treatment… was enough to deny [permission to perform the surgery].”
“This court has determined that undisputed facts establish that, as a matter of law, Defendants discriminated against Plaintiff on the basis of his sex,” Chasanow wrote.
“We’re thankful the court saw through a transparently discriminatory and harmful action by UMMS,” Joshua Block, senior staff attorney for the ACLU which represented Hammons, wrote in a news release. “The government has no business operating a religious hospital, much less do they have the right to deny transgender patients care they routinely provide to cisgender patients.”
“This is a great win for myself and all transgender people denied equal treatment because of who they are,” said Hammons. “All I wanted was for UMMS to treat my health care like anyone else’s, and I’m glad the court recognized how unfair it was to turn me away. I’m hopeful UMMS can change this harmful policy and help more transgender people access the care they need.”
Following the ruling, Michael Schwartzberg, senior director of media relations at the University of Maryland Medical System, released a statement saying that UM and St. Joseph’s were reviewing Chasanow’s decision.
“We dispute many of the conclusions that were reached in this decision and may be in a position to comment further after additional analysis of the ruling,” the statement read. “Legal disagreements aside, we sincerely wish the very best for Mr. Hammons and we support his efforts to seek the highest quality healthcare. We may disagree on certain technical, legal points but compassion for the patients we serve remains foundational to our work.”
“This legal claim stems directly from, and is traceable to, a surgeon mistakenly scheduling a procedure that could not be performed at UM SJMC,” it continued. “Although our offer to perform gender-affirming surgery at a different location was declined by Mr. Hammons, the University of Maryland Medical System remains committed to meeting the unique medical needs of transgender individuals and patients who are routinely scheduled by physicians for appointments and procedures at UMMS member organizations.”
Republicans and Democrats don’t often see eye-to-eye on social issues, but even within the Democratic party, there’s a differing views on gender identity and transgender issues.
A May 2022 poll from The Pew Research Center found that 60 percent of U.S. adults say that the identities of man or woman are determined by someone’s sex at birth. Around 38 percent say someone can be a man or woman, even if that differs from their sex at birth.
The statistics reveal that over half of U.S. adults incorrectly conflate gender with sex, as every major medical institution separates the two.
According to the National Institute of Health: “‘Sex’ refers to biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles. ‘Gender’ refers to socially constructed and enacted roles and behaviors which occur in a historical and cultural context and vary across societies and over time.”
Though the division is greater among party lines, as a new study from Pew found that 86 percent of Republicans believe gender is determined by sex, as opposed to 61 percent of Democrats who believe the two are separate categories.
Even within the Democratic party, the opinions of racial groups vastly differ. Around 66 percent of Black Democrats align with Republicans in the belief that gender is determined by sex.
In comparison, 72 percent of White Democrats, 61 percent of Asian Democrats, and 54 percent of Hispanic Democrats believe that gender and sex are separate.
When it comes to transgender acceptance across party lines, “38 percent of adults say society has gone too far in accepting trans people, 36 percent say it has not gone far enough, and 23 percent say it is about right.” Of Republicans, 66 percent say society has “gone too far in accepting transgender people,” while a majority of Democrats at 59 percent say it has not gone far enough.
Black Democrats are less likely than White, Hispanic, and Asian Democrats to favor policies that would protect transgender people from discrimination in the workforce, athletics, or in healthcare.
In social settings, 34 percent of Black Democrats favor policies that would require transgender people to use public bathrooms that match their sex at birth. Support for such policies is much lower among other Democrats, with, 14 percent of White, 20 percent of Asian, and 24 percent of Hispanic Democrats
The difference in opinions based on racial groups can somewhat be attributed to the role spirituality plays in minority communities, as the report reads: “[Black Democrats] tend to be more religious than other Democrats as well – and more likely to say religion influences their views on gender identity.”
Another factor that sets White Democrats apart is their proximity to transgender people in their lives, with the study finding they are “more likely than Democrats in all other major racial and ethnic groups to say their views on gender identity are influenced a great deal or fair amount by knowing someone who is transgender.”
Far-right pundit Jordan Peterson has finally discovered that his actions have consequences following several controversial tweets.
The anti-LGBTQ+ author has been told he could have his psychology licence revoked if he refuses to undergo a mandatory coaching program by the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO).
Peterson initially revealed he was obligated to take the course in a 3 January twitter thread.
“The Ontario College of Psychologists has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social media communication retraining with their experts,” he wrote.
“About a dozen people from all over the world submitted complaints about my public statements on Twitter and [The Joe Rogan Podcast] over a four-year period claiming I had ‘harmed’ people with my views.”
The former Toronto psychology professor also aired his frustrations at the obligatory media training course in a 4 January column for The National Post.
He cited his tweets criticising Canadian president Justin Trudeau – for what he described as an “unconstitutional” COVID-19 travel ban, while also calling him a “puppet” – as the reason for the admonishment from the Ontario College of Psychologists.
“What exactly have I done that is so seriously unprofessional that I am now a danger not only to any new potential clients but to the public itself?” Peterson wrote.
Jordan Peterson has claimed his tweets criticising Justin Trudeau were predominantly why he is obligated to attend the media training session. (Getty)
Others have routinely cited his often blatantly anti-LGBTQ+ tweets and rhetoric, including claims that being trans is a “contagion” similar to “satanic ritual abuse”.
Peterson acknowledged these criticisms in his column, saying that he had been labelled “sexist, transphobic” and a “climate change denialist”.
Despite the plethora of examples detailing Peterson’s vehement anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments – including several dozen tweets and audio snippets of him comparing the trans community to “borderline schizophrenic” individuals – he failed to cite any in his article.
Most notable was his refusal to correctly gender actor Elliot Page in a set of tweets in July, prompting his several-month-long ban from Twitter before being reinstated after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the site.
After being banned, Peterson recorded a 15-minute YouTube video titled “Twitter ban” which saw the media pundit call gender-affirming healthcare a “viciously harmful fad”.
Since being reinstated, Peterson’s rhetoric against the transgender and LGBTQ+ community has continued among his repeated tweets of lockdown scepticism and far-right ideological rhetoric.
In a statement to Global News, the CPO said: “The college is not authorised to discuss this matter as per the confidentiality provisions of section 36 of Ontario’s Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991.”
