A married lesbian couple have won a lengthy legal battle against a retirement community that refused them housing due to the owners’ religious beliefs.
Mary Walsh, 72, and Beverly Nance, 68, have been together for 40 years and married for 10. In 2016 they applied to move to the Friendship Village senior living facility in St. Louis, where they hoped to spend their last years surrounded by friends with help on hand if they needed.
But once Friendship Village staff learned they were married they refused them, saying the home did not condone homosexuality. The letter they received said that the only married couples they accepted were those in unions between “one man and one woman”.
This blindsided the couple, who had already paid the $2,000 deposit under the assumption that their relationship was not an issue. They’d chosen Friendship Village for financial reasons, as the community offered care options they would need that weren’t available elsewhere without substantially extra costs.
Walsh and Beverly sued Friendship Village alleging housing discrimination, only to have their case dismissed last year when a judge found that the centre had indeed discriminated against them, but that it wasn’t illegal.
But the couple refused to back down, and their case was reinstated in July following the recent Bostock v. Clayton County ruling that determined sexual orientation was protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Walsh and Nance finally got their hard-won victory on Tuesday (8 December), after reaching a confidential settlement with the home.
“This has been a harrowing experience and one that I hope no other same-sex couple has to face,” Walsh said after the ruling was announced. “Bev and I are relieved that this case is now behind us and that we have closure after our lives were thrown into chaos.”
Their focus now is only “on their health and each other,” and trying to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
Public Health England has finally confirmed where people living with HIV land on the coronavirus vaccine priority list.
On Tuesday (8 December) the UK became the first country in the world to start administering the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after it was approved my regulators last week.
The government has now released the order of priority in which the vaccine will be given out, and those who are HIV-positive will be in the sixth group, along with other “adults aged 18 to 65 years in an at-risk group”.
“At-risk” adults also include those undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy, people diagnosed with a blood cancer like leukaemia, and people with severe asthma, diabetes, heart problems or kidney disease. The group also includes those with a severe mental illness or learning disability.
The sixth risk group follows care home residents and staff, those over and 80 and health and social care workers, people over 75, people over 70 and the extremely clinically vulnerable individuals, and people over the age of 65.
Some studies have shown that those living with HIV are at an increased risk of dying from COVID-19 and, although information is conflicting, one small London study found that HIV-positive people with low CD4 cell counts were more likely to be admitted to hospital with COVID-19 than other people with HIV, according to HIV and AIDS charity NAM/ aidsmap.
NAM/aidsmap executive director Matthew Hodson told PinkNews: “Although there is little evidence that people living with HIV are more likely to acquire COVID, there may be a slightly increased risk of dying from COVID-19.
“People who are not virally suppressed on treatment for HIV are likely to be at greater risk. COVID has underlined the importance of prompt HIV diagnosis and treatment access.
“Some of the vaccines, such as the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines, specifically recruited people living with HIV, although the full results of these studies have not yet been released.
“On a personal level, as someone who has been living with HIV for 22 years, I will not hesitate to get vaccinated.”
Vaccine misinformation has been spreading like wildfire on social media, and this is no different when it comes to the safety of the coronavirus vaccine for people with HIV.
NHS HIV consultant Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan wrote on Twitter: “A WhatsApp message is circulating saying that people living with HIV should not accept the vaccine, as it is a way for the government to kill them, as they are too expensive to look after on the NHS. THIS IS NOT TRUE. It’s vital we discuss people’s fears!”
She added: “Made sure to recommend COVID-19 vaccines to all of my patients in clinic today. A lot of concerns, so it was great to discuss and address them.
“Interestingly, some people said it was reassuring to hear I was going to get one, as it made them feel more confident about them.”
The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up an appeal from Oregon parents who want transgender students in their school district to use locker rooms and bathrooms based on their sex assigned at birth.
The decision lets stand a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the district’s policy of permitting trans students to use facilities that align with their gender identity.
“A policy that allows transgender students to use school bathroom and locker facilities that match their self-identified gender in the same manner that cisgender students utilize those facilities does not infringe Fourteenth Amendment privacy or parental rights or First Amendment free exercise rights, nor does it create actionable sex harassment under Title IX,” Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in the February decision for Parents for Privacy v. William P. Barr et al.
The case originated in Dallas, Oregon, an agricultural town 15 miles west of Salem, the state’s capital. In 2017, parents of high schoolers sued over the Dallas School District’s policy of allowing a transgender male student use the boy’s locker room and bathroom. At the time, a lawyer for the parents indicated that cisgender boys would be embarrassed and ashamed to change in the same room as someone who was assigned female at birth.
In 2018, a lower court refused to block the district’s policy, and the 9th Circuit affirmed that ruling earlier this year.
LGBTQ advocates on Monday praised the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the appeal.
“Today’s decision is excellent news for transgender students,” Mara Keisling, executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement. “Trans students deserve an educational environment that is safe, supportive and free from discrimination. The school district’s actions to create that environment have been vindicated.”
Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said with its decision Monday, the high court has “once again said that transgender youth are not a threat to other students.”
“The decision not to take this case is an important and powerful message to trans and non-binary youth that they deserve to share space with and enjoy the benefits of school alongside their non-transgender peers,” Strangio said in a statement. “We will continue to fight in courts, in legislatures, and in our families and communities to ensure that all trans people feel safe and belong.”
Similar lawsuits to the one brought forth in Oregon by Parents for Privacy have been dismissed by courts in other parts of the country.
Bullying used to be depicted as kids being shoved into lockers and coerced out of their lunch money by the older, more popular rulers of the school. Nowadays, the focus on bullying has shifted to those hiding behind computer screens and taunting others in the virtual world. While in-school bullying is on the rise, technology and social media have created alternate avenues for bullies to wreak havoc. Whether bullying is done on school grounds or over the phone, the consequences can be lifelong and even life-ending.
So how many kids are experiencing cyberbullying and how do their parents feel about it? To get a better idea of technology’s role in bullying, we surveyed more than 1,000 parents of children over the age of five and asked about their children’s cyberbullying experiences. Continue reading to see what we learned.
Unfortunately, the issue of failure to intervene is also directed at schools. While schools have some authority over what occurs on school grounds, cyberbullying can take place anywhere and usually occurs off campus. Multiple states have laws allowing schools to punish students involved in cyberbullying, but free speech issues can make it difficult to hold students accountable for off-campus acts. The pushback doesn’t sit well with the majority of parents, though.
Almost 66 percent of parents thought schools should hold kids accountable for off-campus cyberbullying – and their desires are supported by research. Studies have shown that cyberbullying is usually not completely off campus, with social media and internet harassment often being an indicator of in-school bullying. Even if the school doesn’t do anything to intervene, 35 percent of parents said they notified the school about a cyberbullying incident.
The discrepancy between parental concerns and actual data may be due to parents’ increased presence on Facebook over Instagram. If parents aren’t actively using Instagram, they may be less likely to see the bullying or understand the increased risk.
Tech for Teens
Technology can be both helpful and harmful regarding children’s safety, and development. With numerous pros and cons, there doesn’t seem to be a magic answer for when children should be introduced to technological devices and how much time they should spend on them. However, when children get technology seems to depend on the type of technology.
Kids between the ages of six and 10 were more likely to have tablets compared to every other age group and significantly less likely to have smartphones.Smartphones jumped in popularity for kids aged 11 to 13, with 73 percent of parents reporting their middle school-age children having at least one device each.
While the average age at which kids got their first personal tech device was 9.8 years old, studies have shown cyberbullying is linked to the amount of time spent on social media rather than the age at which kids begin using technology. The more time children spend on social media, the higher their risk for cyberbullying. Parents reported their children spent an average of 1.8 hours a day on their personal devices. For the majority of children 18 and younger, parents had access to their devices. Ninety-six percent of parents with children aged six to 10 had access to their kids’ devices, a number that only dropped to over 82 percent for children aged 14 to 18. Significantly fewer parents with children aged 19 and older said they had access – almost a third, despite their kids being legal adults.
Having access to kids’ devices or limiting their screen time is less about overprotectiveness and more about helping children navigate the harm technology can bring. Even the leader of the technology world, Bill Gates, sets strict rules for his children regarding smartphone use, ultimately banning them until age 14.
However, a significant portion of parents with kids from all age groups reported their children had Instagram accounts. Remember, Instagram is now considered a playground for cyberbullying, and despite the minimum age requirement of 13 to create an account, over 11 percent of parents with children aged 6 to 10 reported their youngsters used the platform. Of course, every parent is different, and some children may be more prepared for the digital world than others, but here are some tips to consider before allowing your child onto social media.
Bullying is still ever-present on school grounds and is increasingly problematic online, especially on social media. Kids may get access to technology and sign up for social media at younger ages (sometimes even before the minimum age requirement), but our study revealed that parents are continuing to monitor their children’s use. From limiting their time to having access to their accounts, parents seem to be aware of the threats that technology and the internet possess and are working to protect their children as much as they can.
Parents shouldn’t depend on social media companies to step in and police themselves. As an alternative, parental monitoring software can help parents keep track of what their kids do on their phones and manage their activity accordingly. Some tools parental control tools may be included with your device, and a range of third-party vendors offer easy-to-use dashboards from which parents can filter content. Comparitech has detailed reviews and tutorials on the best parental control apps and software.
We surveyed 1,011 people. To qualify for the survey, people had to report having at least one child over the age of 5. If they had more than one child, respondents were asked to answer the survey based on their experiences with their oldest child.
Respondents were 59.3 percent women and 40.7 percent men. The average age was 42.1 with a standard deviation of 11.
Parts of this project include calculated averages. These were computed to account for outliers. This was done by finding the initial average and the standard deviation. The standard deviation was multiplied by three and added to the initial average. Any data point above this sum was excluded from the calculation of the final average.
When asked which social media accounts their children had, respondents were given the choices that appear in the final visualization, as well as the options of Tumblr, “I don’t know what accounts my child has,” and “Other.” These were excluded from the final visual due to low sample sizes. In the visual about which social media platforms posed the biggest risk for cyberbullying, Reddit and “Other” were also choices given to respondents, but they were excluded from our final visualization of the data.
Limitations
Respondents answered the survey based on their experiences with their oldest children. It’s possible that respondents with multiple children had different or more acute experiences with their other children. Also, this survey is based on parents’ perspectives. Therefore, they may not have knowledge of all their children’s internet activities.
The United States is the only major economy on the planet where health care is a for-profit industry instead of a free public service; it’s also the only place where the government allows health care not just to be run as an industry, but allows that industry to be run as a cartel. What this means in practice is that pharmacology — the study and development of pharmaceuticals — has become more a branch of industry than of science, and it is therefore controlled by lobbying interests rather than either science or the public good.
The only better example of this than the infamous price gouging of insulin in America is how the drug companies have a captive audience for their many still-patented products not only in HIV-positive Americans but also in the nation’s millions of LGBT people who are encouraged to take the sole HIV-prevention drug, Truvada, to avoid HIV infection.
Last year, for the first time, it was announced that a generic version of Truvada — the pill used since 2004 to fight HIV infection and since 2012 as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV — would finally be available in the U.S. Generic versions are already sold elsewhere in the world and, usually, when drugs go generic in America, it’s an open field, which dramatically lowers prices.
Truvada’s patent holder, Gilead, however, granted rights to produce a generic U.S. alternative to just one company — the Israeli firm Teva — for a six-month period, as the result of a settlement. Truvada currently costs American users roughly $1,700 a month; Teva’s generic, which debuted in October, is marketed for around $1,455 per month.
Gilead’s all-but-proprietary access to sell Truvada is the equivalent of Hershey’s controlling who has access to chocolate milk.
Of course, few people pay the full price of a medicine out-of-pocket. Insurance, for those who have it, helps lower out-of-pocket costs in many cases, though private insurers aren’t required to do so until 2021. Gilead provides some patients a coupon for $7,200 worth of purchasing assistance per year, with no monthly limit (which means some months it might be free and others it might be full price). Teva’s patient discounts are also $7,200 per year, but they’re limited to $600 per month — knocking its monthly cost down to around $855. Unfortunately, California and Massachusetts both forbid the use of pharmacological coupons that made Truvada somewhat accessible if a generic alternative exists; patients who relied on those discounts must now apply for access to other programs or pay out of pocket for the medications they couldn’t afford.
Meanwhile, generic versions of Truvada — Ricovir, Tavin-EM, or Tenof-EM — elsewhere in the world cost $210 to $720 per year.
Ironically, Gilead put little of its own money into the research that developed Truvada, which is a combination of two medicines, tenofovir disoproxil and emtricitabine (though the company says otherwise). The former input was, in fairness, developed as an oral medication by Gilead (heavily based on a drug first developed by a Czech scientist, after a collaboration with scientists at the University of California-San Francisco showed it was effective in treating HIV), but its patent expired in 2018.
Emtricitabine, the second drug in Truvada and its generic equivalents, was developed at Emory University with NIH grants; Emory then entered into an agreement with a company Gilead eventually acquired to give it control of the drug in exchange for a sliver of the profits. (Until Teva’s generic debuted, Gilead owned 100 percent of the Truvada market in the U.S, pulling in roughly $3 billion a year.)
But the basic research, animal trials and human trials for the combination of the two as preventative drug were all publicly financed by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, though, allows private grabs of public science; the government can claw patents back under certain circumstances, but Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., and Robert Dole, R-Kan., argued in 2002 that pricing was deliberately not conceived as one such circumstance .
The federal government has the ability to compel broad generic production of Truvada virtually overnight and has refused to act on it.
So the only Truvada-related patent Gilead now owns — until September 2021 — is for emtricitabine; its all-but-proprietary access to sell Truvada is the equivalent of Hershey’s controlling who has access to chocolate milk.
It doesn’t have to be this way, as advocacy groups like PrEP4All have been arguing for years. Empowered with the intellectual property equivalent of eminent domain, the federal government has the ability to compel broad generic production of Truvada virtually overnight and has refused to act on its ability — whether in the Obama administration or the Trump administration. (There are few indications that the Biden administration will be any different.)
The problem with patents thus persists because toxic agents in soulless systems have created a ruthless market for its ostensible solutions.
Unaffected politicians and policymakers — including lobbyists and Big Pharma C-suite cynics — instead cast unsustainable, unaffordable drug prices as a result of tough decisions, difficult circumstances or unavoidable economic realities. But they are wholly avoidable. Such anguish is not a necessary evil of market forces or political gridlock; every other industrialized nation manages to recognize how unnecessary profit-driven health care is.
The most bitter pill in all of human health is the one we prescribe the least: the truth, without a spoonful of sugar. And the truth is that we are fighting late-stage, metastasized cowardice here, a societal immunodeficiency in which we are unable to defend people over profits, or dignity over dollars. Sadly, as far as we’ve come in our understanding of immunology — a knowledge built almost entirely on the bones and blood of the world’s 32.7 million AIDS deaths and 75.7 million HIV infections — such cowardice is wholly incurable because it is more dictum than dysfunction.
As Americans and the world have witnessed the planet’s greatest economy suffer some of the planet’s poorest Covid-19 health care, it is increasingly clear to everyone that government has all the legal and political power it needs to improve the lives of millions with a snap of its fingers, but none of the willpower. When America’s founders committed — and condemned — us to a government ruled by values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they unfortunately allowed no checks or balances against how much happiness the powerful can find in their fellow Americans’ misery.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s effort to educate the public on the coronavirus pandemic has earned him scores of admirers, but his work on the global HIV/AIDS crisis saw him cheered on Tuesday by one star-studded fan — Elton John.
“What a wonderful and fitting way to mark World AIDS Day, by honoring one of the biggest champions in the history of the AIDS epidemic,” John said in remarks at the US Global Leadership Coalition’s virtual tribute celebration, where Fauci was presented with the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
“There are very few people on this planet who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of service to save millions of lives like Dr. Fauci,” said the global music superstar, who founded an eponymous foundation that works to combat HIV/AIDS and its stigma.
Elisa Crespo, a trans candidate for New York City Council, has received an outpouring of support form the LGBT+ community after a “hatchet piece” on her sex work past.
But on Sunday (29 November) a derogatory “hatchet piece” was published about Crespo by the New York Post on her candidacy and history as a sex worker.
Crespo has been open about her time as a sex worker, and how her experience shaped her politics today. She previously told Gay City News: “I had a really rough, challenging, testing adolescence, and sex working landed me in trouble with the law.
“That changed my way of thinking, my politics, and the course of my life in general… because I realised I had to do something and I changed my life for the better.”
But the New York Post treated Crespo’s past as a scandalous revelation, describing her as “an ex-prostitute who was busted in a police sting”.
The LGBT+ community in politics and beyond jumped to Crespo’s defence and slammed the tabloid publication’s “hatchet piece”.
Congressman-elect Torres wrote on Twitter: “Across the country, LGBTQ candidates have come under siege for being who we are. I speak from first-hand experience: the voters of the Bronx won’t be swayed by appeals to bigotry.
“Both the New York Post and the scoundrels behind the hatchet piece should be ashamed of themselves. Word of advice: transphobia is not only bad morals. It’s bad politics.”
Nearly two decades after Bruce Bozzi Jr. lost his first love to AIDS, he revisited their love story in a social media post shared with tens of thousands of strangers.
“On a super hot day in July, we decided to meet on the corner of 14th Street and 5th Avenue,” Bozzi, 54, a restaurateur, wrote in the caption, paired with photos of a striking man in his 20s. “Tommy stood there with his jet black hair, his eyes brilliant with shades of green and blue and that smile you can see in this photograph. Being gay back then was hard, exciting and complicated.”
“Tommy, I think of you every time I stand on 14th & 5th no matter what season it is in New York and much more than that. I guess it’s not the amount of time but the quality that is so important,” Bozzi’s message said. “No matter, we were robbed of you too early! Tommy Grella, January 18, 1963 to June 24, 1992. You never forget your first loves, now do you?”https://www.instagram.com/p/B9nII1-ptNY/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=1116&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com&rp=%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Femotional-instagram-memorial-aids-victims-stories-reach-new-generation-n1249436#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A881%2C%22ls%22%3A858%2C%22le%22%3A878%7D
Bozzi is among thousands of people who have shared memories of loved ones on The AIDS Memorial Instagram account. While remembering those lost to AIDS is often relegated to World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, this social memorial honors them year-round. Every post on the Instagram page tells a heartfelt — and often heartbreaking — story of someone who was taken too soon as a result of the disease, which has claimed more than 32 million lives since the start of the epidemic.
Preserving a hidden history
The AIDS Memorial — created by Stuart, who is based in Scotland and asked that his full name not be published to protect his privacy — has shared more than 7,000 stories and amassed over 150,000 followers since it debuted in April 2017. The posts use images of those who have been lost instead of quilt squares or statistics to put faces to the epidemic.
Stuart said he gets submissions from around the world, although the majority (75 percent to 80 percent) are from the United States. He speculated that Americans are “more open, more forthcoming” about sharing personal stories. Regular submissions also come from England, Australia, Canada and Brazil.
Ron Sese, a volunteer for The AIDS Memorial, said preserving history was among the memorial’s inspirations.
“If the history books won’t write about us, how do we tell our stories? How do we share our stories? How does the next generation learn about the generation that came before them?” he asked.
As the account’s submissions and followers grew, Sese said, “we started to see a community build.”
“We started to see someone submitting a post about a sick father, a dear friend, and people who knew that person would then reach out in the comment section,” he said. “There would be a reunion of sorts, and that value is hard to come by — especially in a social media age.”
Sese said part of the beauty of The AIDS Memorial is that it’s bringing a rich and important history to younger people exactly where they are: social media.
“There is an entire group of people who don’t know life before the internet — they’ve never known a life without a timeline,” he said. “If this is where people are sourcing information and this is where people are learning day to day … then this is where we need to meet them and present them that information.”
‘The saddest I ever felt’
Most of those who submit images and share stories, like Bozzi, are loved ones of those lost to AIDS. Some share paragraphs, while others post just a few words.
On Nov. 21, which was Transgender Day of Remembrance, Marie Jose shared the story of her Uncle Boris, who died in 1996 at age 30. Jose was just 7 when Boris, an Ecuadorian immigrant who lived in Queens, New York, died of AIDS-related complications.
“This is my uncle Boris who was the best dressed, most fun and irreverent person I knew growing up. I wish I’d gotten more time with [her],” Jose wrote in the caption, along with a slideshow of images showing Boris donning attire spanning the gender spectrum. “Boris had a magic to [her] that continues to cast spells.”https://www.instagram.com/p/CH3mvSrj62O/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=1116&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com&rp=%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Femotional-instagram-memorial-aids-victims-stories-reach-new-generation-n1249436#%7B%22ci%22%3A1%2C%22os%22%3A883%2C%22ls%22%3A858%2C%22le%22%3A878%7D
“Boris had the best, loudest laugh that sounded like a Times Square 90s bruja,” Jose said, using a Spanish word for “witch.” “Boris also went by Exotica, [her] performer name and [she] used to wear nipple tassels and the most snatched outfits. She dressed for the gawds.” (While Jose used male pronouns to refer to her uncle in the post and noted that her uncle used male pronouns while he was alive, she requested that female pronouns be used in this article.)
At the end of the caption, Jose recalled the day of Boris’ funeral and how it “rained a monsoon.”
“I still remember [her] queer childhood friends from the block, 3 of them, holding hands around [her] tombstone, crying. They were the last ones to leave,” she wrote. “I remember feeling the saddest I ever felt in my whole little life, watching them thro the car window, they were standing through the storming rain and saying goodbye to no doubt, another chosen family member lost to AIDS.”
‘Lying there in my “deathbed”‘
While most of the AIDS Memorial posts are about loss, some are about survival and perseverance. Texas native Aaron Holloway’s post, shared on Oct. 11, National Coming Out Day, is one such example.
“I was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure. The nephrologist proclaimed that my kidneys were ‘gone’ and I would never urinate again,” Holloway wrote, adding that he was just a college senior at the time. “Afterwards, I was simultaneously diagnosed with AIDS by another physician in the presence of my mom and thereby outed. I will never forget what the physician said to me, ‘Wake up! It’s AIDS. Are you surprised?'”https://www.instagram.com/p/CGNxwEyDhh8/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=1116&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com&rp=%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Femotional-instagram-memorial-aids-victims-stories-reach-new-generation-n1249436#%7B%22ci%22%3A2%2C%22os%22%3A885%2C%22ls%22%3A858%2C%22le%22%3A878%7D
“I never told my mom I was gay and she did not know,” Holloway said. “Lying there in my ‘deathbed,’ I believed my mom would abandon me. She did not.”
Holloway said that after he was given just a month to live in March 2008, his kidneys “miraculously” regained function. Not only did Holloway finish his bachelor’s degree — cum laude, no less — but he also went on to get a master’s degree.
‘Afraid to be forgotten’
Most of the stories shared on The AIDS Memorial are those of LGBTQ people, as men who have sex with men and transgender women are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. That having been said, the memorial includes many stories about non-LGBTQ people, too.
“It reminds you that this isn’t something that just impacts gay men,” Sese said.
One such person is Debbie, a West Virginia woman whose daughter, Renee Taylor, shared a memorial post on Aug. 5, the 17th anniversary of Debbie’s death.https://www.instagram.com/p/CDhZvbEjJTv/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=1116&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com&rp=%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Femotional-instagram-memorial-aids-victims-stories-reach-new-generation-n1249436#%7B%22ci%22%3A3%2C%22os%22%3A1268%2C%22ls%22%3A858%2C%22le%22%3A878%7D
A federal judge has signed off on a settlement between the estate of Aimee Stephens and the Metro Detroit funeral home that fired her in 2013 after she came out to her boss as transgender.
U.S. District Judge Sean Cox on Monday approved the terms of the settlement between the estate of Stephens, who died in May, and her former employer, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, which going forward is prohibited from firing employees on the basis of transgender status.
Under the terms of the agreement, Harris Homes is to pay $130,000 to Stephens’ estate, including $63,724 in back pay with interest and $66,276 in damages. The consent decree also says Harris Homes must pay another $120,000 to the ACLU Foundation for costs and plaintiff attorney fees.
Stephens’ case was one of three involved in June’s landmark Supreme Court ruling for LGBTQ employment discrimination protections. She died in May before the ruling was issued.
Of nearly 16,000 respondents polled in the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey, 47 percent were either moderately or highly religious. Those who were older, Black or lived in the South were the most likely to be religious, researchers found.
To determine religiosity, respondents were asked about service attendance and the importance of religion in their daily lives.
Respondents who said religion was not an important part of their daily life and they never or seldom attended services were categorized as “not religious.” Those who indicated religion was important — even if they attended services less than once a month — were classified as “moderately religious,” as were those who attended services weekly, even if they said religion was not important in their lives.
Respondents who said religion was an important facet of their daily life and they attended regular services were categorized as “highly religious.”
By that metric, 27 percent were classified as moderately religious, 20 percent as highly religious and just over half (53 percent) as not religious.
According to the authors of the report, the 5.3 million religious LGBTQ adults in America “are found across the age spectrum, in every racial-ethnic group, among married and single people, among those who are parenting, and among rural and urban dwellers.”
Still, certain patterns emerged, particularly among generations.
Only 38.5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and about 40 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds were religious. That compares to more than half (51 percent) of those 35 to 49 who could be classified as religious and 56 percent of those 50 to 64.
Religiosity was highest among people 64 and older: Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) were moderately or highly religious.
That surprised lead author Kerith J. Conron, research director at the Williams Institute, considering how unwelcoming most churches have been toward LGBTQ people historically.
“Their faith must have been pretty strong when they were younger and coming out and there were even fewer accepting places,” she said. “It persisted despite discrimination and rejection.”
She predicts those numbers will decline drastically in future years.
“My hypothesis is that fewer and fewer people in young adulthood are choosing religion. It’s a pattern we see in non-LGBT people, as well,” Conron said. “People are consciously deciding to step away from the religion of their youth because it doesn’t embrace their values.”
Even straight Americans have cited their church’s treatment of the gay community as part of the reason they’ve left, she added.
According to a 2019 Pew Research Center analysis, 26 percent of Americans identify as agnostic, atheist or “nothing in particular,” up from 17 percent just a decade earlier.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, New York’s LGBTQ synagogue, said the barriers gay people face when participating in their faith have only started to fall.
“There’s been progress, but I deal with people all the time from liberal religious families who have faced horrible bigotry and rejection,” she said.
But, she added, the hunger for spirituality is deep among gay people — perhaps even deeper than among the larger population.
“Everyone has that desire for meaning or purpose, but for LGBT people, it’s right there on the surface,” Kleinbaum told NBC News. “Anyone who goes through the process of discovering a deeper truth about themselves, especially if it’s at odds with the larger world, understands a sense of revelation, of deeper truth. It’s our going to Mount Sinai.”
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ-affirming New Ways Ministry, agreed.
“LGBTQ people have many spiritual gifts which can renew religious institutions, if these groups would just perform the simple and holy acts of welcoming and listening,” DeBernardo said.
The vast majority of religious LGBTQ Americans are Christian — split fairly evenly among Catholics (25 percent), Protestants (28 percent) and other Christian denominations (24.5 percent). Only about 2.5 percent identify as Jewish and 2 percent as Muslim.
But the percentage of gay Americans who identify as part of any faith tradition is still considerably lower than in the general population, of which 67 percent is religious, according to a 2017 Gallup analysis.
Even LGBTQ Black Americans, the most likely demographic to be religious (over 70 percent), still lag behind Black people in the general population: More than 82 percent are religious.
“The reason there has been such tension between LGBTQ people and institutional religious groups has not been because LGBTQ people are not religious,” DeBernardo said, “but because faith groups have vilified them and excluded them.” Working on inclusion in the Catholic Church, he said, “I have seen an enormous number of LGBTQ people whose faith and religious identity are so strong that they continue to push for acceptance even against mammoth walls of opposition.”
Whether it’s too late for churches and synagogues to attract gay parishioners remains to be seen. But if there’s any hope, Kleinbaum said, “We have to go beyond tolerance.”
“We need to say, ‘This is who God created,’ and celebrate them.”
