On Saturday, July 23, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the spread of monkeypox to be a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), the organization’s loudest alarm bell signifying an emerging outbreak.
Since early May, more than 15,000 cases of monkeypox have been identified across more than 60 countries. Disease caused by the monkeypox virus typically involves a few days of fever and lymph node swelling followed by a rash, which can leave scars. Most cases in the current outbreak have resolved without hospitalization or the need for medication. As of July 7, there have been three deaths, all of them in Africa.
When the WHO first convened a committee in late June to determine whether monkeypox was a PHEIC. As cases have continued to rise worldwide, the committee reconvened on July 21 — and this time, the outcome was different.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in international health regulations,” Tedros said when announcing the emergency.
Tedros made the declaration despite the the WHO’s emergency committee for monkeypox, which did not come to an unanimous consensus on whether to declare an emergency. “There are uncertainties on all sides,” said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, explaining Tedros’s reasoning in deciding to declare a PHEIC. “He sees a window of opportunity to to bring this disease under control,” said Ryan. The committee offers a recommendation, but ultimately it was Tedros’s decision.
The last time the WHO declared an international emergency was in early 2020, for Covid-19. While the disease caused by the currently spreading monkeypox virus is much less severe than Covid-19 and spreads far less easily, there are good reasons for the WHO to declare an emergency.
For starters, said Ana B. Amaya, an expert in global health governance at Pace University in New York, this monkeypox outbreak is just very different from past outbreaks of the disease. The vast majority of the latest cases have been identified among gay and bisexual men, and sexual contact with multiple sexual partners has emerged as an important risk factor. Scientists are now trying to determine if the virus spreads through sexual fluids like semen and vaginal fluid in addition to the ways it’s already known to spread: via skin-to-skin contact and, to a lesser degree, by respiratory transmission.
Prior to the current outbreak, monkeypox often spread throughout households via close contact and, possibly, shared items like utensils and linens. In the past few weeks, isolatedreports of infections in children, who are thought to be at higher risk for severe outcomes of monkeypox infection, reinforce the worry that without containment, outbreaks often spread beyond the populations where they start.
The prospect that the virus might be spreading in ways not seen before raises the concern that it will surprise us in other ways — for example, by causing severe disease if it reaches certain populations it has not yet reached, like large groups of immunocompromised people, said Amaya. “All of that is really alarming. And that’s why it’s very important for us to have a coordinated response that starts from the WHO level,” she said in a late-June interview, before the WHO’s first meeting to discuss issuing an emergency declaration.
But beyond that, this kind of declaration encourages countries to coordinate to stop the virus’s spread in a few different ways. Here’s how that works.
A public health emergency is not the same thing as a pandemic
To be resoundingly clear: The WHO did not declare monkeypox to be a new pandemic. There’s a difference between a pandemic and a PHEIC.
A pandemic is squishily defined as “an epidemic occurring over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries, and usually affecting a large number of people,” according to A Dictionary of Epidemiology. Public health experts use the phrase “pandemic” to emphasize the global reach of an outbreak. They seem to agree that calling something a pandemic means it demands a coordinated international response — and potentially, that it’s too big to contain.
On the other hand, a PHEIC is a more carefully defined term. It describes a situation that has not necessarily grown out of control, but has the potential to do so.
According to the WHO’s International Health Regulations, an outbreak qualifies as a PHEIC if 1) it’s unusual or unexpected, 2) has potential for international spread, and 3) requires an immediate international response.
The WHO has only declared six PHEICs to date, including Ebola, Zika, and Covid-19.
The monkeypox outbreak easily meets the first two criteria for an emergency: the virus’s spread outside West and Central Africa and among sexual networks are both unusual patterns, and the virus has already spread internationally, with cases now present in about 60 countries. And given that spread, containing monkeypox will clearly require an international response.
Why did the WHO wait to declare an emergency?
Some experts think this outbreak easily met the PHEIC criteria when the WHO first addressed the question about a month ago. Why didn’t it declare an emergency then?
Nearly 50 percent of transgender people travel outside of their state of residence to get gender-affirming genital surgeries, according to a new study from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). The percentage could increase as more states put bans against gender-affirming healthcare for trans people in place, the study’s authors say.
The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery, looked at 771 transgender patients who had a vaginoplasty or phalloplasty between 2007 and 2019. It found that 49 percent left their state of residence to get the procedure. People who lived in southern states were more likely to have to leave their home states in order to receive the surgery.
That’s because there’s a lack of surgeons who provide such care in the South. A 2020 studyfound that just 11 doctors in the South could provide such surgeries, and four of the doctors resided in Florida.
The number of such doctors could decrease as more Southern states ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. Genital surgeries aren’t typically performed on young trans people, but some doctors could choose to locate their practices outside of states with such bans in place because the bans increase doctors’ legal and financial liabilities if they treat young patients.
Of additional concern, the OHSU study found trans people who left their states to get surgery ended up paying up to 50 percent more in out-of-pocket medical expenses than those who were able to obtain surgeries in their home states. This included costs for post-surgical visits and foll0w-up care.
Only one of the 771 patients included in the study had their surgery paid for by their commercial health insurance provider, The Hill noted. This suggests that the life-saving surgical procedures may not be affordable for many trans people. Trans people living in transphobic states will face even greater financial and time costs just to receive gender-affirming care.
“We already knew that traveling for health care requires patients to take time off work and pay for travel and lodging on their own, and that it can make receiving follow-up care from qualified providers who are familiar with each patient’s unique needs challenging,” Jae Downing, the study’s lead author, said in a press release.
“This study helps quantify how severely we need more gender-affirming surgeons,” Geolani Dy, an assistant professor of urology and plastic and reconstructive surgery at OHSU School of Medicine, added.
On a sultry Tuesday evening in New York City, Luke Brown excitedly opened a newly delivered bottle of black-and-orange pills, popped his first dose in his mouth, and washed it down with root beer.
Having contracted monkeypox this month, the lanky, bespectacled 29-year-old project manager had been suffering from what he called “the most severe pain of my life” for over a week before he finally was able to obtain a course of antivirals — a treatment he hoped would soon clear up his lesions and alleviate his suffering.
For Brown, this was cause for celebration. But it was also a sobering moment for him to reflect on how, to gain access to this medication, he had to leverage high degrees of personal privilege, medical literacy and self-advocacy that he said he was guiltily aware most people at risk for monkeypox probably lack. Because to join the fortunate few who have obtained this prized medication, called TPOXX, he had to navigate what he characterized as the exasperatingly byzantine maze of the medical and public health system.
“Here we are in the epicenter of an outbreak primarily affecting gay men in the city,” Brown said of his hometown, New York, which as of Thursday had 778 confirmed monkeypox cases out of 2,593 nationwide. “The city that of anywhere in the world should have the most impressive and robust infrastructure to respond to the health care needs of gay men. And at every level it has fallen flat on its face.”
Luke Brown points to a monkeypox lesion on the knuckle of his thumb.Benjamin Ryan for NBC NewsAnother lesion is visible just above Brown’s right eyebrow.Benjamin Ryan for NBC News
Like many of his fellow gay and bisexual men — a demographic that comprises the vast majority monkeypox cases in the global outbreakthat has ballooned to 15,848 cases — Brown said he has grown increasingly appalled and infuriated by the nation’s response to a virus spreading so swiftly that many epidemiologists now believewill likely become endemic in the U.S. and around the world.
Supply of the antiviral is not the problem; there are 1.7 million courses in the nation’s Strategic National Stockpile, according to Dennis Hruby, chief scientific officer of the U.S. pharmaceutical company SIGA, TPOXX’s manufacturer. But the drug, also known as tecovirimat, is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat monkeypox as it is by regulators in the United Kingdom and the European Union; the drug is approved only for smallpox in the U.S.
This is bad news for the Americans with monkeypox who like Brown suffer from excruciating physical pain or other severe outcomes from the infection and who are desperate for treatment to speed their healing. They, and the health care providers who care for them, are up against the U.S. regulatory system.
Even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to reduce the red tape that impedes TPOXX access, announcing new changes Friday, public health experts pointed to a complementary means of leveraging the drug’s potential power to alleviate suffering: large clinical trials of the antiviral as a monkeypox treatment.
Plans for such trials are already in advanced stages in Canada, the U.K. and the European Union, according to Hruby. The National Institutes of Health is also planning one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the federal agency’s efforts to launch such research in the U.S. are only in the earliest planning stages.
“This points to a persistent issue we saw during Covid,” said James Krellenstein, a public-health activist and cofounder of the activist group PrEP4All, “where the United Kingdom and European researchers were really able to mount much quicker clinical studies than the United States was.”
Excessive barriers to prescribing
In addition to Brown, NBC News spoke with a dozen people who have taken TPOXX, all of whom suffered from extreme pain before starting the antiviral. They generally reported that within a few days of treatment, their monkeypox symptoms — the pain in particular — began to ease, much to their relief. Most reported no bothersome side effects, or, in one case at least, not bad enough to discontinue treatment. While they all acknowledged that they could not be certain how the course of the disease might have unfolded had they not taken the drug, they generally believed it had been effective for them.
The FDA approved TPOXX as a treatment for smallpox in 2018 based on studies that had infected rabbits with rabbitpox and nonhuman primates with monkeypox. (Smallpox and monkeypox are close viral relatives, so treatments for one are expected to work for the other.) Researchers had to rely on these proxy models of similar viruses because there is no smallpox to investigate, as the virus has been eradicated; and even if there were, it would be unethical to study such a lethal pathogen in humans.
The data indicating the drug is safe for humans comes from a studyof 449 healthy people.
Typically, physicians may use their own judgment to prescribe medications off label for purposes other than those for which they were granted explicit FDA approval.
But given the lack of research on TPOXX’s efficacy in humans, federal health regulations dictate that health care providers may only prescribe the drug for monkeypox through a compassionate-use system overseen by the CDC. Physicians such as Dr. Marshall Glesby, an infectious disease specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, said that these strict rules are excessive, including the need to review a more than 100-page treatment-protocol document to qualify as a TPOXX prescriber and to thoroughly document each case.
Dr. Marshall Glesby, an infectious disease specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, said the strict rules around prescribing TPOXX are excessive.Benjamin Ryan for NBC News
Such burdens sharply limit the number of health care providers who are willing and able to prescribe TPOXX, according to clinicians who have gained such authority.
“It’s a cumbersome process,” said Dr. Anu Hazra, a physician at Howard Brown Health in Chicago who recently began prescribing the treatment.
“Because we don’t yet know how well this drug is going to work for monkeypox patients,” said Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, who leads the CDC’s monkeypox response, “it is important to ensure we have some data from patients who use it, so we can better understand the risks and benefits and ultimately help other people as well.”
Responding to health care providers’ recent complaints about the TPOXX compassionate-use system, the CDC has, for example, made optional previous requirements that clinicians submit photographs of patients’ monkeypox lesions and ship viral specimens to the agency.
In a July 15 letter to the heads of various federal health agencies, PrEP4All and the nonprofit Partners in Health called on the CDC and FDA to end all restrictions on TPOXX’s use and to allow health care providers to freely prescribe it for monkeypox.
Friday, the CDC announced further revisions to the compassionate-use system, including plans to reduce the 100-plus-page document to under 50; pare back the number of reports physicians must fill out about each patient from six to two; and to permit virtual appointments.
“We have reduced the data we need down to the most critical pieces,” McQuiston said “and have worked to make using this drug simpler, in order to ensure doctors can get the drug to patients who need it.”
Dr. Jason Zucker, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University Department of Medicine whose team has prescribed the antiviral to 45 patients, said that the U.S. should launch a large randomized clinical trial including people with mild monkeypox disease. If anyone in the placebo arm should progress to severe disease, he proposed, they could be switched into a parallel compassionate-use group. This would not only address the crucial question of the drug’s efficacy but also expand access to treatment while also collecting data on people receiving it in a much more rigorous and organized fashion than he said occurs through the current system.
Jumping through hoops to get TPOXX
Luke Brown said that he first tried to gain access to TPOXX through his primary care provider, who submitted the request to New York City’s health department. The request was denied on the grounds that his case wasn’t serious enough. But then he began to suffer pain so severe all he could do was pace around his apartment for hours; even then, his physician delayed in resubmitting the request. So the well-connected Brown tapped into his contacts on social media and finally found someone who linked him to a local doctor with prescribing authority.
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“It’s infuriating,” he said of the hoops he had to jump through to obtain the drug.
Boomer Banks, an online content creator in New York City, said that he went through a maddening ordeal to obtain TPOXX.Benjamin Ryan for NBC News
“I had to fight for the TPOXX meds,” said an online content creator known as Boomer Banks, also a New Yorker, about what he said was a maddening ordeal finding someone at the city’s health department who could help him access the treatment. “I had no privilege to leverage, just my mouth,” said Banks, who did not want to use his real name used to protect his privacy. “I’m a brown immigrant, 42-year-old HIV-positive sex worker with no insurance. I didn’t take ‘no’ as an answer.”
A recent nonpeer reviewed study posted to a pre-print server found that in laboratory experiments, TPOXX was highly effective at neutralizing the monkeypox strain circulating in the global outbreak.
Under current CDC guidelines, TPOXX is reserved for those with severe disease, including those who are hospitalized or at high risk of a severe outcome because, for example, they are immunocompromised. Those suffering from a common symptom of the virus, intense anorectal or genital pain, qualify for TPOXX, Zucker said.
Brooklyn resident Sebastian Kohn, 39, who had a particularly severe case of monkeypox, said that days after he started TPOXX, the difference in his anorectal pain was “night and day.”
“I can wash myself without wanting to cry,” Kohn said.
Luke Brown holds his bottle of TPOXX pills.Benjamin Ryan for NBC News
Where is the U.S.-based clinical trial?
Asked about the NIH’s plans to back a U.S.-based clinical trial of TPOXX, Judith Hewitt, deputy director of the Office of Biodefense, Research Resources and Translational Research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that “it’s super early days” for such plans.
“There are now just beginning to be discussions about a trial in people living with HIV or at risk of HIV,” she said.
In an email, Dr. Judith Currier, a professor of medicine at the UCLA Division of Infectious Diseases and the chair of a major HIV-related clinical trial network funded by the NIH, confirmed that a trial is being discussed. “I think the holdup is identifying the funding for this work.”
“Money is obviously the real issue here,” Hewitt said. “And so people are scrambling to do what we can do with the resources at hand.” She said the agency is debating whether, for example, to fund a study examining whether a lower dose of the Jynneos vaccine would be highly effective against monkeypox. “So that’s within the same treatment area. But then we’re still up to our eyeballs in Covid.”
Krellenstein, the activist, said, “It’s bizarre, given that we have such large supply in the strategic national stockpile and TPOXX was approved without any human efficacy data, that there weren’t ready-to-go plans for actually doing a U.S. clinical study in the event that we needed to use it.”
According to SIGA’s Hruby, the company might not even look to U.S.trial data on TPOXX to submit to the FDA. Instead, they might rely on the combined findings of the trials already primed to launch in other nations, along with safety data from compassionate-use programs worldwide.
As for how long before the company would submit the drug for FDA approval, Hruby wouldn’t speculate.
“These things always take longer than expected, especially when working with large teams,” Hruby said.
Even on a drug given priority review, the FDA typically takes six months to reach a decision.
TPOXX could help blunt monkeypox’s impact
If approved, TPOXX would offer a future in which the antiviral complements widespread vaccination among at-risk individuals to mitigate monkeypox’s impact on public health, experts said.
The virus could be treated at the very first sign of symptoms, and possibly even during the asymptomatic incubation period if testing technology advances to permit detection at that stage. Such early medical intervention would not only prevent pain and suffering, but would also very likely block transmission of the virus by shortening or eliminating the disease’s infectious period.
Treatment could also save people from the personal and financial hardship of isolating at home for what can be weeks of illness with monkeypox that’s left to resolve on its own.
What’s more, TPOXX could be used as post-exposure prophylaxis among people exposed to monkeypox, either among unvaccinated people or those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised, according to Columbia’s Zucker.
The U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command does have an established study to assess such a preventive use of this drug. And while a listing of the trial indicates participants must be Department of Defense–affiliated personnel, according to Hruby, there actually is no such restriction.
Friday morning, Luke Brown said his pain had begun to subside and he was watching in wonder as his lesions were steadily sinking back into his skin — “like magic.”
Reflecting on the ordeal monkeypox has been for him, he said it had inspired him to become a public-health activist.
“I’m resolved to see that no one suffers like I did, because no one needs to,” he said.
Anticipating that the U.S. monkeypox outbreak will only continue to expand, he said, “We are just at a crest of avoidable pain unless access to this drug becomes easier.”
Greece’s parliament has banned “sex-normalizing” surgeries on babies born intersex, with atypical chromosomes that affect their bodies in a way that does not fit with the normative definitions of male or female.
Under a new law approved by parliament on Tuesday, surgeries that seek to ensure a child ascribes to traditional notions of male and female on people under the age of 15 years are banned in Greece, unless there is a court decision stating otherwise.
The bill stipulates fines and a prison term for doctors conducting such surgery.
Operations, including corrective surgeries or hormonal therapies to change face or body characteristics, on intersex people over the age of 15 years will be permitted if the teenagers consent, according to the law.
Rinio Simeonidou, mother of an intersex teenager and secretary general of Intersex Greece, told parliament before the vote that the approval of the bill would be “a truly historic moment for all intersex children in Greece” and a good start in eliminating violations of intersex people’s rights.
Malta, Portugal and Germany have already banned such surgeries, which in the past have led intersex people to sterilization, loss of sexual sensation, psychosomatic trauma and health problems, Simeonidou said.
Earlier this year, Greece banned so-called conversion therapy for minors, practices aimed at suppressing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and which health experts have condemned as psychologically harmful and unethical.
“I was truly saddened by the mistakes of the past that led to dramatic situations because we were lacking the knowledge and courage,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who faces elections next year, told parliament before the vote as he urged lawmakers to endorse the legislation.
Several men have alleged they had sex with anti-LGBTQ+ pastor and conservative radio host Jesse Lee Peterson.
The allegations emerged after Church Militant – a far-right Catholic group and website – released an almost 30-minute video in June featuring interviews with men accusing Peterson of making sexual advances toward them.
Patrick Rooney, one of the men in the video, claimed he had a sexual relationship with Peterson that he said lasted about 10 years. Rooney, who has known Peterson since 1992, alleged in the video that the Los Angeles-based pastor made sexual advances toward him for years before they became sexually involved in 2005.
But Rooney admitted in a subsequent investigation by the Daily Beasthe didn’t have any emails, texts, recordings or other documentation that could back up his claims.
“Jesse Lee Peterson is a very smart person, he’s a sly person,” Rooney said. “He’s not going to leave a lot of extraneous evidence out about what he does.”
PinkNews has contacted Jesse Lee Peterson and his Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) for comment.
Another man, named Samuel Arambula, alleged in the Church Militant video that Peterson subjected him to unwanted sexual touching at the “BOND house”, a Los Angeles House where Peterson reportedly lives with other members of his organisation.
Robert Santner – who described himself as the BOND house’s former manager – claimed in the video that he witnessed Peterson “intensely” hugging another man. He said he saw a man wrapped up in blankets “like a burrito” while the pastor hugged and kissed his forehead.
According to the Daily Beast, the video followed an online feud between Jesse Lee Peterson and Church Militant’s founder Anthony Michael Voris, who has been described as “one of the US Catholic Church’s most infamous agitators”.
Peterson has reportedly refused to address the allegations he had sexual relationships with men. He told one caller on his radio show, who asked about the claims, that “it’s not concerning me”, the Daily Beast reported.
The outlet reported the video has caused leading figures in the online “manosphere” – which the Daily Beast described as “Peterson’s hyper-masculine conservative community” – to distance themselves from the pastor. One of the leaders reportedly banned Peterson from future events.
In 2019, Jesse Lee Peterson described then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as a “radical homosexual”. He complained that same-gender married couples – who he described as “radical homosexuals” in “phoney relationships” – had “taken over terms ‘husbands’ and ‘wives’”, forcing straight couples to call each other “partners”.
Peterson also claimed that queer couples are not “mentally capable” of raising children and alleged LGBTQ+ people are “violent toward each other”.
He said in 2016 that intellectual “nutcases” are responsible for same-sex marriage and drag queens.
Last year, Jesse Lee Peterson tweeted the baseless claim that “‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ based on race, gender sexual orientation or any other physical attribute is a cancer on America culture”.
Reddit has banned the anti-LGBTQ+ slur “groomer” under its hate speech policy, as well as any other reference to LGBTQ+ people as “paedophiles”.
The vile slur, which conflates LGBTQ+ identities with paedophilia, has been increasing in use online, and has now been banned by Reddit as hate speech.
Journalist Alejandra Caraballo explained on Twitter that the social media platform will now “enforce their hate speech policy on content that utilizes the groomer libel”, which means that posts containing the slur will break Reddit policy and could be taken down.
The community “Against Hate Subreddits” added that as well as the “groomer” slur, Reddit will now enforce its hate speech policy on those who portray being transgender as a mental illness, or quote transgender suicide statistics in a hateful way.
Caraballo added: “Your move Twitter”, referencing Twitter users’ complaints that the social media site does not do enough to prevent hate speech.
The Data for Progress poll surveyed 1,155 likely voters and asked them about the spread of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the US, as well as certain slurs and stereotypes.
The poll stated: “Some groups have been describing teachers and parents who oppose banning discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in schools as ‘groomers’ – a term used to describe someone who gets close to and builds trust with a child or young person with the intent of sexually abusing them.”
Respondents were asked whether they agreed that “teachers and parents that support discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in school” in the wake of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation were “groomers”, and a majority of 55 per cent said they did not.
Broken down by political affiliation, just 15 per cent of likely Democrat voters supported anti-LGBTQ+ “groomer” language, while 45 per cent of likely Republican voters agreed with the slur.
A Reddit spokesperson said: “Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging. In line with this, our content policy prohibits content that promotes hate based on identity or vulnerability, including gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
“We regularly reach out to the communities on our platform to remind them of our policies and offer support, and we will continue to enforce our policies across the platform.”
Despite great strides of progress over the past few decades, the fight for full equality and acceptance of LGBTQ people is far from over.
Corporates has been a growing ally and critical partner in many key moments for LGBTQ rights, including the movement for marriage equality, the fight to decriminalize LGBTQ people in India in 2018, and the successful 2017 campaign to repeal the anti-LGBTQ HB 2 in North Carolina. Brands have immense power, especially in their advertising, where LGBTQ visibility and representation matters. This brand power extends outside of advertising as well – to all internal and external communications.
A number of corporations and brands prioritize workplaces where LGBTQ employees can achieve and have equal benefits and opportunities. But this is just one step on the journey toward true allyship. Corporate accountability does not begin and end with employee benefits and hiring practices – it extends to how a corporation spends its dollars, philanthropic and political. It extends to how a corporation takes public stands and lobbies against anti-LGBTQ legislation, and how it supports and lobbies for pro-LGBTQ legislation, because this legislation impacts LGBTQ employees and consumers.
Protecting all LGBTQ people, including LGBTQ people of color, members of the trans community, and LGBTQ youth, is both good for business and good for the world. The journey to true allyship for LGBTQ people is not always easy, but it is always important. Any company that wants to be a true ally of the LGBTQ community should work toward the below recommendations. Recent high-profile calls to action from LGBTQ employees and LGBTQ consumers have shown that the bar for corporate allies has been raised. Community leaders and press actively research a company’s political donations and other internal information and speak out if a Pride or other LGBTQ-inclusive marketing campaign conflicts with a company’s internal policies or political giving.
Note that these recommendations should not be considered an exhaustive checklist, at the end of which a company is “done.” Being an ally is an active, ongoing, principled journey.
Especially during LGBTQ Pride Month, and for Pride campaigns:
June is LGBTQ Pride Month, and a time when many brands showcase support for LGBTQ people. June should not be the only time this support is exhibited, but it is the loudest time of year for allies to express support for the community. At a time when brands are trusted by many consumers, and advertising and brand marketing have the opportunity to educate the general public on LGBTQ people and issues, GLAAD recommends that companies showcase support and include LGBTQ people in campaigns year-round. The following are best practices for public or internal Pride campaigns, though they should be used for campaigns outside of Pride Month too.
Don’t market to the moment, join the movement: Give back to LGBTQ advocacy and direct service non-profits. Involve LGBTQ employees in deciding the causes and organizations to support, and include state and local organizations, as well as organizations led by and serving transgender people and LGBTQ people of color.
Showcase the diversity and intersectionality of the LGBTQ community in advertising, marketing, public advocacy, internal communications, and employee programming. This includes ability, age, body size, ethnicity, faith, geography, race, socioeconomic status, and more.
Feature more LGBTQ talent and community members in external mainstream and community specific campaigns and programming. Compensate LGBTQ talent for appearances and panels, both internal and external facing, at corporate events and in promotion of LGBTQ-inclusive campaigns.
Include LGBTQ consultants who specialize in storytelling and out LGBTQ creatives behind the scenes. Take a comprehensive inclusive approach, from the creation of the campaign to the final product. Include LGBTQ professionals on marketing, production, and other third-party consulting roles.
Bring in LGBTQ voices early for LGBTQ Pride Month campaigns. LGBTQ consultants, talent, employees, and nonprofit partners should be a part of conversations around Pride initiatives as plans are being developed. Allow ample time to bring LGBTQ voices, professionals, and beneficiaries into planning for June.
Devote budgets to Pride campaigns that are consistent with other programmatic campaigns, consistent with LGBTQ consumer behaviors.
Be very aware who the target for Pride initiatives are. Some initiatives will primarily benefit LGBTQ employees. Others may target consumers. Others may target the community where you operate. Each one of those targets will have a distinct, if overlapping, focus.
Every day of the year, including LGBTQ Pride Month and beyond:
Extend support to the political fight. True corporate allies do not donate to candidates or elected officials who introduce, vote yes, or otherwise support anti-LGBTQ legislation or block passage of pro-LGBTQ legislation like the Equality Act. Develop criteria to vet elected officials and political donations by evaluating candidate platforms and LGBTQ voting records.
Use your company’s leverage and internal resources, including social media, marketing, public relations and government affairs, to speak out against local and national anti-LGBTQ legislation, and engage other businesses to do the same. Speak out and support pro-LGBTQ legislation when proposed.
Support LGBTQ media via advertising buys to get your message heard. Include LGBTQ publications, digital and print, in media plans during Pride and all year round.
Support the notion of Pride 365 and plan LGBTQ-inclusive campaigns and support for the community year-round, not just during Pride month. Consider including LGBTQ people and families in holiday creative, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and other moments of recognition like Black History Month.
Seek out Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) training, including LGBTQ-specific workshops, for yourself and your employees as well as. Seek out resources like the GLAAD Media Institute.
Commit to employee recruitment initiatives that include the LGBTQ community, including outreach to transgender people and LGBTQ people of color.
Use meetings with your LGBTQ ERG to learn what LGBTQ issues are arising where your company does business, and to help form strategic responses with support from external LGBTQ experts and consultancies.
Tell authentic and accurate LGBTQ stories, spotlighting LGBTQ people and issues year-round on social media, in editorial, and in internal communications, with consideration for how these stories enter into a cultural context and conversation.
Real-world examples:
Speaking out against anti-LGBTQ legislation: Apple
Amidst an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation in 2022, Apple utilized multiple offices to take action. Apple lobbied against these harmful bills, filled court briefs in cases involving LGBTQ people, and encouraged other large companies to take public stands against this legislation. (Read more here.)
Building authentic LGBTQ campaigns that give back: Can’t Cancel Pride, PUMA
In 2020, iHeartRadio and P&G developed Can’t Cancel Pride, a concert in celebration of LGBTQ Pride, available to all via iHeartRadio livestream. In 2022, the now annual effort brings top out artists including Lizzo, Elton John, and Kim Petras, to raise awareness of current LGBTQ issues and support from more than 20 brands to donate funds to GLAAD, SAGE, The Trevor Project, the National Black Justice Coalition, CenterLink, and OutRight Action International. (Read more here.)
When ideating on their 2022 LGBTQ Pride Month efforts, PUMA collaborated with LGBTQ talent, creatives, and advocates from start to finish. PUMA partnered with Texas-based out queer artist Carra Sykes to design a Pride footwear collection, partnered with Cara Delevingne to help promote the collection, and collaborated with out photographer LaQuann Dawson to lead the collection’s photography. Proceeds from the collection benefit GLAAD.
For media inquiries, contact [email protected]. The GLAAD Media Institute consults behind-the-scenes on LGBTQ representation with brands, Hollywood, journalists, tech products, and more content creators. To learn more about the GLAAD Media Institute’s workshops and trainings for corporate allies, contact [email protected].
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, warned on Friday the spread of monkeypox, an outbreak that has occurred primarily among gay and bisexual men, would increase in the coming weeks.
“Now as we closely monitor cases, I would like you all to understand that we anticipate an increase in cases in the coming weeks,” Walensky said in a conference call with top Biden administration health officials and reporters.
The increase, Walensky said, is due to three factors: 1) The CDC streamlining its reporting process to allow states to report new cases more quickly and accurately; 2) With more cases in the United States, an increase in the resulting exposure of these cases in the coming weeks; and 3) A significant increase in the number of people seeking laboratory tests and the number of specimens being submitted for testing.
Monkeypox cases in the United States, Walensky said, have reached 1,470 reported cases documented across 44 jurisdictions as of July 14.
Younger gay and bisexual men are primarily affected: The median age is 36 with a range of 18 to 76 years of age, and the vast majority of cases happen among those who identify as men who have sex with men based on demographic information local health departments provided to CDC, Walensky said.
The Biden administration on the same day Walensky disclosed the new data announced an order for another 2.5 million doses of Bavarian Nordic’s JYNNEOS vaccine to respond to the current monkeypox outbreak.
The vaccines, however, won’t arrive soon: According to the Department of Health & Human Services, they’re coming in 2023 as part of the plan for the U.S. government’s available supply of vaccine to reach 7 million by mid-2023, which would be several months after the outbreak has begun.
The Biden administration has been faulted for moving too slowly in responding to monkeypox in criticism reminiscent of inaction during the coronavirus and HIV/AIDS epidemics, including being too slow to distribute vaccines and make testing available. Monkeypox is transmitted by skin-to-skin contact, unlike the other two diseases, and isn’t fatal.
Walensky during the call acknowledged “the demand for vaccines from jurisdictions is higher than our current available supply,” but pushed back on other criticisms as “points of confusion where we’ve been hearing from the public, our partners and media.” The availability of tests, for example, is and has been meeting capacity, Walensky said.
“We have the testing capacity needed,” Walensky said. “We expanded the nation’s monkeypox testing capacity this week, and now have four commercial labs with combined capabilities along with CDC laboratory Response Network … we’ve gone from being able to test 6,000 samples a week to 70,000 samples per week. Having commercial lab testing for monkeypox will also make it more convenient for providers to access tasks by using existing providers to lab relationships, and we have not yet received anywhere near that demand of tests as our capacity now permits.”
Also during the call health officials announced efforts to work on delivery of 786,000 doses currently located in Denmark, which they said will be available pending FDA clearance by the end of July. The inability of the Biden administration to move the vaccines from Europe in a timely fashion has been a source of criticism of the FDA.
Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research at the FDA, pushed back on that criticism in response to a question from the Washington Blade, insisting the FDA had taken a timely approach to obtaining those vaccines.
“First of all … quite contrary to missing a chance for approval, FDA actively reached out using contacts with the Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority to actually move up the submission that was necessary and all of the other events that were necessary to get those doses to be able to be used from what was originally going to be this fall,” Marks said. “And we did that actually, pretty shortly after we realized there was a monkeypox outbreak.”
Marks also said the United States was unable to rely on the European Union’s certification of the vaccines because the FDA relies on its own safety protocols for approval of medication for use domestically.
“We do not in the United States recognize — we don’t have mutual recognition of vaccine inspections for initial licensure from other countries, and that’s because we have our quality standards that have to be maintained,” Marks said. “And we have with all due diligence to make sure that the necessary procedures were undertaken, so that these will be available before the end of July but these doses were originally not scheduled to be approved until sometime in the fall, and that was moved up.”
Twitter on Monday labeled but refused to take down a pair of highly transphobic tweets attacking Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Why it matters: Twitter has a practice of often labeling — but not removing — tweets from elected officials that would otherwise violate its terms of service.
Details:
The tweets, linked here, misgender Levine while also using extremely vile terminology to describe gender reassignment surgery.
Twitter’s move means that people will have to click through a warning to view the tweets. Twitter will also limit sharing of the posts.
What they’re saying: “The Tweet you referenced violated the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct,” Twitter said in a statement to Axios.
“However, we’ve determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible, and has been labeled in line with our policies.”
Meanwhile, GLAAD, the LGBTQ civil rights group, condemned Twitter’s move as inadequate.
“This account has repeatedly and intentionally violated Twitter’s Hateful Conduct guidelines against targeted deadnaming and misgendering of transgender people,” a GLAAD spokesperson told Axios. “It’s clear that some politicians see pushing malicious, anti-trans content on social media as part of their election strategy, even with the full knowledge that such content is violative.”
Between the lines: Twitter has already suspended and then banned Greene’s personal Twitter account but has refused in the past to take action against her official account despite apparent violations of various policies, including the prohibition against deliberate misgendering.
Allowing the latest tweets to remain reignites questions as to just what it takes to get Twitter to remove tweets from elected officials. Twitter eventually banned former President Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
A spokesperson for Adm. Levine declined to comment.
Be smart: The tweets also falsely promote the idea that gender-affirming care for youth relates to surgery.
For young trans kids, gender-affirming care involves social transition and support. Kids approaching puberty may be prescribed puberty blockers to delay the onset of puberty while some older teens are allowed access to hormones.
U.S. Republicans in Congress are lining up behind legislation that critics say would roll back protections for transgender people, setting a playbook for action on a divisive social issue should they take control of Congress this fall.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would block federal funding to colleges where transgender women are allowed to participate in sports with cisgender women. A separate bill would allow transgender people to sue medical personnel who helped them transition as minors.
Another bill would block funding to schools that disobey state laws regarding “materials harmful to minors,” mimicking state laws that have been used to remove books discussing history around race and LGBTQ themes.
The bills have support from key Republicans in the House and Senate. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has promoted the sports bill at a press conference and in a conservative newspaper. It is backed by 127 of 211 House Republicans.
In the Senate, five Republicans have sponsored a version of the bill targeting medical providers, including Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio.
Republicans would be in a position to advance those bills next year if they win control of the House or the Senate in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, which analysts say is likely.
“I hope these are legislative initiatives that we can pass when we get the majority back,” said Rep. Jim Banks, who sponsored the medical providers bill and represents a district in Indiana, which banned transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams at schools this May.
Fears of discrimination
Critics say the legislation proposed by House Republicans would reduce access to care needed by transgender people to transition. Transgender people are significantly more likely to attempt or commit suicide, often due to lack of access to gender-affirming medical care, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
Banks called such criticism “outrageous” and said he did not see how his legislation would contribute to an unsafe environment for transgender people.
Violence against LGBTQ people has also increased fourfold between 2020 and 2021 in the United States, according to ACLED, a nonpartisan organization that tracks violence globally. The increase occurred during a three-year uptick in anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“There has always been fringe voices who oppose LGBTQ equality, but now, unfortunately, that fringe has grown loud and is being given national platforms,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, a LGBTQ advocacy group.
Sixty-four percent of Americans support protecting trans people from discrimination, according to a June poll from Pew Research Center; 10% oppose protections.
Eighteen Republican-led states have enacted bans on trans girls and women participating in publicly funded women’s sports, while more than a dozen have introduced legislation mimicking Florida’s law limiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Advocates are pushing Democrats to do more to enshrine protections into law before the November elections, but they face uncertain prospects in the evenly divided Senate.
“If we lose the House or the Senate I think it’s really unlikely we’ll be able to prevent discrimination” at the federal level, said Fran Hutchins, executive director of Equality Federation.
