The LGBTQ+ organization Human Rights Campaign (HRC) kicked Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch off the top of its corporate equality index (CEI), citing the company’s tepid response to the Dylan Mulvaney backlash.
“When we saw the company working with Dylan, that was a good sign. It was a sign of inclusion,” HRC senior vice president of programs, research, and training Jay Brown told CNN. “What we were really disturbed by was the company’s reaction once the backlash started happening.”
There are approximately 3 million Dashers who are the public face and main workforce of DoorDash who are not considered in the CEI because DoorDash doesn’t consider them employees.
On April 1, Mulvaney posted a 50-second video to Instagram showing off some custom Bud Light cans with her face on them, a part of a brand partnership with the beer company.
But Anheuser-Busch’s weak response to the backlash led to anger among LGBTQ+ people as well. The company released a statement in April saying that it “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people… We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.” And Anheuser-Busch CEO Michel Doukeris downplayed the partnership on a call with investors this month, saying: “We will continue to learn, meet the moment in time, all be stronger and we work tirelessly to do what we do best: Bring people together over a beer and creating a future of more cheers.”
Meanwhile, Mulvaney said she was “having trouble sleeping” after becoming the target of so much hatred for the past month and a half, leading to criticism that Anheuser-Busch left her out to dry. Some LGBTQ+ people – including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) and several bars in Chicago – have been boycotting Anheuser-Busch as a result of their response to the controversy.
And now HRC is jumping into the fray.
HRC’s Brown said that the beer company’s lackluster response couldn’t have come at a worse time, as transgender equality is being targeted in state legislatures across the country. He said that he asked Anheuser-Busch to at least release a statement in support of Mulvaney and transgender people, offer inclusion training to executives, and listen to LGBTQ+ employees, but the company hasn’t done any of those things. In fact, two of the marketing executives who worked on the Mulvaney partnership have been put on leave, which many on the right are claiming as a victory of their Bud Light boycott.
After asking to at least talk to someone at the company, Brown sent a letter informing Anheuser-Busch that they were losing their 100% rating on CEI, which rates the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality.”
HRC has been maintaining the CEI since 2002, when it rated policies for gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees, and has expanded it in the last two decades to include evaluations of transgender employee policies, partner benefits, and how a corporation supports an inclusive culture outside of its own workplace.
HRC gave a 100% rating to the Fox Corporation until last year when it got demoted due to Fox News’s coverage of LGBTQ+ issues.
Target is removing certain items from its stores and making other changes to its LGBTQ merchandise nationwide ahead of Pride month, after an intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement Tuesday. ”Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”
Target declined to say which items it was removing but among the ones that garnered the most attention were “tuck friendly” women’s swimsuits that allow trans women who have not had gender-affirming operations to conceal their private parts. Designs by Abprallen, a London-based company that designs and sells occult- and satanic-themed LGBTQ clothing and accessories, have also created backlash.
The Pride merchandise has been on sale since early May. Pride month is held in June.
Target confirmed that it has moved its Pride merchandise from the front of the stores to the back in some Southern stores after confrontations and backlash from shoppers in those areas.
Target’s Pride month collection has also been the subject of several misleading videos in recent weeks, with social media users falsely claiming the retailer is selling “tuck-friendly” bathing suits designed for kids or in kids’ sizes.
The moves come as beer brand Bud Light is still grappling with a backlash from customers angered by its attempt to broaden its customer base by partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light’s parent company said it will triple its marketingspending in the U.S. this summer as it tries to restore sales it lost after the brand partnered with the transgender influencer.
Target and other retailers including Walmart and H&M have been expanding their LGBTQ displays to celebrate Pride month for roughly a decade. This year transgender issues — including gender-affirming health care and participation in sports — have been a divisive topic in state legislatures and the backlash has turned hostile.
Recently coming off of Bi+ Health Awareness Month, annually in March, we’ve been pointed to our Bi+ population who not only contend with the challenges commonly experienced by their LGTQ+ peers, but also must overcome a host of obstacles specific to their community. There has been immense progress in LGBTQ+ equality over the previous decades, yet too many Bi+ community members continue to suffer under the yoke of age-old prejudices.
While these 31 days are designated to focus on complications confronting and negatively impacting Bi+ people, as well as creating awareness around better meeting the population’s needs, our efforts to stand in solidarity with the Bi+ community cannot simply begin and end each March. More must be done for a community that our society has ignored and overlooked for decades.
According to Gallup, Bi+ people actually make up more than half of LGBTQ+ Americans, who now represent 7.1 percent of our country’s population. However, this community experiencessignificantly worse physical, mental, and social health outcomes compared to their gay, lesbian, and heterosexual peers.
Our Bi+ neighbors often experience a wider array of negative medical conditions compared to heterosexual adults that are frequently aggravated by the unique discriminations they face related to their sexual orientation. These conditions range from higher rates of elevated cholesterol and asthma, as well as increased prevalence of smoking and alcohol use that can also heighten the risk for other health problems.
Our health care system and the oft unchecked anti-LGBTQ+ biases ingrained within it make it even more difficult to address these issues. Many Bi+ people refrain from disclosing their sexual identity to healthcare practitioners based on past negative interactions with their physicians, which results in delaying or avoiding necessary appointments and procedures. Adding to the matter, 80 percent of physicians assume patients would decline to disclose their sexual identity to their doctors, making the health care process for the Bi+ more difficult.
Working at SAGE, my colleagues and I see these exact instances constantly with the Bi+ elders we engage with, along with the other elders who utilize our services and resources across the LGBTQ+ community. Bi+ elders are significantly more likely to live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line and more likely to have lower income levels as compared to their gay and lesbian peers. We also see higher rates of depression and worse health outcomes as well among Bi+ people, creating further complications they must navigate.
You may be asking why this is the current state of the Bi+ community in the U.S., especially for our elders. It is likely, at least in part, attributable to multifaceted discrimination. Bi+ people are at risk of marginalization by anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment while simultaneously seeing their voices and narratives erased or disbelieved within LGBTQ+-centric circles.
So while those who would oppose equal protection under the law for LGBTQ+ people — those who have found ever more vociferous champions of their prejudices among our elected officials over the past several years — do not hesitate to denigrate the BI+ community, other members of the LGBTQ+ community are necessarily creating spaces that are inclusive of Bi+ people.
We must do better — those in the community; those outside of the community; those leading our health and nonprofit organizations; those elected into office and beyond. We all must do better at standing in solidarity with communities other than our own.
Improvement in this area can begin with two crucial steps — inclusivity and increasing resources. You might assume that inclusivity wouldn’t be an issue for the LGBTQ+ community, but those same assumptions are what often lead to the sidelining of Bi+ people and their narratives. Listening to, understanding, and respecting other people’s identities and experiences is the foundation of inclusivity, and this must be remembered as more pro-LGBTQ+ programs are developed.
We must also make mental health programming more accessible for Bi+ people given that they are at greater risk of experiencing protracted isolation and loneliness. The community’s elders are more likely to experience social isolation compared to other LGTQ+ adults, and LGBTQ+ elders as a whole are twice as likely to be single and live alone when compared to their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Mental health concerns and their treatment has become more known and accepted worldwide, but this focus and investment must be nuanced to be as inclusive as possible of all demographics.
The positives here are that we have clear steps for creating more welcoming spaces for the Bi+ community, avenues to guide future research and paths for creating more accessible and comprehensive resources. However, time must not be wasted. Addressing the specific needs of Bi+ people can no longer be a second thought, as it has been for far too long.
It is long past time to critically reevaluate and rethink how we as individuals and professionals stand with Bi+ people in America and elsewhere.
Kylie Madhav is the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at SAGE where she defines the strategic vision for SAGE’s external-facing DEI work and leads in designing the organization’s DEI action plans, goals, and benchmarks.
New HIV infections continue to ebb only modestly in the United States, while many other wealthy Western nations have posted steep reductions, thanks to more successful efforts overseas to promptly diagnose and treat the virus and promote the HIV prevention pill, PrEP.
In a new HIV surveillance report published Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that new HIV transmissions declined by 12% nationally between 2017 and 2021, from 36,500 to 32,100 cases.
By comparison, according to estimates by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, between 2015 and 2021, the annual infection rate plunged by more than 70% in the Netherlands, 68% in Italy and 44% in Australia. United Kingdom health authoritiesrecorded about 2,700 diagnoses in England in 2021 — a drop of approximately one-third since 2017 and one-half since 2015.
Experts told NBC News that the U.S. remains so far behind in combating HIV because of the nation’s lack of a national health care system and sexual-health clinic network; fragmented and underfunded public health systems; and poorer synchronization between government, academia, health care and community-based organizations.
These experts also pointed to factors such as racism, inadequate adoption of evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder, state laws criminalizing HIV exposure and medical mistrust in people of color.
“HIV in the United States is very much a disease of those who are most disenfranchised in society,” Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University, said.
The power of the pills
The 2010s heralded the era of so-called biomedical HIV prevention. A series of landmark studies established two critical facts: one, that fully suppressing the virus with antiretroviral treatment eliminates sexual transmission risk in addition to extending life expectancy nearly to normal, and two, that when HIV-negative people take the antiretrovirals Truvada or Descovy daily as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, they reduce their risk of contracting the virus by 99% or more.
Accordingly, the nations that have succeeded in far besting the U.S. in reducing new infections have gotten more people with HIV diagnosed and on treatment, and have done so sooner in the course of infection. These countries have also often seen a greater proportion of those at the highest risk of HIV, namely gay men, get on PrEP.
A medical assistant draws blood from a patient on National HIV Testing Day at a Planned Parenthood health center on June 27, 2017, in Miami.Joe Raedle / Getty Images file
An estimated 1.2 million Americans have HIV. According to the CDC, only 87% of them are diagnosed and just 58% are in treatment and have a fully suppressed viral load. This latter figure compares with robust national viral suppression rates, estimated by health authorities, of 82% in Australia, 83% in the Netherlands, 89% in the U.K and 74% in Italy. The rate is higher than 70% in at least 16 other European nations.
In the U.S., the virus has maintained its vastly disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men, who, according to the new CDC report, comprise about 70% of new cases despite making up only about 2% of the adult population.
The CDC has estimated that about 814,000 gay and bisexual men are good PrEP candidates. Recent data suggested that the number of people, overwhelmingly from this population, who have ever used PrEP each year more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, to at least 318,400. However, a recent CDC study suggested that only about half that group took PrEP during any one month last year, suggesting that many people take it only temporarily.
HIV prevention drug Descovy, at Pucci’s Pharmacy in Sacramento, Calif., on Oct. 7, 2019.Rich Pedroncelli / AP file
The most recent four-year national decline was driven by an estimated one-third drop in cases among 13- to 24-year-olds, which Dr. Robyn Neblett Fanfair, acting director of the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention, characterized as “very encouraging” on a Tuesday media call. The CDC attributes this success to progress in expanding testing, treatment and PrEP among gay and bisexual males, who comprised 80% of the cases in that age group.
But infection rates among these men’s older counterparts have remained statistically stable.
In England, vastly improved biomedical prevention among gay and bisexual men slashed their HIV diagnosis rate so drastically — by about three-quarters in a decade — that in 2022, fewer of them tested positive for the virus than heterosexuals. In the U.S., gay and bisexual men’s transmissions outnumber heterosexuals’ by more than three to one.
Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke University Global Health Institute, remarked that many of the nations that have seen such precipitous declines “don’t have to deal with the really sharp health disparities and lack of access” that have colored the U.S. HIV fight.
Persistent divides
HIV has for decades exposed racial and socioeconomic fault lines in the U.S., with the virus disproportionately affecting people of color and the poor.
Blacks and Latinos comprised a respective 40% and 29% of the most recent transmissions, despite these racial groups making up only 12% and 19% of the U.S. population. Approximately one in five new infections are among women, more than half of them among Black women.
The new CDC report reveals that such racial disparities have abated only slightly in recent years. Breaking down the transmission trajectory by race and sex showed that Black men were the only group to see a statistically significant reduction.
Estimated new infections among gay and bisexual men declined between 2017 and 2021 from 9,300 to 8,100 among Blacks and 7,800 to 7,200 among Latinos. However, these changes were not statistically significant, in contrast to the significant decline among whites, from 5,800 to 4,800 cases.
Politics and public health
Conservative politicians’ recent fervent use of anti-LGBTQ legislation and rhetoric to appeal to the Republican base threatens to further undermine efforts to combat HIV, public health experts warned.
“All of this plain hatred at the LGBTQ community is not good for ending the epidemic,” Kathie Hiers, CEO of AIDS Alabama, said.
Hiers also decried what she characterized as insufficient and poorly coordinated national support for housing among those living with and at risk for HIV. She pointed to the robust support New York provides HIV-positive homeless people as a pillar of that state’s success in fighting the virus.
About half of HIV transmissions occur in the South, which has an infection rate approximately 50% higher than in the West and Northeast, and double that of the Midwest. Southern states, dominated by Republicans, have tended to devote fewer resources to combatting the virus compared with liberal states, and cities elsewhere, such as San Francisco and New York, that have a history of beating back substantial HIV epidemics.
Mayor London Breed, right, shakes hands with HIV prevention expert Dr. Hyman Scott at Zuckerberg San Francisco Hospital on Sept. 10, 2019.Gabrielle Lurie / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images file
Experts have long cited the refusal of most Southern legislatures to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act as a major driver of regional disparities in HIV treatment and prevention.
“Medicaid expansion is a massive structural intervention to support the most vulnerable in our communities,” said Dr. Hyman Scott, an HIV prevention expert at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Silver linings
There is hope that the South may be turning a corner, given the CDC’s finding that it was the only region to see a statistically significant decline — of 12% — in estimated new HIV infections between 2017 and 2021.
Additionally, HIV’s decline appears to be accelerating, however marginally. The CDC previously reported the new infection rate was essentially stable during the mid-2010s and then inched 8% lowerbetween 2015 and 2019.
And while the most recent data are somewhat hazy due to a drop in HIV testing following Covid-19’s onset, an apparent sustained decline in transmissions in 2020 and 2021 represents a victory for the HIV treatment and prevention workforce. Infectious disease clinics, for example, often proved nimble in the face of the new pandemic’s disruptions by pivoting to telehealth and supplying patients with months of medications at a time.
The CDC isn’t satisfied.
“In prevention, patience is not a virtue,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said during the Tuesday media call. “We can end HIV in America. We know the way, but does our nation have the will?”
Fighting for the future of HIV
The federal government is hoping that a surge in spending will be the linchpin that finally sends the HIV epidemic into a swift retreat.
In 2019, Donald Trump endorsed a plan to ratchet up federal outlays on HIV. Between the 2020 and 2023 fiscal years, this infusion of new annual funds, largely funneled to the 48 counties where about half of transmissions occur, has soared from $267 million to $573 million. Mermin called for Congress to approve President Biden’s budget request of $850 million for the 2024 fiscal year.
The expressed aim of the spending is to cause the 2017 HIV transmission rate to collapse 75% by 2025 and 90% by 2030. But as CDC surveillance quite evidently shows, the epidemic’s current trajectory is nowhere near on track to achieve such lofty goals.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji.Courtesy Dr. Boghuma Titanji
Emory’s Boghuma Titanji said that to succeed in beating HIV, the nation must address the myriad intractable social inequities that drive transmission, including poverty, racism, stigma, homophobia, homelessness and poor health care access.
Absent such progress, Titanji said, she anticipates that by the decade’s end, HIV in the U.S. will be “pretty much the same: a disease that will continue to disproportionately impact the most vulnerable communities.”
As mpox cases start to rise again in some key areas, experts are urging queer people to remain vigilant and get vaccinated.
Mpox cases are down significantly since the epidemic reached its peak in the summer of 2022. The shift prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare that the outbreak was no longer a public health emergency on 11 May – but that doesn’t mean the virus has disappeared.
The WHO is now warning that mpox cases could rise again during the summer months as queer people congregate for Pride festivals and other gatherings.
“[Mpox] still is circulating, it still is with us, and still does represent an ongoing risk,” Dr Richard Pebody, mpox lead with the WHO, tells PinkNews.
“It’s much lower levels of cases now than what we were seeing before, but we also know – and this is the key message I really want to get out to folk – is that there is still the potential for flare-ups, for further outbreaks, this spring and summer.”
He continues: “We’ve seen recently a flare-up in France for example. We’ve also seen a flare-up just recently in the States, in Chicago. These have again really been occurring primarily in the GBMSM (gay, bisexual and men who have sex with men) community and many of the cases had a vaccine last year as well, so it is highlighting the ability of the virus to still circulate and to cause illness.”
Mpox (previously monkeypox) is no longer considered a public health emergency, but it’s still circulating. (Getty)
That’s why the WHO is now launching a new campaign to remind the public that mpox is still circulating as the summer season begins.
“We know festivals where people get together there is an increase in sexual contact. There is the potential for further clusters and outbreaks in those types of settings,” Dr Pebody says.
“It’s really about putting this out there and raising people’s awareness that, on the one hand, we [should] celebrate where we are now, but also to highlight what we can do to keep ourselves and those around us safe.”
WHO urges people to get tested if they develop mpox symptoms
Dr Pebody says there are a range of things people can do to protect themselves and others from mpox this summer.
“On the one hand, if you suspect that you’ve got mpox yourself – so if you’ve started to develop a rash which is consistent with mpox – then get yourself checked out.
“Give the festival or the event a miss. Avoid close contact with others and that will certainly reduce your risk of then spreading that on to others – that’s a really important thing.”
People can also reduce their risk of contracting mpox by taking a smallpox vaccine if one is available in their country. Vaccines reduce both the risk of infection and the risk of severe illness.
The WHO wants people to stay safe this summer, but they also want to reassure queer people that they can still have fun while socialising or having sex with new partners.
“I would really try to reassure people not to be frightened,” Dr Pebody says.
“Certainly now in Europe, the incidence of mpox is much, much lower than it was last year. We’re in a much better position so we certainly don’t want to frighten people. What we want to do really is to remind people that mpox is still potentially out there, but there are things we can all do to reduce that risk of potentially being exposed.
“If you’re planning to go to a festival, to an event, do go – have fun, have a good time, but just remember what you can also do to protect yourself and others.”
In Hanover Township in New Jersey, the Board of Education passed a policy Tuesday requiring school staff to notify parents of their children’s sexual orientation, classifying it along with substance and alcohol use, firearms, and “unlawful activity” as a threat to students’ well-being.
New Jersey’s attorney general is suing.
The kindergarten through eighth-grade district serves about 1,300 students in Whippany and Cedar Knolls in Morris County.
“Enacting a policy that has teachers policing their schools to out LGBTQ+ students is a disconcerting return to tactics used to criminalize sexual orientation and gender identity,” Jeanne LoCicero, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, told NJ.com. “It targets students based on their LGBTQ+ status and cannot stand.”
“We will always stand up for the LGBTQ+ community here in New Jersey and look forward to presenting our arguments in court in this matter,” AG Matthew J. Platkin said in a statement. He joined Sundeep Iyer, Director of the Division on Civil Rights, to file an emergency motion in Superior Court to enjoin the new policy.
“We are extremely proud of the contributions LGBTQ+ students make to our classrooms and our communities,” Platkin added, “and we remain committed to protecting them from discrimination in our schools.”
Platkin’s complaint argues the board’s policy violates the state’s Law Against Discrimination because it requires parental notification for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer students but not for their peers.
The attorney general’s office quotes from the new policy requiring all school staff to “immediately, fully and accurately inform a student’s parent(s) whenever such staff member is made aware of, directly or indirectly, any facts or circumstances that may have a material impact on the student’s physical and/or mental health, safety and/or social/emotional well-being,” including a student’s “sexuality,” “sexual orientation,” “transitioning,” and “gender identity or expression.”
In a statement, the Hanover Township board claimed the requirement doesn’t target students based on a protected status. Under the Law Against Discrimination, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression are protected statuses.
The attorney general’s complaint also argues that the policy would put students’ safety and mental health put at risk, and that it goes against guidance from the New Jersey Department of Education, which protects students’ confidentiality and privacy.
“The purpose of this policy is to involve the parents in the lives of their children,” the board’s attorney, Matthew Giacobbe, told the Daily Record. “They’re participating and not having people other than themselves make judgment calls on their child.”
The board’s statement added: “The Hanover Township Board of Education believes that parents need to be fully informed of all material issues that could impact their children so that they – as parents – can provide the proper care and support for their children.”
A Mississippi school district is refusing to let a transgender girl wear a dress and heeled shoes with her graduation cap and gown for high school graduation this weekend, her family says in a federal lawsuit against the district.
The lawsuit filed Thursday demands that the Harrison County School District allow the 17-year-old to wear what she wants as she and her classmates graduate from Harrison Central High School on Saturday.
The teenager is listed in court documents by her initials, L.B. The lawsuit said L.B. had worn dresses to classes and to extracurricular events throughout high school, including to a prom last year.
The Harrison Central principal, Kelly Fuller, told L.B. and her parents May 9 that the school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast would make L.B. follow a dress code requiring male students to wear white shirts, black slacks and black shoes for graduation, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the family. The dress code says girls are to wear white dresses.
Fuller said the request to meet with L.B. about the dress code was prompted by Harrison County School District Superintendent Mitchell King, who had called to ask what transgender students were wearing to graduation, according to the lawsuit.
King told the teenager’s mother in a phone call that L.B. “needs to wear pants, socks, and shoes like a boy,” and King repeatedly misgendered L.B. as a boy, the ACLU said in a news release.
U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden scheduled a Friday hearing on the family’s request for temporary restraining order against the school district.
Wynn Clark, attorney for the Harrison County School Board, declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.
“I have not read the entirety of their complaint,” Clark told The Associated Press.
The AP left phone messages Thursday for Fuller and King about the lawsuit, which says L.B. should not face discriminatory and unequal treatment.
“My graduation is supposed to be a moment of pride and celebration and school officials want to turn it into a moment of humiliation and shame,” L.B. said in the news release. “The clothing I’ve chosen is fully appropriate for the ceremony and the superintendent’s objections to it are entirely unfair to myself, my family and all transgender students like me. I have the right to celebrate my graduation as who I am, not who anyone else wants me to be.”
The lawsuit said L.B. “has lived every aspect of her high school career as a girl.”
“L.B. should be focused on celebrating this important milestone alongside her peers; however, this targeted attack by the leaders of the Harrison County School District seeks to strip her of her right to celebrate this occasion as her true self,” said McKenna Raney-Gray, staff attorney for the ACLU of Mississippi.
Aaron and Lacey Jennen’s roots in Arkansas run deep. They’ve spent their entire lives there, attended the flagship state university, and are raising a family. So they’re heartbroken at the prospect of perhaps having to move to one of an ever-dwindling number of states where gender-affirming health care for their transgender teenage daughter, Sabrina, is not threatened.
“We were like, ‘OK, if we can just get Sabrina to 18 … we can put all this horrible stuff behind us,’” Aaron Jennen said, “and unfortunately that’s not been the case, as you’ve seen a proliferation of anti-trans legislation here in Arkansas and across the country.”
At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, though judges have temporarily blocked their enforcement in some, including Arkansas. An Associated Press analysis found that often those bills sprang not from grassroots or constituent demand, but from the pens of a handful of conservative interest groups.
Many of the proposals, as introduced or passed, are identical or very similar to some model legislation, the AP found. Those ready-made bills have been used in statehouses for decades, often with criticisms of carpetbagging by out-of-state interests. In the case of restrictions on gender-affirming care for youths, they allow a handful of far-right groups to spread a false narrative based on distorted science, critics say.
“These are solutions from outside our state looking to solve nonexistent problems inside our state,” said Aaron Jennen. “For whatever reason, they have the ear of legislatures in states like Arkansas, and the legislators will generally defer to and only listen to those individuals.”
The AP obtained the texts of more than 130 bills in 40 state legislatures from Plural, a public policy software company, and analyzed them for similarities to model bills peddled by the conservative groups Do No Harm, which also criticizes efforts to diversify staffing in medicine, and the Family Research Council, which has long been involved in abortion restrictions.
One of the clearest examples is in Montana, where nearly all the language in at least one bill can be found in Do No Harm’s model. Publicly available emails from December show the Republican sponsor, Sen. John Fuller, tweaked the model before introducing it weeks later. Democrats criticized his efforts.
“This is not a Montana issue; it is an issue pushed by well-funded national groups,” Democratic Sen. Janet Ellis said during debate in February.
Republicans pushed back.
“Someone mentioned this is not a Montana solution. And I can tell you that I won my election on this issue,” said Republican Sen. Barry Usher, who ran unopposed in the general election after winning his contested primary.
The Montana bill passed in March with much of Do No Harm’s model language intact and has been signed into law.
Do No Harm’s model and the 2021 Arkansas bill endorsed as a model by the Family Research Council also have many similarities, including the assertion — rebutted by major medical organizations — that the risks of gender-affirming care outweigh its benefits.
Republicans’ recent focus on legislation to restrict aspects of transgender life is largely a strategy of using social “wedge issues” — in the past, abortion or same-sex marriage — to motivate their voting base, political observers say. And it does appear to resonate; a Pew Research Center survey a year ago found broad support among Republicans, but not Democrats, for restrictions on medical care for gender transitions.
“These organizations are not introducing this model legislation to make legislators’ jobs easier, to support kids in their constituencies. They’re introducing this model legislation to gain wealth, to gain eyes, to gain power, and to gain access,” said Heron Greenesmith, a senior research analyst who monitors anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric for Political Research Associates, a liberal think tank.
Such bills often distort valid science that supports gender-affirming care for youths, said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University who edited the section about gender dysphoria in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. Do No Harm cites the manual in its model bill.
“These bills are not at all interested in patient care,” Drescher said. “These bills are designed to inflame.”
It’s problematic “any time policymakers are cherry-picking isolated studies or scientific research that arrives upon a different conclusion than the rest of the community or that relies upon studies without having that expertise,” said Marty P. Jordan, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University. “It’s problematic for the individuals that the legislation could impact. It’s problematic for the larger public, and problematic for democracy writ large.”
Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said: “If it’s a good bill, no one should be shy about where they got it because that’s the federal system working correctly.”
Do No Harm launched last year with an initial critical focus on the role of race in medical education and hiring, and the Virginia-based nonprofit has registered lobbyists in at least four states. People associated with it have testified in statehouses around the U.S.
When asked about Do No Harm’s legislative activity, founder and chair Dr. Stanley Goldfarb responded in an email: “Do No Harm works to protect children from extreme gender ideology through original research, coalition-building, testimonials from parents and patients who’ve lived through deeply troubling experiences, and advocacy for the rigorous, apolitical study of gender dysphoria.”
The Family Research Council, an advocacy group that opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights, has been behind what it calls the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, or SAFE Act. Among other things, it falsely asserts that “‘gender transition’ is an experiment.”
A leader of the Family Research Council declined to directly answer several questions about its model bill, including where it had been used and which legislators it had worked with, but said, “What should be an issue debated in the scientific community now has to be dealt with through legislation.”
“The SAFE Act gives minors a chance to experience development before imposing lifelong chemical and surgical procedures that increasingly show evidence of psychological and physiological harm and completed suicide after the transition,” Jennifer Bauwens, the organization’s director of family studies, said in an email.
In Arkansas, Sabrina Jennen — who will turn 18 in July — continues to receive gender-affirming health care while her family’s suit winds through the courts.
“For these outside groups to carry more weight than the people these legislators were elected to represent is very upsetting,” Aaron Jennen said. “They didn’t listen to us before, but now they have to listen to us because we filed a lawsuit and went to court.”
Nearly three quarters of trans people in the UK have faced verbal abuse in the last year, shocking new figures from a leading LGBTQ+ charity have revealed.
Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity, has shared new data which highlights the raft of vile abuse both LGBTQ+, and non-LGBTQ+, young people face in the wake of rising homophobic and transphobic rhetoric.
The figures are part of a new report by the charity called Positive Futures, set to be published on 1 June, which examines the experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults in the UK.
The report will cover a range of topics including wellbeing, home life, school and work, as well as taking into account intersectional identities such as faith, race and disability.
Carried out by market researcher Cibyl on behalf of Just Like Us, the study surveyed 3,695 adults aged 18 to 25.
‘Devastating’
The research found in the past year 61 per cent of LGBTQ+ young adults have experienced verbal abuse.
Within these figures, a staggering 72 per cent of trans young adults faced verbal abuse in that time frame.
After trans people, non-binary (70 per cent) asexual (68 per cent) young adults were then the most likely to report verbal abuse in the last 12 months.
The research also found nearly half (47 per cent) of non-LGBTQ+ young adults have also faced anti-LGBT+ verbal abuse during the previous 12 months, despite not being queer.
Amy Ashenden, interim CEO of Just Like Us, said it is “devastating” to see a majority of trans young people have faced verbal abuse and it is a “sign of the often terrifyingly transphobic times we are living in here in the UK”.
“The levels of abuse faced by LGBT+ young adults are completely unacceptable,” she said.
“It’s hard to believe that in 2023, LGBT+ young people are still being subjected to verbal abuse and violence, and that anti-LGBT+ attacks are so prevalent that they are even being directed at non-LGBT+ young people.”
‘Vital’ we take LGBTQ+ inclusion ‘seriously’
The Just Like Us research also found that when it comes to physical abuse, both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ young people face similar levels (25 per cent and 24 per cent respectively).
However, when examined in terms of identity these results shot up for those who are lesbian (30 per cent), asexual (32 per cent) and gay men (31 per cent).
LGBTQ+ young adults were significantly more likely than their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts to say the physical abuse they experienced was sexual abuse (50 per cent opposed to 30 per cent).
Within this, young lesbians were the most likely to have faced sexual abuse (57 per cent) whilst asexual young people were the group with the highest likelihood of experiencing domestic abuse (44 per cent).
“It is absolutely vital that we start taking LGBT+ inclusion seriously, and that schools all over the UK give young people positive messages about LGBT+ identities, otherwise I fear that these figures will only increase,” Ashenden added.
“A great place to start for schools UK-wide is signing up for School Diversity Week, so that teachers can access our free and easy-to-use resources and let all of their pupils know that being LGBT+ is something to be celebrated and proud of.”
Penguin Random House, authors, parents and a free speech group filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a Florida school district for removing 10 books related to race and the LGBTQ community after a high school teacher complained.
In addition to the publishing house, PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, five authors whose books have been removed from the district, and two parents whose children go to school in the district filed the suit against the Escambia County School District and the Escambia County School Board in Pensacola, Florida.
“All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir manifesto by LGBTQ activist George M. Johnson.Alamy Stock Photo
The plaintiffs alleged that the district and the board violated the First Amendment by “depriving students of access to a wide range of viewpoints, and depriving the authors of the removed and restricted books of the opportunity to engage with readers and disseminate their ideas to their intended audiences.”
They also argued that the removals violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment “because the books being singled out for possible removal are disproportionately books by non-white and/or LGBTQ authors, or which address topics related to race or LGBTQ identity.”
“This is no accident,” the suit alleged. “The clear agenda behind the campaign to remove the books is to categorically remove all discussion of racial discrimination or LGBTQ issues from public school libraries. Government action may not be premised on such discriminatory motivations.”
Neither the district nor the school board immediately responded to requests for comment. However, Bill Slayton, a member of the school board, told NBC News correspondent Antonia Hylton that he was surprised by the lawsuit because the school board and the superintendent have been following state law.
“We have been removing books that have been called inappropriate, pornography,” he said. “I guess I’m a little surprised because this is going on all over the state of Florida, not just here. My reaction is our procedures are following what we have been told we have to do.”
The plaintiffs allege a campaign to restrict access to books in the Escambia County School District began last May after Vicki Baggett, a language arts teacher at the district’s Northview High School, challenged “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky. Baggett expanded her effort in the fall and challenged more than 100 books for “questionable content,” prompting a book purge in the district, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
Baggett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since last May, the district and the school board have removed or indefinitely restricted access to five books by the author plaintiffs: “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” by Sarah Brannen, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, “Two Boys Kissing” by David Levithan, “When Aidan Became a Brother” by Kyle Lukoff and “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez.
