Organizers and observers said between 1,500 and 3,000 people turned out on Saturday for the first ever National Transgender Visibility March on Washington in which scores of participants held signs proudly declaring their status as transgender or gender nonconforming Americans.
The march kicked off at 11:35 a.m. on Sept. 28 from Freedom Plaza in downtown D.C. following the completion of a two-and-a-half hour rally. It traveled along Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., from 13th to 4th Streets, where the march ended four blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
Among the speakers at the rally was trans actress of “Pose” and “American Horror Story” fame Angelica Ross, who made an impassioned call for unity, inclusiveness and compassion within the transgender and overall LGBT rights movements and those movements’ allies.
Also expressing strong support at the rally for the march and trans rights were D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Sheila Alexander-Reid, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
Reid read an official proclamation issued by the mayor declaring Sept. 28, 2019, Trans Visibility Day in D.C.
Many of the marchers carried signs saying, “Trans Lives Matter.” Several told the Washington Blade they were moved and inspired as they walked past the buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue that they said symbolize the people and the institutions they are calling on to change to ensure their equal rights and dignity.
Among the buildings the marchers walked past were the FBI Headquarters, the Trump International Hotel, and the Justice Department, which, under the administration of President Trump, has taken positions against transg rights in pending federal court cases.
“This is amazing,” said trans activist Maggie Downs, who said she traveled from Florida to attend the march. “I’m here for black trans lives and trans children’s lives, and then my own rights,” she said as she walked past the Trump hotel.
“We’re here not to be invisible, which is what this administration is trying to do to us,” she told the Blade.
Marty Drake, an official with the Montgomery County Pride Center who marched with the group Maryland Trans Unity, said this was not the first time he has walked past the Trump hotel in a protest march.
“It’s always a treat going by the Trump hotel in any march,” he said. “This group was very polite. The shouts of ‘shame, shame, shame,’ were a lot politer than some of the other marches I’ve been at,” he said. “It was remarkable that a lot of people simply waved at the Trump Hotel.”
Several speakers at the rally, including Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director at the D.C.-based National Center for Transgender Equality, said an important objective of the trans rights movement is securing passage by Congress of the Equality Act, an LGBT civil rights bill that includes strong protections for trans people.
“Today’s march is about the power and visibility to get us equality,” he said. “At a lightening pace, Americans have seen our power at work as transgender people have moved from a side issue that our neighbors didn’t even know a lot about to a priority in the halls of power and the presidential campaign,” he told the rally.
“A community long forced into the darkness is now finally stepping into the daylight,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “But what the grassroots organizers of this march and what you know is that progress for any of us is not enough unless it is progress for all of us.”
Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights groups, described as a crisis the large number of murders of mostly black trans women over the past several years in the U.S.
“As we gather here in the capital of the greatest country on earth there is a crisis raging across our country,” David, a long time civil rights attorney, told the rally. “There is a crisis that is shattering dreams and shattering lives. There is a crisis that has been largely overlooked by the media,” he said.
“It is a crisis that has taken the lives of more than 150 transgender people in the past five years, most of them black transgender women,” he continued. “It is a crisis that none of us can ignore anymore. We have to stand up. We have to speak out,” he said.
“For those of us who are gay or are lesbian or bisexual or queer or who are straight, we have to stand up for the transgender community, said David. “We have to stand up for the transgender community and stand up for them as if they are our family because you are our families.”
As in all protest marches in the nation’s capital, D.C. police have a policy of not releasing estimates of the number of people who turn out for such events. In the case of Saturday’s Trans Visibility March, although no official crowd estimate was released, it was clear to observers that the march was about three and a half blocks long as it traveled along Pennsylvania Avenue in the east bound lanes, which make up half the width of the famous street.
D.C. police closed the entire section of Pennsylvania Avenue between 13 and 4th Streets, where the march ended and many marches gathered at John Marshall Plaza, a small park located at 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue between the Canadian Embassy and the U.S. District Courthouse.
Among those walking in the rear of the march were members of the D.C. Police LGBT Liaison Unit. Also helping to oversee the police escort of the march and the closing of nearby streets was Lt. Brett Parson, who oversees the police liaison units.
“It was a sizable crowd,” Parson told the Blade. “And it was cooperative and it was well organized and we were proud to be there to provide safety and security,” said Parson, who noted that the entire march and rally went off without incident or any safety related problems.
Among the buildings the march passed near the end of its route on Pennsylvania Avenue were the Newseum, which currently includes an LGBT exhibit on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and the Canadian Embassy, which is next door to the Newseum. People standing in front both buildings waved at and cheered marchers as they passed in front of the two buildings.
“I think it was fantastic,” said Lucky Alexander, the assistant national strategy director for the National Trans Visibility March, as he stood in John Marshall Plaza following the march. “We got a lot of diversity in the crowd. We didn’t have any hiccups as far as any counter protesters,” he said. “I think we did a fantastic job.”
Added Alexander, who traveled to D.C. from Los Angeles: “I would estimate 3,000 people at least and give or take maybe more than that” attended the march and rally.
Longtime D.C. trans activist Dee Curry called the march a highly successful “first step” in what she noted are plans for an annual trans march on Washington, including one next year in the midst of the 2020 presidential election campaign.
“This is an amazing start to a movement,” said Curry, standing at John Marshall Plaza, named after the first U.S. Supreme Court chief justice, where the marched ended. “I think that the numbers reflect that there is a consensus that we need to step up and do some things,” she said. “And I think this will be a catalyst so this will be much bigger next year.”
Other speakers at the rally included trans activist Bamby Salcedo, president and CEO of the Trans Latin@ Coalition; Jodie Patterson, chair of the HRC board of directors; Justin Nelson, president of the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce; Carter Brown, founder and executive director of Black Trans Men, Inc.; and trans activists Apyphanie Dawn and Lynn Morrison.
D.C. transgender activist Earline Budd, who was scheduled to speak, had to cancel due to illness, according to Alexander-Reid.
Aimee Stephens lost her job at a suburban Detroit funeral home and she could lose her Supreme Court case over discrimination against transgender people. Amid her legal fight, her health is failing.
But seven years after Stephens thought seriously of suicide and six years after she announced that she would henceforth be known as Aimee instead of her given name, she has something no one can take away.
“I’m happy being me,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s taken a long time.”
The Supreme Court will hear Stephens’ case Oct. 8 over whether federal civil rights law that bars job discrimination on the basis of sex protects transgender people. Other arguments that day deal with whether the same law covers sexual orientation.
The cases are the first involving LGBTQ rights since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s gay-rights champion and decisive vote on those issues. They probably won’t be decided before spring, during the 2020 presidential campaign.
The 58-year-old Stephens plans to attend the arguments despite dialysis treatments three times a week to deal with kidney failure and breathing problems that require further treatment. She used a walker the day she spoke to AP at an LGBTQ support center in the Ferndale suburb north of Detroit.
“I felt what they did to me wasn’t right. In fact, it was downright wrong,” Stephens said, her North Carolina roots evident in her speech. “But I also realized it wasn’t just me, that there were others in the world facing the same tune.”
On the other side of the case is the R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, whose owner worries that a ruling for Stephens also would prohibit sex-specific sleeping facilities in shelters, as well as showers, restrooms and locker rooms. Congress can change the law to make explicit protections for LGBTQ people if it wishes, owner Thomas Rost says in court papers.
More than half the states do not prohibit discrimination in employment because of gender identity or sexual orientation, despite the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that made same-sex marriage legal across the United States. In Michigan, the state’s civil rights commission last year decided to interpret existing state law to protect LGBTQ people from workplace bias. But that wouldn’t affect Stephens, who was fired in 2013.
There’s no dispute over the sequence of events that led to the Supreme Court case. Stephens was once a Baptist minister in North Carolina and she said she always liked “comforting people in need.” She spent nearly six years as a licensed funeral home director and embalmer at the company’s Garden City, Michigan, location. Stephens came to work every day in a dark suit, white shirt and tie.
At the end of July 2013, Stephens met with Rost in the home’s chapel and handed him a letter in which Stephens revealed she had struggled with gender most of her life and had, at long last, “decided to become the person that my mind already is.” Stephens wrote, “As distressing as this is sure to be to my friends and some of my family, I need to do this for myself and for my own peace of mind and to end the agony in my soul.”
Following a vacation, Stephens said she would report to work wearing a conservative skirt suit or dress that Rost required for women who worked at his three funeral homes.
“He read the letter, folded it up and put in his pocket and we were basically done for that day,” Stephens recalled. Two weeks later, Rost and Stephens met again, briefly. “He handed me a letter and said this is not going to work,” she said.
The letter was a termination notice and the offer of a modest severance payment, Stephens said. She turned down the severance because it would have meant signing away her right to sue, she said.
Stephens took her complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which agreed to sue the company. During the Obama years, the EEOC had changed its longstanding interpretation of civil rights law to include discrimination against LGBTQ people. The law’s Title 7 prohibits discrimination because of sex, but has no specific protection for sexual orientation or gender identity.
A trial judge ruled against her, but the federal appeals court in Cincinnati sustained the complaint. The court found that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is sex discrimination. The appeals court also separately found that Rost fired Stephens because of his sex stereotypes about Stephens’ appearance and dress.
The funeral home appealed, and the justices agreed to hear the case. Appeals courts in Chicago and New York issued similar rulings bringing sexual orientation under the rights law, while the appeals court in Atlanta declined to do so. The justices also will weigh in on that issue.
Rost’s family has been in the funeral home business since 1910. He testified that Stephens dressed in women’s clothing would be “a distraction that is not appropriate” for grieving families.
Rost declined an interview request, but his lawyer described him as a caring man whose service to clients is paramount.
“Tom has gone out and gotten groceries for widows who were incapable of doing it,” lawyer John Bursch said.
In firing Stephens, Rost was not trying to prevent her from dressing as she wants on her own time, Bursch said, though he declined to use female pronouns to describe Stephens.
“To say this is somehow rolling back respect for people is just a false premise,” Bursch said.
The issue, he said, is the extent of federal civil rights law. “It’s asking to have a right recognized which has never existed,” he said.
Congress has never expressly included sexual orientation or gender identity in Title 7’s prohibition on discrimination “because of…sex,” though pending legislation would do so. The bill’s prospects are slim.
The Trump administration has reversed course from the Obama administration and has sided with employers who argue that the civil rights law does not protect LGBTQ people. The change of position puts Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco in the odd position of representing the EEOC at the Supreme Court, where he will argue against the EEOC’s stance.
Trump’s election and his rollback of Obama administration policies allowing transgender people to use school bathrooms corresponding to their identity, and to serve openly in the military are major reasons why Stephens has persisted in her fight, even as her health struggles have mounted.
“With all the things that have come out, with the way that transgender people are being treated, basically trying to be forcibly erased from society, I have no regrets at all about it,” she said.
Alphonso David, the new president of the Human Rights Campaign, doesn’t hold back when talking about the harm he says President Trump is inflicting on the LGBT community.
In fact, David said Trump is responsible for the ongoing problem of violence against transgender people. Just this year, as David noted, 18 transgender people have been reported killed, 17 of whom were people of color.
“President Trump is not only responsible, but he is the gasoline that is responsible for many fires around this country,” David said.
David said Trump is “spewing hate and division and bigotry” and is responsible for discrimination and violence against many minority communities, including transgender people.
“There is a connection between what we’re seeing with transgender violence, with racial injustice, with immigrant bias throughout this country because of Donald Trump,” David said.
David made the remarks in an interview with the Washington Blade in his office on Tuesday days before the first-ever National Transgender March on Washington and the 23rd annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner in Washington, D.C.
Asked about his message to participants in the transgender march, David issued a call for solidarity with transgender people.
“We have to be supportive of the transgender community, and we have to not only be there for this march, we have to be there after the march, we have to be there in two weeks, we have to be there in six months, we have to create systems that will support the transgender community,” David said.
David kept his cards close to the vest about the upcoming National Dinner, but said big news is in store for the night.
“And, you know, certainly I’ll be focused on transgender rights,” David said. “I think it’s something that we need to focus on, but the details of that, you’ll have to wait until Saturday.”
Read the full interview here:
Washington Blade: I guess my first question for you is you’ve been on the job now for about a month Has anything about being in this job in that time period surprised you?
Alphonso David: Yes.
There have been a number of things that surprised me. The dedication, the commitment, the passion that HRC staff members and supporters bring to this work. We often talk about the Human Rights Campaign being the largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the world. But we never really talked about the dedication and the sheer grit that people exhibit in doing this work. And so, that has been a surprise. What has also been surprising to me as I travel the country, talking to advocates, and activists, supporters about the election, and they are incredibly energized. They’re ready to get involved. They’re ready to make sure that their voices are heard. And they appreciate the true impact that this election could have on this country.
Blade: As you were coming on board, did you have any conversations with Chad Griffin at all during the transition?
David: [Laughs] Yes.
I’ve known Chad for a long time. I met Chad when he first thought about bringing a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8, which was a ballot initiative in California that ended up going all the way up to the Supreme Court. And we had been colleagues and friends for a long time. So before taking this job, I had a conversation with him — actually several conversations with him — about the organization about the challenges that we face in the movement, and about the opportunities that I see that we can take advantage of.
Blade: In your introduction, one thing that’s really notable about your biography is your background and growing up in Liberia, with all the challenges that country faced when you were growing up, and you had to flee violence there. How does that experience inform your approach to the LGBT movement?
David: There are so many takeaways from my experience in Liberia that are applicable to my adult life, and they’re also applicable to my advocacy. I think most important for me is making sure people understand how fragile democracy can be. I grew up in a country that was — had a democratically elected president and a democratically elected, you know, state — our equivalent would be state elected officials. And in the span of a few hours, that all shifted, and my uncle was assassinated, and my father was put in prison, and we were living under a dictatorship.
So that experience for me is very real. It continues to be very real, and I take that and learn from it to make sure that other people fully appreciate how important it is for us to engage in our democracy. And it’s not only as it relates to LGBTQ issues, right? It’s anything that you care about, it could be the climate, or it could be on race issues, or it could be on economic issues. We have to make sure that people are informed and actively engaged in our democracy, and I bring that to this work.
I also bring to this work the fact that we are living under a significant amount of daily — I would say a barrage of daily attacks — from the Trump administration, and it’s gotten to the point that people have become numb to it. When the Trump administration says we’re filing an amicus brief, and in that amicus brief, we’re saying LGBT people can be fired from their jobs because they’re gay. We’re saying that transgender people can lose their housing because they’re transgender. We’re saying that under the Affordable Care Act, transgender people shouldn’t be protected. We’re saying transgender people can be thrown out of the military. When you see that drumbeat of attack after attack after attack, my fear is that people become numb to it, or they think that it doesn’t have the impact that it actually does. And part of my role is making sure that we remind people, remind people that we’re living under a climate where LGBT people live under attack, and we have to make sure that we engage, we have to make sure we get him out of office, Donald Trump specifically. And we elect pro-equality candidates that represent all of us, not just simply some of us.
Blade: We’ve talked a lot about some initiatives you want to pursue, including getting Trump out of office, but what is your No. 1 priority for the Human Rights Campaign? That might be it.
David: [Laughs] I have many priorities, I would say one of the most important priorities is making sure that we have a president that represents our interests, and we have elected officials across the board from congressional members to state elected officials that represent the interests of all Americans and all residents as opposed to just some, so that is a huge priority.
But I’m also going to be outlining a variety of other priorities this week. We have our national dinner that’s scheduled for Saturday. I hope you’re coming. [To Blade photographer Michael Key:] And I hope you’re coming. And I will be unveiling all of those priorities, the things that I think we need to focus on as we go into the election season and as we go into next year.
Blade: Well, can you talk a little bit about what your strategy is going to be for 2020, both for the White House and for Congress?
David: Sure. So we are with respect to the White House, making sure that people are registered to vote, making sure that they’re engaged in the electoral process. And what that means is not only going to make sure that you’re registered, but also connecting with everyone else that you know, to make sure they’re also registered. That’s step one.
Step two is, of course, making sure that people understand the issues and are engaged on the issues. Unfortunately, in some cases, people don’t vote because they’re not informed. Or if they do vote, they’re not really that informed about what they’re voting on. So we want to make sure that we provide as much information as possible. So they’re fully educated about the options that they have. And so when they exercise their right to vote, we hope that they’re exercising their right to vote in support of pro-equality candidates. So that’ll be my focus as it relates to Donald Trump.
And again, highlighting everything that he’s done, because many people, I think we’ve gotten to the point where some people have tuned it out. They’re not really listening anymore. So they don’t know in some cases, what this administration is doing to attack gay people, or LGBTQ people, you know, in terms of all of us.
With respect to the Senate races, and races in the House of Representatives, we’re going to be applying the same strategy, we’re going into certain key districts where we think we have an ability to actually win. And we’ll have people on the ground in some cases, we do now, to make sure that we can transform those communities — so they support pro-equality candidates.
And finally, with respect to state elected races, we have offices now in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. We identified those three states, as states where we think we have an ability to actually transform the electoral landscape, and elect more pro-equality candidates. So we’re working at all three levels, presidency, congressional races, and state races to make sure we support pro-equality candidates.
Blade: Let’s talk a little bit more about President Trump. Does the Human Rights Campaign support his impeachment?
David: Good question.
I think at this point, we are looking at that issue. We are having conversations with various elected officials and our coalition partners to make sure that if we do pull that lever, and we seek impeachment of the president, we know what that actually means. There are variety of arguments that certainly support impeachment. And I think some would say there are some legal arguments that certainly support impeachment, but some are also concerned about the collateral consequences of doing that. And so we’re weighing all of those options, and we’ll make a final determination in the next few days to the extent it’s something that’s germane.
[Editor’s Note: The Blade conducted this interview with David shortly before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she’d open up a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump.]
Blade: One other piece of news with President Trump is his U.N. speech not too long ago, just today. He brought up a global initiative to decriminalize homosexuality and says that he stands in support of LGBTQ people who are facing persecution overseas. Did you happen to see those remarks?
David: I did not see those remarks. But I read about those remarks. Are you asking me my opinion?
Blade: Yes.
David: It’s all noise. It’s all noise, and we should reject it outright. It doesn’t mean anything. Donald Trump standing up on a stage saying that he supports decriminalization internationally means nothing, and the only place you have to look is right at home. If Donald Trump wants to support LGBTQ people, allow transgender people to serve in the military. If Donald Trump supports LGBTQ people, allow us to get health care. If he supports LGBTQ people, actually put money behind ending AIDS. He doesn’t do that.
So to suggest he’s interested in decriminalizing homosexuality, as he calls it, in other parts of the world is noise. It is a distraction from what he should actually be doing, which is making sure that LGBTQ people actually have protections in our own country.
He claims to be a nationalist, right? Right? He’s not interested in making sure that immigrants are actually provided an opportunity to seek asylum in this country. He thinks that we should close the border. If you’re such a nationalist, why do you focus on international policy when you’re not focused on your own domestic policy as it as it relates to LGBTQ people. That would be my question to him.
Blade: One thing you brought up is the HIV initiative. And you said that he’s not put enough funding to back up that initiative by the Department of Health & Human Services to get new infections down by 90% by 2030. Can you talk a little bit about why he’s not putting his money where his mouth is on that?
Again, all we have to do is look at the record. Donald Trump essentially debunked or deconstructed an HIV council that was in place with the express mission of trying to end HIV and develop policies and procedures to do that. He ended up decommissioning that council. Now, —
David: I’m not sure if he actually restocked it. I know that he’s claiming he’s going to do that. But that commission was actually in place. Now, even if you were to accept on face value, that he’s interested in ending HIV by 2030, the amount of money that he’s actually put up to invest in that is insufficient. So I have no faith that Donald Trump is actually interested in ending HIV by 2030, because he’s shown us time and time again, that he’s not to be trusted, and this is simply placating to our community. Now to the extent money is provided, great. But at this point, it has not been provided. To this point, we cannot trust him. In fact, we should be afraid of what he will do to the LGBTQ community. That’s why I have no investment in what he claims to be a mission of ending HIV by 2030.
Blade: I think LGBT — or gay Republicans — would point to the decriminalization initiative, the HIV initiative as well as appointments like Ric Grenell and a recent appointment to the court, Patrick Bumatay, as evidence that Trump is not as anti-LGBTQ as you say. What would be your response to them?
David: Tick-tock is my response to them. The election is in November of 2020. Is it a coincidence that he’s doing all of those things now? That would be my response to them. It’s noise. Donald Trump is not supportive of the LGBT community. If he is, allow transgender people to serve in the military. If he is, roll back the regulations that remove transgender people from protections under the ACA. If he is, he should tell the solicitor general to retract the amicus brief that he filed, or the briefs, plural. The amicis that he filed in the Supreme Court that say LGBT people shouldn’t have protections in employment. They should be — an employee should be able to fire them. Or better yet, he should retract the regulations that essentially allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ people. We can’t have it both ways. So Donald Trump is essentially placating to certain members of the community to say, “See me over here. I support you. Ignore everything else that I’ve done.” Not only is it noise, but it’s offensive for anyone to suggest that he actually supports the community.
Blade: Let’s go to the Title VII cases, your background, you have a legal background. And so I’m eager to get your take on those. Do you think the LGBT side will win in those Title VII cases?
David: Look, I am hopeful that we will win. I understand the current composition of the court. I understand the arguments against us. I am concerned that there is a possibility that the court will rule against us. I am — I’m hopeful that they will appreciate that there are decades of cases that clearly say that LGBTQ people are protected under Title VII. They may ignore that. I’m hoping that they don’t. I’m hoping that we can appeal to their better angels, and that they will be intellectually honest about the case law and about what it will do to effectively say LGBT people are no longer protected.
I mean, you think about that, we will essentially throw out of the window, excuse me, decades of case law that people have been relying on, that employers have been relying on. I’m hopeful that the court can look at the amicus brief that was signed by 160 — we have to get you the right number — businesses that signed on, that said we support Title VII being inclusive to protect LGBTQ people.
Having said all of that, I’m a realist, and I also appreciate that there’s a chance that we may lose. So I don’t know the answer to that question. We’re pushing to make sure that they respect the rule of law, that they respect stare decisis, that they see lower courts have issued rulings for years, appellate courts as well as district court rulings, and I hope they respect that, you know, that trajectory that we’ve been relying on for so long. I just — it’s difficult to predict at this point. I’m just hopeful that we get the right ruling.
Blade: In what ways is the Human Rights Campaign working with the legal team in those cases?
David: We are — we’ve signed on to an amicus brief with other organizations. And we’ve also been instrumental in helping to identify businesses to sign on to the business brief as well. Those are just two examples, but there are many others where we’re coordinating very closely with the ACLU, we’re coordinating very closely with other organizations such as the [National LGBTQ] Task Force to make sure that we identify partners in the movement that will support a positive ruling, but also partners that are not a part of the movement that appreciate, you know, what this would mean, this meaning what a negative ruling will mean, to LGBTQ people across this country.
If I know today that I can go into my office, and my employer cannot fire me simply because I’m transgender, or my prospective employer cannot deny me a job simply because I’m gay, and then the next day, that employer or those employers could do that, it’s a sea change, it would change everything. And it would make it even more important for us to pass the Equality Act, but in the interim, I think it would be a sea change for people throughout this country.
Blade: This weekend is going to be a big weekend for LGBT rights. First of all, we have the transgender march. What’s your message to the people who are taking part in that demonstration?
David: Well, I think the transgender community has been underserved for decades, and we are now living in a state of crisis, I see it as a state of emergency where primarily black transgender women are being killed on our streets, and we have to do something, we have to stand up. We have to be supportive of the transgender community, and we have to not only be there for this march, we have to be there after the march, we have to be there in two weeks, we have to be there in six months, we have to create systems that will support the transgender community.
So my message this weekend is that the Human Rights Campaign is going to be there. The Human Rights Campaign will stand up with members of the transgender community on Saturday, and moving forward to make sure that we can do everything possible to provide support to the transgender community.
Blade: You mentioned the continuing problem of anti-trans violence. Is President Trump responsible?
David: President Trump is not only responsible, but he is the gasoline that is responsible for many fires around this country. So President Trump is spewing hate and division and bigotry, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves. When someone does that — if I poured gasoline on, you know, newspapers, and lit a match, a few feet away, at some point, it will find his way to that — to those newspapers. And that’s what he’s done.
There is a connection between what we’re seeing with transgender violence, with racial injustice, with immigrant bias throughout this country because of Donald Trump. It’s what he’s spewing. He’s basically telling people it’s OK to show your face if you’re a bigot, and there are significant collateral consequences when you do that.
But also, I think, within the LGBTQ community, we have a lot of work to do to make sure that the transgender community is respected and honored and celebrated. So we don’t know all of the facts in these cases. At this point, we have 18 cases where transgender people have been murdered, 17 involving black transgender women. We don’t have all the facts. But they’re not divorced, certainly not divorced from Donald Trump’s bigotry. It’s not divorced from his rhetoric. But we don’t know all of the facts yet. So I don’t want to suggest in each and every case, we know what happened, but it’s all been fueled by bias — by transphobia.
Blade: Also, this weekend is the dinner. What can you preview about what you’re doing on stage?
David: I will tell you on Saturday. You will hear — This is my first major address. As the HRC president, I have spoken twice before in Cleveland, and in St. Louis. But this is the first major address, and is an opportunity to really outline the vision, my vision for the organization moving forward. And you will hear, what I think we should be doing and how we should be approaching the work. And, you know, certainly I’ll be focused on transgender rights. I think it’s something that we need to focus on, but the details of that, you’ll have to wait until Saturday. And there’ll be other things that I’ll be I’ll be announcing as well.
Blade: Very exciting. I want to talk a little bit about the Democratic candidates. We had the LGBT forum in Iowa last week who do you think won the forum?
David: Ooh, I’m not doing that. [Laughs] No, no, no. I have — I have my personal views, which are personal, and as the president of HRC, I have a responsibility to make sure that before I opine on any presidential candidate, we’ve done our due diligence, so we’re going through the process right now of reviewing each candidate reviewing their records, and we will make a determination at some point in the near future.
As you may know, on Oct. 10, we have a town hall that’s going to be televised live on CNN, where we will hear from all of the candidates that qualify about LGBT issues and their visions for addressing some of the significant issues we face within our community. So we have a little bit more work to do before we get to the point that we can take an official position on any of the candidates.
Blade: But do you expect the Human Rights Campaign will endorse in the Democratic presidential primary before the nominee is known?
David: The Human Rights Campaign has done it both ways. There have been opportunities where we’ve endorsed before the primary and where we endorsed after, I think it’s too soon to tell. And I want to make sure that we think about all of the options, and we make the best decision for the community and for ourselves at the appropriate time. So it’s too soon to tell.
Blade: The candidate right now, who is generally seen as the front runner is Joseph Biden. And he enjoys considerable support, in particular from black Americans, according to the polls. But there’s one thing about his record: His vote for the crime bill in 1994. Do you think that he’s getting a pass on that issue?
David: I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to comment on that specifically. And I don’t know that you could say that he’s getting a pass. I don’t think we know enough. You know, we now live in a cycle, a news cycle, that’s 24 hours a day, where certain news outlets and periodicals have access to pools of people, and they do polls, and they do their assessments as to what what people think. At this point, I don’t think we know enough as to whether or not people are that concerned about the crime bill. I certainly know based on some feedback that some voters don’t think is that significant. They’re looking at the larger, you know, his larger philosophy. But I don’t think we know enough yet to really draw a concrete conclusion.
Blade: In contrast, Pete Buttigieg the openly gay candidate, is not doing as well in the polls relative to the front runners. Given his position right now, do you think America is ready for a gay president?
David: It’s also very good question. I hope so. I hope that we are at the point in our culture that we can see beyond sexual orientation and focus on merit. But I also know, based on the increase in hate crimes across this country, based on homophobia and transphobia, that we have a lot of work to do. So I think Pete Buttigieg’s candidacy is historic. I think it’s incredible. I think it’s it’s fantastic that he’s running, and that he has generated so much support across this country. Whether the support is sufficient at this point to land him the Democratic nomination is too soon to tell. And I think to answer your question directly, I’m hopeful that we’re at the point that we can see merit and not focus on identity to the exclusion of merit. But I don’t know that we’re there yet. I’m hopeful that we are and and if he can get there, I think it will be fantastic.
David: People are free to have their opinions. I understand why someone would say that. I think it’s a complicated issue.
Women have been fighting to have a woman serve as the commander in chief for a very long time, most recently in the last election, and I understand that people would like to see a woman serve in that role. But I also think, from my vantage point as the head of the Human Rights Campaign, that we have to support the candidate who will potentially get the nomination and who supports a slew of issues that we care about, including women’s rights. So I can’t say I criticize them for having that opinion. I think it’s their opinion to have. In my role, I have a different responsibility to make sure that our endorsement is reflective of a larger community. And that’s what I’m planning on doing.
Blade: Well, that seems to suggest the endorsement is leaning toward Buttigieg at this point. Is that correct?
David: Oh, no, no. Identity politics is a fascinating construct, but I don’t think we can live in that world. For a variety of different reasons, I think we have to be focused on facts, we have to be focused on merits. And we don’t know who the ultimate presidential Democratic nominee will be. And as I said before, we have a lot of work to do internally, to do our due diligence. We have a forum in two weeks, where we will hear from all of the candidates as to what they think about LGBTQ issues, but more importantly, what they will do. What will you do to address the issues that our young people are facing? Are you supportive of banning conversion therapy, or how will you address some of the significant concerns facing the transgender community? Do you support the modification of 1556*, which is the Affordable Care Act, which would strip out transgender members from health care, and do you agree that we should make certain modifications to state law? We don’t know the answers to most of those questions. We do know that almost all of the candidates support, quote, support LGBTQ issues. That’s great. Now the question is how are you going to do that? And once we have that information, once we do our due diligence, we’ll then end up as being a position to endorse a candidate but we’re not there yet.
An individual who is born female but later becomes male and gives birth to a child should be legally regarded as a mother, England’s High Court ruled on Wednesday.
Fred McConnell, a transgender man, wanted to be recognized as the father of his son, who was born last year, on the official registration of the child’s birth but was told he would have to be registered as the mother.
He sought legal action to quash that decision, saying it breached his and his son’s rights but in a landmark ruling, Andrew McFarlane, President of the High Court’s Family Division, dismissed his claim and concluded that McConnell was the mother.
“It is now medically and legally possible for an individual, whose gender is recognized in law as male, to become pregnant and give birth to their child,” McFarlane said.
“Whilst that person’s gender is ‘male’, their parental status, which derives from their biological role in giving birth, is that of ‘mother.'”
McConnell, who was registered as female at birth, transitioned to live as male when aged 22, later undergoing a double mastectomy and testosterone therapy. Official details, such as his passport and health records, were amended to show his gender as male, court papers said.
In 2016, he suspended the testosterone treatment and became pregnant after undergoing intrauterine insemination fertility treatment using donor sperm, with the baby born in January 2018.
McFarlane said the issue had been “most properly and bravely” raised by McConnell and was an important matter for public debate, but related more to public policy than law.
“Down the centuries, no court has previously been required to determine the definition of ‘mother’ under English common law and, it seems, that there have been few comparable decisions made in other courts elsewhere in the Western World,” he said.
Police in Dallas say a transgender woman was seriously wounded after being shot several times and they are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Investigators say a man driving a pickup truck pulled alongside the woman late Friday, yelled slurs about her gender identity and fired several times, striking her in the chest and arm.
Authorities say the woman’s injuries prevented her from speaking with them until Sunday when she relayed details of the shooting.
Police are searching for a red four-door pickup with large wheel rims, and released images and details of the crime on their website. The Dallas Police Department is offering a $5,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest and indictment.
Friday’s shooting follows three fatal attacks on transgender women in Texas this year — two in Dallas. Weeks after her beating was caught on tape, Muhlaysia Booker, 23, was found shot dead in Dallas on May 18, and a 33-year-old man was arrested in connection with her death and the deaths of two other women. Chynal Lindsey, 26, was found dead in a Dallas lake on June 1, and a 22-year-old man was arrested as a suspect in her killing. Tracy Single, 22, was killed in Houston on July 30, and a 25-year-old man was arrested in connection with her death.
The issue of violence against transgender women of color has become an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. At an LGBTQ Presidential Forum in Iowa on Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., drew attention to the violence faced by transgender women of color by reading their names as part of her opening statement.
Two other Senate Democrats running for president, Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, have used their social media platforms to speak out on the issue, and Booker brought up the issue in the Democratic debate in Miami in June.
“We do not talk enough about trans Americans, especially trans African Americans and the especially high rates of murder right now,” Booker tweeted soon after that debate. “It’s not enough just to be on the Equality Act, we need to have a president who will fight to protect LGBTQ Americans every day.”
The 19th reported killing of a trans American this year alone took place on Friday in Kansas City, Kansas, and has been named by loved ones and activists as Ja’leyah-Jamar.
The victim was identified as in their 20s and was shot to death on the corner of North 60 Street and Leavenworth Road, according to Kansas City Police Department news release.
Law enforcement were called to investigate a shooting at 2:38pm in the outer town area, filled with auto repair shops and community churches. They arrived to find the injured victim in the middle of the road.
Jamar was quickly taken to hospital and tended by medics. But died shortly after from her injuries, the release stated.
While authorities have not released a name of the victim, family, friends and activists identified her.
Family and trans activists mourn the loss.
Adriana Sanders, the victim’s cousin, posted on Facebook: “Ja’leyah-Jamar didn’t ask for this life… No one can control who they love, God made us to live and love and to grow.
“It’s not our fault as a transgender woman or a homosexual man to want to live a normal life, wanting to be in love, have a family, build your own legacy and, because a man could not accept who he was as himself and an individual, he felt the need to take my cousin’s life,” she wrote, according to The Advocate.
Local LGBT+ advocates have also joined in mourning the loss of yet another trans woman of colour in a country experiencing an alarming epidemic of transphobic cruelty.
“Another black trans woman was killed in Kansas City this weekend!” activist Merrique Jenson posted on Facebook.
“Kansas City is one of the epicentres of violence towards trans women of colour, particularly black trans women, in this country!”
Jenson was one of the first to confirm the identity of the victim, claiming she had corroborated with local trans women who knew Jamar “directly”.
“While she is still being misgendered and misidentified by most [Kansas City] media outlets, community advocates have already begun to share updates as we learn more.
“I encourage agencies with social, political and financial power to do something about this.”
The 32-year-old, who enjoyed make-up, dancing in front of the mirror, and once talked of adopting a child, became the 11th reported trans woman of colour to be killed in the US this year. She was found by locals murdered across the state line in Kansas City.
PinkNews have contacted the Kansas City Police Department for further information.
Police release photos of unidentified man and vehicle sought in connection.
Investigators released a photograph of a suspect last week.
They described the man as a person of interest on a news release, as well as two photos of a vehicle – a white 2006 Pontiac G6 with Kansas tag 038 LXW.
The vehicle was found near 13th Street and Euclid Avenue.
Moreover, the suspect was reportedly last seen walking west from that location.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Kansas City Police Department’s TIPS Hotline at (816) 474-8477.
19 trans people killed in 2019.
Jamar is the latest victim of a spectre of violence against trans people, in particular black trans women.
The Human Rights Campaign excoriated Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson over a report that he disparaged transgender people in meetings with staff this week.
“Ben Carson has spent his career in politics expressing disgust toward the existence of transgender people,” Alphonso David, president of the LGBTQ advocacy group, said late Thursday.
“From his comments on trans people in the military to his support for a proposal that would literally permit emergency shelters to turn away trans people who are homeless to his unqualified support for a White House that has made attacking trans people a mantra, it is hardly surprising that Ben Carson would blatantly dehumanize trans people in his official capacity,” David said.
David was responding to a Washington Post report Thursday that Carson had expressed concern about “big, hairy men” trying to use women’s bathrooms. Carson also “lamented that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women,” during a visit to San Francisco this week, the Post reported, citing agency staffers.
A senior HUD official disputed the account in a statement to the Post.
“The Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered individuals. Any reporting to the contrary is false,” the official said.
Carson’s department earlier this year signaled that it would propose a rule to allow HUD-subsidized homeless shelters to consider a person’s sex or gender identification in determining whether they can be admitted.
Three people, including a transgender woman, were attacked in Portland, Oregon, in what police say may be a bias crime.
The assault happened in a downtown parking lot around 2:30 a.m. Thursday, and the assailants had fled by the time officers arrived, Portland police said in a statement.
“There were elements of the crime that possibly met the criteria for a Bias Crime,” Portland police said in the statement, which also asked anyone with information to come forward.
In Oregon, bias crimes are defined as any criminal act in which a person is targeted because of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity or national origin, Portland police said.
KGW reported that Thursday’s incident occurred a week after another transgender woman, Marla Standing-Owl, said she was attacked while driving for the ride-sharing service Lyft on Sept. 6 in Portland.
Standing-Owl said she was attacked by a male customer she picked up from a hotel who was drunk and told her “you’re nothing but a man.”
“I told him I don’t need bigotry in my car and that’s when he snapped,” she told the station. Standing-Owl said that the man punched her repeatedly while she was driving and that she pulled over and used pepper spray on the assailant before he ran off.
Exposure to “conversion therapy” — efforts by a secular or religious professional to change a transgender person’s gender identity — is associated with thoughts of and attempts at suicide, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
Dr. Jack Turban, the study’s lead author and a resident physician in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said it was the first study “to show that gender identity conversion efforts are associated with adverse mental health outcomes, including suicide attempts.”
Turban said that previous reports showing the negative effects of conversion therapy, also known as “ex-gay therapy” or “reparative therapy,” have focused on efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation.
But this was novel, he said, because of its large sample size — over 27,000 transgender people responded to the survey — and its broad approach to identifying past efforts to change participants’ gender identity.
Seventy-one percent of respondents recalled speaking to a religious adviser or secular therapist about their gender identity, and of those, roughly 20 percent said these interactions involved efforts to change their gender identity from transgender to cisgender.
“The rate of previous suicide attempts among transgender people in the United States is extremely high, with 41 percent reporting that they have had that experience,” said study co-author Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, director of the National LGBT Health Education Center at The Fenway Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program.
“What this new study shows is that transgender people who are exposed to conversion efforts anytime in their lives have more than double the odds of attempting suicide compared with those who have never experienced efforts by professionals to convert their gender identity, he said.
Turban said one of the most alarming findings from the study was the even higher risk of psychological distress for those who reported exposure to conversion therapy during childhood. Those who were subjected to the practice before age 10 were four times more likely to report lifetime suicide attempts than the general transgender population, according to the findings.
“This is important because some experts continue to advocate for gender identity conversion efforts for young children,” Turban said in a statement. “We hope our findings contribute to ongoing legislative efforts to ban gender identity conversion efforts.”
Currently 18 states, along with the District of Columbia, ban the practice of conversion therapy on minors. And nearly every major health association — including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics — has spoken out against the practice.
“The term ‘conversion therapy’ is a misnomer,” Keuroghlian noted. “It suggests that conversion efforts are a legitimate therapeutic practice, even though we are finding that this practice is associated with significantly increased risk of harm, including serious psychological distress and potentially fatal suicide attempts.”
The study found no difference in the outcome based on whether the effort to change a person’s gender identity was conducted by a religious adviser or secular professional. According to the findings, the vast majority of conversion therapy is conducted by secular professionals, like psychologists or counselors, with religious efforts accounting for roughly a third of all conversion therapy efforts reported by this cohort.
“Current training of mental health clinicians in the U.S. does not usually include gender-affirming care as standard curriculum,” Keuroghlian said. “We hope this study will inspire clinical training programs to revise their standard curricula.”
“All clinicians need to be trained in concepts and terminology related to gender identity, how stigma is related to mental health disparities and best practices for gender affirmation grounded in scientific evidence,” he added.
This latest study builds on previous work published last month by Turban, Keuroghlian and their colleagues that found nearly 200,000 transgender people in the United States have been exposed to conversion therapy at some point in their lives.
A black transgender woman was found dead in her burning car in South Florida in what is being investigated as a homicide, authorities said.
It is the 18th killing of a transgender person in the U.S. this year.
The body of Bee Love Slater, 23, was discovered in Clewiston on Sept. 4, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Hendry County Sheriff Susan Harrell told NBC News in a statement that authorities could not initially identify the body “due to the burns and lack of identification available.” A medical examiner later identified the body through dental records, Harrell said.
According to The Advocate, investigators said Slater’s death was one of the most brutal murders they had seen.
Authorities have not said if they think Slater’s gender identity played a role in her death, the Palm Beach Post reports. Investigators are not releasing how she died.
Her death is the 18th killing of a transgender person in the United States this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which tracks the deaths of transgender people. A majority of those killed have been black transgender women.
George Wallace, executive director of LGBT+ Center Orlando, told NBC News in a statement Thursday that transgender women of color “are killed at a higher rate than that of their peers.”
“I find it sad and upsetting that our trans brothers and sisters continue to be targets of hate and intolerance,” Wallace said. “I wish I had a solution, but we must continue advocating and educating.”
Slater’s friend, Jackson, who asked to be referred to by his last name, told the Palm Beach Post that Slater underwent surgery this year. But, he said, she was verbally harassed and bullied online and had expressed concerns about her safety.
“We have more questions than answers,” Jackson said of her death.
The American Medical Association in June announced it efforts to bring national attention to what it called “the epidemic of violence against the transgender community, especially the amplified physical dangers faced by transgender people of color.”