The California HIV Alliance, of which Project Inform is a member, submitted their budget request to the State, urging the State to make strategic investments in programs that will increase PrEP uptake and other evidence-based prevention services, provide targeted HIV prevention and employment services for transgender women, address the health and psychosocial needs of older adults living with HIV and educate medical providers about advances in HIV prevention and treatment.
Specifically, we urge the Legislature to consider the following:
$10 Million General Fund Annually – $10 Million General Fund Annually – Support Comprehensive HIV Prevention Services Including PrEP and PEP;
$2 Million General Fund Over 3 Years – Support Demonstration Projects to Address Economic Empowerment and Linkage to HIV Care and Prevention Services for Transgender Women;
$3 Million General Fund Over 3 Years – Support Demonstration Projects to Address the Health and Psychosocial Needs of Older Adults Living with HIV;
$1 Million General Fund Over 2 Years – Develop a Public Health Detailing Initiative to Educate Medical Providers about HIV and STD Prevention;
ADAP Rebate Fund – Modify PrEP Assistance Program to Provide More Comprehensive Coverage for PrEP and PEP.
Further, the HIV Alliance also supports a proposal from the California Hepatitis Alliance to provide $6.6 million General Fund annually for hepatitis C prevention, testing, and linkage to and retention in care. They also support a proposal from Essential Access Health to provide $10 million General Fund annually for STD prevention.
Finally, the HIV Alliance opposes Governor Brown’s proposal to eliminate 340B drug reimbursement within the Medi-Cal Program.
A fifth transgender woman has been murdered in the US.
Phylicia Mitchell was shot dead outside of her home in Cleveland, Ohio last week.
The 45-year-old was found with bullet wounds in her chest in her living room on February 23.
She was taken to hospital but was later pronounced dead.
Police have not yet determined a suspect or a motive for the shooting.
Her partner of 30 years, Shane Mitchell, said that he is distraught over her loss.
Phylicia and Shane (Photo by Phylicia Mitchell/Facebook)
“Everyone loved her,” he told Cleavland.com. “I miss her tremendously. That’s my soulmate.
“We went everywhere together. We did everything together.”
Mitchell took her partner’s name last year, although they did not have an official wedding.
He explained: “It was like a mock wedding.
“We had a few friends come, some of her family. It was awesome.”
The two had recently separated as they both struggled with drug addiction, which Mitchel fears is the reason she was killed.
Over the time that they knew each other, Shane had helped Phylicia get out of sex work.
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He said: “She was a good person, even though she had a drug problem, she’s a good person.
“She got mixed up with the wrong people.
“We should have never started doing drugs together. We’d have both had an even better life than we already did.”
Mitchell added that when they first started their relationship they struggled as people “didn’t respect them” but over the years, his family began to accept her.
“My nieces and nephews opened up to her so much. She was just so funny and kind,” he added.
She was found stabbed to death in her home. Her husband Mark Steele-Knudslien, has been arrested on suspicion of the murder after he confessed to police that he had killed her. However, he has since entered a not guilty plea at his arraignment hearing.
Gutierrez was brutally murdered and her body was found burnt.
Local trans rights activist Ari Moore told Buffalo News: “The hatred, the bigotry and the aggressive attacks on trans people is almost an everyday occurrence in our lives.”
The Pentagon has confirmed that a transgender recruit has signed up to join the military – after Donald Trump’s ban on trans troops was lifted.
Donald Trump announced on Twitter last year that all transgender servicepeople would be purged from the US armed forces, claiming they were a burden on the military.
Four different courts issued rulings blocking the decision amid legal action, allowing transgender troops to join the military from January 1 this year.
Following the legal action, the Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis sent a memo to the White House last week giving guidance on future policy.
While the details of the memo were not disclosed, it is believed that he recommended allowing transgender people to openly serve.
Today, the Pentagon confirmed that a transgender person has signed a contract to the join the U.S. military for the first time since the memo was sent.
Maj. Dave Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the contract was signed on Friday, and that the person met the required standards to serve in the military.
He said: “[The Pentagon] confirms that as of February 23, 2018 there is one transgender individual under contract for service in the US Military”.
The individual has yet to start basic training.
Trump has remained silent on the issue.
Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN last month asked a federal district court to permanently block enforcement of the Trump Administration’s ban policy.
The motion for summary judgment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington seeks a speedy resolution of the case..
Plaintiff Megan Winters, a 29-year-old woman and five-year member of the U.S. Navy serving in the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C, said: “Without a court ruling, the possibility of being shoved back into the closet hangs over my head and every transgender service member’s head every day.
“It is impossible to overstate how damaging that uncertainty is to morale and military readiness.”
Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Peter Renn said: “Every single federal court to look at President Trump’s policy has already found that it reeks of undisguised and unlawful discrimination against qualified transgender people willing and able to serve our country, and it’s time to put the nail in the coffin for that policy.
“The facts are in and the court has what it needs to finally return this bigoted policy back to the dustbin of history, where it has always belonged. Every day that this clearly illegal ban lingers perpetuates harm to patriotic Americans who wish only to serve the country they love.”
The course targeted girls who “think they might be gay, bisexual or transgender”.
The advertisement for the workshop has since been removed from the church website, although it says it is going ahead.
After the church declined to cancel the event, hundreds of people turned out to protest on Thursday night – and send a message to the teens that they are fine just they way they are.
(Metro-Detroit Political Action Network)
Speaking to BTL, protest organiser Brianna Dee Kingsley said: “Conversion therapy is what it is, and Metro City Church is trying to repackage it as conversation therapy.
“But the basic premise is you are broken and you need to be fixed and that something is wrong, and we stand against that – we are here to show support for the LGBTQIA community.”
Several survivors of gay cure therapy also attended the protest.
One protester said: “I went through conversion therapy at a local church when I was 15.
At Transamerica, our passion is empowering people to add more years to their lives, and more life to their years. Let’s charge forward with a healthy account balance and a healthy heart to match.
“I wanted to come out and basically make sure these kids know that there are people out there outside of your parents’ house and outside of your parents’ religion who will be there for you.
“I want them to know that they don’t have to give in to what their parents say – they can make it through this even though it’s probably hard right now going through all this.”
And Oakland University professor Char Davenport pointed out the lack of legislation banning gay cure therapy across much of the US – despite the discredited practise being condemned by hundreds of medical bodies.
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Davenport said: “This protest, yes it’s about this church, and it’s about these kids – but let me tell you that this is a much bigger issue than this street corner.
“Only nine states and the District of Columbia have banned this practice. We can make a difference here in Michigan, and we’re going to make a difference here in Michigan. So pay attention, and you’re going to be a part of it.”
A second protest is planned for next week.
The church’s pastor Jeremy Schossau defended the workshop in a sermon subsequently posted to YouTube.
He said: “We’ve seen this movement in culture, particularly younger people, where they are just struggling – and our culture is cheering that struggle on.
“For me, I believe it’s in the wrong direction. Unashamedly. We believe God is the creator of men and women, and that God created men to be men and women to be women, and defined their completeness in one another.
“Not man with man, or woman with woman, but with the opposite. That is God’s design. For those of us who want to follow the God of the Bible, that’s what we believe. It is not a hate-filled thing.”
He added: “Some of you are aware that a couple weeks ago we offered a workshop on the idea of sexual identity for young girls.
“It is obvious that so many young people struggle with their sexual identity, and the direction they want to go with their life.
“We see this more and more, and it has not escaped the church – this is a problem even within the church, and I do say the word ‘problem’, because God does not want us to live confused, he wants us to be whole and complete.
“God doesn’t want us to live broken. We are a Bible-believing, traditionally-minded Christian church that wants to engage the world.”
He denied that the practise was hateful because “this church believes in loving sinners”, and went on to claim parents have a “duty” to fix their children’s sexuality.
He said: “I think it is very clear in scripture that God wants men and women to be married in a monogamous, loving thing called marriage. All of this sexual movement comes from brokenness.
“We’ve been told that parents have no right to intervene in the development of their 12-year-old children. I think it’s not only a right, it’s a duty, and a responsibility.”
GLAAD, the media monitoring organization that advocates for proper treatment and representation for LGBTQ+ people in media, is now calling upon the media for increased and more accurate coverage of violence against transgender people, especially women of color.
After the death of Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, the first transgender casualty of 2018 and a victim of domestic abuse, GLAAD released a statement on their website elucidating both their mission and expectations for the media’s coverage of transgender murders:
“[GLAAD is calling on the media to] report on the brutal violence perpetrated against transgender people, particularly transgender women of color. With violence against transgender people at an all-time high and rising, national media coverage is severely lacking.”
The statement continues: “The media must do a better job of reporting these murders and bringing needed attention to a community under vicious and violent attack.
In order for people to be aware of the horrific violence affecting the community, the public needs to know it is happening. The media has a responsibility to communicate about the deadly realities faced by transgender people.”
In addition to the necessity of increased reporting of violence against transgender people, GLAAD is also making clear that media outlets must respect the victims by using proper pronouns and names:
“Respect and use the lived identity, name, and pronoun of the victim. Report on each victim with dignity and respect, portraying them as a person, not just a statistic.
Disregarding the victim’s gender identity and misgendering them in news reports adds further insult to injury, compounding the tragedy by invalidating who the victims were.”
For guidelines on properly and respectfully reporting on transgender people, GLAAD offers their guides entitled “GLAAD’s Doubly Victimized: Reporting on Transgender Victims of Crime” as well as “GLAAD’s Media Reference Guide.” GLAAD also directs readers to contact them if they see a news story “which misgenders a transgender victim and/or publishes details about their personal life irrelevant to their murder,” at the email address transgender@glaad.org.
GLAAD reported that in 2017, 26 transgender people were killed in the United States and nearly all of the victims were transgender women of color. The organization cites that this due in part to transgender women living “at the dangerous intersections of transphobia, racism, sexism, and criminalization which often lead to high rates of poverty, unemployment, and homelessness.”
So far, GLAAD has posted the names of two known transgender women who have been murdered in 2018; Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, 42, who was killed on January 5 in North Adams, Massachusetts and Viccky Gutierrez, who was killed on January 10 in Los Angeles, California.
To learn more about individual transgender victims of violence, more information can be found at https://mic.com/unerased.
A trans prisoner in Missouri has won a landmark court case meaning that she will be able to access gender-affirming treatments.
Jessica Heckling has been n the Potosi Correctional Center since she was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1995.
At just 16-years-old, was convicted of first-degree murder and armed criminal action after she shot an killed a man during a drug-related incident.
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At that time, Hicklin was beginning to come to terms with her trans identity but because of former rules held by the Missouri Department of Corrections, she had been unable to access many of the treatments and procedures in order to transition.
Because she had not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria before being sentenced, she was denied access because of the “freeze frame” policy.
The policy has been coined “unconstitutional” by Hicklin’s lawyer, Demoya Gordon of Lambda Legal, and they hope that the court ruling will come as a significant blow to it.
“If they can’t justify not doing this for her, how that can they justify not doing this for anybody else. This should be the knife to the heart of the policy,” Gordon added.
Hicklin was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression the longer she was forced to live as male.
Despite doctors recommendations, the prison denied her hormone therapy, access to women’s commissary items and regular hair removal.
However, the 38- year-old has now won her right to access these potentially life-saving items after she won a court case against the Missouri DOC.
Speaking about the ruling, Hicklin said it has been “life-saving”.
She told BuzzFeed: “It’s like you’re out in the middle of the ocean, your boat capsized, and you’re just hoping that you’ll see a boat on the horizon and that you’re not going to drown, but how do you keep treading water?
“It’s like this lawsuit was a flare. That’s really how I’ve felt, like we filed this lawsuit and it’s in the courts, there’s no indication of whether anybody saw it and I’m just drowning, and wondering why I’m still treading water. So obviously the feeling is, the boat showed up. There is life now.
“For me this is life-saving, and I know for sure if I’m talking to someone, it’s going to be life-saving for them. It’s like you’re drowning and somebody throws you the life vest,” she said.
She added that straight after she found out the ruling she almost could not believe she had won.
“I kept going, like, Are you kidding me? I get to be the woman I am? Even just trying to explain it my eyes are fogging up. I have so much hope for the future now,” she said.
She went on to explain that even being able to wear female underwear will create an incredible sense of affirmation because for a long time all she could feminise was her hair.
“All my life it’s been the only expression of womanhood I had was my hair and I’m looking forward to having [women’s] underwear that’s me… I will be the only one who knows that I have it but it’s a sign of me. And just to be able to say I dress like a woman, because I am one.”
Hickins said that the freeze frame policy, which has stopped her from furthering her transition for such a long time, is often not an “official written police” and so it’s difficult to know how many US prisons are enforcing the “antiquated” policy.
“They don’t adhere to either modern medical practice or standards of human decency,” she said.
The prisoner added that before the ruling she was scared every day that they would not win the case.
She said: “I wanted to have hope that it was going to happen and when it didn’t I had to convince myself every night when I went to bed, how am I going to go on, how am I going to keep doing this?
“I was just explaining to my therapist the other day, I can’t even take myself in the mirror anymore. And to think I’ll actually be happy to look in the mirror, that’s actually going to be me, not this other person.”
The Education Department has told BuzzFeed News it won’t investigate or take action on any complaints filed by transgender students who are banned from restrooms that match their gender identity, charting new ground in the Trump administration’s year-long broadside against LGBT rights.
It’s the first time officials have asserted this position publicly as an interpretation of law. No formal announcement has been made.
For nearly a year, the Trump administration took a less clear stance, with officials saying they were studying the issue. When the Education Department and Justice Department withdrew Obama-era guidance on transgender restroom access in February 2017, Trump’s officials said in a memo and court filings that they would “consider the legal issues involved.” Then last June, the Education Department issued another memo saying it was “permissible” for its civil rights division to dismiss a trans student’s restroom case. However, in those statements, officials never cemented their intent to reject all restroom complaints issued by trans students.
For the past three weeks, BuzzFeed News called and emailed Education Department officials attempting to pinpoint the agency’s position.
Finally on Thursday, Liz Hill, a spokesperson for the agency, responded “yes, that’s what the law says” when asked again if the Education Department holds a current position that restroom complaints from transgender students are not covered by a 1972 federal civil rights law called Title IX.
Asked for further explanation on the department’s position, Hill said Friday, “Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity.”
She added that certain types of transgender complaints may be investigated — but not bathroom complaints.
“Where students, including transgender students, are penalized or harassed for failing to conform to sex-based stereotypes, that is sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX,” Hill said. “In the case of bathrooms, however, long-standing regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX.”
The Education Department’s stance conflicts with two federal appeals courts.
Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Obama administration, said the new school-restroom policy is legally dubious.
“Until now, the official position of the Department has been that Title IX protects all students and that they were evaluating how that protection applies to the issue of bathroom access,” she said in an email to BuzzFeed News. “This new categorical bar of civil rights protection for transgender children required to attend schools every day ignores the text of the law, courts’ interpretation of the law, the stated position of the Department to date, and human decency.”
The Education Department’s stance conflicts with two federal appeals courts, which held that Title IX guarantees transgender students’ access to restrooms matching their gender identity. Lower courts have been divided on the matter.
Although Hill said “the law says” transgender student restroom complaints aren’t covered by Title IX, the law does not say that.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 says it bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in publicly funded education settings. Does that exclude transgender restroom disputes? The plain text of the law, as some federal judges have noted, does not answer the question. It’s ambiguous, they say. The term “sex” — including in the law concerning separate restrooms — is not defined as referring to gender identity or a person’s sex as identified at birth.
But insofar as Title IX needs clarity, the highest courts in the United States to contemplate the law’s scope found it does, in fact, confer transgender students the right to use public school restrooms matching their gender identity.
The exact meaning of Title IX is ambiguous: It bans discrimination “on the basis of sex.”
Federal appeals courts for the 6th Circuit and 7th Circuit both suspended school restroom policies, ruling that transgender students were likely to prevail at trial using claims under Title IX.
Most recently, in May 2017, a unanimous three-judge panel for 7th Circuit wrote in Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District that a “policy that requires an individual to use a bathroom that does not conform with his or her gender identity punishes that individual for his or her gender non‐conformance, which in turn violates Title IX.”
Harper Jean Tobin, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, told BuzzFeed News, “It marks a shift in position for the Education Department that is particularly remarkable in light of case law.”
For the department to neglect those decisions, Tobin said, is to “ignore the law in favor of their ideology.”
Hill did not answer questions about how the department reconciles its position with conflicting circuit court rulings, or why it won’t accept the complaints arising even from students inside those circuits (which encompass Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, and Wisconsin).
In May 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance that said Title IX ensures transgender students can use restrooms and other school facilities in accordance with their gender identity. (A district court suspended that guidance after a challenge led by the state of Texas.) But even before it had guidance on the matter, the Obama administration enforced this view of Title IX in 2013.
With Trump in office, the Justice Department and Education Department sent a Dear Colleague letter to local officials in February 2017 rescinding Obama-era guidance. But the Trump administration letter did not assert a position on what Title IX required, instead announcing that officials were going to “more completely consider the legal issues involved.” It made similar statements in briefs filed at the Supreme Court and US District Court in North Carolina.
In June 2017, Candice Jackson, acting head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, issued a memo that said it would be “permissible” for a complaint concerning a restroom to be dismissed. But that memo did not assert any interpretation of the law or a general rule for handling such complaints.
The Justice Department said in October that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which bans sex discrimination in the workplace, does not protect transgender people.
But it did not make such a clear statement on the education law. Rescinding the school guidance created the absence of a position for recipients of federal education money.
Officials at the Education and Justice Department’s did not answer questions from BuzzFeed News about when they stopped considering transgender student restroom complaints as a matter of policy and how many of those complaints have been rejected.
A Justice Department official told BuzzFeed News on Friday, “The Department of Justice cannot expand the law beyond what Congress has provided. The Department of Justice remains firmly committed to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, and will aggressively enforce all civil rights laws enacted by Congress.”
But Lhamon disagreed, given her view that Title IX doesn’t actually tie the administration’s hands.
“That interpretation represents an appalling abdication of federal enforcement responsibility, inconsistent with the law and with courts’ interpretation of the law, and totally lacking in human compassion for children in school, whom the Department is charged to protect,” she said.
A global study into the treatment of transgender people has revealed that three in five people deliberately misgender trans people in order to cause disrespect.
A study carried out by Ipsos looked into the treatment and social perception of transgender people across 16 countries.
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the US were all surveyed.
Ipsos found that Americans were most likely to misgender a person on purpose, followed by Australia, Canada and Britain.
They also found that only one in five people would be ok with using the gender-neutral pronoun “they”.
It should be noted that questions about pronouns were only given to people living in countries where English is the primary language.
However, Ipsos hope that they will soon “develop similar custom questions language-by language in the future”.
Regarding the “tolerance” of transgender people, six in ten said they believed that their country was becoming more accepting.
This belief was highest in Argentina where 78 percent of the population thought that they were becoming more tolerant of trans people.
Hungary, Poland and Japan were the least likely to say that their countries were becoming more accepting.
Spain, Argentina and Britain were the nations most likely to agree with the sentiment that trans people are brave with 74, 70 and 69 percent of survey respondents agreeing with the statement.
An average of half of all people surveyed said that they believed being transgender was natural.
People in Italy (11 percent), Spain (nine percent), Argentina (13 percent), and France (13 percent) are least likely to believe that transgender people have a form of mental illness. This compares to two in five people in Serbia (44 percent), Hungary (43 percent), and Poland (41 percent).
When breaking down the data, the US is the most likely to believe that transgender people have a mental illness amongst the western countries with 32 percent of those surveyed agreeing with the statement.
It was also the most likely western country to believe that trans people are committing a sin with their gender, with 32 percent of Americans agreeing to the statement.
US pharmacy giant Walgreens has updated its bathroom policy to be trans-friendly after a woman was denied access because an employee thought she was transgender.
Jessie Meehan helped implement a companywide policy which allows customers to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender policy.
Meehan took on the task after she was told she could not use the female bathroom at the Walgreens on Sunset Boulevard.
She was in the store during the LGBTQ Pride festival and had purchased some items in the store.
However, she was told she looked to masculine to use it and a store manager told her that it was store policy to restrict bathroom access based on appearance.
Meehan, who is not transgender, was later told by a different manager that this was not true.
She did not fight to use the female bathroom and instead used the stall in the male bathroom.
“This was very humiliating,” she explained. “I felt extremely uncomfortable.”
Her complaint was not followed up to Walgreens, and so she reached out to ACLU and staff attorney Amanda Goad sent a letter to the company explaining that California law “protects every person’s right to access restrooms based on their gender identity in workplaces, schools and business establishments.”
Meehan did not seek out a financial settlement, as she was happy that the company changed its policy across all 8,100 stores.
She added that she was shocked that she had received the treatment because she see’s Walgreens as an ally.
“(It’s) A company that really supports progressive issues which I really respect a lot. I’ve supported that business and one of the reasons why is because I knew it was an LGBT company. If this happened there, god knows where else it happens,” she said.
The musician added that she had faced similar discrimination about her appearance for her whole life, but she finally decided to take a stand after the incident in Walgreens.
“I’ve been discriminated against my whole life based on my appearance based on looking too male.
“It’s the first time I actually said something about it or did something about it.
“I can imagine there are 100s of people who didn’t do anything about it,” she said.
The new Walgreens policy states: “All individuals have a right to use restroom facilities that correspond to the individual’s gender identity, regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth.”
Selling your home can be difficult, and for most of us, living there while it’s on the market can be even harder. Trying to schedule showings around your work and home schedule can drive you crazy, even with a gay real estate professional working with you.
Here are a few tips that will make the entire process easier.
Leave When an Agent Is Showing the House
First, be ready to pick up and leave at any moment. It’s very difficult for a real estate agent to successfully show your home when you’re sitting right there. Potential buyers will likely be much too nervous to really inspect the home and speak freely as they should.
Fortunately, agents are required to schedule showings and let you know ahead of time when they will be by. This will let you know when you need to make arrangements to be somewhere else, so you’re not surprised in the middle of dinner and have to walk out of your own home.
Mind Your Pets
While some people love to meet curious dogs and playful kittens, others are allergic or simply aren’t pet people. Some of our trusted companions can be nervous and unpredictable when strangers come into the home when you’re not there. For the comfort and safety of everyone involved, please take your animals with you when you leave for showings.
Clean, Clean, and Clean Some More
You can never have your home too clean for showings. Since you’re living there, you’re always going to be making small messes all over the house. Even the smallest thing like a few dirty dishes in the sink needs to be taken care of before potential buyers arrive. This means you’re going to be sweeping and vacuuming much more often than you’re used to.
In addition to cleaning, you also want to keep everything as organized as possible. Throw away or organize your mail each day, keep the kid’s room looking tidy, and get your closets, the garage, basement, and attic in order. That sounds like a lot of work, but if you make it a point to clean and organize every day, it won’t be that bad.
Put Away Anything Confidential or Valuable
In an age where identity theft is more common than we’d like to admit, you can’t risk leaving out anything with identifying information on it. Put away any paperwork that has your date of birth, social security number, account number, or other information on it.
Additionally, make sure your valuables are locked up. While a licensed real estate agent will be there with the potential buyers the entire time, you don’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
Remove Anything That’s Truly Personal
When a potential buyer sees something they find distasteful or that clashes with their beliefs, it can cause them to instantly dismiss your home from their shortlist of properties. While it’s true that your religion, political beliefs, or other beliefs have nothing to do with your home, people don’t always separate the two. To that end, it’s a good idea to remove anything that’s overly personal from sight.
That doesn’t mean you have to scrub your home of personality, but take a critical look at your décor. You may want to take down or put away things that you could see someone else disliking.
Your agent can assist you with staging your home so that it looks as bright and as spacious as possible, even while still serving as your living space.
If you’re looking for a LGBTQ real estate agent, they’re not hard to find. You can search online at www.GayRealEstate.com for a list of agents in your city.