New polling released by Gallup Tuesday showed that 70% of those Americans surveyed approved of same-sex marriage, a new milestone in the trend of approval since 1996 when Gallup first polled Americans on recognition of same-sex marriages, which then only registered a 27% approval.
According to the data kept by the firm, the upward trend steadily increased with a majority approval in 2011, followed by a 60% rating at the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015.
Gallup noted; “Since then, the issue has been less prominent in U.S. politics, and public support for same-sex marriage has continued to increase. Gallup has recorded other shifts in Americans’ ideas on marriage over time, historically, including expanded support for interracial marriage, which had 87% approval as of Gallup’s 2013 update.”
Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans’ views, Gallup reported.
Democrats have consistently been among the biggest supporters of legal same-sex marriage. The current 83% among Democrats is on par with the level of support Gallup has recorded over the past few years.
When Stephanie Ocasio-Gonzalez heard that the Connecticut Parentage Act passed the state Senate in a late-night session on May 20 and was headed to the governor’s desk, she congratulated her wife.
“I told Denise, ‘You’re now the owner of a 14-year-old boy,’” she said.
It was a joke shared between two people who have long struggled to have their family recognized. Despite being there for their teenage son, Jayvin, for over a decade, Denise Gonzalez is still not officially recognized as Jayvin’s parent under Connecticut law.
“She bought his first bike. She was there for the first day of kindergarten and every first day of school since,” Ocasio-Gonzalez said of her wife. “She was there for his surgery, taught him math, and so much more. She’s his mom.”
Soon the state of Connecticut will recognize her as such. On Tuesday, the first day of LGBTQ Pride Month, Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, signed a ceremonial copy of the Connecticut Parentage Act into law. The measure, which was officially signed last week and takes effect Jan. 1, will make it easier for those who don’t share a biological connection with their child, like Gonzalez, to establish parentage.
“This is such an important day — what it says for our kids, what it says for Connecticut, what it says for respecting everybody and who they are,” Lamont said at the signing ceremony.
Ocasio-Gonzalez and Gonzalez have been married since 2014, and they share a 2-year-old daughter, Destiny, in addition to their teenage son. Both women are on Destiny’s birth certificate, but even though they were married at the time of her birth, Gonzalez is still not considered Destiny’s legal parent outside of Connecticut.
Denise’s parental rights are limited because she did not go through what is often referred to as a second-parent-adoption process. As a result, routine activities like taking her children to the doctor or picking Jayvin up from school have been anxiety-provoking events that require extra paperwork and preparation.
“It just took a lot more work,” Ocasio-Gonzalez said.
But the adoption process seemed daunting, she said. In addition to the costs involved, the couple worried about interacting with Jayvin’s birth father, according to Ocasio-Gonzalez.
“I read that in some cases, even though I have full custody, I would have to get the other parent to give permission, and just thinking about having to go through that was emotionally draining,” she said. “I know he would not agree to it.”
Once in effect, the Connecticut Parentage Act will allow the family, and others like them, to avoid a potentially lengthy and costly second-parent adoption.
This means starting Jan. 1, Gonzalez can declare her de facto parentage in court and be legally recognized as Jayvin’s parent. The process to become Destiny’s legal parent outside of Connecticut is even easier.
“The really great thing this bill does for those families is that it allows them to establish parentage through a simple administrative form,” Douglas NeJaime, a professor at Yale Law School and the principal drafter of the bill, told NBC News. The new law changes the existing acknowledgement of paternity form to an acknowledgement of parentage form, making it gender-neutral. The form “has the effect of having a judgment from a court, and all other states have to treat it as valid,” NeJaime said.
So if Ocasio-Gonzalez and her family move to another state — any other state, regardless of its parentage laws — they will both be recognized as the legal parents of their two children.
The newly enacted law makes it easier to establish parentage at birth regardless of the sexual orientation, gender or marital status of the parents and adds protections for children born using assisted reproductive technologies. The new measure also removes gender-specific language from the state’s parentage law to make every path to parentage available on a gender-neutral basis. To be inclusive of transgender parents, for example, the new law makes references to the “person” who gives birth, rather than the woman who gives birth.
State Sen. Alex Kasser, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, called its passage a “historic and long overdue moment for Connecticut.”
“Finally all children will be given equal protection under the law, and all parents will be recognized when their child is born,” Kasser, a Democrat, said in a statement. “This bill confirms that there is no place for discrimination in Connecticut.”
Variation in state parentage laws
With Lamont’s signature, Connecticut will join Maine, Washington, Vermont, California and Rhode Island in passing bills that update parentage laws to recognize the realities of LGBTQ families. However, many states continue to have gaps in their legislation that make the children of same-sex couples vulnerable.
For example, many states do not recognize the parental rights of nongestational parents who are not married. Only 14 states afford rights to these parents, according to the LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project. The other states, according to the group, explicitly recognize the nongestational parent only if the couple is married and lack clear guidelines for unmarried couples, leaving them in a legal gray zone.
“We have a lot of states that do not treat LGBT families as full members of the community, and that is the problem,” NeJaime said.
Connecticut’s new law is a version of the Uniform Parentage Act of 2017. The model legislation is intended to help lawmakers update laws to include LGBTQ families and those who have used assisted reproductive technology. The act, originally promulgated in 1973, was drafted by members of the Uniform Law Commission, a group of experts, academics, practicing lawyers and judges, who work on model legislation for states.
What’s next?
Advocates already have their eyes on upcoming legislation in other states, including Massachusetts. Like Connecticut’s legislation, Massachusetts’ bill is also based on the Uniform Parentage Act.
“People are not aware that some of these core protections are still not in place,” said Polly Crozier, a senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD.
The bill, currently in committee, would provide protection for children born through assisted reproductive technologies and through surrogacy.
Ocasio-Gonzalez said she hopes Massachusetts follows Connecticut’s lead so more families like hers can enjoy equal rights.
“We already know we are a family, and now with this bill passing, no one can tell us differently,” she said.
Holly Duchmann, who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, plans to attend a Pride celebration for the first time this year.
“In the years before the pandemic, while I was out to my friends, I was still really scared to go to Pride,” Duchmann, 27, said. “Because I’m bisexual, I kind of pass as straight a lot, and so that kind of created anxiety with me for years, making me feel like I didn’t really belong in the LGBT community.”
She felt more accepted after finding queer community through her roller derby team, and in 2020, she was looking forward to going to her first Pride event. She even picked up pieces of “extravagant” clothing here and there to wear. But then everything was canceled because of the pandemic, and, during quarantine, she turned to TikTok to feel connected to other LGBTQ people.
“The pandemic helped me realize I need to celebrate life when I can,” she said. “It’s like being cooped up made me want to burst out. So I’m fully vaccinated and making plans with friends to go all out this year.”
Duchmann plans to go to New Orleans to celebrate, though New Orleans Pride, which has organized the city’s main Pride events in the past, disbanded in 2020. There’s no central Pride event planned this year, but Duchmann isn’t worried.
“I really see Pride as being larger than just an event held by one organization,” she said. “NOLA is great about gathering and celebrating. It’s kind of like Mardi Gras. It’s a whole season.”
In the last few decades, Pride has been celebrated in cities around the globe with bigger and bigger events such as parades, marches and protests. In June 2019, an estimated 5 million people attended NYC’s annual Pride march, which coincided with WorldPride, which moves to a different major city each year. The celebrations were expected to be just as big in June 2020, the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march — then called Christopher Street Liberation Day — which began a year after the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, a dayslong protest that began after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in downtown Manhattan.
But in April 2020, the pandemic brought plans for the 50th anniversary of Pride to a halt, forcing event organizers across the U.S. to pivot to all-virtual programming. Now, Pride — in New York and beyond — will return with a mix of in-person and virtual events. Organizers are balancing concerns about safety with increasing vaccination rates and the LGBTQ community’s excitement to return to Pride after a year of social distancing.
‘More strategic’ virtual programming
Last spring, the group behind NYC Pride, the country’s biggest annual Pride celebration, canceled its in-person march for the first time in a half-century because of the Covid-19 crisis, and then had two months to create a virtual event in June.
“That was a shock that we had to think about very quickly on our feet to adapt to,” Dan Dimant, media director for Heritage of Pride, the group behind NYC Pride, said. “We did our best, but what we had this time around was the luxury of time and foresight.”
This year, Heritage of Pride will host some face-to-face events — like its annual street fair — but its well-known march, which has attracted millions in previous years, won’t be coming back in the same way just yet.
NYC Pride organizers will hold virtual events like a family movie night, a human rights conference and a rally, among others. It will also hold its usual Pride march on June 27, though it will be mostly virtual with “in-person elements that are to be determined,” Dimant said, adding that any in-person element would take place in a supervised area with perimeters to limit attendance.
“We put together a much more strategic virtual program for most of our events, and we’ve also kind of left the door open for most of this year to kind of wait and see what we could do in person,” Dimant said. “We believe that we certainly can’t have millions of spectators in one massive crowd just yet. It’s just too soon for that. But there are some events that we can do safely in person.”
‘Playing the safe card’
Other groups in large cities are organizing their events similarly.
Los Angeles Pride will host a free streaming concert June 10 on TikTok featuring Charlie XCX, a virtual “Thrive With Pride Celebration” on ABC7. LA Pride will also debut its “LA Pride Makes a Difference” volunteer calendar, which will enable people to volunteer — both in-person and virtually — for local nonprofits that support LGBTQ people.
People march in the 50th annual Pride parade on June 9, 2019 in West Hollywood, Calif.Chelsea Guglielmino / Getty Images file
Noah Gonzalez, the vice president of the board of directors for the Christopher Street West Association, the nonprofit behind LA Pride, said its signature parade and festival, which in 2018 drew more than 100,000 attendees and participants, can take six months to a year to plan, so the board had to make a decision about how to host the events in December.
“We had no idea where we were going to be, so we had to plan for what we knew at the time, and keeping the responsibility and safety in mind, we knew we could do something virtual,” he said. He said the group’s in-person events — the volunteer opportunities — allow people to decide what level of exposure they’re comfortable with, and don’t involve large crowds.
“From a celebratory perspective, we’re sort of pulling back a little bit and playing the safe card, but when it came to giving back to the community or being involved in community, our perspective was … we will create these opportunities and bring them to the community, and you can decide what you would like to do,” he said.
A crowd cheers on those participating in the 50th annual Pride parade in Washington on June 8, 2019.Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images file
Some Pride organizers in big cities have committed to larger in-person celebrations, but they are limiting capacity, adhering to strict health requirements or not holding their events until the fall.
LA Pride will host a Pride night at Dodgers Stadium on June 11, with a special package available to fully vaccinated attendees, and an in-person outdoor LGBTQ movie night on June 26. Similarly, San Francisco Pride is having two Pride movie nights on June 11 and 12 at Oracle Park and a Black Liberation Event at the African American Art & Culture Complex on June 18.
Chicago Pride plans to bring back its Pride in the Park concert in person, with Chaka Khan and Tiesto as headliners, but the event is ticketed, and attendees have to verify that they’ve been vaccinatedor provide other health information through an app no more than 12 hours before arriving to the two-day event, which takes place June 26 and 27.
“We worked with [the app] Health Pass by CLEAR so that we could create a very safe environment where people [who] are either tested or have been vaccinated are the only people that can come into the event right now,” Dustin Carpenter, president and lead organizer for Pride in the Park, said.
People march in the 50th annual Pride parade in Chicago on June 30, 2019.Kamil Krzaczynski / Reuters file
Atlanta Pride also plans to host a festival, though the group traditionally doesn’t celebrate until mid-October. The events will take place in Piedmont Park, which is outdoors, unfenced and allows for social distancing, Jamie Fergerson, executive director of Atlanta Pride, said.
“There’s a lot of concern about health and safety, obviously,” Fergerson said. “People have a lot of questions, and we — as a nonprofit organization that works for a community that’s been historically marginalized in a number of ways, including access to health care and access to good health care — we take health and safety very seriously.”
Some events are still on standby. In Philadelphia, Philly Pride Presents planned to host a festival on Sept. 4, but shared on its Facebook page Friday that the event is “a work in progress” and “not yet ‘fully open’” after the city issued guidance on reopening. Pride Houston has a few smaller events listed on its website, including Rock the Runway, a Pride fashion show, and said a “big announcement” is coming this month.
Other groups, like Boston Pride, have postponed their usual June festivities until the fall.
Some LGBTQ people said, regardless of the number of precautions taken, they don’t feel safe attending in-person Pride events just yet.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable attending a Pride event as a fully vaccinated person, because I don’t know who is vaccinated and who is not,” Justice Dominguez, who is 24 and lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, said in an email. “Even with social distancing and mask requirements, it still feels like a risk. We know that less than half of all U.S. adults are fully vaccinated (per CDC). I thought these numbers would discourage Pride organizers but I was wrong.”
Other LGBTQ people said they won’t be attending large Pride celebrations and will instead attend community-run events, such as New York’s Queer Liberation March, which is organized by the activist group Reclaim Pride, started by community activists in 2019 as an alternative to NYC Pride.
“Being a transgender woman of color, Pride celebrations at large have not included the trans community,” Houston resident Eden Torres, 36, said. “I am moving back to NYC this summer after 13 years in Texas. I will attend any grassroots, no corporation, trans-centered Pride celebrations, but will not participate in corporate Prides any longer.”
But Duchmann isn’t alone in her excitement for Pride festivities — some people are also looking forward to finally being face-to-face.
Patrick Murphy, 71, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, said he and his partner of 49 years will be attending an in-person event.
“We believe that we must continue to show the world that we are still here and will always be strong,” Murphy said. “We survived AIDS and Covid! Just by being there shows the younger generation of LGBT people that they do have a future.”
This summer, New York City will launch the nation’s largest and most comprehensive workforce development program for at-risk LGBTQ youth.
NYC Unity Works, a $2.6 million initiative that will reach 90 participants over the next four years, is targeted at young adults ages 16 to 24 who are homeless or at risk of experiencing homelessness. Along with job training, it will provide educational opportunities, mental health services, paid internships and job placement, all with the goal of establishing long-term employment and a secure financial future.
The program is an offshoot of the NYC Unity Project, a citywide effort to help at-risk LGBTQ youth launched in 2017 by New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, wife of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
In a statement, McCray said Unity Works “marks the first time that any city has taken this particular set of comprehensive steps to provide training, mental health services and social supports that are critical to long-term success and stability for LGBTQI youth.”
Ashe McGovern, Unity Project’s executive director and a senior LGBTQ policy adviser in de Blasio’s office, praised McCray for prioritizing queer youth.
“I can say unequivocally if the first lady was not at City Hall championing this project, it wouldn’t exist,” McGovern, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said. “She’s personally committed to it. She’s pushed for it.”
The pilot program will be run through the Department of Youth and Community Development in partnership with the NYC Center for Youth Employment and the Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest LGBTQ homeless youth service provider.
But a Supreme Court ruling isn’t a magic bullet, McGovern cautioned.
“Nondiscrimination policies aren’t self-actualizing,” they said. “They don’t automatically create a pathway for success for people who have been marginalized their whole lives. Who have been rejected by their families … We need to give young people the skills to be competitive for jobs — even entry-level jobs. It’s an important paradigm shift.”
A recent survey by The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth, found 35 percent of LGBTQ young people experience employment discrimination. For young transgender people, that percentage jumps to 61 percent.
Up to 40 percent of homeless young people identify as LGBTQ, according to numerous studies. Many are forced out of their homes due to a lack of support and seek acceptance in large (and typically expensive) progressive cities like New York. Without a permanent address, suitable work clothes or even reliable internet, they can be locked out of the job market.
“Many of them are literally in survival mode,” McGovern said of Unity Works’ target applicants. “There’s not space, time or support to think long term or feel energized and joyful about the future. We’re trying to give them that.”
To ensure their success, the staff will help participants with challenges such as changing identity documents and accessing public benefits. And participating agencies and employers are expected to demonstrate cultural responsiveness and competency.
In addition to two years of direct services, Unity Works participants will receive an additional year of followup from LGBTQ-affirming case workers and therapists.
“We know that young LGBTQ people are largely homeless because their family rejected them,” McGovern said. “They may face peer rejection, school rejection, community rejection, so we knew this had to be trauma-informed. It’s not enough to just give people resumé building tips and say ‘good luck.’ This program is a larger support system to help them feel empowered.”
Mario Smith, a 20-year-old who identifies as transgender and nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, said Unity Works has the potential to be life-changing.
“Giving trans people the tools to work and get educated — it’s not a handout,” they said. “It’s going to create such a productive group of people who can turn around and help their community.”
Smith immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica as a teen and worked with the Ali Forney Center to get a green card and housing. Now they’re enrolling in Unity Works to study psychology and eventually become a youth health advocate.
“Everyone’s at a different place in their life,” they said. “Some people need job placement, some need help furthering their education. You can’t just have a cookie-cutter answer. This program is tailor-made to the individual.”
As much as Unity Works will benefit Smith and the other New York-based participants, McGovern is thinking even bigger.
“Ultimately we want to build a model we can prove and push it across other jurisdictions,” they said. “I want this to be such a success that it’s replicated all across the country.”
In the summer of 1953, Audrey Hartmann was 23 years old and on vacation with friends. She was staying in Ocean Bay Park, a small beach town on Fire Island, 60 miles from New York City.
She’d heard whispers about a place down the beach called Cherry Grove. A few miles away, it was said to be a welcoming community of gay people. She’d heard there were lesbians there.
Hartmann walked down, and what she saw is on display at a new exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, as well as chronicled in the 1993 book “Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town” by Esther Newton. Hartmann encountered “charming little houses” lit by gas lamps, and wherever she walked were canopies of trees. She caught a glimpse into some of the homes and said, “I remember seeing women by candlelight sitting there,” and wished she was one of them.
Maggie McCorkle and Audrey Hartmann in Cherry Grove, ca. 1963.Cherry Grove Archives Collection
Her wish came true. She would go on to live in Cherry Grove and became a beloved member of the community. She and her longtime partner were some of the first women to buy a home on the island. Hartmann, now 90, was interviewed for the exhibit, “Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove,” which opens Friday at the New-York Historical Society, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In a recording, Hartmann says of Cherry Grove, “It was an escape for everyone to be able to come out here on the weekend and be yourself. It was a safe haven. I could say to someone, ‘I’m Audrey Hartmann … and I’m gay.’”
That, at the time, was unheard of.
The exhibit includes 70 photographs and additional ephemera contributed by the Cherry Grove Archives Collection. Included in the exhibit are recorded accounts from notable residents, including Hartmann.
Hot House, 1958.Cherry Grove Archives Collection
Cherry Grove was one of the first gay beach towns in the United States, joining a handful of LGBTQ vacation spots and resorts that became popular in the pre-Stonewall era, along with places like Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Saugatuck-Douglas, Michigan.
The striking images in the collection are special because of their rarity, as well as the joy and intimacy displayed in them. There is a relaxed nature to the photos, of couples with their arms around each other, friends out at parties or spending time together on the beach.
“Most people didn’t share themselves in that way because they couldn’t be documented. It could be held against them legally,” said Parker Sargent, 46, one of the curators of the exhibit and a representative of the Cherry Grove Archives Collection. In Cherry Grove, gay residents were able to form a community, have a voice in how things were run and be out. “And that’s revolutionary in a really quiet way,” Sergeant said.
“Patricia Fitzgerald & Kay Guinness, Cherry Grove Beach,” September 1952.Cherry Grove Archives Collection
Part of what makes Cherry Grove special is its remote location on a barrier island between Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the island is only accessible by boat and inaccessible to cars. Cherry Grove provided a sanctuary while also offering queer people the distance and safety required to be themselves, away from the New York laws prohibiting their queer identities and the constant police enforcement of anti-LGBTQ policies.
“Because it’s isolated, people are not judging you, like you’d be afraid of in the real world,” said Susan Kravitz, 77, who curated the exhibit with Sargent and is a committee member of the Cherry Grove archive. “The women in the ‘50s had to wear skirts and dresses … but when they came to Cherry Grove, they could wear trousers — and that was a big deal. Not just pants, but trousers … It’s always about freeing oneself to be who you want to be, and where else can you do that?”
Cherry Grove did have its share of raids and arrests, but the last boat left the island at midnight, meaning there was no police presence once the boat left the dock. That contributed to a vibrant nightlife, one so integral to the community a section of the exhibit is devoted to theater, performance and the social scene. Theater is a lasting legacy of Cherry Grove, as it was theater people who began to vacation there as early as the 1930s, laying a foundation of creativity and openness that has had a lasting draw for the LGBTQ community.
Pat Fitzgerald, Kay Guinness, Mary Ronin and Bea Greer, c. 1950. Cherry Grove Archives Collection
Cherry Grove was different from the city, where the gay bars were run by the mob, according to Sargent, who described these urban watering holes as “dark and seedy clubs” where “you always had to be careful that the lights would come on,” signaling a police raid.
“In Cherry Grove, you were suddenly out in nature and sitting on people’s front porches and going to house parties,” Sargent said. “There was a levity and a freedom of not being caught.”
Cherry Grove continued to evolve after the 1950s, moving from a sanctuary for mostly white and affluent gay men and women to a more inclusive place with the advent of the 1960s, as the civil rights movement gained traction and more commercial real estate in the area led to affordable housing options for greater swaths of the community. As the decades move forward, photographs begin to show queer people of color and working-class LGBTQ people.
“You will see such joy in these photographs, you will see happiness, you will see laughter, and you would never think that would be the case given the times in which these people lived,” Kravitz said.
“Parasol Party.”Cherry Grove Archives Collection
Part of the mission behind “Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove” is to create an archive where there has been none.
“It’s more than just the photos or the old videos,” Sargent said. “It’s getting that material out there for people to see and to rewrite our history in a way that has been very blank because we tend to think that gay life started at Stonewall. … People have a look at gay history before Stonewall. We’ve always been here.”
Today, Cherry Grove remains a beloved summer destination for LGBTQ beachgoers, particularly lesbians, as has the adjoining community of the Fire Island Pines, which has traditionally catered to gay men. Though the world has become more accepting over the decades, these two Fire Island enclaves remain important to the community, and just as vibrant as ever, welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors to its boardwalks every season.
A high school in Indiana has ordered teachers to remove Pride flags from their classrooms to “maintain viewpoint neutrality”, and students have slammed the decision.
The principal of Pendleton Heights High School, Connie Rickert, ordered three teachers to remove Pride flags from their classrooms, local newspaper The Herald Bulletin reported.
“Teachers are legally obligated to maintain viewpoint neutrality during their official duties to ensure all students can focus on learning and we can maintain educational activities and school operations,” she stated. “Our counselors are trained to respond to any student who desires support.”
Despite outrage from students, other senior staff also issued statements about the ban, with one comparing the Pride flag to a white supremacy flag. One student slammed the comparison, telling The Indianapolis Star: “One is about inclusiveness and the other is about hate.”
The president of the board of trustees for the local district wrote in an email to parents: “The issue with displaying the flag in a school is a double-edged sword.
“If an LGBTQ+ flag is allowed to be displayed, then any other group would have the same ability. That could include such flags as supporting white supremacy, which is in direct conflict with LGBTQ+. I hope we can model equality and support through our actions.”
Student Bryce Axel-Adams started an online petition, calling for the school board to officially allow Pride flags in classrooms. At the time of writing, it has more than 3,500 signatures.
Bryce wrote: “Having a pride flag is one of the clearest ways to say, ‘I support you, and I’m here for you. You are loved.’
“That is so important for LGBTQ+ youth, we have always been told that teachers will always be there for us, and being able to easily identify teachers we can safely go to is extremely important to our mental health.”
Bryce later added that they had received an update from the school administrators saying they had changed their stance, and weren’t banning the flags because they are “political speech”, but to “avoid a discrimination lawsuit”.
The petition received a number of heart-warming responses from teachers in other districts, Pendleton alumni and other students.
New York’s Stonewall Inn will kick off LGBTQ Pride Month with a star-studded streaming concert on June 1 to benefit The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Safe Spaces Initiatives. Presenters and performers for the event, produced by Tom D’Angora, Michael D’Angora and Victoria Varela, include Billy Eichner, Chelsea Clinton, Margaret Cho, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Julianne Moore, Fran Drescher, Lea DeLaria, Alexandra Billings, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Poehler, Randy Rainbow, Jordin Sparks, Lance Bass, Sophia Bush, Jackie Cox, Sasha Velour, Debra Messing, Laith Ashley, Omar Sharif Jr., Rita Wilson, André De Shields and more.
The Safe Spaces Initiative will identify and designate entertainment venues, food and beverage locations, stores, businesses, and other public venues, as safe spaces for LGBTQ members of the community.
“The Stonewall Inn is one of the original safe spaces, and it’s important that we create more Safe Spaces for the LGBTQA+ community across the country,” said Stonewall Inn co-owner Kurt Kelly.
“We need to make sure that public venues, stores, business, etc. that say they are LGBTQA+ friendly and a safe space for the community are putting in the work and have the policies, procedures, and training to make sure they truly are a safe and affirming space for our community,” said Stonewall Inn co-owner Stacy Lentz, who also serves as CEO of The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative.
The concert is sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery, FCB Health New York, Hawkins Mikita, Jagermeister USA, Jennifer Brown Consulting, JetBlue, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Video Out.
Stonewall Day Celebration
Pride Live is teaming up with Outloud: Raising Voices for the fourth annual Stonewall Day celebration, a three-day concert at Los Angeles’ Memorial Coliseum June 4-6. Adam Lambert is set to curate and perform at the event, which will also feature Chelsea Clinton, Whoopi Goldberg, Kim Petras, Geena Rocero, Angelica Ross, Rafael Silva, Sam Sparro, Ryan Jamaal Swain, George Takei, VINCINT, Chely Wright and Conchita Wurst.
Pennsylvania State University officials approved a measure that would remove gendered and binary terms like “freshman” and “upperclassman” from course and program descriptions late last month.
The changes were suggested in a Penn State University Faculty Senate proposition, AD84 Preferred Name and Gender Identity Policy, which passed on April 27, a university spokesperson told the student newspaper The Daily Collegian. It was unclear when the updated language would be implemented.
The proposition recommended changing the nomenclature of college classes from “freshman,” “sophomore,” “junior” and “senior” to “first-year,” “second-year,” “third-year” and “fourth-year.”
Among its other recommendations were replacing the terms “underclassmen” and “upperclassmen” with “lower division” and “upper division,” as well as he/him/his and she/her/hers pronouns with they/them/theirs pronouns.
The impetus for the changes was to move beyond the school’s lexicon of “sexist and classist” terms and to build a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all students, according to the proposition.
Terms like “freshman” and “upperclassmen” carried a “strong, male-centric, binary character” and terms like “junior” and “senior” ran “parallel to western male father-son naming conventions,” the proposition said.
If implemented, the recommendations would be enforced in all written materials, including recruiting information, admissions materials, internal documents and school websites.
Penn State University did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The move comes on the heels of wider education and visibility of the use of nonbinary gender pronouns and terms.
In a survey conducted last year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, 1 in 4 LGBTQ youths said they used pronouns other than he/him or she/hers.
The survey, which asked 40,000 LGBTQ young people ages 13 to 24, found that 75 percent of those who use pronouns other than the gender binary choose a combination of he/him, she/her and they/them to express their genders. For example, a person might use “he and they” or “she and they” or “he, she and they.”
An increasing number of actors and musicians have also identified as nonbinary in the past few years.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday voted to keep the word “homosexuality” included in the state’s public indecency and obscenity laws, angering top-ranking Democrats including those who introduced legislation to remove the classification from the books.
Currently, for example, Pennsylvania law on prostitution characterizes “homosexual” sex among “deviate sexual relations.”
“Sexual conduct means acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, breast.”
SB 609 would have removed the word “homosexual” or “homosexuality” from obscenity laws.
But on a party line vote every Republican, led by Speaker Brian Cutler (photo), elected to abuse, attack, demean, mock, and marginalize the state’s LGBTQ community by voting against the bill.
Democratic Rep. Brian Sims, the state’s first openly gay elected lawmaker who is running for Lieutenant Governor in the 2022 election, blasted his GOP colleagues:
“Compounding the rampant homophobia of the Republican caucus with this type of aggressive cowardice is so painfully on brand. May you never have to see your colleagues vote to keep the ways you love a ‘crime,'” Sims also tweeted.
A high school in Indiana has ordered teachers to remove Pride flags from their classrooms to “maintain viewpoint neutrality”, and students have slammed the decision.
The principal of Pendleton Heights High School, Connie Rickert, ordered three teachers to remove Pride flags from their classrooms, local newspaper The Herald Bulletin reported.
“Teachers are legally obligated to maintain viewpoint neutrality during their official duties to ensure all students can focus on learning and we can maintain educational activities and school operations,” she stated. “Our counselors are trained to respond to any student who desires support.”
Despite outrage from students, other senior staff also issued statements about the ban, with one comparing the Pride flag to a white supremacy flag. One student slammed the comparison, telling The Indianapolis Star: “One is about inclusiveness and the other is about hate.”
The president of the board of trustees for the local district wrote in an email to parents: “The issue with displaying the flag in a school is a double-edged sword.
“If an LGBTQ+ flag is allowed to be displayed, then any other group would have the same ability. That could include such flags as supporting white supremacy, which is in direct conflict with LGBTQ+. I hope we can model equality and support through our actions.”
Student Bryce Axel-Adams started an online petition, calling for the school board to officially allow Pride flags in classrooms. At the time of writing, it has more than 3,500 signatures.
Bryce wrote: “Having a pride flag is one of the clearest ways to say, ‘I support you, and I’m here for you. You are loved.’
“That is so important for LGBTQ+ youth, we have always been told that teachers will always be there for us, and being able to easily identify teachers we can safely go to is extremely important to our mental health.”
Bryce later added that they had received an update from the school administrators saying they had changed their stance, and weren’t banning the flags because they are “political speech”, but to “avoid a discrimination lawsuit”.
The petition received a number of heart-warming responses from teachers in other districts, Pendleton alumni and other students.
