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Ohio Senate overrides governor’s veto of transgender care restriction

The Ohio Senate voted Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that bans transition-related medical care for transgender minors and restricts trans athletes’ participation on school sports teams.  After the Senate’s 23-9 vote, the bill will become law in 90 days. The Ohio House already voted 65-28, along party lines, to override DeWine’s veto earlier this month. Ohio is now the 22nd state with a law that restricts minors’ access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy and the 24th with a law that bars trans girls and women from playing on women’s school sports teams.  Health care providers who violate the law could […]

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Transgender veterans sue the VA for gender-affirming surgery

An advocacy group for transgender veterans is suing the government over its exclusion of gender-confirmation surgery in veterans’ health benefits.  The Department of Veterans Affairs covers almost all transition-related care for veterans, including hormone therapy, voice training, fertility preservation and hair removal. However, if trans veterans want to receive surgery — such as genital and breast procedures — they are required to either use private health insurance or pay out of pocket. Such operations are covered for active-duty service members. The Transgender American Veterans Association, or TAVA, formed in 2003, filed a petition in May 2016 asking the VA to start a rulemaking […]

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Ads Targeting LGBTQ+ Are “Insincere,” Says LGBTQ+ Community

While LGBTQ+ Americans and their advocates have made some progress in achieving greater civil rights, recognition, and representation for the LGBTQ+ community, recent actions suggest that further work is needed in the pursuit of equality. A new report from Collage Group, a leading provider of cultural intelligence, takes a close look at LGBTQ+ marketing and advertising. Specifically, the study examines how LGBTQ+ Americans feel about recent ads aimed toward their community. It also provides the perspectives of non LGBTQ+ people, as well as the perceptions of liberals and conservatives.  The report examines marketing efforts, specifically LGBTQ+ representation in regard to […]

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Maine legislators frantically working to make the state a trans refuge

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A proposed law in Maine would make the state the 15th “trans refuge” as lawmakers push back on attempts by some activist state attorneys general to demand private medical information from health authorities. Texas, in particular, has been at the forefront of attempts to persecute trans youth and their parents, along with hospitals, doctors, and healthcare providers, across state borders. Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has gone so far as to send special investigators across the state border to interrogate children and their families. The bill would protect Texans who flee to the state to seek medical care for their children or […]

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Biden administration allocates $700,000 to sex-ed program for trans boys

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The Biden administration is dedicating approximately $700,000 to a sexual health program aimed at pregnancy prevention for transgender boys.  The Department of Health and Human Services has approved a grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in California, which will spearhead a program focused on sex education and condom usage for trans boys. The grant summary explains that trans boys are “at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable.”  It also said trans […]

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GLAAD demands Mark Zuckerberg public statement on Facebook’s anti-trans content moderation failure

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GLAAD is urging Meta to take immediate action following the company’s independent Oversight Board’s decision to overturn Facebook’s original stance on a post that targeted transgender people with violent language. The case has highlighted the insidious methods used to attack LGBTQ+ individuals on social media, such as coded language and indirect messaging. The Oversight Board’s ruling overruled Meta’s original decision to leave up a contentious post that targeted transgender individuals with violent and harmful language. The post, originating from a user in Poland, displayed a curtain in the transgender Pride flag’s colors, coupled with text in Polish implying that transgender people should die by suicide — a clear […]

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Lawmakers in South Carolina approve ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors

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Lawmakers in South Carolina, USA, have approved a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.  On 18 January, the Republican-dominated House debated and voted “overwhelmingly” in favour of the bill, as per AP News. The bill prevents health professionals from performing gender-affirming surgery, prescribing puberty blockers and overseeing hormone therapy for patients under 18 years old. The bill also prevents those under the age of 26 – eight years past the age of majority in the Southern US state – from using Medicaid, the nation’s public health insurance program for those from a low-income background, to cover the cost of gender-affirming […]

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Queer people of colour don’t think they will live as long as their white peers, study finds

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Large numbers of queer young people of colour in the US believe they have a low life expectancy compared with their white peers, a new study has found. The research for LGBTQ+ youth mental-health charity The Trevor Projectshowed that, overall, 58 per cent of young queer people believe there is a high chance they will live to at least the age of 35, while 34 per cent view their chances as low. The remaining respondents were unsure. The report, which surveyed 28,524 LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 13 and 24, found that 59 per cent of young LGBTQ+ people of colour […]

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Two of the country’s largest transgender rights organizations will merge

Two of the country’s largest transgender rights organizations are merging, telling NBC News that joining forces will allow them to better combat years of conservative efforts to roll back trans rights. The National Center for Transgender Equality, or NCTE, a group that focuses primarily on federal policy reform, and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, or TLDEF, which works to advance trans rights through litigation, will merge by this summer to become Advocates for Trans Equality, or A4TE.  “We’ll be able to operate with double the influence, double the power,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of NCTE, who […]

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West Virginia Republicans want to ban transgender people from public spaces, call them ‘obscene’

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Republicans in West Virginia have upped the hostility among those on the right toward transgender people. There, the LGBTQ+ community is currently grappling with significant legislative challenges that have the potential to impact the rights and lives of transgender individuals drastically.  Multiple draconian bills were introduced in the state’s legislature this week, with advocates drawing attention to their severe implications. One forces mental health professionals to “cure” transgender people from their gender identity, and another categorizes transgender people as “obscene material,” essentially making transgender individuals’ existence in many public spaces illegal, independent journalist Erin Reed, who specializes in transgender-related legal coverage, reports. Yet another criminalizes their presence near schools. […]

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