An ordinance in Nebraska’s capital city that extends discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity could be put on the ballot this November or rescinded after referendum petitions garnered four times the needed signatures.
The “Let Us Vote” referendum initiative needed 4,137 signatures, equivalent to 4% of voters in Lincoln. But petitions were signed by more than 18,500 voters in just 15 days, forcing the Lincoln City Council to put the Fairness Ordinance on the ballot or rescind the law, according to the Nebraska Family Alliance.
Read the full article. Photo: Nebraska Family Alliance executive director Karen Bowling.
On the heels of a discriminatory gubernatorial order in Texas, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra released the following statement reaffirming HHS’s commitment to supporting and protecting transgender youth and their parents, caretakers and families. Secretary Becerra also announced several immediate actions HHS is taking actions to support LGBTQI+ youth and further remind Texas and others of the federal protections that exist to ensure transgender youth receive the care they need:
“The Texas government’s attacks against transgender youth and those who love and care for them are discriminatory and unconscionable. These actions are clearly dangerous to the health of transgender youth in Texas. At HHS, we listen to medical experts and doctors, and they agree with us, that access to affirming care for transgender youth is essential and can be life-saving.
“HHS is committed to protecting young Americans who are targeted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and supporting their parents, caretakers and families. That is why I directed my team to evaluate the tools at our disposal to protect trans and gender diverse youth in Texas, and today I am announcing several steps we can take to protect them.
“HHS will take immediate action if needed. I know that many youth and their supportive families are feeling scared and isolated because of these attacks. HHS is closely monitoring the situation in Texas, and will use every tool at our disposal to keep Texans safe.
“Any individual or family in Texas who is being targeted by a child welfare investigation because of this discriminatory gubernatorial order is encouraged to contact our Office for Civil Rights to report their experience.”
New HHS Actions Announced by Secretary Xavier Becerra:
HHS is releasing guidance to state child welfare agencies through an Information Memorandum that makes clear that states should use their child welfare systems to advance safety and support for LGBTQI+ youth, which importantly can include access to gender affirming care;
HHS is also releasing guidance on patient privacy, clarifying that, despite the Texas government’s threat, health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information related to gender affirming care;
HHS also issued guidance making clear that denials of health care based on gender identity are illegal, as is restricting doctors and health care providers from providing care because of a patient’s gender identity;
The Secretary also called on all of HHS to explore all options to protect kids, their parents, caretakers and families; and
HHS will also ensure that families and health care providers in Texas are aware of all the resources available to them if they face discrimination as a result of this discriminatory gubernatorial order.
If you believe that you or another party has been discriminated against on the basis of gender identity or disability in seeking to access gender affirming health care, visit theOCR complaint portal to file a complaint online.
If you have questions regarding patient privacy laws, please reach out to the Office for Civil Rights email: OCRPrivacy@hhs.gov or call Toll-free: (800) 368-1019
Resources for kids, parents, caretakers and families:
· SAMHSA supports the Center of Excellence on LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity, which provides behavioral health practitioners with vital information on supporting the population of people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, two-spirit, and other diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions. The Center’s website includes a recorded webinar on Gender Identity, Expression & Behavioral Health 101. Upcoming webinars will include topics such as: How to Signal to Youth that You are an LGBTQ+ Affirming Provider; How to Respond When a Young Person Discloses their SOGIE; Supporting Families of LGBTQ+ Youth; and Safety Planning for LGBTQ+ Students.
· A Practitioner’s Resource Guide: Helping Families to Support Their LGBT Children is a resource guide developed by SAMHSA that offers information and resources to help practitioners throughout health and social service systems implement best practices in engaging and helping families and caregivers to support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children.
“I love gay people,” activist and playwright Larry Kramer proclaimed at the outset of a 2004 speech in New York City. “I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware.”
A new study making waves among LGBTQ-focused academics lends empirical credence to the iconic Act Up co-founder’s prideful claims — not to the supposed sweeping superiority of gay men, rather to the more narrow assertion that this group is remarkably inclined to excel academically.
But the paper, which was published in the American Sociological Review on Feb. 20, comes to starkly opposing conclusions about how growing up gay appears to affect the academic performance of males versus females.
University of Notre Dame sociologist Joel Mittleman.Courtesy Amy Levin
Joel Mittleman, a University of Notre Dame sociologist and the paper’s sole author, found that on an array of academic measures, gay males outperform all other groups on average, across all major racial groups. Conversely, he concluded that lesbians perform more poorly in school overall and that Black gay women have a much lower college graduation rate than their white counterparts.
“This article is focusing a lens on what we do to all kids,” Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, said of the societal pressures that appear to impede lesbians in schooleven as these stressors possibly unnerve gay males into compensating for homophobia through academic striving. “And the most vulnerable kids are going to show it first.”
In recent years, academics, lawmakers and journalists alike have sounded an increasingly urgent alarm that on balance, American males are stuck in a scholastic funk. As the economic gap between those with and without a college degree has widened, women’s college graduation rate has risen in tandem, but men’s rate has remained largely stagnant for decades. Today, women comprise 59.2 percent of college students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
Mittleman’s research indicates that this characterization of the educational gender gap is critically lacking in specificity. It is, in fact, straight males who tend to be mired in a scholastic morass. And the considerable academic progress that young women have charted since the advent of second-wave feminism has been largely restricted to the heterosexuals among them.
Benefit of adding sexuality questions to surveys
Mittleman was able to reach his striking research findings thanks to a move during President Barack Obama’s second term to add questions about sexual orientation to a trio of federally funded, nationally representative surveys. These major annual surveys — which focus on health, drug use and crime victimization — provided the sociologist with information regarding nearly half a million Americans’ diplomas.
Additionally, the National Center for Education Statistics’ High School Longitudinal Study posed questions about sexuality for the first time to the cohort it followed between 2009 and 2017. From this, Mittleman mined a trove of data including 15,270 students’ high school and undergraduate transcripts.
The three surveys of American adults consistently indicated that gay men are far more likely than straight men to have graduated from high school or college, with just over half of gay men having earned a college degree, compared with about 35 percent of straight men. Some 6 percent of gay men have a Ph.D., J.D. or M.D. — a rate 50 percent higher than that of straight men. Mittleman found that gay men’s considerably higher levels of educational attainment hold even after taking into account differences in men’s race and birth cohorts. What’s more, gay men’s college graduation rate dramatically bests even that of straight women, about one-third of whom have a bachelor’s degree.
The longitudinal survey showed that compared with their straight male peers, gay males earned higher GPAs in high school and college, enrolled in harder classes, took school more seriously, had more academically minded friends and had a much lower rate of ever dropping out for a month or more. In stark contrast, these performance disparities were largely reversed when comparing lesbians with straight girls. Most strikingly, 26 percent of lesbians reported at least one dropout period, compared with 15 percent of heterosexual females.
The U.S. lesbian population’s overall college graduation rate, which ranged between 41 percent and 47 percent in the three survey studies, is significantly higher than that of straight women. But Mittleman found this advantage was limited almost entirely to white lesbians, and among women born more recently, gay women’s educational edge has eroded.
Historically, girls have received better grades than boys. But during much of the 20th century, societal constraints — including the predominant expectation that young women would become wives and mothers and not pursue careers — suppressed their graduation rates. In theory, this left lesbians with an advantage. But as constrictions on women’s potential have eased since the 1960s, straight women’s college graduation rate has risen to the point of statistical parity with lesbians among today’s young adults.
The Nancy Drew effect
Searching for the drivers of these differences in school performance between straight and gay students, Mittleman used a machine-learning algorithm to identify response patterns to survey questions that predicted being male versus female among members of the longitudinal cohort. In turn, he found that being atypical for their gender in survey responses helped explain at least part of the gay students’ GPA variation.
This suggested that not just sexual orientation, but its intersection with gender affectation could have influenced how well the gay and lesbians students did in school.
Seeking to explain the sociocultural dynamics possibly at play in these complex equations, Mittleman pointed in his paper to the feminine archetype, long a prized ideal in white, middle-American culture, of the demurely diligent student. (Think Nancy Drew.)
Characterizing masculinity as a fragile and insecure state, Mittleman argued that the long-standing anti-intellectual bias that plagues many American boys is driven in large part by their urge to assert their masculinity by differentiating themselves from the good-girl archetype.
Gay boys, however, appear willing — even eager — to flout gender norms in academics.
“To the extent that it’s feminine to study and appreciate validation in an academic sphere, the gay boys will have an advantage,” Yale School of Public Health psychologist John Pachankis said.
On the flip side, young lesbians may be disinclined to identify with the femininity intrinsic to the good-student ideal, Mittleman suggested. Moreover, by tending to present as more masculine, lesbians may be slapped with a “bad girl” label by educational authorities, subjected disproportionately to school punishment and generally discouraged academically. This could hold especially true for Black girls, whom white authority figures already tend to stereotype as masculine, according to previous research.
“Girls who present as masculine are seen as troublemakers, are seen as suspicious in some way,” Mittleman said.
The ‘Best Little Boy in the World’ phenomenon
An additional factor that Mittleman argued drives the average gay boy to surpass even the average straight girl academically is what’s known in queer psychology as the “Best Little Boy in the World” phenomenon. This refers to the title of the 1973 memoir by former Democratic National Committee treasurer Andrew Tobias, in which he chronicled his youthful crusade to appease his internalized homophobia through admission to Harvard University and other feats of superlative achievement.
In a 2013 paper published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler, now of Harvard University, and Pachankis found evidence suggesting that gay male college students indeed sought to compensate for anti-gay stigma by deriving their self-worth in part through academic mastery and other forms of competition.
This psychological paradigm also comprises the bedrock of “The Velvet Rage,” psychologist Alan Downs’ go-to bible for queer men, published in 2005, on “overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man’s world.”
From a young age … I was determined to become a doctor so I could prove to everyone that I could be successful even though I was gay.
DR. CHRIS REMISHOFSKY
While Mittleman is straight, he said he was nevertheless bullied as a child for “not being sufficiently masculine.” His brother, Dr. Chris Remishofsky, is gay and said the findings of Mittleman’s paper closely reflect his personal experience.
“From a young age,” said Remishofsky, a dermatologist in Sterling Heights, Michigan, “I was determined to become a doctor so I could prove to everyone that I could be successful even though I was gay.”
An analysis by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project published in January found that gay male couples earn $30,000 more annually than lesbian couples.
Ilan Meyer, a researcher at UCLA’s Williams Institute, expressed intrigue over the story Mittleman’s paper tells of many gay men apparently overcoming considerable odds. Meyer pointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance reports that have chronicled the myriad stressors lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people weather in school and the litany of deleterious impacts, including depression and suicidality.
Indeed, Mittleman found that on the whole, lesbian, gay and bisexual young people reported feeling more unsafe in school and suffered higher levels of discrimination and what’s known as minority stress than their straight peers.
“The effect of resilience to override effectively all stressors is quite amazing,” Meyer said. “We’re basically saying gay boys have a terrible school environment, but still, on average, they’re doing fantastically well. To me, that is still a major question — how does that work?”
The price queer youth pay
Brian Mustanski, a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University, cautioned that the relative success of gay men could amount to a double-edged sword.
“While certainly, it’s good news for the young gay men that they’re able to succeed well academically, I do have some real concerns about what kind of pressure they’re putting on themselves,” he said.
Suggesting that feverish academic striving in search of validation can come at a steep cost to mental and physical health, Mustanski pointed to his own research findings that gay men have disproportionately high levels of chronic inflammation. He hypothesized that this physical effect is fueled by minority stress and that it could raise the risk of health problems such as cardiovascular disease.
“We need safe and inclusive policies that protect all students from bullying and differential treatment by school staff regardless of the student’s sexual orientation or gender expression,” Clark said. She called for special support for “those students who may be most likely to face difficulties in school, including sexual minority girls.”
While joining the other experts in praising what he called a “beautifully done study,” UCLA psychologist Patrick Wilsonnevertheless expressed concern that Mittleman’s findings may lead the public to paint student-achievement trends in overly broad strokes.
Noting what an overwhelmingly unsafe place school still is for many queer kids, Wilson further cautioned the public not to conclude, for example, “that a poor Black gay boy living in Montgomery or Mobile, Alabama, feminine-presenting and gender-nonconforming, is actually succeeding in high school right now.”
The Texas Department of Health and Human Services appears to have removed resources for LGBTQ youths from its suicide prevention webpage.
On Feb. 1, the webpage included a subhead for the Trevor Project, describing it as “the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning young people under 25.” The section provided the organization’s website, phone number and text line.
A few days later, on Feb. 5, the section was gone. Of the four suicide prevention phone or text lines, only The Trevor Project was removed.
Now, there are three crisis lines listed: the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Veterans Crisis Line and the Crisis Text line. The Trevor Project’s phone number is still included in a PDF of resources under “Parent and Youth Suicide Prevention” as it was previously, but it isn’t as easily accessible as the section that was removed was, and doesn’t state that The Trevor Project is an LGBTQ-specific organization.
The Health and Human Services Department has not returned a request for comment.
Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, said mental health is not a partisan issue, and removing suicide prevention resources from a government website “because they are specific to LGBTQ youth is not only offensive and wrong, it’s dangerous.”
“We’re talking about a group of young people who are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide compared to their peers,” Ames said, citing Trevor Project research. In another survey, the group found that more than 80 percent of LGBTQ youths said it was important that a crisis line include a focus on young LGBTQ people.
“Especially during this time of unprecedented political attacks against LGBTQ youth, we encourage all youth-serving organizations and government agencies to learn more about The Trevor Project’s lifesaving crisis services and to publicize them to the youth and families who most need support,” Ames said.
This isn’t the first time Texas officials have removed suicide prevention resources for LGBTQ youths — and The Trevor Project, specifically — from state websites.
In August, following criticism from one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Republican primary challengers, Texas officials removed a webpagetitled “gender identity and sexual orientation” and a page devoted to Texas Youth Connection, a program run by the Department of Family and Protective Services, which included a link to The Trevor Project.
The page on sexual orientation and gender identity still shows an error message. The Texas Youth Connection website also displays the same message that it did in October: “The Texas Youth Connection website has been temporarily disabled for a comprehensive review of its content,” the website says. “This is being done to ensure that its information, resources, and referrals are current.”
Patrick Crimmins, the director of communications for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said in October that the review of the webpages “is still ongoing” and would not provide further comment about why the pages were removed. He has not responded to a request regarding when or whether the pages will be restored.
Cameron Samuels, a senior at Seven Lakes High School in Katy, near Houston, and an activist, said the removal of LGBTQ-specific resources from state websites is “part of this larger attack on LGBTQ youth in Texas.”
As an example of this “larger attack” — which Samuels, who uses gender neutral pronouns, said is causing widespread fear among trans people in Texas — they cited a directive issued last week by Abbott that called on the state’s child protective services agency to investigate the parents of minors who are receiving gender-affirming medical care for child abuse. Abbott’s directive also called on “licensed professionals” and the general public to report the parents of trans minors if it appears that they are receiving gender-affirming medical care.
Samuels has also fought censorship of LGBTQ websites within their school district, the Katy Independent School District.
After student activism, they said the district removed its block on the website for the Montrose Center, a local LGBTQ group in the state, in December. In January, it removed restrictions on websites for three national organizations: the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the country; GLSEN, which advocates for LGBTQ students; and PFLAG, which supports LGBTQ people and their families, among other sites.
Samuels said the district has “remained insistent” that The Trevor Project continue to be blocked due to its chat function. But they noted that the chat feature is what allows students to message a trained counselor.
The district has not returned a request for comment, but an official told the Houston Chronicle in January that the Children’s Internet Protection Act has a requirement of “ensuring safe communications including electronic mail, chat rooms and other forms of direct electronic communications.”
“The Trevor Project website has a community space to ‘get advice and support within an international community for LGBTQ young people ages 13-24,’ which is available to anyone who chooses to ‘join now,’” said Maria Corrales DiPetta, manager of media relations for the district. “Minors communicating with adults, unmonitored, online is an area of concern for communication and chat rooms as outline in CIPA.”
Samuels said it’s disappointing to see Health and Human Services officials making decisions that “are very harmful to students and youth who they represent.”
“And this is in addition to the governor’s efforts to investigate parents of trans youth for child abuse and to remove LGBTQ books from school libraries,” they said. “It’s really concerning and disturbing to see this.”
CORRECTION (March 2, 2022, 3:50 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the month that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services removed two webpages with resources for LGBTQ youths. It was August, not October.
Oasis is nationally known for its culturally competent legal representation, case management and support systems for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. Integral to winning each legal case is submitting proof that the types of harm the asylum applicant suffered, or fears of suffering in the future, are documented in their country of origin—so-called country-conditions documentation. Oasis has compiled extensive country-conditions research on the treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals and created up-to-date documentation packets for Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil (as well as multiple countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East), including translations of foreign-language articles and reports. Our Mexico document packet alone contains hundreds of articles of supporting evidence. In 2021, Oasis solidified a partnership with University of California Hastings Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS) to make these documents available to asylum advocates and legal professionals nationwide representing LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. CGRS receives thousands of requests annually from advocates and attorneys throughout the U.S. for support with many different kinds of asylum cases. Between February 2020 and February 2021, for example, “[we] received around 800 requests in LGBTQ cases…for 79 different countries,” said Christine Lin, Director of Training & Technical Assistance at CGRS. Additional materials provided to advocates by CGRS now also include information about Oasis’s technical-assistance program, as well as access to specific guides for particular legal issues often faced by LGBTQ + asylum seekers. With the dissemination of these materials to the larger legal community, Oasis is excited to expand the capacity of attorneys and asylum advocates around the country to provide high-quality, culturally sensitive representation to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers.
To access CGRS’sTA Library, create an account on the CGRS website. To obtain resources for an asylum case, like those listed above, fill out a case intake form. Based on the information provided in the case intake, advocates will be given on-demand access to tailored CGRS resources. For further information, see the TA Library Instructionsand Technical Assistance FAQ.
An amendment filed this past Friday to the legislation that would bar discussions and course materials in Florida’s public schools, colloquially referred to as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, (HB 1557), would also require school personnel to inform a parent of their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The author of the amendment, Republican Rep. Joe Harding, (R-Williston), the author and chief sponsor of HB 1557 also wrote and introduced the amendment.
The Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives is set to pass the controversial measure that has received the backing of Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday. Democrats and advocacy groups have launched a full-scale campaign to derail the bill’s passage.
n an email to the Blade, Nadine Smith, the Executive Director of Equality Florida said: “We wish every home was an accepting one and that every young person was affirmed and celebrated by their families. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case for LGBTQ youth. They already make up 40% of the homeless youth population because they face higher rates of family rejection and abuse simply for being who they are. Knowingly subjecting children to abuse, abandonment, and neglect by forcing them to come out to their parents before they’re ready is cruel, dangerous, and underscores that this bill has no regard for the well-being of Florida’s youth”
Popular Information’s investigative reporter Judd Legum noted on Twitter that the bill’s sponsor, Harding, was retweeting a hardline national conservative group, ‘Mom’s For Liberty’ which is based in Florida, and has been actively campaigning in school systems across the U.S. to remove LGBTQ+ books and curriculum.
Students have repeatedly vandalized Pride posters at Spencer Lyst’s high school in Williamson County, Tennessee. Teachers have skipped over LGBTQ issues in class textbooks. Trans kids in his state have been legally barred from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. Parents have called on school officials to remove books about sexual orientation and gender identity from the county’s elementary curriculum. And while leading hisschool’s Pride club at a September homecoming parade, Lyst and other LGBTQ students were booed by a group of parents.
“I’m so used to it, but it shouldn’t be something I have to think about,” Lyst, 16, said of the near-constant feeling of being attacked at school because of his identity.
He even said it’s “difficult” to walk into the school bathroom for fear of what or who “might be in there.”
“Like, can I go to the bathroom or am I going to get hate for just existing?” he said.
Lyst’s school experience is a far cry from an isolated case.
Spencer LystCourtesy Spencer Lyst
Since the start of the school year, school officials in states across the country have banned books about gay and trans experiences, removed LGBTQ-affirming posters and flags and disbanded gay-straight alliance clubs. In school districts throughout the nation, students have attacked their queer classmates, while state lawmakers have filed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills with many seeking to redefine lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students’ places in U.S. schools.
“There is no separating any of these things,” Mary Emily O’Hara, the rapid response manager at LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said at a media briefing on Monday. “What we’re seeing here is anti-LGBTQ groups, on a national level, making schools the new battleground across the board, across various kinds of school policies and various forms of legislation. Schools are the target right now for the anti-LGBTQ movement.”
In the majority of cases, conservative school officials, lawmakers and parents say LGBTQ issues do not belong in school because they are “political” and “not age-appropriate” for students. Conversely, queer youth and their families, along with LGBTQ and ally teachers, say they feel they are being “erased” from the U.S. education system.
‘I’m not going back in the closet’
South Florida mom Jennifer Solomon, 50, has four children. Her eldest child, Nicolette, 28, is a lesbian who teaches fourth grade in Miami-Dade County. Her youngest, Cooper, 11, identifies as male, but Solomon said his “expression is female.” Cooper “never wanted to be a girl,” his mom explained, but he prefers to wear his school’s girls uniform and enjoys dressing up like a fairy-tale princess for fun.
“An easy way to describe it is that he’s the opposite of a tomboy,” she told NBC News.
Despite how hard she works to protect her children, Solomon — who leads her local chapter of PFLAG, an LGBTQ family advocacy group — said the slew of anti-LGBTQ school policies “keeps me up at night.”
Nicolette, Cooper and Jennifer Solomon.Courtesy Jennifer Solomon
On Monday, Solomon’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, signaledthat he would support a new piece of state legislation — titled the Parental Rights in Education bill, but dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — that would prohibit the discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools.
Speaking at a news event in Miami, DeSantis said it is “entirely inappropriate” for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing alleged instances of them telling children, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet,” and “hiding” classroom lessons from parents.
“Parental rights? Whose parental rights? Only parental rights if you’re raising a child according to DeSantis?” Solomon, who is a nurse manager at a health care company, said of DeSantis’ concerns. “DeSantis tries to paint this picture that every family is this 1950s mom and dad with two kids and a cat and dog. That is not what Florida looks like; that is not what the country looks like.”
“DeSantis has found a weak spot, and that weak spot is children,” she added, suggesting that DeSantis is supporting the measure for political gain.
Nicolette Solomon said she is already hesitant to mention her wife — and by default her sexuality — at school, but she said passage of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill would be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” and vowed to quit if it becomes law.
Nicolette Solomon and her wifeCourtesy Nicolette Solomon
“If I can’t be myself, seven hours a day, five days a week, then I’m going back in the closet, and I can’t do that. It’s not good for my own mental health,” she said. “And I don’t think I can bear to see the students struggle and want to ask me about these things and then have to deny them that knowledge. That’s not who I am as a teacher.”
In less than two months since the start of the year, conservative state lawmakers have filed more than 170 anti-LGBTQ bills — already surpassing last year’s 139 total — with at least 69 of them centered on school policies, according to Freedom for All Americans. The nonprofit group, which advocates for LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections nationwide, said in an email that it didn’t track LGBTQ school policy bills last year, as it was not as much of a “sweeping trend” as it is now.
Three states — including Lyst’s home state of Tennessee — passed bills last year that allow parents to opt students out of any lessons or coursework that mention sexual orientation or gender identity, according to GLSEN, an advocacy group that aims to end LGBTQ discrimination in education. In addition to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill advancing in Florida, there are 15 bills under consideration in eight states that would silence speech about LGBTQ identities in classrooms, according to free speech nonprofit organization PEN America.
But perhaps the biggest trend in state bills targeting LGBTQ youths are those focused on transgender students.
Last year, legislators in at least 30 states weighed legislation that would bar trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity, according to LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. Nine of those states enacted the bills into law. So far this year, 27 states have proposed similar bills, with South Dakota enacting its version of the legislation into law this month.
While not school related, there has also been a slew of bills that seek to prevent transgender youths from accessing gender-affirming health care. At least 20 states have proposed such measures since early 2021, with two states — Arkansas and Tennessee — enacting these bills into law. However, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Arkansas law in July after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged it in court on behalf of trans youths and their families.
Cooper Solomon said he thinks lawmakers are pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation “because they were born in another time.”
“I guess back then, a long time ago, they didn’t accept this, and they thought it was really bad,” the fifth grader said. “I would just like them to know that it’s OK to be like this, and it’s not going to hurt anyone.”
Legislation aside, the last straw for Jack Petocz, 17, was when his high school in Flagler County, Florida, removed a young adult memoir detailing the trials of being a Black queer boy: George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”
In November, a school board member filed a criminal complaint against school officials for allowing copies of the book— which has been challenged in at least 19 states —to remain in two of the county’s high schools. The complaint was dismissed, but the superintendent decided to keep the book off of shelves until new policies are drafted to give parents more control over the library’s collection.
“I felt that my community was under attack, that they were trying to silence LGBTQ+ experiences and voices within our community,” Petocz, who is gay and led a student protest in response to the book’s removal, said. “We’re already a minority. Why are you trying to suppress this critical information within our libraries, you know? These books are critical to providing a sense of identity.”
Books about race, sexual orientation and gender identity have historically been challenged in schools, but over the last several months, school libraries have seen a surge of opposition.
In the fall, as book bans started to take off in counties across the country, national groups — including No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty — began circulating lists of school library books that they said were “indoctrinating kids to a dangerous ideology” to rally support.
The bans then became a talking point in the contentious Virginia governor’s race, where the Republican candidate, former private equity executive and political newcomer Glenn Youngkin, made education a central issue of his campaign and swept to victory.
Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin speaks at an election night party in Chantilly, Va., on Nov. 3, 2021.Andrew Harnik / AP file
Youngkin’s victory prompted other politicians to jump onto the issue, with the governors of Texas and South Carolina urging state school officials in November to ban several books, deriding them as “pornography” and “obscene” content.
School board members in Virginia’s Spotsylvania County made national headlines after calling for LGBTQ books with “sexually explicit” material to be incinerated.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in November that while challenges to books with LGBTQ- and race-related content have historically been “constant,” the association has recently seen a “chilling” uptick.
“I’ve worked at ALA for two decades now, and I’ve never seen this volume of challenges come in,” she said.“The impact will fall to those students who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives, that answer questions about their identity, about their experiences that they always desperately need and often feel that they can’t talk to adults about.”
To counter LGBTQ book bans — and school bans on race-related texts — a group of more than 600 writers, including bestselling children’s author Judy Blume; publishers; bookstore owners; and advocacy groups signed a joint statement in December condemning the trend, arguing it “threatens the education of America’s children.”
Setting a ‘different tone’
While state bills and book bans have garnered the most media attention, advocates say there are a host of other troubling trends adding to the distress that many queer students are feeling: removals of Pride flags and other LGBTQ-affirming symbols from classrooms, disbandments of gay-straight alliance clubs and resignations of teachers in protest of anti-LGBTQ policies.
In the fall, for example, rainbow stickers were ordered to be scraped off classroom doors at MacArthur High School near Dallas.
“While we appreciate the sentiment of reaching out to students who may not previously always had such support, we want to set a different tone this year,” an email from a school official addressed to school staff read. NBC News obtained the email from a MacArthur High School teacher.
The sticker removals prompted a protest from the student body, but the pushback did not successfully encourage school officials to change their stance on the policy.
School board members in Newberg, Oregon, made national headlines in the fall for taking similar actions. In September, the school board banned educators from displaying Pride and Black Lives Matter flags and other symbols it considered “political” in school.
“We don’t pay our teachers to push their political views on our students. That’s not their place,” the school board member who authored the policy, Brian Shannon, said at a recorded board meeting.
The policy prompted town protests that attracted some members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, who counterprotested the efforts. An attempt to recall Shannon and another school board member over the flag removals failed last month.
Some teachers have resigned in school districts over similar measures, like a Missouri teacher who resigned in September after his district mandated that he take down his Pride flag and not discuss human sexuality or “sexual preference” at school. In December, parents accused teachers at a middle school in Tennessee of trying to “indoctrinate” kids into being gay after helping students start a gay-straight alliance club.
In addition to parents, school officials and lawmakers, classmates are among those targeting LGBTQ students, according to advocacy groups and local news reports.
A national survey of LGBTQ students published in 2020 by GLSEN found that 69 percent of respondents reported experiencing verbal harassment at school based on their sexual orientation, 57 percent based on their gender expression or outward appearance, and 54 percent based on their gender identity.
Last year, more than a dozen local news articles —from California to Florida — reported on trans students being harassed or attacked by other students, some of them in bathrooms. However, advocates say it is unclear whether the attacks have increased or whether local outlets are reporting them at greater rates.
Impact of affirmation
Advocates have long been warning educators about the mental health risks plaguing LGBTQ youths and how anti-LGBTQ policies can exacerbate them.
A survey last year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that 42 percent of the nearly 35,000 LGBTQ youths who were surveyed — and over half of trans and nonbinary youths — seriously considered suicide within the prior year. Separately, two-thirds of LGBTQ youths said debates about anti-trans legislation have impacted their mental health negatively, according to a small survey The Trevor Project conducted in the fall.
However, researchers at The Trevor Project have also found that LGBTQ youths who reported having at least one LGBTQ-affirming space — such as a school, home or workplace — were significantly less likely to attempt suicide.
With that in mind, Lizette Trujillo drives three hours a day back and forth to her 14-year-old transgender son’s school in Tucson, Arizona. From the time when he socially transitioned in 2015, Daniel’s school was open to the idea of letting him use the bathroom that corresponded with his gender identity — which Trujillo said was not a given in Arizona — and already had experience teaching trans youth.
Daniel Trujillo.Courtesy Rachel Marie Photography
Trujillo said while the commute “is not without its challenges,” sending Daniel to a school where he is “not ‘othered’” has made him happier.
“The biggest difference at my school is that I’m supported by all my teachers and the principal and staff; I have access to sports and the bathrooms,” Daniel said. “It makes learning easier.”
It also freed up space for his mother to focus on securing her son gender-affirming health care, filing for new identification documents and working through emotional hardships.
“What people don’t realize is that you’re not just worried about school when your child socially transitions,” Trujillo said. “As you start this gender journey, you start to hit walls, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize I needed that,’ or, ‘I didn’t realize that was going to be a problem. I didn’t realize we were going to lose family.’”
In response to the slew of challenges plaguing LGBTQ students and teachers, President Joe Biden has vowed to lend his support. Earlier this month, the White House issued a rebuke of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, while connecting the legislation to the disputes happening nationally.
“Make no mistake — this is not an isolated action. Across the country, we’re seeing Republican leaders take actions to regulate what students can or cannot read, what they can or cannot learn, and most troubling, who they can or cannot be,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. “This is politics at its worse, cynically using our students as pawns in political warfare.”
Students ‘fighting for their basic rights’
There are a number of examples across the U.S. of students getting proactive and successfully turning around anti-LGBTQ policies.
Aaryan Rawal, 17, was one of more than 400 students in Fairfax County, Virginia, who successfully urged their school officials to reinstate two LGBTQ books in November. Rawal, who is gay, said he was relieved when school board members heeded students’ demands, but he lamented that the organizing efforts forced him to miss class and lose sleep.
“No student in any county in this country wants to go to school fighting for their basic rights,” Rawal said. “Instead of doing statistics homework or hanging out with friends, we were expected to go to school board meetings and lobby school board members for stuff that really shouldn’t be up for debate.”
Last month, a group of students in Palm Beach, Florida, met with their newly hired superintendent to describe their experience being LGBTQ in their county’s schools. They went around, one by one, and relayed stories of harassment and assault from students and bullying from teachers, according to two students who attended the meeting.
“Students have just gotten a collective consciousness that, ‘School sucks and because I’m LGBT this is to be expected,’ and that’s not normal,” Marcel Whyne, a nonbinary high school student who attended the meeting, said. “That shouldn’t be the level of standard that we have for LGBT kids. You’re entitled to be treated like your peers and go to school and, you know, just be bored at school like a normal student, not terrified that you’re going to be harassed and have photos taken of you and be embarrassed and assaulted just because you’re trying to be who you are.”
As for Spencer Lyst, in Tennessee, he set out to start his high school’s Pride club, Indy Pride, last fall with the goal of spreading awareness about the school’s LGBTQ community and providing “a place for people who may feel like they don’t have one.” While being booed by adults at his school’s homecoming was a “difficult” experience, he said he remains undeterred.
“People should know that no matter what bill they try to pass or book they try to ban or thing they try to ban teachers or students from talking about in schools, it doesn’t change who people are, and it doesn’t change who we’re going to continue to be,” Lyst said. “So trying to take a legal route to ‘protect your kids’ doesn’t work. They are who they are, and if you can’t accept that, maybe it’s you who has some work to do.”
The percent of U.S. adults who identify as something other than heterosexual has doubled over the last 10 years, from 3.5 percent in 2012 to 7.1 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Gallup found that the increase is due to ”high LGBT self-identification, particularly as bisexual, among Generation Z adults,” who are 18 to 25.
It asked more than 12,000 U.S. adults how they identify during telephone interviews last year. It found that younger U.S. adults are much more likely to identify as LGBTQ than older generations.
More than 1 in 5, or 21 percent, of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup found. That’s almost double the proportion of millennials, who are 26 to 41, at 10.5 percent, and nearly five times the proportion of Generation X, who are 42 to 57, at 4.2 percent. Less than 3 percent of baby boomers, who are 58 to 76, identify as LGBTQ, compared to just 0.8 percent of traditionalists, who are 77 or older.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/u5fH2si?_showcaption=true&app=1
As the youngest Americans slowly outnumber and replace the oldest, Gallup predicts the number of LGBTQ-identifying adults will only increase — and likely at a much faster rate than past generations.
The poll found that the percent of Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists who identify as queer has remained relatively the same over the years. More millennials have increasingly identified as LGBTQ, but only slightly, at 5.8 percent in 2012, 7.8 percent in 2017 and 10.5 percent now.
But the poll noted that the percentage of Generation Z adults who are queer has almost doubled since 2017 — jumping from 10.5 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent. The rise shows that younger Gen Zers, who have turned 18 since 2017, are more likely than older Gen Zers to identify as queer.
Gallup noted that the youngest Gen Zers — who are as young as 10 — still haven’t turned 18, and they are even more likely to identify as LGBTQ.
If the trend of millennials and Generation Z increasingly identifying as LGBTQ continues, “the proportion of LGBT Americans should exceed 10 percent in the near future,” Gallup found.
Bisexuals make up 4 percent of all U.S. adults
Bisexuality is the most common identifier used among LGBTQ Americans, which is in line with a Gallup report released last year. More than half of LGBTQ Americans, at 57 percent, are bisexual.
Over one-fifth of LGBTQ respondents, or 21 percent, are gay, 14 percent are lesbian, 10 percent are transgender and 4 percent identify as something e
Overall, 4 percent of U.S. adults identify as bisexual, compared to 1 percent who identify as lesbian, 1.5 percent as gay, 0.7 percent as transgender and 0.3 percent as other. Heterosexuals comprised 86.3 percent of total respondents, and 6.6 percent did not offer an opinion.
Generation Z adults are the most likely to identify as bisexual, at 15 percent overall, compared to 6 percent of millennials and less than 2 percent of Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists.
Increasing acceptance — in certain areas
Gallup notes that the proportion of Gen Z Americans who identify as LGBTQ is increasing at a faster pace than previous generations, and that they are growing up at a time when 70 percent of Americanssupport same-sex marriage rights, and a majority also support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
But that support varies when broken down further. For example, Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey found last year that 66 percent of people favor allowing openly transgender people to serve in the military, that figure is down slightly from its previous measure in 2019, when 71 percent were in favor.
At the same time, 62 percent of Americans say trans athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth, while 34 percent say they should be able to play on teams that match their gender identity, the survey found.
At the time, Mara Keisling, former executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, attributed that contrast at least in part to the wave of legislation in states seeking to bar trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity.
But she also noted that — consistent with Gallup’s data — as more Americans know trans people and more young people identify as LGBTQ, acceptance will grow. As for those pushing anti-transgender legislation, she added, “Someday, they’ll be in the dustbin of history.”
The Rev. Richard Weinberg, an Episcopalian rector in Washington, D.C., was surprised to find that his diocese didn’t have a policy for paid parental leave when he began preparing to adopt a child with his partner last year.
The church allowed three months of specifically paid maternal leave, four weeks more than D.C. law mandates. But unlike some of the district’s provisions, the church’s policy didn’t address people, including LGBTQ couples, who seek to have children through adoption, surrogacy or other means.
After he and another priest petitioned the diocese for a policy that included all methods of starting a family, the church agreed to give him 12 weeks of paid parental leave once his adoption is finalized. But it took numerous discussions with senior leadership and his congregation to figure out what would work for them, as well as for him.
“Without a policy in place or any law to fall back on, the burden was on me to fight for myself and what I thought was fair and appropriate,” Weinberg said.
The Rev. Richard Mosson Weinberg.St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church
Weinberg’s experience is common in the LGBTQ community, advocacy groups and think tanks studying the issue say. According to a 2020 study by the Census Bureau, same-sex couples are more than four times as likely as opposite-sex couples to adopt children — and more than twice as likely to foster children. But the policies vary by employer and are applied inconsistently, according to studies of the issue.
Advocates have called for more inclusive and widespread parental leave policies, and came close with a provision in President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion social safety net bill, which would have mandated all U.S. employers provide workers with four weeks of paid parental leave. But talks on the legislation collapsed after Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, announced in December that he wouldn’t vote for the billin part over funding for new programs,denying his Democratic colleagues the 50 votes they would need to pass the legislation under special budget rules.
LGBTQ advocates hope that polls showing broad support for paid parental leave will create momentum for legislative action. Eighty-four percent of voters — including majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans — support a paid family leave policy, according to a 2018 study from the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group focused on the issue.
While 12 weeks of leave are available to many new parents under the Family and Medical Leave Act, that time off is unpaid under the law, making it financially unviable for lower-income people. Paid leave through employers or states is available to only about a quarter of Americans, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data in 2021, and just a handful of states and Washington, D.C., have implemented policies themselves.
The programs that are available aren’t distributed equally, with 12 percent of private industry workers in the lowest income quartile receiving paid family leave and 37 percent of workers in the highest quartile having access, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Policies also don’t cover sexual orientations and gender identities equally. A 2018 survey by the Human Rights Campaign found fewer than half of LGBTQ respondents said their employers’ leave policies were LGBTQ-inclusive. Respondents also expressed concern about potentially outing themselves or encountering workplace discrimination when asking for leave, the survey found.
In addition, LGBTQ people face distinct financial considerations in starting families. The community is more likely to face economic hurdles like housing instability, unemployment and food insecurity, to begin with, indicating a greater need for social safety net programs, according to the progressive think tank the Center for American Progress. Then there are the additional expenses associated with various means of bringing children into the home.
“LGBTQ-plus parents often have additional needs for paid leave,” Julie Kruse, the director of federal policy at the advocacy group Family Equality, said. “Our families can be expensive to form — for people that require trans fertility services, for people using alternative reproductive technologies, even those going through the processes of fostering and adopting.”
A further issue is how paid leave policies affect employees’ perceived commitment to their job, said Richard Petts, a sociology professor at Ball State University. Taking leave can be stigmatized, causing employees to worry they’ll face a disadvantage at work if they take time off. When those policies are implemented inconsistently in the workplace, it only exacerbates the problem, he said.
Expanded access would help correct the issue and also be of special benefit to marginalized groups, Petts said.
“The U.S. actually has this really golden opportunity to take the lead in providing and showing what an equitable leave policy could look like,” Petts said. “Having a policy that says this is an individual entitlement really is equitable in the truest sense.”
The Covid pandemic, meanwhile, has only heightened financial concerns as it takes a toll on families across the country, Kruse said, adding that she hopes that could influence voters’ opinions and create momentum for a national policy.
“Knowing that we have paid time off without fear of losing our job is just a huge relief, and all families deserve to feel that, so I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure,” Kruse said. “There’s only so much more families can take.”
Support for legislation
For Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., the issue is personal. Craig, who co-chairs the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus and is one of two LGBTQ parents in Congress, said the complexities that same-sex couples face in becoming parents have shown the importance of a uniform paid leave policy.
Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., shows a picture of her grandson Noah on her phone as she speaks at the Capitol about proposed investments in children to reduce economic disparity on Dec. 14, 2021.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
LGBTQ people face a wide range of barriers when starting families, Craig said. One such circumstance occurred when her wife adopted their first child — even though she was married to the primary adoptee, Craig had to file for second-parent adoption, a practice in place in many states.
Across the nation, nearly 20 states, primarily led by Republicans, have not passed protections against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexuality in adoption, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank focused on promoting equal rights.
Craig said including four weeks of leave in the Build Back Better Act was a step in the right direction, although she and many other progressives had initially called for 12 weeks. She said she plans to continue to advocate for expansive paid leave legislation.
“Paid family leave makes sense for all families,” Craig said. “We shouldn’t be putting barriers in place for LGBTQ individuals who want to have families, and that’s what we’ve done in the history of the nation.”
Before negotiations on the bill stalled, Manchin opposed including 12 weeks of paid family leave, saying he preferred standalone legislation, rather than the sweeping bill, for such a significant policy change and expressing concerns about the funding of the broader package. He also expressed concern that Americans would abuse some benefits like paid leave and the child tax credit.
“I believe in family leave, I believe people should have that opportunity,” Manchin said on MSNBC in November. “Can’t we find a better position for this and do this in a bipartisan process that works?”
Progressive lawmakers view passage of such a provision as a necessary and historic opportunity amid favorable views on the subject, including among some businesses, after previous efforts have failed.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also supports paid family leave, although it opposed the social spending legislation, according to Marc Freedman, the chamber’s vice president of employment policy.
“The chamber continues to believe there is a fiscally responsible, bipartisan approach to providing a federal paid family leave benefit,” Freedman said in a statement to NBC News. “We believe that such a deal can be forged, but this partisan reconciliation bill is certainly not the vehicle to achieve a sensible solution to making sure paid family leave is available on a nationwide basis.”
Weinberg, the D.C. rector, said national legislation would prevent others from having to go through what he experienced in preparing to adopt a child.
While thankful for the changes his diocese made, he said he hopes to see a national standard. Having a child is a significant change for any family, and the opportunity to bond is essential, he said.
“To be able to continue to earn an income without having to put your life and your financial health on hold in order to have a family is just such a basic right,” Weinberg said. “So having legislation in place and employers who are seeking to happily compensate people when they’re starting their family would be a huge benefit to Americans.”
Now, Weinberg and his partner are navigating the application process for a 10-year-old boy from Colombia they hosted for five weeks last year. They hope to have the adoption finalized by summer.
The Rev. Richard Weinberg, an Episcopalian rector in Washington, D.C., was surprised to find that his diocese didn’t have a policy for paid parental leave when he began preparing to adopt a child with his partner last year.
The church allowed three months of specifically paid maternal leave, four weeks more than D.C. law mandates. But unlike some of the district’s provisions, the church’s policy didn’t address people, including LGBTQ couples, who seek to have children through adoption, surrogacy or other means.
After he and another priest petitioned the diocese for a policy that included all methods of starting a family, the church agreed to give him 12 weeks of paid parental leave once his adoption is finalized. But it took numerous discussions with senior leadership and his congregation to figure out what would work for them, as well as for him.
“Without a policy in place or any law to fall back on, the burden was on me to fight for myself and what I thought was fair and appropriate,” Weinberg said.
The Rev. Richard Mosson Weinberg.St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church
Weinberg’s experience is common in the LGBTQ community, advocacy groups and think tanks studying the issue say. According to a 2020 study by the Census Bureau, same-sex couples are more than four times as likely as opposite-sex couples to adopt children — and more than twice as likely to foster children. But the policies vary by employer and are applied inconsistently, according to studies of the issue.
Advocates have called for more inclusive and widespread parental leave policies, and came close with a provision in President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion social safety net bill, which would have mandated all U.S. employers provide workers with four weeks of paid parental leave. But talks on the legislation collapsed after Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, announced in December that he wouldn’t vote for the billin part over funding for new programs,denying his Democratic colleagues the 50 votes they would need to pass the legislation under special budget rules.
LGBTQ advocates hope that polls showing broad support for paid parental leave will create momentum for legislative action. Eighty-four percent of voters — including majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans — support a paid family leave policy, according to a 2018 study from the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group focused on the issue.
While 12 weeks of leave are available to many new parents under the Family and Medical Leave Act, that time off is unpaid under the law, making it financially unviable for lower-income people. Paid leave through employers or states is available to only about a quarter of Americans, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data in 2021, and just a handful of states and Washington, D.C., have implemented policies themselves.
The programs that are available aren’t distributed equally, with 12 percent of private industry workers in the lowest income quartile receiving paid family leave and 37 percent of workers in the highest quartile having access, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Policies also don’t cover sexual orientations and gender identities equally. A 2018 survey by the Human Rights Campaign found fewer than half of LGBTQ respondents said their employers’ leave policies were LGBTQ-inclusive. Respondents also expressed concern about potentially outing themselves or encountering workplace discrimination when asking for leave, the survey found.
In addition, LGBTQ people face distinct financial considerations in starting families. The community is more likely to face economic hurdles like housing instability, unemployment and food insecurity, to begin with, indicating a greater need for social safety net programs, according to the progressive think tank the Center for American Progress. Then there are the additional expenses associated with various means of bringing children into the home.
“LGBTQ-plus parents often have additional needs for paid leave,” Julie Kruse, the director of federal policy at the advocacy group Family Equality, said. “Our families can be expensive to form — for people that require trans fertility services, for people using alternative reproductive technologies, even those going through the processes of fostering and adopting.”
A further issue is how paid leave policies affect employees’ perceived commitment to their job, said Richard Petts, a sociology professor at Ball State University. Taking leave can be stigmatized, causing employees to worry they’ll face a disadvantage at work if they take time off. When those policies are implemented inconsistently in the workplace, it only exacerbates the problem, he said.
Expanded access would help correct the issue and also be of special benefit to marginalized groups, Petts said.
“The U.S. actually has this really golden opportunity to take the lead in providing and showing what an equitable leave policy could look like,” Petts said. “Having a policy that says this is an individual entitlement really is equitable in the truest sense.”
The Covid pandemic, meanwhile, has only heightened financial concerns as it takes a toll on families across the country, Kruse said, adding that she hopes that could influence voters’ opinions and create momentum for a national policy.
“Knowing that we have paid time off without fear of losing our job is just a huge relief, and all families deserve to feel that, so I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure,” Kruse said. “There’s only so much more families can take.”
Support for legislation
For Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., the issue is personal. Craig, who co-chairs the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus and is one of two LGBTQ parents in Congress, said the complexities that same-sex couples face in becoming parents have shown the importance of a uniform paid leave policy.
Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., shows a picture of her grandson Noah on her phone as she speaks at the Capitol about proposed investments in children to reduce economic disparity on Dec. 14, 2021.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
LGBTQ people face a wide range of barriers when starting families, Craig said. One such circumstance occurred when her wife adopted their first child — even though she was married to the primary adoptee, Craig had to file for second-parent adoption, a practice in place in many states.
Across the nation, nearly 20 states, primarily led by Republicans, have not passed protections against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexuality in adoption, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank focused on promoting equal rights.
Craig said including four weeks of leave in the Build Back Better Act was a step in the right direction, although she and many other progressives had initially called for 12 weeks. She said she plans to continue to advocate for expansive paid leave legislation.
“Paid family leave makes sense for all families,” Craig said. “We shouldn’t be putting barriers in place for LGBTQ individuals who want to have families, and that’s what we’ve done in the history of the nation.”
Before negotiations on the bill stalled, Manchin opposed including 12 weeks of paid family leave, saying he preferred standalone legislation, rather than the sweeping bill, for such a significant policy change and expressing concerns about the funding of the broader package. He also expressed concern that Americans would abuse some benefits like paid leave and the child tax credit.
“I believe in family leave, I believe people should have that opportunity,” Manchin said on MSNBC in November. “Can’t we find a better position for this and do this in a bipartisan process that works?”
Progressive lawmakers view passage of such a provision as a necessary and historic opportunity amid favorable views on the subject, including among some businesses, after previous efforts have failed.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also supports paid family leave, although it opposed the social spending legislation, according to Marc Freedman, the chamber’s vice president of employment policy.
“The chamber continues to believe there is a fiscally responsible, bipartisan approach to providing a federal paid family leave benefit,” Freedman said in a statement to NBC News. “We believe that such a deal can be forged, but this partisan reconciliation bill is certainly not the vehicle to achieve a sensible solution to making sure paid family leave is available on a nationwide basis.”
Weinberg, the D.C. rector, said national legislation would prevent others from having to go through what he experienced in preparing to adopt a child.
While thankful for the changes his diocese made, he said he hopes to see a national standard. Having a child is a significant change for any family, and the opportunity to bond is essential, he said.
“To be able to continue to earn an income without having to put your life and your financial health on hold in order to have a family is just such a basic right,” Weinberg said. “So having legislation in place and employers who are seeking to happily compensate people when they’re starting their family would be a huge benefit to Americans.”
Now, Weinberg and his partner are navigating the application process for a 10-year-old boy from Colombia they hosted for five weeks last year. They hope to have the adoption finalized by summer.
Two local organizations are partnering to distribute free copies of controversial books in response to the recent increase in attempts to remove titles from school libraries.
In Purpose Educational Services and the St. Louis bookstore EyeSeeMe will deliver free copies of “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morisson to Missourians who request it.
The organizations raised more than $3,000 in the first few hours after launching the book program, said Heather Fleming, founder of In Purpose Educational Services.
“If you look at most of the books that they are trying to ban, they are the stories of people from historically marginalized groups,” said Fleming. “We have to grapple with some of the things that have happened in our society. Number one, to make sure that they don’t happen again. But then number two, because we need to learn how to live with one another.”
Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is photographed in this photo illustration last November at Left Bank Books in St. Louis’ Central West End neighborhood.
A St. Louis Public Radio analysis of the books being challenged in the area in November found two-thirds were written by authors of color or authors who identify as LGBTQ. “The Bluest Eye,” was the book with the most official requests for removal from libraries. It was the first book by Toni Morrison, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in Literature and a Pulitzer Prize.
The Wentzville School Board voted 4-3 at its Jan. 20 meeting to remove the book from school libraries. That’s after a committee voted to recommend keeping the book, writing, “committee members believe that removing the work would infringe on the rights of parents and students to decide for themselves if they want to read this work of literature.”
A committee in the Francis Howell School District voted to retain the book this month and a review of “The Bluest Eye” is still underway in the Lindbergh School District.
The organizations that are planning the “banned book program” have a form for people to fill out if they are interested in receiving free copies of the book. The books will be distributed to people in Missouri and the groups plan to pick a new book each month, Fleming said.
These conversations and these types of book bans, they’re placing our students at a disadvantage,” Fleming said. “Whether people want to admit it or not, we are becoming an increasingly diverse society … students who are not culturally competent are not going to meet with as much success.”
In 2021, Oasis solidified a partnership with University of California Hastings 
