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Rachel Levine Tapped to Become First Transgender Senate-confirmed Official

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Rachel Levine, who Pennsylvania secretary of health guided her state through the coronavirus, has been tapped to become assistant secretary for health under the Biden administration, setting her up to become the first openly transgender U.S. Senate-confirmed federal official.

The Biden transition team on Tuesday, the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, announced in a statement Levine was chosen for the senior health role, which is the No. 3 leadership position at the Department of Health & Human Services.

Biden hailed Levine in a statement announcing her nomination, which builds on several openly LGBTQ appointments, including Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary and Ned Price as State Department spokesperson.

“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said. “She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”

No openly transgender person has ever sought or obtained confirmation by the Senate in U.S. history. In the Obama administration, Dylan Orr at Department of Labor and Amanda Simpson at the departments of energy and defense made history as the first openly transgender presidential appointees, but their roles didn’t require Senate approval. Trump, whose administration was marked by open hostility to the transgender community, had no openly transgender appointments.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also hailed the nomination in a statement, saying Levine would contribute to the new administration’s effort to contain the raging coronavirus epidemic.

“Dr. Rachel Levine is a remarkable public servant with the knowledge and experience to help us contain this pandemic, and protect and improve the health and well-being of the American people,” Harris said. “President-elect Biden and I look forward to working with her to meet the unprecedented challenges facing Americans and rebuild our country in a way that lifts everyone up.”

The assistant secretary of health oversees the department’s key public health offices, a number of presidential and secretarial advisory committees, 10 regional health offices across the nation, and the Office of the Surgeon General and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

Biden’s appointment of Levine represents a stark contrast to the approach to transgender health issues compared to Trump, whose administration deleted from U.S. government websites guidance on transgender health and rescinded Obama-era regulations under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act barring discrimination against transgender people in health care.

Although speculation had persisted throughout the 2016 election Levine could be up for a position at the HHS if Biden won the election, she downplayed any prospect of leaving her position in Pennsylvania. During a conference call last week hosted by the Center for American Progress, Levine sidestepped a question from the Washington Blade about possibly obtaining an appointment as a senior health official.

“I am obviously very busy and really totally consumed with my current position, which is protecting the public health of Pennsylvania in the midst of the biggest global pandemic since 1918,” Levine said. “So, I’ve always been proud and privileged to serve in Gov. Wolf’s administration, and I’m fully committed to my current mission.”

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5 Things Social Media Platforms Can do to Combat Anti-LGBTQ Disinformation

Social media platforms have a major anti-LGBTQ disinformation problem that enables myths, lies, and misleading content to spread to large audiences and earn high engagement. These platforms have occasionally shown that they are capable of quelling disinformation and removing or flagging misleading content, but they are not consistent in enforcing their own policies and protecting LGBTQ people. There are several actions that they can take to do so in 2021.

In July, a Media Matters study found that during a year-long time period, right-wing sources earned nearly two-thirds of total Facebook interactions on trans-related content that had more than 100,000 interactions (reactions, comments, shares). In particular, over one-third of content that met the criteria for the study was content about trans athletes and medical care for trans youth published by right-leaning outlets. 

When YouTube and Facebook allow anti-LGBTQ groups and media to attack and spread disinformation about trans people, there are real world consequences. Harmful narratives divert attention from important issues facing the community such as employment discrimination and high rates of violence. And when trans youth and their families use these platforms, they are fed a stream of disinformation that could result in parents denying their children critical care or rejecting their identities, which can harm trans kids’ physical and mental well-being. 

The failure of social media platforms to prevent the spread of anti-LGBTQ disinformation also comes as conservatives allege bias against right-wing content, especially on Facebook, which Media Matters has extensively and repeatedly debunked. Despite this, Facebook has consistently caved to conservative demands. 

Under existing or new community guidelines, social media platforms have removed anti-LGBTQ content, including content that compares being trans to having a mental illness and that promotes conversion therapy, a harmful practice that seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people. However, platforms’ enforcement of these rules is inconsistent and inadequate, and disinformation still runs rampant.

Here are five actions the platforms can take to help stop the spread of anti-LGBTQ disinformation:

1. YouTube should enforce its hate speech policy prohibiting content that says being trans is a mental illness. YouTube has a hate speech policy that forbids claims “that individuals or groups are physically or mentally inferior, deficient, or diseased” based on sexual orientation or gender identity, among other categories. Under this policy, it has removed several videos for comparing being trans to having a mental illness, yet many others remain on the platform. YouTube must consistently enforce this existing policy and remove videos that break it.

In November, the platform removed two anti-trans videos from right-wing propaganda network PragerU’s The Candace Owens Show for violating this policy. In both videos, host Candace Owens compared being trans to having schizophrenia. She compared being trans to having a “mental disorder” in one and trans people to “anorexics” in the other.

However, Media Matters found several other videos still on YouTube that do the same thing. For example, another episode of The Candace Owens Show features “ex-trans” activist Walt Heyer, who called being trans a “psychological disorder” and said that adult trans people are not actually transgender but rather have “a sexual fetish disorder.” During a clip of an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube, host Joe Rogan and his guest anti-trans author Abigail Shrier compared being trans to convincing yourself you have a problem with “cutting, demonic possession, witchcraft, anorexia, bulimia.” Additionally, another video of an anti-trans conference at right-wing group the Heritage Foundation includes panelists saying that many trans kids have “neuropsychiatric conditions” and that affirming them is “causing them to be depressed and anxious about who they are.” In fact, trans youth are less likely to suffer from depression and suicidal ideation if they are accepted.

2. Facebook should continue removing pro-conversion therapy posts and pages. In July, Facebook and Instagram announced a policy banning posts that “advertise or promote” conversion therapy, and after Media Matters’ reporting, Facebook subsequently removed several posts and a page for doing so. Despite the policy and action, some of the removed posts have been reinstated and other similar posts and pro-conversion therapy pages remain active on the site. Facebook must consistently enforce its policy and take action against posts and pages that repeatedly break the rules.

In October, Facebook removed the page for pro-conversion therapy group Restored Hope Network, which consistently promoted the practice. That page has remained off the platform since then. However, in July, Facebook removed several posts from the Facebook page for International Federation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice (IFTCC), a worldwide network of conversion therapy practitioners, but later reinstated several of those posts. Those posts cite prominent conversion “therapists” and include a video with advice for conversion therapy practitioners and others that falsely suggest  “Schema therapy” and “professionals and pastoral mentors” can successfully change LGBTQ people. It is unclear why those posts were reinstated, as Facebook is notoriously opaque on its policies and their enforcement.

Several of IFTCC’s posts were never removed, including several posts that suggest people are not innately LGBTQ and another that says, “Not only is it inaccurate to tell clients that change is not possible, it is also unethical for therapists to impose their agendas on clients.” 

Additionally, the Facebook page for pro-conversion therapy group Voice of the Voiceless (VoV) has posted testimony from people claiming conversion therapy is effective or who have otherwise claimed to have changed their sexual orientation. It has also highlighted conversion therapy practitioners, conferences and webinars. Thus far, Facebook has not taken any action on these posts or the VoV page. 

3. Platforms should adopt policies explicitly prohibiting deadnaming and misgendering. In 2018, Twitter updated its hateful conduct policy — which prohibits “repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone” — to include “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Facebook and YouTube, however, do not have these same protections; they must follow Twitter’s example in order to protect LGBTQ users from harassment and discrimination.

Misgendering is when someone is referred to as a different gender than the one that person identifies with, and deadnaming is when someone calls a trans person by “the name they used before they transitioned” rather than the name they currently go by.

Facebook’s hate speech policy under its community standards specifically prohibits “statements denying existence” and referring to transgender or nonbinary people as “it.”  Its bullying and harassment policies prohibit targeting private individuals with “claims about romantic involvement, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Similarly, YouTube’s harassment and cyberbullying policy states, “We also do not allow content that targets an individual with prolonged or malicious insults based on intrinsic attributes” including sexual orientation and gender identity. Additionally, the platform’s hate speech policy says it will “remove content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on” attributes including sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex or gender.

4. Platforms should stop monetizing anti-trans disinformation and hate. Social media platforms YouTube and Facebook have earned money from anti-LGBTQ advertisements and helped right-wing groups raise money off of anti-trans content, despite having policies that allegedly prohibit this. They should enforce and strengthen those policies and prevent the monetization of transphobia. 

During the 2020 election, Facebook earned thousands of dollars from the American Principles Project, an anti-LGBTQ group that ran misleading ads about trans kids and the Equality Act in order to campaign against Democratic candidates including Joe Biden. Facebook removed some of the ads after Politifact found that the ads’ claims include predictions “we can’t fact-check” and that one ad was “missing context and could mislead people.” Despite this, the group eventually ran ads repeating those claims that were not removed. Furthermore, Facebook has allowed anti-LGBTQ outlet The Daily Wire to run paid political ads — including at least one that targets and misgenders actor Elliot Page for coming out as trans — despite its temporary ban on them.

Similarly, YouTube allowed PragerU to raise more than $25,000 off of a video featuring a client of extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom, who repeatedly misgendered trans athletes and fear-mongered about their participation in sports. The YouTube Giving program says that nonprofits must follow YouTube’s Community Guidelines that supposedly protect trans people. The program says that participating organizations must “follow YouTube’s monetization policies both on and off of YouTube,” which PragerU has repeatedly run afoul of.

5. Facebook should stop allowing The Daily Wire to use a coordinated network of pages to spread disinformation. The Daily Wire is a wildly successful right-wing outlet that regularly spreads anti-LGBTQ disinformation and bigotry through online content, podcasts, and social media. It operates a network of Facebook pages that share the same content at the same time, helping it reach large audiences. Facebook should stop allowing these pages to spread the outlet’s content in a coordinated manner.

Facebook started marking these pages as operated by Daily Wire after a series of reports from Judd Legum’s Popular Information, and several pages now display language that they are “Proudly managed by the Daily Wire.” These pages previously did not disclose that relationship. Although the relationship between the pages and the outlet is more transparent, Facebook still allows the coordinated network to game the system and earn high engagement.

In October 2019, Legum reported on how Daily Wire’s network seemed to violate Facebook’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior policy, which removes networks of pages that mislead “about the identity, purpose, or origin of the entity that they represent” and use “multiple Facebook or Instagram assets” to do so. Facebook originally denied that Daily Wire had broken content-sharing rules, but Popular Information reported in July that Facebook finally acknowledged that the outlet was violating “policies against undisclosed paid relationships between publishers.”

The Daily Wire’s use of this network helps it spread anti-trans and other right-wing content and disinformation to large audiences. In fact, a Media Matters study found that The Daily Wire was one of the most successful outlets posting about trans issues during a year time period. 

The Daily Wire has several anti-LGBTQ pundits with large media platforms, including Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Ben Shapiro, the site’s founder. Their Facebook pages also share content at the exact same time as other pages in the outlet’s network.

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Ralph Lauren Drops Sponsorship deal with Disgraced Golfer after Anti-gay Slur

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Ralph Lauren has terminated its sponsorship deal with disgraced golfer Justin Thomas after he blurted out a homophobic slur at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

The world number three golf star had worn the company’s clothing since he turned pro, reaching number one in the world on two occasions and winning a major at 24.×

He quickly fell from grace on Saturday (9 January), when he was caughtangrily muttering the slur “faggot” live on air at the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.

“We are disheartened by Mr Thomas’s recent language, which is entirely inconsistent with our values,” Ralph Lauren said in a statement.

“While we acknowledge that he has apologised and recognises the severity of his words, he is a paid ambassador of our brand and his actions conflict with the inclusive culture that we strive to uphold.

“In reflecting on the responsibility we have to all of our stakeholders, we have decided to discontinue our sponsorship of Mr Thomas at this time.”

Ralph Lauren added that it hopes Thomas “does the hard and necessary work in order to partner with us again – truly examining this incident, learning, growing and ultimately using his platform to promote inclusion.”

Thomas apologised profusely for using the slur, which slipped out when he botched a five-foot putt on the fourth hole.

“There’s just no excuse,” he admitted to Reuters. “There’s absolutely no reason for me to say anything like that. It’s terrible. It’s not the kind of person that I am.

“I need to do better. I deeply apologise to anyone and everybody who I offended and I’ll be better because of it.”

Justin Thomas outburst is the tip of the iceberg in golf, says former pro

The PGA Tour agreed that Thomas’ comment was “unacceptable”, but the gay former professional golfer Maya Reddy suggested it was entirely consistent with the exclusive, anti-LGBT+ culture that is “embedded” in golf.

“There seemed to be permission given to people to say things and be more blatantly hateful… I experienced a lot of that on the golf course,” she told Sky Sports.

“I had tournament directors on mini-tours say xenophobic, racist, and homophobic things to me on the first tee, in the guise of a joke. Which makes it difficult, because as soon as you say something in response, they question your sense of humour and say they’re only joking.

“I felt like I just didn’t belong there and had to constantly prove I had a place on this golf course.”

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Trans Man Killed Amid Puerto Rico’s ‘Wave of Anti-trans Violence’

Puerto Rican police are investigating the death of a transgender man found with multiple gunshot wounds Jan. 9.

A motorist was driving on an unlit section of highway in Trujillo Alto, a municipality about 15 miles southeast of San Juan, when she hit something, according to the local news site WAPA. As she got out of the car, she realized it was a dead body and notified authorities, who identified the victim as Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín.

Police initially misgendered Damián, who listed on Facebook his current home as Juncos, less than 15 miles from Trujillo Alto.

Samuel Edmund Dami?n Valent?n.
Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín.via Facebook

Lt. José Padín, homicide director with the criminal investigation unit in nearby Carolina, told the San Juan Daily Star that Damián “had no identifications nor were there family members who were able to identify him beforehand.” His mother and stepfather were eventually able to identify his body, but used his birth name, according to the Star. “His mom told me that he would always prefer for others to call him Samuel, Sam or Sammy when he was out in the streets,” Padín said.

No motive or suspects have been announced.

Damián is the seventh known transgender person to die by violence in Puerto Rico since last February, according to the Transgender Law Center.

Pedro Julio Serrano, founder of the LGBTQ advocacy group Puerto Rico Para Todas, said police aren’t doing enough to address “the wave of homophobic and transphobic violence that haunts us like never before.”

“Police fail to comply with their protocols and ignore, make invisible and minimize the serious problem,” Serrano wrote Monday in a statement on his website calling on authorities to “investigate the hate angle in the murder” of Damián.

Puerto Rico’s hate crimes law includes both sexual orientation and gender identity, but, according to Metro Weekly, local prosecutors rarely apply them.

After the charred remains of two trans women were found inside a burned-out car in Humacao last spring, the FBI stepped in to join the investigation. In April, the suspects, Juan Carlos Pagán Bonilla, 21, and Sean Díaz de León, 19, became the first people in Puerto Rico to face federal hate crime charges.

The victims — Layla Peláez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velázquez, 32 — were found just days after another transgender woman, Penélope Díaz Ramírez, 31, was beaten and hanged in a men’s prison in Bayamon.

In February, Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, also known as Alexa, was shot to death in Toa Alta one day after being reported to police for using the women’s bathroom in a McDonald’s. Ruiz’s attackers reportedly posted video of the shooting on social media.

The following month, Yampi Méndez Arocho, a 19-year-old transgender man, died in Moca after being shot twice in the face and twice in the back. Méndez had reportedly been assaulted by a woman just hours before the shooting.

The body of nursing school student Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas was found late September near a farm in San German in the southwest. Vargas had been repeatedly shot in the head and left on an isolated road.

Related

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Designer Alexander Wang Accused of Sexual Assault

Alexander Wang is a name synonymous with high fashion, dressing A-list celebrities from Lady Gaga to Kim Kardashian West. While Wang and his brand are mainstays on fashion week runways and red carpets all over the world, the 37-year-old designer originally from San Francisco is also known for frequenting dance floors and VIP backrooms of the hottest nightspots.

It’s in these types of locations that multiple accusers have alleged that Wang has performed nonconsensual sexual acts on them. Earlier this month, Owen Mooney, a 26-year-old model based in the United Kingdom, shared an explicit story on TikTok, accusing a “really famous fashion designer” of sexually assaulting him on the dance floor of a “packed” nightclub in New York City in 2017.

“I was by myself at one point, and this guy next to me obviously took advantage of the fact that no one could f—ing move, and he just started, like, touching me up. And fully like, up my leg, in my crotch, like it made me freeze completely because I was in so much shock,” Mooney said in the TikTok video. “I looked to my left to see who it was, and it was this really famous fashion designer. Like, I just couldn’t believe that he was doing that to me. It made me go into even more shock.”

After another TikTok user guessed in the comments that Mooney’s allegations were about Wang, in a subsequent video, Mooney named Wang as the designer, saying in part, “It’s so wrong. Now, any time I see his name mentioned … it just reminds me of what he did.”

Wang, via a representative, told TODAY in a statement: “Over the last few days, I have been on the receiving end of baseless and grotesquely false accusations. These claims have been wrongfully amplified by social media accounts infamous for posting defamatory material from undisclosed and/or anonymous sources with zero evidence or any fact checking whatsoever.”

In the days since Mooney shared his allegations on TikTok, anonymous Instagram accounts @DietPrada and @S—ModelMgmt have been sharing unverified allegations of other nonconsensual sexual acts involving Wang. Some share a similar theme where victims allege Wang laced their drinks with MDMA. TODAY reached out to these accounts but has not heard back and was unable to verify the claims.

“Seeing these lies about me being perpetuated as truths has been infuriating,” Wang continued in his statement. “I have never engaged in the atrocious behavior described and would never conduct myself in the manner that’s been alleged. I intend to get to the bottom of this and hold accountable whoever is responsible for originating these claims and viciously spreading them online.”

ALEXANDER WANG
Designer Alexander Wang walks the runway at the Alexander Wang Fall 2019 show in New York in 2018.Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images file

In an email interview with TODAY, Mooney says that the alleged incident with Wang took place on Jan. 21, 2017, at a party called Holy Mountain at the club Slake in New York City. That night, rapper CupCakKe was scheduled to perform.

“The club was extremely busy, and after losing my friend in the crowd I didn’t attempt to find him as it was near impossible to move around,” Mooney told TODAY. “So, I was stuck in this spot but was just excited to see CupcakKe perform. My next memory was when I was touched up, then realizing it was by Alexander Wang. He would have seen the shock on my face, I didn’t retaliate, all I wanted to do was get out of the situation. I was able to slowly move myself away, and I went closer to the stage to watch of CupcakKe.”

Mooney said that he saw Wang again later in the evening. “Later that night, I was back with my group, we were dancing and then out of nowhere Wang had been pushed into me by one of his friends,” Mooney said. “I kind of brushed it off, but he proceeded to put his arms around me and lean his head on me. I felt extremely awkward, didn’t say anything but ‘hi,’ the situation was very odd but I basically carried on dancing and ignored him until we parted ways.”

Mooney said he never saw Wang again after that night and never filed a police report. Mooney explained, “I know being touched up in a club is very common, it didn’t cross my mind to take it to the police.”

When asked if the touching could have been because the club was so packed, Mooney said: “He took advantage of the fact I was trapped next to him and he touched up my leg and in my crotch. … It was not a case of him accidentally touching me because we were next to each other.”

Mooney told friends about the alleged incident after it occurred, he said, including one named Hannah, who asked that her first name only be used because she’s nervous about the amount of press this story has received. In an email to TODAY, Hannah said Mooney called her “after the night he was at the club, because he needed to tell me what happened and I was completely shocked.”

TODAY has been unable to confirm if Wang attended the Holy Mountain party on Jan. 21, 2017. But the event was hosted by a promoter who goes by Ladyfag, with whom Wang has had a relationship. In a 2014 New York Times article, Wang said: “(Ladyfag’s) parties never feel like a specific scene.”

In the wake of Mooney’s and the anonymous allegations posted on Instagram, Wang has limited the comments on both his personal Instagram and the Instagram account for his fashion label. So far, none of the major figures who’ve been dressed by Wang have addressed the claims.

TODAY reached out to Wang’s representatives a second time regarding the story Mooney told TODAY. A spokesperson for Wang declined to comment further.

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Instagram’s Anti-LGBTQ Trolls Use Algorithms to Zap Gay Influencers

The never-ending war by LGBTQ+ creators to protect their accounts against bullies who manipulate the automated fiefdom that is Instagram, has once again claimed another casualty as two gay Instagrammers had their account disabled with no apparent hope of appeal.

The reason is that the social media company, owned by Facebook, is built on a system that makes it nearly impossible to restore an account, have a fair hearing with human interaction, or even receive email communications to dispute the company’s seemingly arbitrary decisions to disable or delete an account.

This allows the anti-LGBTQ+ trolls who target LGBTQ+ people nearly free reign.

There is a long history of the Instagram “systems” targeting LGBTQ people, based on the ability of online trolls to be able to manipulate those systems. In May of 2017, Joe Putignano, the author of the bestseller “Acrobaddict” and a gay man who is also a Cirque du Soleil performing artist, model, and a Broadway performer wrote in the Huffington Post,

“We have learned that Instagram does not investigate pictures or accounts that get removed; it is based on an algorithm and bot from a number of reports that deem the account to be either inappropriate or unfit. Instagram claims to take their harassment and bullying seriously; however in a world where LBGTQ people are still considered “inappropriate” where anything we do is considered “adult content” or “pornographic,” then this raises the question “Is our community actually truly safe from discrimination and harassment?”

He then added, “My own account, @joeputignano, had 264.2K followers and disappeared last week when Instagram decided to delete it without word or warning. I woke up in the morning, and it was gone. I was someone who had been harassed since the inception of my account and had been very public about that harassment because I was trying to get help to stop it. It wasn’t a minor harassment either; it was an army of people with fake accounts using homophobic slurs and remarks to report every photo I posted.”

Like most people caught up in the never-ending vortex of non-communications and auto-response, Putignano, also received no answers. However after a concerted campaign of Facebook posts and publicity the social media company relented and reactivated his account.

For husbands Matthew Olshefski and Paul Castle, not unlike Putignano, they now also face the never-ending battle with the social media giant trying to regain access and reestablish their account disabled due to the anti-LGBTQ forces that bully the community at large and Instagram which makes no allowances to stop this scenario from repeating.

Matthew Olshefski and Paul Castle (Photo courtesy of the couple)

Shortly after Matthew and Paul went on their first date in 2016, they started sharing their stories and talents on the internet.

Paul is an artist with a rare form of blindness, and Matthew is a classical violinist who survived a cult in his childhood years. Bonded by their love of the arts, and a shared understanding of “overcoming the odds”, not only did Matthew and Paul become social media influencers: They fell in love and got married.

Along the way, their combined creative forces garnered 100,000 instagram followers, 150,000 TikTok followers, 200,000 Facebook followers, and over 15 million YouTube views.

Matthew shared his beautiful violin music; Paul shared his paintings and illustrations; and together they shared a love story built on unconditional support and a deep admiration for each other.

When the pandemic forced the world indoors last March, Matthew and Paul started their own podcast called “His and His” which touts itself as a “conversation between husbands.” Each week, Matthew and Paul discuss different topics relating to their experiences as gay men. From coming out, to dealing with homophobia, to getting married.

“We had no idea our podcast would resonate with so many people around the world. We have received countless messages from listeners thanking us for giving them the courage to be themselves,” says Paul. “We were so humbled.”

At the launch of their podcast, Matthew and Paul also started a joint Instagram page simply called “Matthew and Paul” where they shared daily pictures along with essay-style posts about their lives together.

“I was stunned by the reaction to our Instagram page,” says Matthew. “I had no idea our stories would bring hope to so many people. Every day we received hundreds of messages from people around the world, thanking us for being so open about our lives and experiences.”

Within a handful of months, the Instagram page grew to 33,000 followers.

“We’ve been creating social media content for over 4 years. This was the fastest growth we’ve ever seen. Something was really connecting with people,” says Paul. “We were thrilled to be representing a same-sex relationship in such a positive way.”

Matthew and Paul’s social media presence began to shift from hobby, to part-time work, and finally to a full-time job. By May of 2020, social media influencing was their primary source of income.

Then, on the morning of December 20, 2020, Matthew and Paul logged onto their shared Instagram account only to find…nothing.

It was gone.

A single message appeared onscreen informing them that their account was disabled for violating Instagram’s terms of use. A second window revealed the “violation” in question.

“Your account has been disabled for pretending to be someone else.”

Matthew and Paul were stunned. Pretending to be someone else? For the past 4 years, all Matthew and Paul had aimed to do was be their most authentic selves. It was, in fact, the most frequent comment from their fanbase.

“It’s ironic that we were accused of being someone else,” says Paul, “when our fans and followers thank us for being ‘real’ on a daily basis.”

The next window prompted Matthew and Paul to submit photo identification and await an email from Instagram within 24 hours. An email never came.

“While we waited for the email, we did some research online and discovered people in similar situations waited over 2 months to hear back from Instagram” says Matthew, “and others never heard back at all.”

Meanwhile, their many fans were concerned and confused. What happened to the daily pictures and stories of love that had provided them with so much hope?

“We love bringing this kind of content to the world,” says Paul. “But it’s more than just a bunch of pictures and posts; it’s a message of equality and representation in a world where homophobia still thrives.”

They have been left wondering: Was the takedown an act of discrimination?

“We want answers,” adds Matthew, “but more importantly, we want to get back to what we were doing, being our most authentic selves.” 

This is not an issue that occurs in isolated circumstances either it is widespread on the Instagram platform. Adding to the frustrations of LGBTQ users who have lost access to their accounts is the fact that like most of the IT/Internet companies in the San Francisco Bay area which have gone remote as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and its continuing grip on California and elsewhere, Instagram is not staffed except remotely. 

A source knowledgeable of the company’s operations but not authorized to speak to the media told the Blade that almost complete reliance on the automated systems and next to no human oversight as a result of the remote virtual work environment has developed into a backlog of disputed decisions on accounts that have been disabled- as a direct result of the algorithms being tripped by repeated so-called ‘complaints’ over content in particular.

The Los Angeles Blade has reached out to Instagram for comment but has not received a response.

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HUD Appears to Have Given up on Anti-transgender Homeless Shelter Rule

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The Trump administration has appeared to have given up a proposed regulation that would have allowed taxpayer-funded homeless shelters to refuse to place transgender people consistent with their gender identity, although another measure permitting HHS federal grantees to discriminate against LGBTQ people may be imminent.

With the Trump administration coming to an end less than one month away, the anti-trans rule under the Department of Housing & Urban Development hasn’t yet been submitted to the White House Office of Management & Budget. The Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs at OMB, which manages the rule-making process for federal agencies, has no listing for its rule under the “regulatory review” portion of the website.

Additionally, the rule is scheduled to become final April 2021. That would be after the swearing-in of President-elect Joe Biden, whose administration would presumably reject the proposed regulation.

By contrast, the rule allowing recipients of grants from the Department of Health & Human Services to discriminate against LGBTQ people has been received by OMB and under review since May 2020. Further, the December 9 issue of the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda indicates OMB intends to make the rule final during the transition period before Trump’s exit.

A HUD official, speaking to the Washington Blade on anonymity, said in the normal schedule for rule regulations and filings the anti-trans homeless shelter rule “will not be finalized before Jan. 20 and isn’t scheduled for finalization until sometime in April.”

“Given the incoming administration, it would seem likely that HUD will take some form of action to either not finalize the rule or withdraw it from consideration soon after their arrival,” the official said.

It’s unclear whether or not a formal decision was made within HUD to let the rule die with the end of the Trump administration. The HUD official said “basically it wasn’t prioritized and therefore it won’t become a final rule because of scheduling.”

The HUD rule, formally proposed in July 2020 after years of mixed signals from Secretary of Housing & Urban Development Ben Carson under questioning from Reps. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), would allow federally funded single-sex homeless shelters to turn away transgender people seeking emergency housing. The sole basis would be the staff perception on whether or not that transgender person appears sufficiently masculine or feminine to be housed in that facility.

Any number of reasons could have contributed to HUD not prioritizing the rule, including delay due to the volume of comments, public backlash over the anti-trans regulation or simply incompetence in the Trump administration.

It could also be the result of legal uncertainty about the proposed rule in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, therefore illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The underlying reasoning behind the decision applies to all laws banning sex discrimination, essentially making anti-LGBTQ illegal in employment, housing, credit, health care, education and jury service.

With the HUD rule, the Trump administration appeared to propose a workaround for Bostock in the case of sex-segregated homeless shelters, asserting they couldn’t turn away transgender people entirely, but could refuse to place them consistent with their gender identity. 

“For example, under the proposed rule, if a single-sex facility permissibly provides accommodation for women, and its policy is to serve only biological women, without regard to gender identity, it may decline to accommodate a person who identifies as female but who is a biological male,” the proposed rule says. “Conversely, the same shelter may not, on the basis of sex, decline to accommodate a person who identifies as male but who is a biological female.”

It’s possible, however, Trump administration lawyers concluded that rationale wasn’t enough to get around Bostock and convinced HUD to abandon the regulation on the basis that it would make the department vulnerable to lawsuits.

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Transgender Woman Found Dead in Christmas Day Slaying in Chicago

A transgender woman was found gunned down on a Chicago street in a shocking Christmas day slaying, a national advocacy group said Wednesday.

Officers found a body near 900 E. 82nd Street, in the South Side neighborhood of Chatham, at about 8:35 p.m. on Friday with an “open wound to the left side” of the victim’s head, police said in a statement.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

Chicago authorities appeared to misgender the victim, as the Human Rights Campaign identified her as Courtney “Eshay” Key, a 25-year-old Black transgender woman.

“HRC has now tracked at least 43 deaths this year of transgender and gender non-conforming people,” the LGBTQ advocacy group said in a statement. “We say ‘at least’ because too often these deaths go unreported — or misreported.”

A police spokesman on Wednesday stopped short of calling this a hate crime and instead said: “At this time, the incident is being investigated as a death investigation.”

Key is survived by her mother and two siblings, childhood friend Beverly Ross said.

Ross said that Key frequently faced harassment on the streets and didn’t hesitate to fight back.

“(Key) was a girl who was not going to take s— from anybody,” Ross said.

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Inside the Fight to Include HIV-positive People in Covid-19 Vaccine Trials

When Jeff Taylor, a longtime AIDS advocate and survivor, learned about clinical trials for the new Covid-19 vaccine in his hometown, Palm Springs, California, he leapt at the opportunity to participate.

“I always want to be the first person to try something,” he said.

But Taylor’s enthusiasm was short-lived. As soon as he told a recruiter over the phone that he was HIV-positive, Taylor was informed that he was ineligible to join.

“I argued with him, but he said: ‘I don’t make the rules. This is what our sponsor told us to do,'” Taylor, 58, said.

Taylor understood, in a sense, why they were rejecting him. As head of the HIV + Aging Research Project-Palm Springs, he had read plenty of studies that excluded people who were immunocompromised or on immune-modularity drugs.

“It’s something that happens all time,” Taylor said.

A study published this year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that 73 percent of over 1,090 analyzed cancer immunotherapy trials specifically excluded patients with HIV.

Not including a sample for the estimated 1.2 million HIV-positive people in the U.S. in the most significant vaccine trial in a generation seemed to him unwise. On July 18, Taylor notified a private listserv for HIV activists and researchers called IBT-Cure. Shortly thereafter, he got a response from Lynda Dee, executive director of AIDS Action Baltimore, another heavyweight in the HIV advocacy world who has been agitating for an AIDS vaccine since the 1980s.

Dee immediately recognized that someone running the trials had failed to include people with HIV. But, having long been an advocate for more inclusive medical trials, she also knew that the experiments were sprawling operations with plenty of opportunities for routine error.

“Vaccine protocols change, and there are usually 20 iterations before they actually get sent to the FDA for approval,” she said. “Someone must have stuck [the HIV exclusion] in there.”

She speculated that researchers didn’t want to include a population that they thought could compromise their results.

“Somebody must have thought: ‘Well, this is about immune systems. I don’t want to confound the data by including someone with HIV,’” she said. “They had no idea what something like that looks like and what hell they were going to get from people like us.”

Lynda Dee is an attorney and the executive director of AIDS Action Baltimore.
Lynda Dee is an attorney and the executive director of AIDS Action Baltimore. Courtesy Lynda Dee

Alarmed by Taylor’s story, Dee put together a group of activists — including representatives from the Latino Commission on AIDS and the National Minority AIDS Council — and sent a letter to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Written with a palpable urgency and more than a whiff of anger, the letter, which the activists also posted to Change.org, said the agency was shooting itself in the foot by excluding HIV-positive people from Covid-19 vaccine trials. Black and Latino residents of the U.S. had been disproportionately affected by both HIV/AIDS and Covid-19, the letter said, and now both communities were the most likely to express skepticism about the coronavirus vaccine.

The activists also pointed out that people with HIV who were responding well to antiretroviral therapy weren’t considered so “immunodeficient” that they were barred from getting other vaccines. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recommend certain live vaccines for people with HIV whose CD4 white blood cell count is below 200.)

Dee said she also reached out to her contacts in the U.S. government, including Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She said Dieffenbach was able to quickly begin discussions with Moderna, because the drugmaker was using government-run clinical trial networks to test its vaccine. (Pfizer didn’t rely on funding from the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed.)

Dieffenbach did not respond to a request for comment.

On Aug. 5, about eight days after Dee posted the letter on Change.org, Moderna changed course and announced plans to drop its exclusions. Moderna recruited 176 people living with HIV out of 30,000 participants, according to data on the FDA’s website. Of those with HIV, one who received the placebo and none who received the vaccine developed Covid-19, according to the data.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=NBCNews&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1291056643464192001&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Finside-fight-include-hiv-positive-people-covid-19-vaccine-trials-n1252458&siteScreenName=NBCNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Pfizer made a similar announcement a day later and ended up enrolling a relatively small number of HIV-positive people — 120 out of 43,000 participants — in the last phase of its trials, according to information on the FDA’s website. An efficacy rate for the HIV-positive participants in Pfizer’s vaccine is not yet available.

The CDC’s website says people with HIV “may receive the vaccine” but notes that the safety data specific to this population “is not yet available.” The agency adds that people with weakened immune systems “should also be aware of the potential for reduced immune responses to the vaccine, as well as the need to continue following all current guidance to protect themselves against COVID-19.”

Even though Dee was able to exert pressure on much of the hulking bureaucracy that decides who gets injected first, she still laments that it took so long for the vaccine makers to change their rules.

“We got ’em in,” she said, “but my God, what a mistake,” she said of the initial exclusion of those with HIV.

Neither Pfizer nor Moderna responded to multiple requests for comment.

Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist who was chosen by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to run vaccine testing operations for Operation Warp Speed, said the pressure on Pfizer and Moderna has been immense, “similar to playing Wimbledon Center Court.”

“I think there were an overwhelming number of priorities and things to do, and it just fell off the radar,” he said.

Corey said there was never “any worry” in the advocacy world that people successfully managing their HIV infections on antiretroviral therapy would have bad responses to the Covid-19 vaccine. Other experts at the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS, the British HIV Association and Aidsmap have also said the Covid-19 vaccine should be considered safe and effective for people with HIV.

Now, Dee and others are working to amend CDC guidelines and prioritize HIV-positive people for vaccination after the elderly and essential workers, as Germany has done. Some data have emergedthat suggest that people living with HIV are also at an increased risk of severe Covid-19 (although more research is needed), and nearly half of Americans who are HIV-positive are over age 50 and thus more likely to live with co-existing conditions that can complicate the course of the illness, like diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Dee, who watched all of her friends die of AIDS in the ’80s, said she’s ready for this next fight.

“I’m a pushy old broad, and I’ve been doing this for 33 years,” she said. “People know me, they trust me, and they’re often a little afraid of me because I’m this East Coast battle-ax, and I say what I think.”

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FDA Considers Lifting Restrictions on Blood Donations by Gay and Bi Men

A new pilot study funded by the Food and Drug Administration could be the first step toward lifting restrictions on blood donations by gay and bisexual men.

The program, called Assessing Donor Variability and New Concepts in Eligibility (Advance), has been launched by three of the nation’s largest blood centers — the American Red Cross, Vitalant and OneBlood.

Approximately 2,000 men who have sex with men (MSM) will be recruited at community health centers in San Francisco; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tennessee; Atlanta; Orlando, Florida; Miami; Washington, D.C.; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Participants must be 18 to 30, have had at least one male sex partner in the last three months and be willing to donate blood. The results could ultimately determine whether the FDA changes its blood-donor history questionnaire, asked of all potential donors to assess risk factors for infection by transfusion-transmissible diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B.

“If the scientific evidence supports the use of the different questions, it could mean men who have sex with men who present to donate would be assessed based upon their own individual risk for HIV infection and not according to when their last sexual contact with another man occurred,” a statement on the Advance website reads.

Restrictions on certain blood donors date to the early 1980s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, when the FDA instituted a lifetime ban on any man who had had sex with another man since 1977. That rule, intended to keep HIV out of the blood supply, was replaced in 2015 with a year-long abstinence requirement.

After the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, more than 100 members of Congress — including Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — signed letters urging then-FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf to eliminate the deferral policy.

“We can’t say some people can give blood, other people can’t based on their sexual orientation,” then-Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who represented Orlando at the time, told reporters, according to The Washington Blade.

Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men are the group most affected by HIV in the U.S., according to the CDC: In 2018, they accounted for 69 percent of the nearly 38,000 new HIV diagnoses across the country.

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In April, as coronavirus lockdowns caused donations to plummet, the FDA quickly lowered the eligibility requirement for MSM to just three months.

The pandemic’s impact on available blood was swift and severe: By mid-March, the American Red Cross had canceled some 2,700 blood drives, resulting in 86,000 fewer donations. In April, donations at the New York Blood Center were down from an average of 9,500 a month to fewer than 2,000, according to New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman, who is gay and was initially rejected as a donor despite meeting the new criteria. “A regular month they host about 600 blood drives,” Hoylman told NBC News in May. “Last week, they hosted two.”

The three-month deferral also affects women who have sex with MSM, sex workers, injection drug users and those with recent tattoos or piercings.

In an April letter to the FDA, two New York Democrats, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and committee member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called the change “a good first step” but urged the agency to move toward assessing potential donors by individual risk.

“A policy that fails to do this perpetuates stigma and falls short of ensuring that every person who can safely donate blood in the United States has the opportunity to do so,” they said.

The Red Cross, which had encouraged the FDA to adopt the three-month deferral model, also called it “a scientifically based interim step” toward abolishing restrictions altogether.

“Blood donation eligibility should not be determined by methods that are based upon sexual orientation,” the relief organization said.

Image:
Jay Franzone.Reubelt Photography

Jay Franzone, an LGBTQ advocate who remained abstinent for a year to donate blood in January 2017, said the Advance study is long overdue.

“Italy, Spain and other nations modernized their donor policies years ago, before the U.S. even ended its lifetime ban,” he told NBC News.

More than a dozen nations — including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — have adopted a risk-based questionnaire in place of a blanket policy based on sexual orientation. Earlier this month, the U.K. became the latest.

Franzone said he’s confident the Advance study will bear out what advocates like him have been saying all along: “Individual, risk-based assessment is safer for recipients of lifesaving blood.”

Jason Cianciotto, senior managing director of institutional development and strategy at New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis, said it’s exciting to reach this point after more than a decade of advocating for policy change.

He did have concerns about the Advance study, though, saying 2,000 individuals “is not a representative sample,” especially as no health centers in Chicago, New York, Boston or other Northeastern cities are involved.

He speculated that the pilot study, like the three-month deferral, was spurred by the pandemic.

“When we’ve lobbied the FDA in the past, their statements showed they didn’t really see an imperative” to change the current policy, Cianciotto told NBC News. “Even though we explained the ban contributed to stigma against people with HIV.”

A 2014 study by UCLA Law’s Williams Institute found that fully repealing restrictions on gay and bisexual donors could add over a half million blood units annually, increasing the available blood supply by 2 to 4 percent.

But when advocates had mentioned gay and bisexual donors could help alleviate blood shortages, Cianciotto said, the FDA has always claimed it didn’t really have any. “Of course, no one could have predicted a nationwide shortage of blood and blood products caused by a pandemic,” he added.

That the program has started under the Trump administration, which has been accused of rolling back LGBTQ rights, increases the likelihood that it was being driven by necessity, he said.

An FDA spokesperson told NBC News that the agency “remains committed to considering alternatives to time-based deferral by generating the scientific evidence that is intended to support an individual risk-assessment-based blood donor questionnaire.”

The spokesperson indicated there is no announced timeline for the study’s completion, although ABC News reported that researchers aim to present their findings by late 2021.

Cianciotto said he hopes the program is completed and implemented before the next election.

“In a Biden administration, we’ll have an advocate like we had in the Obama administration — in fact, one who actually was in the Obama administration,” he said. “But we can’t risk this becoming a campaign issue.”

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