The lawyer who fought for – and won – equal marriage for gay, lesbian and bisexual people says she is “optimistic” about the future of trans rights in the US.
Mary L. Bonauto, an LGBT+ civil rights lawyer, represented the gay plaintiffs in the momentous Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which paved the way for same-sex marriage in the US in 2015.
She had been fighting for marriage equality since the 1990s – and led on the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case which saw Massachusetts become the first state where same-sex couples could legally marry in 2004.
In an op-ed for USA Today, Bonauto compared her experiences fighting for equal marriage to the fight for trans rights.
“Throughout my decades as an LGBTQ civil rights lawyer, I’ve seen each step forward for inclusion met with someone repackaging old tropes about our communities,” she wrote.
American people ‘are in fact on the side of’ trans rights, lawyer argues
In her essay about “why I’m optimistic about transgender rights”, Bonauto continued: “But soon the personal stories of gay couples – people who fell in love and committed to a life together against all odds – broke through into our national understanding, and more Americans came to realise that LGBTQ people simply wanted to marry for their love and commitment to another person.”
It’s Bonauto’s view that the same is now happening for trans people in the US.
US states are introducing “dozens of bills” to “restrict transgender people’s access to opportunities and freedoms the rest of us take for granted”, she wrote, adding that these conversations “are often based on misinformation”.
“[Rather it’s] disinformation promoted by politicians trying to stoke fear and advance harmful policies,” Bonauto said.
“But when harmful stereotypes are replaced by real conversations with transgender people and accurate education, we see that the American people are in fact strongly on the side of inclusion for transgender and LGBQ people, and we have unfinished business in making that full inclusion real.”
Detailing the long journey to marriage equality in the US, and the tactical legal and social battles that paved the way for the ultimate demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, Bonauto concludes: “Among the lessons of marriage equality is that when we all get to know each other, familiarity replaces fear and inclusion seems obvious.
“As people heard from loving and committed couples, they could see that we simply wanted to live our lives. That’s just as true for transgender young people today.
“The legislative efforts and lawsuits underway are showing young transgender people making a simple point – this is just who I am – and their families and classmates are standing next to them and for their common humanity.
“As time has proved again and again, we all benefit when we are open to walking in another’s shoes, when our laws require fairness, and when we further equality, inclusion and opportunity for everyone.”
At least five people sustained gunshot wounds in a shooting near an Atlanta nightclub hosting a black gay Pride event.
Shots rang out around 6 am Monday (September 6) near The Marquette Lounge, a venue hosting a Lil Kim concert as part of black gay Pride. Officers responded to reports of gunshots at the scene and discovered the five aforementioned victims. All received treatment at a nearby hospital and fortunately did not sustain any life-threatening injuries. The identities of the victims have not been made public.
11Alive reports that an investigation suggested that a fight broke out among concert patrons. Several concertgoers called 911 after the gunfire began. The suspect in the shooting fled, and remains at large, and the investigation remains ongoing.
“There were people shooting back and then somebody got in a fight, and they maced somebody and we all had to run. It was very scary,” said Joseph Downer, an eyewitness to the scene.
The Marquette Lounge also issued a statement in response to the shooting. “The Marquette Lounge management team is committed to the safety of our guests and are deeply saddened by the events that occurred outside the facility and across the street from our parking lot on Sunday evening as our establishment closed,” it read in part. “Our premises were fully secured at the time and to our knowledge, no major occurrence happened that would warrant the shooting that took place across the street.”
Meanwhile, Atlanta city councilman Michael Bond has said he will propose new measures to the council aimed at increasing security. That will include a new ordinance requiring liquor license holders to own adjacent parking lots to make sure customers are protected.
“Perhaps they begin towing cars after the business is closed, then the lot becomes private and people are no longer allowed to park there,” Bond told 11Alive.
The shooting outside The Marquette Lounge is just one of a number of shootings across the United States this Labor Day weekend. Chicago and New York City both experienced numerous shootings, while a former Marine in Florida gunned down four people, including an infant.
The president of Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, was fired Monday after a report found he tried to help discredit an accuser of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the group said.
Alphonso David was fired effective immediately after an internal investigation was completed and the group’s boards of directors voted to remove him, Human Rights Campaign Chairs Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson said in a joint statement
According to the report, David helped draft a letter about the allegations last year that people who saw it described as “victim shaming.”
The letter wasn’t published, and David didn’t sign it, but the investigation found that he agreed to circulate it to see whether others would sign it. David denied that to NBC News last month.
The Human Rights Campaign said Monday, “This conduct in assisting Governor Cuomo’s team, while president of HRC, was in violation of HRC’s conflict of interest policy and the mission of HRC.”
David, who was Cuomo’s chief counsel from 2015 to 2019, responded Monday with a statement saying the group’s board had “unjustly” provided notice of termination and vowed to bring a legal challenge.
“As a Black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up,” he said.
In a statement earlier Monday, he said the group’s co-chairs had asked him to resign but “didn’t offer a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing on my part when I asked repeatedly.” Referring to the document he helped draft, he said in a statement Sunday that he had a “legal obligation” to provide it to Cuomo but then spoke out against it.
“When the New York Attorney General’s report came out, I was shocked and sick to my stomach and immediately called on Governor Cuomo to resign,” he said, adding that he’d called on the Human Rights Campaign to conduct an independent investigation into his conduct.
In the joint statement, Cox and Patterson said David’s earlier statements “included significant untruths about the investigation and his status with the organization.” They didn’t elaborate.
Hate crimes based on sexual orientation dipped slightly last year, but crimes based on bias against trans and gender-nonconforming people continued to increase, new FBI data suggest.
The Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s Hate Crime Statistics 2020 report found that 7,759 hate crime incidents were reported last year, up by 6 percent from 7,314 incidents in 2019.
Although reports of hate crime incidents based on anti-LGBTQ bias were down overall, from 1,393 in 2019 to 1,287 in 2020, reports of incidents motivated by gender-identity bias jumped by nearly 20 percent for the second year in a row.
Law enforcement agencies reported 1,051 hate crime incidents motivated by sexual orientation last year, down from 1,195 in 2019. Hate crime incidents motivated by gender identity increased from 198 in 2019 to 236 in 2020.
Although hate crime incidents motivated by anti-trans bias appear to be increasing, advocates have said government data often don’t tell the full story.
Anecdotally, trans people have reported facing bias-motivated violence much more often. Advocates have said the discrepancy between FBI data and trans people’s lived experiences is a common theme when it comes to data collection on LGBTQ people.
Of the 27,715 trans adults surveyed by the National Center for Transgender Equality in the summer of 2015, nearly half (46 percent) reported that they were verbally harassed in the previous year, and nearly 1 in 10 (9 percent) said they were physically attacked in the previous year for being transgender.
This year is also on track to be the deadliest on record for transgender people, with at least 35 trans and gender-nonconforming people having been killed so far — most of them Black trans women — according to the Human Rights Campaign. At this time last year, at least 29 trans people had been killed, according to the group. Advocates say the estimates are low, as law enforcement agencies often use trans people’s birth names, also known as their deadnames, and their sexes assigned at birth in reports of their deaths.
The number of hate crime incidents reported by the FBI is also likely to be low for a number of other reasons, advocates say.
“This data is critical, but it doesn’t tell the whole story of anti-transgender violence,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in an emailed statement. “Many transgender people do not feel comfortable or safe reporting crime to the police. In fact, according to our U.S. Transgender Survey, more than half (57%) of respondents said they would feel uncomfortable asking the police for help if they needed it.”
Heng-Lehtinen said concern about interacting with police is greater among transgender people of color, with with 67 percent of Black trans people, 59 percent of Latino/a trans people and 59 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native trans people reporting discomfort turning to the police.
A 2013 report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs also found that less than half (45 percent) of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV who experienced violence reported their incidents to police, in part because of past experiences of police hostility and mistreatment.
A 2018 report from the Human Rights Campaign found that no state has a comprehensive law that requires all government-funded data collection efforts to include sexual orientation and gender identity data with other demographic data, such as race, ethnicity and sex.
Four states — New York, California, Oregon and New Jersey — and Washington, D.C., have narrower laws that require LGBTQ-inclusive data collection in some areas other than hate crimes.
Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., require law enforcement agencies to collect and report data on hate crimes based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity, the report found.
In addition, the FBI report doesn’t provide details about how LGBTQ people of color are uniquely affected by violence; research shows that they report facing more violence than white LGBTQ people.
The report does indicate that incidents motivated by anti-Black and anti-Asian bias increased significantly. Specifically, it found that the number of incidents motivated by anti-Black bias rose from 1,930 in 2019 to 2,755 last year and that incidents motivated by anti-Asian bias jumped from 158 to 274.
Advocates have recently called for more comprehensive federal data collection related to sexual orientation and gender identity so they can help suggest better policy solutions that account for the rising fatal violence against Black trans women and hate violence against all LGBTQ people.
In June, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., reintroduced a bill to improve collection of data about sexual orientation and gender identity in violent crimes and suicides.
“The epidemic of violence against transgender Americans — particularly transgender women of color — is only getting worse,” Maloney said in a statement at the time. “HRC has been tracking the underreported data since 2013, and Congress still hasn’t acted to enable local law enforcement to do the same.”
Some LGBTQ renters report not being caught up on rent and fear losing their homes in the next few months, according to a new report published just after the the Supreme Court struck down an extended eviction moratorium last week.
Nearly one-fifth (19 percent) of LGBTQ renters report not being caught up on rent, compared to 14 percent of non-LGBTQ renters, according to the report by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer renters who are behind on rent are slightly more likely than non-LGBTQ renters who are behind on payments to fear eviction within the next two months, at 47 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
Researchers used data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, collected from July 21 to Aug. 2, to examine rental housing stability late in the Covid-19 pandemic among LGBTQ people compared to non-LGBTQ people, accounting for differences by race, according to a news release.
The report adds to growing research that shows the Covid-19 pandemic is having a harsher impact on LGBTQ people, particularly LGBTQ people of color and LGBTQ youth.
The end of the eviction moratoriumwill have a similar disproportionate impact, according to the Williams Institute report, in part because LGBTQ people are more likely to rent their homes, at 41 percent, compared to non-LGBTQ adults, at 25 percent.
LGBTQ people of color were most likely to rent, at 47 percent, compared to 37 percent of white LGBTQ people — and they were more likely to report being behind on rent and fearing eviction.
Nearly one-third (30 percent) of LGBTQ people of color reported being behind on rent, compared to 10 percent of white LGBTQ people, 19 percent of non-LGBTQ people of color and 10 percent of white non-LGBTQ people.
Just over half (51 percent) of LGBTQ people of color who are behind on rentfeared eviction in the next two months, compared to 38 percent of white LGBTQ people, 46 percent of non-LGBTQ people of color and 47 percent of white non-LGBTQ people.
Activists hold a protest against evictions near City Hall on Aug. 11, 2021, in New York.Spencer Platt / Getty Images file
“A key component to a person’s housing stability is whether they own or rent,” lead author Bianca D.M. Wilson, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute, said in a statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the risk that LGBT people— and LGBT people of color in particular — will lose their housing as federal eviction protections are set to expire in October.”
But the Supreme Court struck down those protections last week in a 6-3 opinion that said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority and that Congress would have to authorize the moratorium.
Evictions can now resume unless a state or local jurisdiction has implemented its own moratorium. Six states — California, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Washington — and the District of Columbia have their own moratoriums in effect that aren’t affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.
The CDC issued the more limited order earlier this month for parts of the country with “substantial” or “high levels” of community transmission of Covid-19 — which currently includes almost the entire country. The order also said new variants of Covid-19, such as the delta variant, “have evidence of an increase in transmissibility, which may lead to higher incidence.”
However, some LGBTQ people are among the more than 3.5 million renters nationwide who have been unable to pay their full rent and are “likely” or “very likely” to face eviction, according to anotherCensus Bureau Household Pulse Survey taken in early August.
Previous research from the institute found that LGBTQ people of color are nearly twice as likely as non-LGBTQ people to test positive for Covid-19, and they are twice as likely to report being laid off from their jobs during the pandemic.
LGBTQ people are also more likely than the general population to work in industries that have been more affected by Covid-19, such as the service industry, and are more likely to live in poverty and lack access to adequate medical care, paid medical leave and basic necessities, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group.
Three-fourths (74 percent) of LGBTQ people said pandemic-related worry and stress has negatively affected their mental health, compared to 49 percent of non-LGBTQ people, according to a March analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
LGBTQ youth experienced worse mental health, a July 2020 pollfrom Morning Consult and The Trevor Project found. Nearly 70 percent of LGBTQ respondents said they experienced increased loneliness since the pandemic began, with 55 percent reporting symptoms of anxiety and 53 percent reporting symptoms of depression in the two weeks before the poll.
Now, that risk will grow even more with the end of the eviction moratorium, and it could impact LGBTQ youths’ ability to find housing for years to come, said Dylan Waguespack, public policy and external affairs director at True Colors United, a nonprofit group addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness.
“We know that eviction has lifelong consequences for people — specifically evictions done through the court system,” Waguespack said. “We see those evictions basically follow people for the rest of their lives. It makes it so much harder to get that next apartment, and even the one after it and the one after that.”
A study from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, which conducts public policy research on issues affecting children and families, found that LGBTQ youth had a 120 percent higher risk of homelessness than non-LGBTQ youth.
Eviction can put young LGBTQ people in dangerous situations, according to a True Colors United news release about the end of the eviction moratorium. It can put youth at a higher risk of exploitation by traffickers and jeopardize their ability to stay in school and receive health care, the release added.
Waguespack said many LGBTQ youth don’t have access to safe shelters where they live. He noted the Biden administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development is making a significant effort to enforce nondiscrimination protections at federally funded shelters, but many shelters aren’t federally funded.
He added that it will take a long time for LGBTQ people, including youth, to feel safe accessing a shelter after potentially having faced discrimination.
“It’s going to take effort to rebuild that trust,” he said.
In the meantime, he said True Colors United believes it is “critical” for Congress to pass an eviction moratorium.
“There’s just no way that we’re going to be able to keep folks housed throughout this crisis if all we’re depending on is sort of continued efforts around various court rulings,” he said. “We need something in place that captures everyone and that keeps folks in their housing until we actually see a significant change in what this pandemic looks like economically.”
He encouraged anyone facing eviction, especially LGBTQ youth, to contact a fair housing organization in their area to find out whether there are local policies in place that could help.
A Virginia school district will pay more than $1.3 million in legal fees to resolve the case of Gavin Grimm, former high school student who challenged its bathroom policy.
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday announced in a press release the Gloucester County School Board in a court filing said it would not challenge Grimm’s request to pay the fees and other costs associated with his case.
Grimm was a sophomore at Gloucester County High School in 2015 when he filed a federal lawsuit against the Gloucester County School District’s policy that prohibited students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that did not correspond with their “biological gender.”
Lower courts ruled the policy violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The U.S. Supreme Court in June declined to consider the case.
“Rather than allow a child equal access to a safe school environment, the Gloucester School Board decided to fight this child for five years in a costly legal battle that they lost,” said Grimm in the ACLU press release. “I hope that this outcome sends a strong message to other school systems, that discrimination is an expensive losing battle.”
As the nation battles new variants of the Covid-19 virus, LGBTQ Americans have felt the economic brunt of the pandemic harder than the general public, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
It found 19.8 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults lived in a household where there was a loss of income in the past month, compared to 16.8 percent of non-LGBTQ adults.
Economic disparities between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people existed long before the pandemic, says M. V. Lee Badgett, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but have grown more pronounced.
A report from the Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement and Research, for example, indicated that, in 2019, nearly 1 in 5 (19.8 percent) LGBTQ households were unsure they could pay their bills that month, compared to 14 percent of non-LGBTQ households.
But according to the new data, collected from 64,562 households between July 21 and Aug. 2, more than a third (36.6 percent) of LGBTQ people had difficulty paying household bills in the last week, compared to roughly a quarter (26.1 percent) of cisgender heterosexuals.
That growing inequality is evident in other areas, too: Food securityis a reference to the ability to access sufficient, safe and nutritious meals that meet dietary preferences and needs for an active and healthy life.
According to the census survey, LGBTQ households are now nearly twice as likely to experience food insecurity as heterosexual families, 13.1 percent to 7.2 percent.
Williams Institute data from 2014 suggests the difference was much smaller then, with 18 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults reporting that they or someone in their family went without food for an entire day in the past month. That’s compared to 14 percent of all people who were food insecure, according to U.S.Department of Agriculture figures for that year.
“If we’re starting out on unequal footing, it’s just going to get worse with a pandemic. It’s going to reach into economically vulnerable populations and hit them harder,” said Badgett, author of “The Economic Case for LGBT Equality.” “And groups with health disparities, like LGBTQ people, are also going to be hit worse.”
In a statement, Jay Brown, senior vice president for programs, research and training at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said the Census Bureau’s findings “highlight what we have long known — LGBTQ+ Americans disproportionately bear the brunt of economic hardships, from food insecurity to unemployment.”
The group’s research shows that, during the current crisis, LGBTQ people, especially queer people of color, are consistently more likely than the general population to have their work hours cut or to face unemployment.
In part, that’s because LGBTQ people are more likely to be employed in the food service industry, hospitals, retail and education: According to a 2020 HRC Foundation brief, 40 percent work in those industries, all significantly impacted by shutdowns and more likely to expose workers to the virus.
There are other factors, including that the LGBTQ population tends to be younger and is less likely to have robust support systems than their cisgender heterosexual counterparts. But Badgett said “we don’t have great data” yet to determine how much of an impact those factors might have.
Badgett underscores the Census Bureau finally incorporating sexual orientation and gender identity on an economic survey is a positive sign.
“Mostly they just appear in health surveys,” she said. “Going forward, this indicates we’ll get richer data on LGBTQ economics.”
The important thing is to ensure assistance programs are available to help everyone, Badgett said, “that LGBTQ people can access [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs] and food banks, and that service providers are fully inclusive and not turning them away, either intentionally or accidentally.”
As young people across America prepare to return to class — some in person, some remotely — the Biden administration issued a message for transgender students.
In a joint video Thursday, Suzanne Goldberg, the acting assistant secretary of education for civil rights; Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke; and Dr. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health and human services for health, outlined the federal government’s support for transgender students even as their community is under siege on the state level, where more than 130 anti-trans bills in 36 states have been introduced this year alone, according to the Human Rights Campaign.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/UjuZokP
In the video, Goldberg, a lesbian, discussed the concerns many students have about returning to class, from making friends to keeping up with academic demands.
“If you’re a transgender student, perhaps you’re worried about simply being accepted and safe and being treated with respect as you head into the new school year,” she said.
Clarke, the first woman to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, praised the work by many teachers and administrators nationwide to create safe and inclusive environments for LGBTQ students.
But, she added, “we also know that’s not the reality for all transgender students, including perhaps some of you.”
“In some places, people in places of authority are putting up obstacles that would keep you from playing on the sports field, accessing the bathroom and receiving the supportive and lifesaving care you may need,” Clarke said. “We’re here to say, ‘That’s wrong — and it’s against the law.’”
In the 2020-21 legislative session, more than 75 bills were introduced that would bar trans students from playing school sports. Such measures have become law in nine states, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
“We know you are resilient,” Goldberg said, “and we hope you will find support where and when you need it. But we also want you to know the Department of Education and the entire federal government stand behind you. Your rights at school matter. You matter.”
Goldberg said trans students who faced discrimination should file complaints with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, and Clarke confirmed that the Justice Department would investigate such allegations.
“We want you to know that we are looking out for you,” Clarke said. “And we’re looking out for your civil rights.”
“It is critical to support trans youth and their parents and families to help them achieve the good health and well-being that everyone deserves,” she said.
It isn’t the first time the White House has reached out to trans youths: In an executive order released on his first day in office, President Joe Biden extended federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans, writing, in part, “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”
In his first address to Congress in April, Biden said, “To all the transgender people at home, especially the young people, I want you to know the president has your back.”
Referring to that “unequivocal message,” Levine said she wanted transgender students to know “that I’ve got your back, too — and I’ll do everything I can to support and advocate for our community.”
Clarke cited the Justice Department’s challenges to bans on transgender girls’ competing in female sports in West Virginia and on gender-confirming treatment for minors in Arkansas, saying, “We stand behind you and are ready to act to defend your rights.”
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, praised the video for “sending a strong and meaningful message to transgender students across the country — and especially in places where they have come under attack by politicians.”
“It’s so important for transgender kids to know that they are not alone and that the president of the United States has their back,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “President Biden and his administration are working to make sure transgender youth have an opportunity to be safe, to learn and to be healthy. They are incredible allies.”
Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, interim executive director of GLSEN, a LGBTQ student advocacy nonprofit group, said that she also welcomed such a “bold, affirming message” and that she wanted “further policy action to back up this commitment.”
“The administration must set a clear precedent, not only for federal agencies, but for state and local leaders, and ensure that transgender youth are safe, supported and empowered in our school communities,” Willingham-Jaggers said. “Individual educators and school leaders can step up in the meantime and make thoughtful connections with the transgender students in their schools to show them that they are valued and that they belong.”
Two newlywed women were found fatally shot at their southeastern Utah campsite, officials said, days after telling friends they were worried about a “creepy guy” who had been lurking nearby.
The bodies of Crystal Michelle Turner, 38, and wife Kylen Carrol Schulte, 24, were discovered Wednesday off La Sal Loop Road in Moab, Utah, about 260 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to a statement from the Grand County sheriff.
Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner.Courtesy Bridget Calvert
“At this time the Grand County Sheriff’s Office is conducting an on-going homicide investigation,” the statement said. “We are currently following up with any and all leads that come to our attention during this investigation and will continue to be available to people who come forward with information. The Grand County Sheriff’s Office believes there is no current danger to the public in the Grand County area.”
The statement did not elaborate on why “there is no current danger to the public,” and a sheriff’s department representative could not be immediately reached for comment Monday.
Turner and Schulte lived a bohemian lifestyle, moving to various campsites, Schulte’s aunt, Bridget Calvert, told NBC News on Monday.
Friends and co-workers started worrying about them when Turner missed work and Schulte was a no-show at her job.
Days before going missing, Turner and Schulte met friends at a local bar and told them they were worried about someone camping nearby.
Kylen Schulte.Courtesy Bridget Calvert
“They said they needed to move their campsite because of some creepy guy at their campsite,” Calvert said. “These are outdoors girls, and they’re independent and confident. And for somebody to make them feel uncomfortable, it had to be a very valid discomfort.”
The couple, married just in April, enjoyed a carefree lifestyle moving around in their converted van.
“That’s how they lived. They enjoyed life and didn’t worry about material things,” Calvert said. “There’s no clear motive. The entire community loved them. They’re amazing people.”
Woody’s Tavern said Turner and Schulte were at that bar the weekend before their bodies were discovered and has turned over surveillance video to law enforcement.
“At no time were they approached by anyone except my staff and the entire time they were relaxed and enjoying their time with their friends and each other,” according to a statement from the tavern on Sunday. “These two women were very much in love with each other and their focus and attention were always on each other.”
Last September, Marie Pinkney beat incumbent Delaware state Sen. David McBride in the Democratic primary by a solid margin, before going on to a decisive victory in the general election. Upon winning, Pinkney became not only the first openly queer woman to be elected to the Delaware Senate but one of dozens of LGBTQ female candidates who won their elections in the last cycle.
Pinkney, a social worker, said she was inspired to run because of her work with victims of gun violence and a lack of political will to pass effective gun control legislation.
“I didn’t know if I could actually win,” Pinkney said, “but then I looked at who my state senator was, and I realized he was a serious impediment to gun violence legislation passing or even getting to the floor. That was enough for me.”
Delaware State Sen. Marie Pinkney.via Marie Pinkney
As a complete newcomer to politics challenging one of the longest-serving lawmakers in Delaware history, Pinkney’s victory came as a surprise to observers. However, a new report from the LGBTQ Victory Institute, an organization that supports LGBTQ elected officials and political hopefuls, found that the odds aren’t good for those betting against queer female candidates.
A review of the win and loss records of all 1,088 candidates endorsed by the LGBTQ Victory Fund (the political action committee associated with the Victory Institute) from 2016 to 2020 found that queer cisgender women — including lesbian, bisexual and other nonheterosexual women — won 69 percent of the time, compared to 59 percent for queer cisgender men endorsed by the political action committee.
Victory Fund does not track candidates it does not endorse, but its analysis of the 2020 LGBTQ candidates (both endorsed and unendorsed) suggests its candidates are representative of the overall LGBTQ candidate population in terms of race, sexual orientation and gender identification.
Though they are more successful at the ballot box, queer cisgender female candidates were outnumbered by their male counterparts every year covered by the Victory Institute’s report. Queer cisgender women accounted for just 35 percent of Victory Fund-endorsed candidates since 2016, whereas cisgender male candidates accounted for 59 percent.
This means that even if lesbian, bisexual and other nonheterosexual cisgender women started to run at the same rate as their male counterparts, they would not reach electoral parity with queer cisgender men until 2037, the report stated.
“LGBTQ women face unique barriers to running for office — the same sexist campaign tactics and misperceptions of their own qualifications as other women, combined with anti-LGBTQ bias — yet overcoming those obstacles makes them strong contenders by the time they run,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the Victory Institute and former mayor of Houston, told NBC News. “LGBTQ women candidates tend to wait to run for positions they are qualified — and often overqualified — to hold and perhaps don’t trigger the same negative stereotypes directed at LGBTQ men.”
“Their experiences as women and as LGBTQ people often make them better politicians, portraying an authenticity and sensibility that resonates with voters,” Parker continued. “LGBTQ women make fantastic candidates, and when we run, we win. But we will not achieve representation equitable to LGBTQ men until we start running in much higher numbers.”
Among all female candidates, existing research suggests women and men win elections at approximately the same rate and their representational deficit has more to do with barriers to seeking office in the first place. However, endorsements by groups like EMILY’s List and E-Pac (and Victory Fund) reportedly make a large difference in their likelihood of success.
Transgender female candidates were also more likely to succeed than their transmasculine counterparts, winning 54 percent of the time, compared to trans men’s 18 percent success rate, according to the Victory Institute’s report. Nonbinary and gender-nonconforming candidates performed even better, winning 64 percent of the time. But the number of transgender and nonbinary candidates is relatively small. Only 39 of the more than 1,000 candidates tracked by the Victory Institute were transgender women, and only 11 were transgender men. There were also only 11 nonbinary or gender-nonconforming candidates over the five-year period. That said, the 2020 election cycle saw the most trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming candidates.
Despite their electoral advantage, queer cisgender women are only 37 percent of LGBTQ elected officials, and transgender women are only 4 percent, according to the Victory Institute. Only 2 percent of LGBTQ elected officials are nonbinary or gender-nonconforming, and approximately 0.5 percent are transgender men. Even queer cisgender men, who make up 56 percent of LGBTQ elected officials, are severely underrepresented when compared to all elected officials.
LGBTQ elected officials represent approximately 0.19 percent of all elected officials nationwide, according to a previous Victory Institute report. To achieve proportionate representation of the United States’ estimated 18 million LGBTQ adults (roughly 5.6 percent of the adult population, according to the most recent Gallup poll), Americans would need to elect 28,128 more LGBTQ people to office — a significant jump from the current total of 974.
As to why she thinks LGBTQ women perform relatively well at the ballot box, Pinkney said LGBTQ people, along with other marginalized groups, generally understand the importance of maintaining a high level of preparedness and taking every opportunity to succeed.
“We don’t have the room for error. We don’t have the room to mess up and make those mistakes,” she said. “It comes off as excellence, but for most marginalized communities, it just feels like everyday operation.”
