A gay lawmaker and coronavirus survivor tried to donate plasma to help others – but he was turned away because of his sexuality.
Shevrin Jones, a Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, went to a blood drive on August 7 with his mother Bloneva Jones and his father Eric Jones.
The three decided to donate blood because they had recently recovered from COVID-19 and wanted to help others by donating their antibody-rich blood.
Writing on Twitter, Jones said: “I was blessed to get through COVID, and it’s only right that we bless someone else and give them a fighting chance to live also.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
Florida lawmaker Shevrin Jones was told he can’t donate blood because of his sexual orientation.
But Jones’ dreams were quickly shattered when he was turned away by OneBlood because of a government policy that requires queer men to practice celibacy for three months before donating blood.
After he was turned away, Shevrin wrote on Twitter that he was “disappointed” he could not donate blood because of his sexual orientation.
“I was ‘deferred’ for another time. The good news is, my mom, dad, brother and over 20 other people saved a life today!”
He added: “Too bad my blood plasma isn’t good enough.”
To make matters worse, the incident was later turned into a campaign tactic in an anonymous homophobic text campaign.
I was ‘deferred’ for another time. The good news is, my mom, dad, brother and over 20 other people saved a life today!
Jones, who is currently running to become Florida’s first Black gay senator, was shocked to discover that texts were sent out to voters in Senate District 35 last week saying he had been discriminated against for “homosexual contact”.
The text linked to a website set up where an article about his blood donation ban was copied word-for-word.
“It’s a shame that my opponents have stooped to this new low to try and win,” Jones told the Miami Herald.
“Rather than running off the issues that matter to the voters of our community, they have chosen to lob desperate attacks based on antiquated, discriminatory FDA policy… Hate never wins.”
Experts have urged the United States to overturn its ‘scientifically outdated’ blood donation ban.
Gay and bisexual men have been banned from donating blood in the United States since the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was at its height.
The original ban prevented any man who had ever had sex with another man from donating blood for life – but it has been relaxed considerably since then.
Earlier this year, the food and drug administration (FDA) reduced the deferral period – meaning the amount of time a man must remain celibate before donating blood – from 12 months to three months.
In April, more than 500 doctors and experts in the United States wrote to the FDA urging them to overturn the “scientifically outdated ban”.
“While the FDA’s recent decision to shorten the prohibition window to three months is a step in the right direction, it does not go far enough in reversing the unscientific ban,” the letter said.
It had been several years since professor Joseph Palamar had seen that unmistakable “caveman face,” the telltale sign of an imminent overdose of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, or GHB.
Standing among throngs of concertgoers at a Brooklyn music venue last year, Palamar spotted the bulky man with the contorted face nearby. He was struggling to remain conscious.
“I’ve noticed that when people are meant to pass out and they keep forcing it, they make these very strange, primitive faces,” Palamar, an epidemiologist and associate professor of population health at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told NBC News. “They look like they are in such euphoria it’s almost painful.”
Within minutes, the man succumbed, apparently to the suppressive effects of the drug, and collapsed to the floor. Security staff raced over and carried him away.
The ordeal reminded Palamar of New York’s sweaty nightclubs at the turn of the millennium, the same venues that had sparked his interest in studying drug use. Back then, overdoses, particularly on GHB, were so common that some clubs hired private ambulances to avoid 911 calls and police scrutiny. One club allegedly hid unconscious patrons in a back room without medical assistance.
Despite these efforts, the clubs didn’t go unnoticed. After a rash of overdoses across the United States in the late ’90s, Congress scheduled GHB as a controlled substance in 2000. Exposures to GHB reported to poison control centers fell almost immediately.
But 20 years on, a new generation of recreational users — a disproportionate number of them gay and lesbian, according to researchers — has rediscovered the drug. Recent indictments in a Texas federal court reveal that today’s networks for distributing GHB aren’t spread over local dealers but far-flung markets linking buyers to legal businesses with dubious motives. Social media and the world’s largest online marketplace are also tangled in this web. This illicit network generates millions of dollars each year and has spurred a small but growing crisis, for which federal regulators and the medical community appear ill-equipped and unprepared.
GHB 101
Occurring naturally in the body, gamma-hydroxybutyric acid was first synthesized in a lab in the 1960s. Although its application in medicine has always been limited, GHB has had various recreational uses. In the 1980s, health food stores marketed the compound as a dietary supplement. Then, in the ’90s, the drug found its way into American nightlife.
In small doses — mere milliliters — GHB produces feelings of relaxation and confusion and heightens sexual arousal, lending to its allure as a party drug. It can also cause amnesia and hallucinations.
While not particularly addictive, the drug has a steep dose-response relationship, meaning the difference between experiencing euphoria and losing consciousness is a matter of a few drops of the clear, viscous liquid. It is this quality of GHB that gives it the nickname “the date-rape drug,” although the compound is rarely a factor in sexual assault. Overdoses can result in coma and respiratory arrest, which to an unaccustomed observer may appear as if the affected person has only fallen asleep.
GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate) is a depressant, which means it slows down the messages traveling between the brain and the body.The Alcohol and Drug Foundation
GHB overdoses surged in the United States during the 1990s. In 1995, the Drug Abuse Warning Network recorded 145 emergency department visits for GHB-related illness in a single year. By 2000, this number was nearing 5,000. That same year, the American Association of Poison Control Centers logged some 2,000 exposures to GHB and its analogues as well as six deaths.
In reacting to the growing crisis, Congress passed the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000, which authorized the attorney general to list GHB as a Schedule I controlled substance. The law, named after two teenagers who allegedly died from GHB overdoses after unknowingly ingesting the drug, also targeted GHB analogues, or chemicals that are “substantially similar” to the illegal compound. Two of these — gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) and 1,4-butanediol (BDO) — were named in the act’s text.
Once ingested, GBL and BDO metabolize into GHB and have similar clinical effects. But unlike GHB, both chemicals have widespread use in industrial manufacturing, which prevents them from being regulated as controlled substances. Under the Farias-Reid act, GBL became subjected to greater control by the Drug Enforcement Administration, while BDO was left unregulated. Even so, under the new law, the sale and distribution of either GBL or BDO could result in criminal prosecution if the seller knew the buyer would consume the chemical.
New market for an old drug
After the federal government targeted GHB, reports of its use began to fall. By 2005, poison control centers in the U.S. only recorded some 550 exposures to GHB and one death.
During that same period, online retail grew to offer new avenues for buying and selling GHB and its analogues under the guise of legitimate business.
In 2002, in its first major action against the sale of GHB, codenamed Operation Webslinger, federal agents busted four drug-trafficking rings that had used the internet to connect with buyers. One of these operations, a mother-son team in Missouri, was accused of setting up a limited liability company called Miracle Cleaning Products to deal BDO online. Through their business, the duo could legally purchase the chemical in bulk from two U.S.-based suppliers and then distribute smaller quantities to their customers throughout the U.S. When law enforcement finally arrested the family, federal agents recovered 2,200 gallons of BDO and seized $300,000 in cash. Ultimately, the court sentenced the mother to 14 years in federal prison and the son to more than eight years.
Congress again took action by passing the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006. In addition to establishing the national sex offender registry, the law made it illegal to use the internet to sell GHB or its analogues to any person without a legal prescription to use the drug or any business not authorized to handle the chemical. Anyone convicted of using the internet to sell these compounds to unauthorized buyers could face a fine and 20 years imprisonment.
The new law also authorized the attorney general to develop regulations for record-keeping and reporting by anyone handling BDO. To date, the Department of Justice has not established these requirements.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which is part of the DOJ, told NBC News the it “has not promulgated any regulations that were authorized but not required by legislation,” adding that “1,4-butanediol is produced in large volumes for a multitude of legitimate industrial uses, none of which are intended for human consumption.”
Last month, federal agents raided Right Price Chemicals, a wholesaler in Texas, and arrested nine individuals who were accused of distributing BDO for human consumption beginning in 2015. According to the DOJ, the defendants had used the internet to sell the compound to buyers in 48 states. Some of these buyers then dealt smaller quantities to other users.
In just four years, sales of BDO generated $4.5 million for Right Price Chemicals, according to the Department of Justice. Prosecutors also claim that the product caused at least two deaths.
A lawyer for one of the defendants told NBC News that Right Price Chemicals warned customers on its website and its products that BDO was not for human consumption.
“Simply because people misuse a product does not place criminal liability on the retailer of that product,” Ryan Gertz, the lawyer, said. “Right Price Chemicals is a legitimate business that maintained thorough records, paid taxes, employed experts to advise them about proper practices and openly consulted with the government about its operations.”
The defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty and attest that they only distributed BDO for legitimate, legal purposes. If convicted, they face a minimum of 20 years, and up to life, in federal prison.
This BDO “cleaner” was for sale through the Amazon and Walmart online marketplaces as recently as early August. “Not for human consumption” is printed on the bottle. In the interest of public health, NBC News has blurred the company’s name from the label.
Right Price Chemicals is not the only business that has cashed in on BDO. Companies purportedly based in Europe, China and India market the compound on English-language websites. Stateside, companies have also found success by selling BDO on Amazon, the world’s largest online marketplace. As of last week, two third-party sellers offered consumer-sized quantities of BDO on Amazon (Amazon removed these products after NBC News reached out to the company for comment).
In the interest of public health, NBC News has chosen not to name the companies or share their websites and social media accounts.
One of these sellers markets its products as an “organic reagent” and “heavy-duty cleaner” with multiple at-home uses, though the Drug Enforcement Administration maintains that 1,4-butanediol “has no household applications.”
On Amazon, the companies’ products were much pricier than traditional cleaning supplies. Whereas most heavy-duty cleaners on Amazon retail for about $15, BDO of a comparable size went for over $100.
Both sellers are legally registered in different Midwestern states as limited liability companies. The name of one suggests it is a chemical wholesaler; however, it only distributes 1,4-butanediol. The other began as an all-natural soap company in 2015 but switched to selling BDO via its website and Amazon last year.
Prior to early August, buyers could also purchase BDO through the website of one of the sellers using cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin.
One seller included a legal disclaimer on its Amazon product page stating that its BDO was not for human consumption. Nevertheless, commenters on several blogs, including Reddit, have discussed purchasing BDO as a GHB substitute through Amazon.
NBC News attempted to contact multiple people who allegedly purchased BDO from one of the third-party sellers on Amazon. Only one agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. This buyer confirmed purchasing 1,4-butanediol on Amazon in order to ingest it and said the seller did not ask for justification when placing the order. The buyer said that the day after consuming the BDO, they felt “absolutely terrible.” The compound, this individual said, caused them to feel fatigued, nauseous and confused.
Shortly after NBC News began contacting these alleged buyers, the third-party seller removed images of BDO bottles and packaging labels from its Instagram account. The company also removed its offering of BDO from its website and instead provided links directing customers to its product pages on the Amazon and Walmart marketplaces.
Amazon prohibits third-party sellers from using its marketplace to sell scheduled controlled substances, like GHB, and List I chemicals, like GBL. BDO is neither. Still, Amazon specifies that its list of restricted products is “not all-inclusive” and the sale of “unsafe” products is strictly prohibited.
“Third party sellers are independent businesses and are required to follow our selling guidelines when selling in our store. Those who do not will be subject to action including potential removal of their account,” an Amazon spokesperson told NBC News. “The products in question are no longer available.”
Walmart also prohibits third-party sellers from selling controlled substances and “products that are subject to regulatory action or criminal enforcement.” Like Amazon, Walmart removed 1,4-butanediol products from its website following NBC News’ request for comment.
In a statement, a Walmart spokesperson said: “We strive to make our third-party Marketplace a trusted destination for safe, high quality products. We require our third-party sellers to comply with all applicable laws and our prohibited products policy. We removed the product 1,4-butanediol from Marketplace and have taken steps to prevent sellers from listing similar items going forward.”
NBC News tried to contact both companies that formerly sold 1,4-butanediol on the Amazon and Walmart marketplaces. Neither responded.
One of the sellers, however, appears to have moved to another major online marketplace after being removed from Amazon and Walmart.com. This marketplace, whose name NBC News will not publish in the interest of public safety, makes sellers’ purchase histories publicly available and shows the seller earned over $2,670 in just 48 hours this week from selling 35 units of BDO.
The comeback of a ‘party drug’
As the online market for GHB and its analogues has grown in recent years, researchers have seen an uptick in the drugs’ recreational use.
From 2016 to 2019, Palamar and Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, surveyed adults at electronic dance music parties in New York City to track relative changes in drug use. In that three-year span, they found that the rate of GHB use increased from one in 100 to roughly one in 25, a relative increase of 300 percent.
But for certain demographic groups, the use of GHB is far more widespread. In another survey taken from 2016 to 2018, Palamar and a group of researchers at NYU and Rutgers University found that both gays and lesbians at electronic dance parties were at higher odds for GHB use than straight patrons. According to the study, gay men were nearly 12 times more likely than heterosexual men to self-report GHB use within the past year. Lesbians were nearly seven times more likely than straight women. While gays and lesbians reported comparable or higher rates of use across most surveyed drug types, the difference in GHB use between gay and straight attendees was by far the greatest.
It was in nightlife that Jon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy, discovered GHB.
As a newcomer to New York City in 2013, Jon, like many young gay men, found a community in nightclubs where he began taking GHB with friends. At first, the drug was only a cheap weekend indulgence.
After drinking one glass of water mixed with GHB, “I wouldn’t need to drink for the rest of the night,” Jon said. “That’s a very attractive selling point.”
But the party didn’t always end on Monday. What had started as only a weekend exploit soon became a weekday occurrence and eventually a physical dependence on the drug.
For several years, no one — including Jon’s boyfriend at the time — knew of this dependence. Even when Jon acknowledged his problem to himself, he still didn’t reveal it to others.
“I wanted to detox without anyone knowing, because at that point I knew I was only doing it for maintenance,” he said. “I was only doing it to curb the withdrawals.”
These were often debilitating. If Jon didn’t ingest GHB on a regular basis, his body would begin to show symptoms akin to alcohol withdrawal. He would sweat and shake. His anxiety would soar to the point of confusion. As a young person trying to make something of himself in New York, Jon needed to maintain his dependence on GHB. The alternative — abruptly stopping his GHB use — was to risk a coma and even death.
So, Jon continued to consume 1.25 milliliters of GHB every two hours for three and a half years.
When he finally sought help at a rehabilitation center last summer, Jon encountered a different problem altogether.
“They had never heard of the drug,” he said of the rehab’s staff. “They had no idea what it was. They didn’t know how to treat it. They didn’t know how to deal with it. Nothing.”
Ultimately, Jon’s doctors treated him with diazepam, which has been shown to be effectivein treating GHB dependence. As of today, Jon has been in recovery for over a year.
The ignorance around GHB that Jon experienced in rehab is not unique to a single health care provider or institution. It pervades the entire society.
“It’s called ‘generational forgetting,’” said Palamar, using a term coined by the social psychologist Lloyd Johnston. “One generation could be fully aware of the potential adverse effects of a drug, but then the next generation just doesn’t know.”
This “forgetting” may also contribute to the apparent rise in GHB use among gays and lesbians.
“In the gay community, people don’t tend to go out for a very long period of their lives,” said Guy Smith, producer of the popular gay Pines Party on New York’s Fire Island. “A gay generation in nightlife is about 10 years, so the conversation that people have about a drug in any particular place will only last that long. There is no conventional wisdom.”
Like Palamar, Smith came of age in New York nightlife at the turn of the millennium when GHB overdoses spiked. In recent years, Smith said, use of the drug has started peaking again.
Spurring this rise are industries, like online retail and social media, which came of age in that same timeframe and which therefore lack experience with the drug.
In such a lax environment, the front lines for addressing GHB abuse have shifted to unlikely places. Several nightclubs and parties, including Guy Smith’s events, now enforce a zero-tolerance policy on GHB. The move is not without its naysayers.
But Smith and Palamar stress that these policies save lives.
Both men witnessed GHB devastate New York nightlife when clubs ignored problematic drug use in the early 2000s. Young opponents of zero-tolerance policies, Palamar said, were “not around when people were dropping like flies” and “not there with all the deaths.” And he hopes they never will be.
Idaho officials’ latest attempt to ban transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificates violates a court order issued two years ago, a federal judge said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale first ruled in 2018 that a law barring the birth certificate changes was unconstitutional, and she banned state officials from implementing it. Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers passed new legislation that did largely the same thing.
That law signed by Republican Gov. Brad Little went into effect on July 1. It set strict criteria for changing gender on a birth certificate, including a requirement that a person first obtain a court order, and only allowed people to seek the court order if the sex listed on their birth certificate was mistakenly entered, entered fraudulently or under duress.
As a result, the state Department of Health and Welfare created procedures to implement the new law, including revising an application form and the department’s instructions for changing the sex listed on a birth certificate.
In her order Friday, Dale said the new procedure does the same thing as the old one by effectively preventing transgender people from changing the sex on their birth certificates.
“The plain language of the statute, as quoted, forecloses any avenue for a transgender individual to successfully challenge the sex listed on their Idaho birth certificate to reflect their gender identity,” Dale wrote.
Lambda Legal represented two transgender women who filed the original lawsuit that led to Dale’s first ruling. The advocacy group successfully argued the state’s ban on birth certificate changes for transgender people violated their constitutionally protected right to privacy, liberty and freedom from compelled speech.
“It is astonishing that the Idaho Legislature and Gov. Little plowed forward with resuscitating this dangerous and archaic ban in direct defiance of multiple court orders that repeatedly ordered the government to stop discriminating against transgender people,” said Nora Huppert, an attorney with Lambda Legal. “What was discriminatory in 2018 remains discriminatory today.”
Spokespeople with the Department of Health and Welfare and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Another anti-transgender law passed this year also is being litigated. It bars transgender and intersex girls and women from competing in women’s sports. Boise State University student Lindsay Hecox is suing the state in federal court, contending the law is discriminatory and would prevent her from trying out for the women’s cross country team because she is transgender.
Two transgender teens sued Arizona’s Medicaid agency Thursday, alleging their civil rights are being violated by the state health insurance program’s ban on gender-affirming surgeries.
The suit, filed Thursday in an Arizona federal courthouse, seeks to establish a class action on behalf of the teens — known only as John Doe, 15, and D.H., 17, and other transgender Arizonan Medicaid recipients under age 21 who seek chest reconstruction as treatment for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The complaint estimates there are at least 100 Arizonans who would be affected by the suit.
The suit defines the class as “individuals who have been unable and will be unable” to obtain coverage through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System “for medically necessary male chest reconstruction surgery because of the [ban], and as a result, have faced or will face delayed or denied access to these medically necessary treatments.”
The claims say the state’s 1982 ban on “gender reassignment surgeries” violates the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions, the Medicaid Actand the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
According to the suit, the two came out as transgender years ago and since then have faced significant challenges as puberty began to change their bodies. It also states the reliance on chest binders to create a more masculine appearance forced D.H. to abandon his beloved hobby of dance and resulted in John Doe wearing a heavy hoodie through Arizona’s sweltering summers.
Both teens’ physicians recommended chest reconstruction surgery, and the state’s 1982 ban on Medicaid funding for “gender reassignment surgeries” means that as Medicaid recipients, they are ineligible for the medically necessary surgery even if a doctor recommends it, according to the suit.
Arizona is among 10 states across the U.S. that explicitly ban transgender health care coverage for Medicaid recipients, according to Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C., explicitly cover this type of care, while 18 states have no explicit policy regarding trans health coverage.
Asaf Orr, an attorney working on the case and the director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Transgender Youth Project, said there is “no legitimate justification for Arizona’s refusal to provide this critical care to transgender Medicaid recipients.”
“Instead, excluding that care creates unnecessary barriers that prevent transgender young people from thriving in every aspect of their lives and can cause lifelong harms,” he said in a statement.
In June’s landmark Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the high court found that the Civil Rights Act’s ban on employment discrimination “on the basis of … sex” also bans employment discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender identity.
“In Bostock, the United States Supreme Court unequivocally held that the definition of ‘sex’ under federal law includes discrimination against transgender people,” Orr wrote in an email to NBC News. “By maintaining and enforcing a categorical exclusion for surgical treatment for gender dysphoria, AHCCCS is impermissibly discriminating against transgender Medicaid recipients on the basis of sex and, as a result, the Court should enjoin AHCCCS from denying coverage under that exclusion.”
The suit notes that Medicaid requires that recipients under age 21 receive “Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment” so that major “medical, vision, dental, and hearing” problems are diagnosed and treated early in life. It then states that “[s]urgery to treat gender dysphoria, including male chest reconstruction surgery” is such a service.
Heidi Capriotti, a spokesperson for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, declined to comment.
Trans prisoners in a New York county were delivered a stunning victory Wednesday (August 5) when a roster of LGBT+ activist organisations secured them a vital but simple right: To be incarcerated as the correct gender.
The landmark legal settlement was described by activists as having secured some of the most “robust policies in the country” to better protect trans folk in custody in the western Steuben County.
The case was brought forward after 43-year-old trans military veteran Jena Faith was sentenced to a month in Steuben County Jail in 2019. While initially kept in the women’s division of the jail, she was later transferred to the men’s where she experienced weeks of verbal and physical humiliation and abuse from inmates and guards alike.
Trans woman tossed in men’s jail: ‘No one should ever be subjected to the cruelty and harassment I endured.’
Faith filed a lawsuit with the TLDEF after her rattling experience in a men’s facility. Trapped in the tight, cramped cells with male prisoners, she detailed in a report to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) how inmates harassed her, guards misgendered her, and told of how she was denied hormone therapy.
As a result of the settlement, the county will now commit itself to a package of policy changes designed to treat trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex folk with dignity and respect.
These range from housing inmates in line with their gender identities and training prison staff to respect inmates’ pronouns to giving access to clothing, toiletry and grooming products and appropriate medical care.
Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) and the New York Civil Liberties Union hope that the new policies will offer a blueprint for other prisons across the state and the US.
“No one should ever be subjected to the cruelty and harassment I endured.
“Everyone housed in detention facilities deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, including transgender people. I hope my case will help others, not only in Steuben County, but also across New York and beyond.”
Efforts by the Obama administration to ensure trans convicts were protected from sexual abuse and assault were unwound by president Donald Trump in 2018.
The multinational investment bank Citigroup is being sued by a gay man who claims he was demoted and discriminated against because of his sexual orientation.
The allegations by gay banker Thomas Krauss appear to counter Citigroup’s proud ranking as the most LGBT-inclusive financial services employer in the Stonewall Top 100.
Krauss joined the firm in 2010 and until recently led the firm’s capital introduction group for the Americas, Bloomberg reported.
He says he was targeted when he uncovered complaints of sexual harassment made against a new hire on his team, Deutsche Bank veteran Joseph Genovese.
Concerned that Genovese’s hiring could put Citigroup at risk of creating a “hostile and offensive work environment,” the suit says Krauss disclosed what he learned to senior Citigroup managers, who later withdrew the offer made to Genovese.
Although Krauss made the disclosure in confidence, he claims that several executives pushed to find out who “blew the whistle” on Genovese.
Once they learned it was Krauss, they allegedly began a campaign to punish him which eventually resulted in him being demoted.
Sadly the retaliation didn’t end there: despite receiving consistently positive evaluations, Krauss’s 2019 year-end review reflected a decrease in his leadership rating, which led to a pay reduction and “effectively destroyed his Citi career,” according to the complaint.
Krauss also alleges that he was denied a promotion to managing director because of his sexual orientation and for extra work he did on behalf of the company’s LGBT+ initiatives.
“It is easy to say you are not tolerant of discrimination but action, as is true with Citi, speaks louder than empty words,” said Krauss’s lawyer Daniel Kaiser in a statement Monday (3 August).
Rosa Diaz and her daughter were riding their motorcycles through rural Brawley, California, this year when they noticed a young person who appeared lost walking down the town’s main street. Diaz, who runs the only LGBTQ resource center for miles, sensed that the person might be in need of support.
She told her daughter to continue ahead, and Diaz made a U-turn.
Marilyn Cazares, 22, was found dead in an abandoned building in Brawley, Calif., last month.via GoFundMe
“I asked her for her name,” and the person shared a male name, Diaz said in an interview. “I said, ‘Is there another name that you prefer?’ And that’s when she told me, ‘Well, I like Marilyn.'”
Diaz asked her whether she needed anything. “I need a new wig,” Diaz recalled Marilyn saying, gesturing to her worn clothes and hairpiece. Diaz gave her a business card, and Marilyn promised to call her after the weekend. Diaz’s team found her a wig, but the call never came.
“I didn’t know about Marilyn again until I was called regarding her death,” Diaz said.
Marilyn Cazares, 22, was found dead last month in an abandoned building in Brawley, about a half-hour north of the Mexican border. It has been a particularly deadly year for trans people — especially trans women of color. In 2019, 27 trans people died because of violence in total. In 2020, the number has already reached 25, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
In July alone, there were six violent deaths of trans and gender-nonconforming people across the U.S. — all but one of them trans Black or Latinx women — making it the deadliest month so far for this vulnerable community.
In the weeks following her encounter with Cazares in February, Diaz and her small team at the Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Centertried to reach out to Cazares. But they didn’t have her last name or any other information about her. Since her death, family and friends have spoken out about a young woman who lived her truth despite being bullied, ridiculed and violated by members of her community. Her family said they believe her death was a hate crime.
Brawley police are investigating Cazares’ death as a homicide, and Diaz said the community is hungry for answers.
Mindy Garcia, Cazares’ aunt, told NBC affiliate KYMA of Yuma, Arizona, which serves the Brawley area, that her niece was “very brave,” “very outspoken” and “very loved.”
“She was very beautiful,” Garcia added.
An openly hostile environment
Diaz, who grew up in Imperial County, where Brawley is located, came out as lesbian in her 40s. She describes the area as one that at best lacks LGBTQ resources and at worst is an environment that’s openly hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer residents.
She started a support group in 2014 after she had nowhere else to turn for a sense of community — and people began turning up in large numbers.
“People who came to this group were telling me, ‘You know, we appreciate what you’re doing, but I need counseling, I need hormone therapy, I need artificial insemination,'” she said. “I wasn’t prepared for all of that.”
But within six months, she had founded the Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Center. She said she has had to “tread lightly” for it to be viewed as a reputable community organization. It’s still the only LGBTQ center in Imperial County, which includes seven cities and about 180,000 residents.
“This is where I began to hear stories,” Diaz said of the center. “Those who were a little flamboyant and very comfortable with themselves … they were considered to be crazy, weird, even evil to some extent.”
She said she’s certain Cazares experienced that kind of treatment in her short lifetime.
“According to what I heard from the family — and because I know my community — Marilyn or anybody that could appear as if they’re one gender but identify as another gender are ridiculed,” she said. “They are seen as people with a mental illness, or, you know, people that are not right.”
She said LGBTQ people in Imperial Valley are pushed out of their families, their churches and their communities. She also said Cazares’ death marks the second high-profile homicide of a Latina trans woman from Brawley, after the murder of trans teen Gwen Araujo in 2002.
“The community is angry, of course, because we know that trans women are being killed all over,” Diaz said. “A lot of people believe that these things only happen in big cities, and here, it has hit home.”
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Diaz emphasized the need for LGBTQ education in communities like Brawley, where, she said, many residents are unaware of how their LGBTQ neighbors might struggle. Since her death, Cazares has been misgendered in the media — even by members of her family. But Diaz said her goal is to lead with education and information rather than attacks, especially for working-class people who are still learning.
“It’s a sad event,” Diaz said. “But it’s also an opportunity to really honor Marilyn and to let the family know: ‘We remember her like this, because this is who she was.'”
A prominent children’s hospital publicly apologized Thursday for performing cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex infants and pledged to end the practice.
“We recognize the painful history and complex emotions associated with intersex surgery and how, for many years, the medical field has failed these children,” the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago said in a statement. “We empathize with intersex individuals who were harmed by the treatment that they received according to the historic standard of care, and we apologize and are truly sorry.”
The apology, signed by the hospital’s CEO and three head physicians, comes after activists, over a yearslong campaign, called on the institution to ban cosmetic genital surgery on intersex infants, which is irreversible. The signatories also committed to “evolving” their policies going forward and stated that the hospital would not perform such surgeries unless medically necessary or with willful consent from fully informed patients.
“Historically care for individuals with intersex traits included an emphasis on early genital surgery to make genitalia appear more typically male or female,” the statement, published Tuesday, continued. “As the medical field has advanced, and understanding has grown, we now know this approach was harmful and wrong.”
“Intersex” is an umbrella term that refers to individuals born with sex traits or reproductive anatomy that do not fit the conventional categories of male and female. Approximately 1.7 percent of the population fits into this broad category, according to research cited by the intersex advocacy group InterACT.
Intersex activists have long advocated for a ban on medically unnecessary genital surgery for intersex infants. They have argued that the historically common practice — intended to “help” these individuals better fit into society — denies them the legal right to consent to the procedure. According to the Human Rights Watch, 1 in every 2,000 children “is different enough that doctors may recommend surgical intervention to make the body appear more in line” with a conventional male or female.
Along with intersex justice organizations, multiple civil and human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, have long condemned these procedures as unnecessary, saying that there is no evidence such practices help individuals better function in society.
Many who were forced to undergo these surgeries report lifelong harm, including higher risks of scarring, loss of sexual sensation and psychological trauma.
While the hospital has not disclosed how many such procedures had been performed over the years, it did state that it had not performed a clitoroplasty on a child or infant in five years.
Intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis, who was subjected to cosmetic genital surgery at the Lurie Children’s Hospital, was in disbelief after hearing the news.
“Today, what matters is the autonomy of future intersex people and patients,” Pagonis said at a virtual news conference on Thursday. “We couldn’t do the whole country, we couldn’t get Congress to agree with us, but we knew that we could do it at one hospital where it happened to me and so many other people.”
“I’m here to say that we did that, we did that!” Pagonis said.
Pagonis, who identifies as nonbinary and intersex, founded the activist group Intersex Justice Project with fellow intersex activist Sean Saifa Wall. One of the project’s goals was to end these practices across the country, specifically at the Lurie Children’s Hospital, where Pagonis underwent a clitorectomy as a child.
Three years ago, the organization launched a campaign demanding the hospital end this practice, staging multiple protests at its front doors, starting the social media hashtag #EndIntersexSurgery, and organizing phone and emailing campaigns to express members’ concerns.
This watershed moment is only a taste of victory, Wall said Thursday at the news conference.
“We are one step closer to ensuring a world where intersex children can live free from harm,” he said.
Two more Black trans women have been murdered in the US this week, and reports have emerged that a Black trans man was killed in June.
Their deaths mean there have been at least 25 trans people murdered in the US in 2020, just over halfway into the year. The Human Rights Campaign tracked 27 violent fatalities throughout all of 2019.
According to local New York TV station WPIX, 32-year-old Tiffany Harris was stabbed to death in her Bronx apartment early Sunday morning (July 26).
She was initially deadnamed and misgendered by the police and the media, but was correctly identified by people in her community as well as a trans rights group.
NYPD officers responded to a 911 call just after 1.30am and discovered Harris with a stab wound to her chest in the hallway of her building. She was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead at around 2.20am.
Her death is not being investigated as a hate crime. A man caught on CCTV is wanted for questioning, and is believed to have been in a relationship with Harris.
On Monday (July 27) afternoon, a second Black trans woman was found dead in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
According to local news outlet The Advocate, Queasha D Hardy was just 24 years old and had been shot in broad daylight. She was found just after 1pm lying in the street with multiple gunshot wounds and passed away at the scene.
Hardy was also misgendered and deadnamed by police and the media after her death, and her next of kin reportedly demanded that she be identified as male despite her living openly as a trans woman.
A Black trans man was murdered last month.
Reports have recently emerged that a Black trans man, Brian Powers, was murdered in Akron, Ohio, on June 13.
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, Powers was killed by a single gunshot and was found on the street outside a church.
Police said they have no leads, but the man’s friends and family believe his death is not being treated seriously because he was Black and transgender.
Powers’s friend Steve Arrington, who works at the Akron AIDS Collaborative, said: “I’m kind of disturbed when they say ‘Black Lives Matter’.
“I say: ‘Whose lives, my life? Or just heterosexual Black people’s lives? What about my LGBTQ brothers and sisters? They’re Black. Do their lives matter?’”
After Harris’ death, Human Rights Campaign said in statement: “There are currently very few explicit federal legal protections for transgender or gender-expansive people.
“Nationally, despite some marginal gains in state and local policies that support and affirm transgender people, recent years have been marked by anti-LGBTQ attacks at all levels of government.
“We must demand better from our community, peers and elected officials and reject harmful anti-transgender legislation appearing at the local, state and federal levels.
“It is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of colour. The intersections of racism, transphobia, sexism, biphobia and homophobia conspire to deprive them of necessities to live and thrive.
“This epidemic of violence that disproportionately targets transgender people of colour — particularly Black trans women — must cease.”
Following the deaths of four trans people – three of whom were Black trans women – in a single week at the start of July, HRC said it has “never seen such a high number at this point in the year” since they began tracking this data in 2013.
Black trans army veteran Jamel Young is suing the New York Police Department for their “dehumanising” treatment of him during what began as a routine traffic stop in 2019.
Young, 33, had driven to New York from Atlanta, with his girlfriend, in March 2019.
His ordeal began when, after dropping his girlfriend at a friend’s apartment, he began looking for somewhere to park.
When an unmarked NYPD car pulled him over, Young said he didn’t panic.
“I’m feeling like, OK, I didn’t do anything wrong, whatever this is I’ll take care of it,” Young toldBuzzFeed News.
But the US citizen said was still aware that as a Black man in the Bronx late at night, he needed to be careful. “The only thing on my mind is to comply,” he said.
It was after he disclosed to the police officers that he is transgender that the problems began.
According to Young’s lawsuit against the corrections department and the NYPD, filed last month, the police then misgendered, assaulted and sexualised him. Officers also dismissed his fears for his safety and failed to provide for his basic needs, Young alleges.
His case comes one year after New York City was sued over the death of Layleen Polanco, the Afro-Latinx trans woman who died in solitary confinement in Rikers Island prison.
After asking him “basic traffic stop questions”, police asked Jamel Young if he had a gun on him. He did – and though it was registered, what Young didn’t know was that he needed a separate license to take it out of Georgia.
He also didn’t know whether the gun was in the car with him or if it was in the bags he’d dropped with his girlfriend at his friend’s house. He says he also didn’t know that you need a different license to carry a gun on your person and in your vehicle.
The police – who arrest hundreds of tourists every year for bringing firearms to New York, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country – placed him under arrest.
“I didn’t know or think that I was doing anything wrong, I thought I was doing everything completely, 100 per cent right,” Young said.
As police pulled him from his car, he panicked and told them he’s trans – hoping they’d be respectful. But instead, several officers grabbed his chest and crotch like they were “trying to confirm” that he’s trans.
Young also alleges another officer sexually assaulted him while transporting him to the police station.
His lawsuit also alleges that police officers joked about him being trans and called him “he, she, her, him, miss and sir” at various points in the night.
Young was taken to prison, where his problems continued. He said he feared for his life, and that when he asked his legal-aid lawyer what to do, he was told to tell officers that he was female.
“I felt worthless,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I felt like all those triggers that trans people try so hard to manage throughout the transition, all of it just exploded.”
The NYPD said in a statement: “NYPD recognises and supports the rights and dignity of transgender and gender non-conforming persons. We endeavour to treat all individuals with the utmost respect.
“This lawsuit will be reviewed in the normal course when service is effected.”
Jamel Young said he’s suing because he wants to see changes that will ensure the safety of transgender people in custody.
“I’m not asking for anything special. I don’t think I need to get coffee three times a day. I literally just need my safety,” he said.
