Montana’s governor has signed a bill that bans transgender athletes from competing on school and university sports teams that correspond with their gender. Greg Gianforte’s signing on Friday makes Montana the latest Republican-controlled state to approve such legislation.
Conservative lawmakers in state capitols across the US have proposed more than 80 laws this year targeting trans people, the majority of them seeking to ban trans children from certain sports teams or limit youth access to gender affirming health care.
When the Associated Press recently contacted lawmakers behind the proposed bans, most couldn’t cite a single local example of a trans girl playing sports.
A consistent level of parental support, even if it’s negative, leads to better mental health outcomes for lesbians and gay men, according to a small new study.
The report, released this week at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, found that individuals whose parents were initially unsupportive of their sexual orientation but became more accepting with time were most likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Researchers at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology surveyed 175 cisgender gay men and lesbians about the initial and current levels of parental support they received regarding their sexuality.
Based on their responses, the subjects were divided into three groups: Those whose parents’ reaction was consistently positive, those whose parents’ reaction was consistently negative and those whose parents’ reaction shifted from negative to positive. (A fourth group, individuals whose parents were initially positive but shifted to negative, was excluded because it was too small to analyze.)
The groups were then given two assessments frequently used to determine mental health: the general anxiety disorder-7questionnaire and a patient health questionnaire. The first questionnaire found those with consistently positive support and those with consistently negative support had “mild anxiety,” while those whose parents evolved from negative to positive had “moderate anxiety.” The latter questionnaire, which rates symptoms of depression, found those with static parental reactions exhibited “mild depression,” while those whose parents shifted their support had what is considered “moderate depression.”
Lead author Matthew Verdun, a doctoral candidate in applied clinical psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a licensed family therapist, said many factors could be at play, including that family rejection can lead gays and lesbians to find new, healthier support systems.
“In coming out, we learn how to cultivate meaningful relationships and navigate across social context,” he said. “Who are safe people to come out to? How do I identify the people who are going to accept all of me, including my orientation?”
Re-establishing the bond with a previously unaccepting parent could mean ending therapy or abandoning a chosen family, he said. And just because a parent is more accepting doesn’t mean the environment is a positive one.
“If a parent goes from being unsupportive to supportive, are they abandoning some of their relationships that may still be unhealthy?” Verdun said. “Are they part of a faith tradition that rejects their child or says they’re an abomination? If the parent comes around but doesn’t shift out of that belief system, that’s going to affect their child.”
Previous research has generally linked negative responses from family to a higher probability of LGBTQ mental health issues: According to a 2010 study by the Family Acceptance Project, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young adults who reported low levels of family acceptance in adolescence were over three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to report suicide attempts, compared to those with high levels of family acceptance.
But those studies, Verdun noted, look at the dynamic at one point in time, usually when the individual has just come out or is still living at home. “I wanted to know what happens over time,” he said.
The findings can be useful for mental health providers, he said, but they shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that rejecting your gay or lesbian child is a healthy response.
“If I was talking to parents, I’d say supporting your child is key,” Verdun said.
Psychiatrist Jack Drescher, author of “Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man” and a former editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health, called the findings “rather surprising.”
“It’s not the result we expect, based on clinical evidence,” Drescher, who was not involved in the study, said. “But when we don’t know the answer, the answer is always to do more study. I’d love to see qualitative research — get narratives of the people involved and see what themes emerge among those who had the experience of having negative and later positive responses.”
Amazon is still selling a book that advocates say perpetuates the idea that being transgender is harmful to youth and something to be “cured.”
The book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” by the journalist Abigail Shrier, explores what Shrier calls an “epidemic” of young girls coming out as trans.
“A generation of girls is at risk,” the Amazon description of the book reads. “Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it — or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.”
Dozens of Amazon employees, including some who are LGBTQ, filed an internal complaint in April arguing that the book violates Amazon’s policy against selling books “that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness,” according to The Seattle Times, which received images of the complaint.
“Irreversible Damage,” by Abigail Shrier.Regnery Publishing
But on April 23, the company’s director of book content risk and quality announced on an internal message board that Amazon would continue to sell the book.
“After examining the content of the book in detail and calibrating with senior leadership, we have confirmed that it does not violate our content policy,” the director wrote, according to The Seattle Times.
Not everyone on the board that reviewed the book agreed with the company’s decision. The Seattle Times cited Slack messages in which at least one employee involved in the review process said, “We told them it’s transphobic and needs to be removed.”
An Amazon spokesperson told NBC News in an email, “As a bookseller, we believe that providing access to written speech and a variety of viewpoints is one of the most important things we do — even when those viewpoints differ from our own or Amazon’s stated positions.”
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has vocally supported LGBTQ rights in the past. In 2012, he donated $2.5 million to advocates fighting for marriage equality. The company also recently joined a list of businesses that support the Equality Act — a bill that would provide LGBTQ people with federal protections from discrimination in housing, education, public accommodations and other areas of life. Amazon also signed on to a recent Human Rights Campaign letter condemning states that pass anti-LGBTQ legislation, including bills that target transgender youth.
Shrier has defended the book’s content, writing on Twitter with a link to The Seattle Times article about Amazon’s decision, “Anyone who thinks my book ‘advances a narrative of transgender identity as a disease’ hasn’t read it, or is a bona fide idiot.”
She writes in the book’s introduction that it is “not about transgender adults,” but about what she says is an increasing number of children assigned female at birth identifying as transgender. She told The Seattle Times that her book doesn’t take a stance against transitioning for adults in any way, but that she opposes the “fast-tracking of youth” into medical transition.
Shrier did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Trans advocates and physicians who treat trans youth oppose Shrier’s book because they say it poses a danger to youth and spreads misinformation. Medical experts have said that trans minors are never “fast-tracked” into medical transition. Rather, international medical guidance recommends that prepubertal youth socially transition and receive mental health therapy.
Dr. Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he researches the mental health of transgender youth, said the book “promotes the idea that transgender youth are ‘confused’ and that gender diversity is something to be ‘cured.’”
“Every relevant major medical organization (The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Psychiatric Association, and The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, to name a few) disagrees with this position,” Turban said in an email. “A recent study from our group found that attempts to force transgender people to be cisgender are strongly associated with suicide attempts.”
The ideas in Shrier’s book, Turban said, could have negative effects on the mental health of transgender youth. “Research consistently shows that family rejection of a young person’s gender identity is a major predictor of bad mental health outcomes, including suicide attempts,” Turban said. “This book promotes that kind of family rejection. I can’t emphasize enough how dangerous that is from a public mental health perspective.”
In November, Target said it would remove Shrier’s book from shelves after backlash from LGBTQ advocates. But it reversed that decision after critics said it was suppressing Shrier’s free speech rights. At the time, trans people and advocates condemned Target’s decision.n1266447&sessionId=f05d091f28fd33ae6b252c89996f977218833b26&siteScreenName=NBCNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px
Shrier and her book faced criticism again when she testified against the Equality Act during a Senate hearing in March.
But she has also received a wave of support in part from people who argue that books of any kind should not be censored.
Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a law professor at the New York Law School, said she hasn’t read Shrier’s book, but “it doesn’t matter” to her what the book says — she thinks it should continue to be published and sold as a matter of free speech.
She said she recently tried to persuade a publisher to keep publishing “Mien Kampf,” Hitler’s autobiography, “and it’s not despite the fact that my father barely survived the Holocaust — it’s because of that fact,” Strossen said, adding that she believes free speech is “the most effective way to expand rights and safety and dignity for any individual or group, but, in particular, those who have traditionally been marginalized and oppressed.”
No matter how well intended, suppression of speech does more harm than good, Strossen said. First, she argued that it gives the person being censored and their speech even more attention. Second, she said people who are anti-trans can make people like Shrier “martyrs for free speech.”
She said suppression can also create what’s called the forbidden fruits effect or the Streisand effect — after Barbra Streisand, who, in 2003, tried to have photos of her Malibu house taken off of the internet, which sparked more public interest in the photos.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, that idea … people who are trying to suppress it must be really threatened by the idea, let me look into it,’” Strossen said of what happens when ideas or speech are suppressed. “And so the idea, paradoxically, gains credibility.”
She said she believes “the more dangerous an idea,” the more important it is for the idea to be understood and responded to by those who can explain why it’s wrong and dangerous.
In the case of Shrier’s book, Strossen said, it’s important that people who support trans young people can show that “if you truly care about the health and lives and mental health and physical health and equal well being and dignity of these young people, that these ideas are wrong and misguided.”
The White House is preparing to confront the wave of transphobic legislation proliferating in at least 33 states.
A total of 253 anti-LGBT+ bills have been introduced in the current legislative session, 124 of which are explicitly anti-trans. Sixty-six are focused on sports, 33 on access to healthcare, and 14 on bathroom and locker room access.
The Biden administration has already warned that many states passing these bills are breaking federal law, but has so far yet to enforce this in state legislatures.
That could be about to change, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s leading LGBT+ advocacy organisation.
HRC president Alphonso David told The Daily Beast: “We are having conversations with the Biden administration about additional actions that they should be taking as it relates to anti-LGBTQ bills that we’re seeing in these states.
“But we want to make sure we don’t lose sight of how important those words are, and how important his early actions have been to support and protect LGBTQ people throughout the country.”
When asked if he would like to see the White House directly and publicly challenge the anti-trans bills, David replied: “The short answer is ‘Yes,’ and based on my conversations with the administration I believe they will be doing that.”
David would not reveal the detail of the conversations HRC was having with the Biden administration, “except to say we are exploring variety of ways where the administration could be even more active”.
“Federal agencies interpret federal law,” he continued, “and I believe in many cases, the bills being passed in many states across the country violate federal law, including the constitution.
So, there are options and actions that have yet to be taken that we are engaging with the Biden administration on as they explore different ways where they can be even more impactful. We can anticipate more actions from the Biden administration as related to these bills.
“I think more needs to be done, and we are engaging with them to do more. I believe that the administration is going be taking additional steps and additional actions that will further clarify their position as it relates to the anti-LGBTQ bills that we’re seeing in the states. I can’t tell you what form that will take.”
Separately, the Department of Justice confirmed to The Daily Beast that it plans to “fully enforce our civil rights statutes to protect transgender individuals”.
Tiffany Thomas, a 38-year-old Black trans woman, has been murdered in Texas, making her at least the 19th known trans person violently killed so far this year.
Her friends remembered her as someone with a “big heart, who was “funny” and who always “stayed laughing”.
According to the Dallas Police Department, which misgendered and deadnamed Thomas, she was found on the ground at a car wash and pronounced dead at the scene.
Naomi Green, of the Dallas trans rights organisation Abounding Prosperity, said in a statement: “I am saddened to learn of another senseless murder of a member of our LGBTQ+ community in the Dallas area.
“Though there are still questions surrounding all the details of their death, regardless of how they identified no one deserves to have their life cut short in this way.
“My heart goes out to their family and friends as they mourn the death of their loved one, and I hope and pray that they receive the justice and peace they deserve. As an entire Dallas community, we have to do better!”
HRC director of community engagement for the transgender justice initiative Tori Cooper added: “Over the last few days and weeks, we have received reports of numerous deaths of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
“Tiffany did not deserve to die – none of the transgender and gender non-conforming people who have been killed this year deserved to lose their lives.
Last week, the New York City Council passed a bill mandating the city’s health department to develop educational materials about how so-called “normalizing” surgeries on children born with variations in their sex characteristics are medically unnecessary and risk lifelong harms.
This groundbreaking bill, which passed by a vote of 45-2, was authored by Council Member Daniel Dromm. “This legislation not only signifies a major step forward for the principle of informed consent but also aims to reduce the unfortunate stigma that still exists,” Dromm said in a press release. “The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will create a new outreach campaign, which will incorporate the input of several organizations and experts.”
Intersex people — or people born with variations in their sex characteristics — make up approximately 1.7 percent of the world’s population. Since surgeons popularized cosmetically “normalizing” surgeries on infants to remove gonads, reduce the size of the clitoris, or increase the size of the vagina in the 1960s, these practices have become widespread. Since the 1990s, intersex advocacy groups, as well as a range of medical and human rights organizations, have spoken out against the operations and called for regulation. One former New York City health commissioner, herself a pediatrician, called for the same in 2019.
Despite growing consensus that these surgeries should be a thing of the past, parents continue to face pressure from some surgeons to choose medically unnecessary operations when their children are too young to participate in the decision. In 2016 and 2017, I interviewed parents across the United States, including in New York, who described how surgeons urged them to elect these procedures for their perfectly healthy children. Why? Because the surgeons argued that children would be stigmatized if they looked different.
New York City has taken an important first step in supporting parents by providing accurate, affirming information about their children’s health to counter the misinformation and bigotry evident in what some surgeons present as medical advice.
Patrick O’Connell, a venerable AIDS activist who sought to smash stigma with awareness campaigns such as the iconic red ribbon, has died.
O’Connell passed away aged 67 of AIDS-related causes, his brother Barry confirmed to The New York Times.
Living with HIV for 40 years, he spent much of his life fronting campaigns to better educate the public about what it means to live with HIV/AIDS.
The son of a wire lather and secretary, O’Connell was born 12 April, 1953, in post-war New York City.
For much of the 1980s, O’Conell’s life was filled with rented black funeral suits and friends fearful of what was then a dooming diagnosis. By the end of the decade, AIDS had become the leading cause of death for men aged between 25 and 44.
In 1991, O’Connell formed Visual AIDS, a collective of artists and advocates who used a borrowed art gallery space to design exhibitions that forced the public to reckon that the disease.
We had no choice,” he said in a 2003 interview with the BBC. “We had to do something with our professional lives.
“The East Village art scene felt like it was disappearing overnight because of AIDS. All our colleagues around the country were dying.”
No wonder. The White House was, at the time, almost indifferent to the virus’ rampage across the US and treated it more as a punchline than a public health emergency.
That’s when O’Connell had an idea: a small way to encourage the world to reckon with the disease that was destroying so much of the LGBT+ community – a red ribbon.
That same year he launched the Ribbon Project and with it, an unwavering and defiant symbol of AIDS activism.
To O’Connell, the colour red was as rousing as it was morose. It symbolised, he told the BBC, blood. It is “the colour of passion” and is “vibrant and attention-getting”.
The yellow ribbons from the Gulf War were still all around,” he told The New York Timesin 1992. “We noticed that they could mean anything from ‘I care about young people who have gone overseas’ to ‘I support Bush.’
“We wanted that kind of leeway, too, something that could mean ‘I hate this government’ or just ‘I care about people with AIDS’.”
In the two weeks before the 1991 Tony Awards, the 15 artists involved in Visual AIDS oversaw the making of thousands of grosgrain ribbons which were delivered to the Minskoff Theatre.
As the awards were beamed into homes across America, host Jeremy Irons walked on – and he was wearing a red ribbon.
Soon enough, whether it be pinned on a dress worn by Elizabeth Taylor or printed on United States Postal Service-issued stamps, the red ribbon was everywhere.
O’Connell’s death comes after that of Larry Kramer, the ACT UP agitator who fought against policy-makers to take the disease seriously, and Nita Pippins, who was something of a mother figure to countless AIDS patients.
“It is hard to be prideful of something that was generated by such frustration and sorrow,” O’Connell reflected of his decades-long work in AIDS activism to the BBC.
“I would give anything, I would give back all this attention if I hadn’t lived through these decades of AIDS.
“All the people who died so young, these talented people. Now I know only one person alive from my 20s.”
Transgender people who have access to gender-affirming surgery report better mental health outcomes, according to a new study.
The report, published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery, compared the psychological distress levels, suicide risk and substance use in trans and gender-diverse people who had undergone gender-affirming surgery with those who wanted such procedures but had not yet had them.
The researchers found that subjects who had not received the surgical interventions they desired were nearly twice as likely to report severe psychological distress and suicidal thoughts, and reported higher incidences of binge drinking and tobacco use, as well.
“This study adds to a growing body of evidence showing affirmation in all forms can be life-saving for trans and gender-diverse people,” said lead author Anthony Almazan, a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. “Policies that limit access to care can put lives at risk. Our evidence shows we should be expanding gender-affirming care, not limiting it.”
Depending on an individual’s sex assigned at birth, a variety of surgical options are available, including facial contouring, tracheal shaving, chest construction, hysterectomy, phalloplasty and vaginoplasty.
Of the participants who indicated interest in one or more procedures, 13 percent had undergone surgery at least two years prior to being surveyed, while 59 percent wanted to but hadn’t.
Overall, gender-affirming surgery was associated with a 42 percent reduction in psychological distress, a 44 percent reduction in suicidal thoughts and a 35 percent reduction in tobacco smoking.
The authors say their findings shouldn’t be interpreted as suggesting all transgender people want or need surgery.
“There are many different gender-affirming surgeries, and not everyone pursues every option, or any,” said senior author Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, who directs the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at The Fenway Institute in Boston. “We can’t make any assumptions.”
Almazan, who plans to specialize in psychiatry, agreed, saying whether to undergo any form of transition is “a personal decision.”
“The role of physicians and surgeons is to help individuals determine what is appropriate for them,” he added. “There are multiple studies showing other forms of transition have had similar results.”
Keuroghlian cited a 2020 study that found changing one’s legal name and gender marker on government documents was also associated with improved mental health.
The new report, however, represents the first large-scale controlled study of the relationship between gender-affirming surgery and psychological well being. It uses data from nearly 20,000 participants in the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality.
About 39 percent of the participants identified as transgender women, 33 percent as transgender men and 27 percent as nonbinary. Other forms of affirmative care were adjusted for — including puberty blockers and hormone therapy — as were sociodemographic factors, like age, race and economic status.
The analysis didn’t parse results by specific procedure or gender identity, but Almazan indicated that could be addressed in future studies.
While the number of transgender individuals seeking to surgically transition has steadily increased over the past decade, research on its impact has been limited.
A 2019 report from the American Journal of Psychiatry ultimately found “no advantage” in surgery in relation to psychological distress and suicide attempts. But, according to Almazan, it relied on a much smaller sample size and lacked a proper control group.
“When they did update their analysis to include a control group, they didn’t differentiate between people who wanted gender-affirming surgery and hadn’t had it and those who didn’t want it,” he said.
Keuroghlian said the issue of gender-affirming health care is often clouded by “an anti-trans political agenda” that argues trans people “will eventually regret accessing care.”
A Fenway Institute report from last month found that most people who detransition, or revert to their sex assigned at birth, aren’t driven by internal factors. They’re “fueled by social pressure, stigma, economic status, incarceration and other external factors,” Keuroghlian said.
Dr. Sherman Leis, a Pennsylvania physician who has been performing gender-confirming surgeries for more than 20 years, said Almazan and Keuroghlian’s findings are further proof that “all barriers to transgender care and denial of insurance coverage for transgender surgeries clearly should be removed.”
“This is evidence to show those health plan insurers who have not wanted to cover transgender surgery because they wanted ‘more evidence showing the efficacy of surgery,’ that gender-affirming surgery should be made available to transgender and diverse gender people,” Leis said.
Ohio will soon join nearly every other state in the country in allowing transgender people born in the state to change the gender markers on their birth certificates. Tennessee will soon be the lone holdout.
The Ohio Department of Health will not appeal a federal court rulingissued in December that found the state’s ban on birth certificate gender changes is unconstitutional. The department is instead working on a process for people to request the change and expects to have it in place by June 1, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported Monday, citing a court filing made Thursday.
The December ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio came in response to a lawsuit brought by four transgender people born in Ohio. The plaintiffs, according to court documents, were subjected to professional humiliation, verbal harassment and threats to their safety as a result of not having a birth certificate that aligned with their gender identity.
The ruling cited a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality that found 36 percent of respondents in Ohio who showed an ID with a name or gender that did not match their gender presentation were “verbally harassed, denied benefits or service, asked to leave, or assaulted.”
Judge Michael Watson called the state’s argument that permitting changes to birth certificate gender markers would “undermine the accuracy of vital statistics or fraud prevention” a “red herring.”
“The Court finds that Defendants’ proffered justifications are nothing more than thinly veiled post-hoc rationales to deflect from the discriminatory impact of the Policy,” Watson wrote.
While nearly every state now permits transgender people to change the gender marker on their birth certificate, the process for doing so varies from state to state. Fourteen states, for example, require proof of gender-affirming surgery in order to make such a change, according to Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
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.
