With fewer than two months remaining in the Trump administration, the Department of Labor went through with making a rule final on Monday that would grant religious institutions a broader exemption under former President Obama’s executive order barring anti-LGBTQ workplace among federal contractors.
Although no notice was seen on the Federal Register website indicating the process is over for implementing the rule, first proposed in August 2019, the website for the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs indicates the regulation has become final. A note in the final rule indicates it will become effective on Jan. 8, days before President-elect Joe Biden is set to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.
The final rule has language stating its purpose to “clarify” the religious exemption under Executive Order 11246 signed by former President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to ban employment discrimination among federal contractors, which Obama amended in 2014 to include a prohibition on anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Recognizing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in employment, was amended in 1972 to expand its religious exemption, OFFCP the regulations under the executive order “should be given a parallel interpretation” with regard to its religious exemption.
“This rule is intended to correct any misperception that religious organizations are disfavored in government contracting by setting forth appropriate protections for their autonomy to hire employees who will further their religious missions, thereby providing clarity that may expand the eligible pool of federal contractors and subcontractors,” the rule says.
As a result of the rule, federal contractors will be to claim a religious exemption to discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment without punitive consequences from OFCCP under Obama’s executive order.
Religious affiliated colleges and universities that contract with the federal government and have histories of anti-LGBTQ discrimination, such as Brigham Young University in Utah, may be the intended beneficiaries of the final rule. However, the definition of a religious institution is so vague virtually any federal contractor could assert a religious view to get out of the requirements against anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Further, the rule makes no distinction between anti-LGBTQ discrimination and other forms of discrimination. Because Obama’s executive order was in the form of an amendment to Johnson’s executive order against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, the final rule open the door to workplace discrimination on the basis of these categories as well as anti-LGBTQ discrimination among federal contractors.
Jennifer Pizer, director of law and policy at the LGBTQ group Lambda Legal, said in a statement “it is hard to overstate the harm that the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is visiting on LGBTQ people, women, religious minorities and others with the sledgehammer it is taking to federal non-discrimination protections.”
“For nearly 80 years, it has been a core American principle that seeking and receiving federal tax dollars to do work for the American people means promising not to discriminate against one’s own workers with those funds,” Pizer added. “This new rule uses religion to create an essentially limitless exemption allowing taxpayer-funded contractors to impose their religious beliefs on their employees without regard to the resulting harms, such as unfair job terms, invasive proselytizing and other harassment that make job settings unbearable for workers targeted on religious grounds.”
OFCCP didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request to comment Monday on why the Trump administration needed to make the rule final with less than two months remaining in the Trump administration and why the final rule doesn’t appear in the Federal Register.
According to the final rule, OFCCP obtained during the 30-day public comment period 109,726 comments on the proposal, which includes more than 90,000 comments generated by organized comment-writing efforts.
The rule is made final days before the Labor Department is expected to produce internal emails on the deliberation behind the regulation. In September, the Washington Blade had filed a lawsuit with attorneys from the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press under the Freedom of Information Act seeking internal emails within OFCCP to uncover information about the motivation behind the rule change. The first batch of emails from the Labor Department is expected to come out Thursday as a result of a joint status report in this lawsuit.
Obama’s executive order now has less importance in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision this year in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, thus illegal in the workforce under Title VII regardless of whether or not a business is a federal contractor. However, the executive order provided additional tools for the OFCCP to root out anti-LGBTQ discrimination proactively without an employee having to file a workplace discrimination lawsuit under Title VII.
OFFCP states in the rule the change is needed to enforce the law consistent with recent Supreme Court decisions in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia and Hobby Lobby, even though cases had nothing to do with employment. Meanwhile, the final rule downplays the importance of the Bostock decision, asserting the “holding itself is not particularly germane to OFCCP’s enforcement of E.O. 11246, which has expressly protected sexual orientation and gender identity since 2015.”
“The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump,” the statement says.
Obama’s executive order covered an estimated 34 million employees working for federal contractors, many thousands who are LGBTQ, and 22 percent of the workforce.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere, however, said any notion the updated regulation undercuts Obama’s executive order is false.
“This rule does not revise, amend or in any way undermine the executive order governing nondiscrimination requirements for federal contractors, and it in no way undercuts the president’s promise and commitment to the LGBT community,” Deere said. “It simply seeks to clarify the scope and application of the religious exemption already contained in the executive order that the previous president signed.”
Now that the Trump administration has made the rule final, the Biden administration cannot easily undo it under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the U.S. government to undertake a deliberative process and engage with the public before making regulatory changes.
Pizer told the Blade via email the Biden administration “will have to do a full rulemaking” process under the Administrative Procedure Act to undo the regulation in the aftermath of the Trump administration making it final.
“We do expect it to be among the many Trump administration rule changes (and still-pending, likely-to-be-finalized, proposed rule changes) that will be top priorities for review and redoing by the new administration,” Pizer said.
Pizer added she can’t predict the timing for that process given the sheer number of Trump-era rules that needed reversing under Biden, especially because that might be affected by litigation that might produce court orders enjoining the U.S. government from enforcing the regulation.
Sasha Buchert, senior attorney with Lambda Legal, said in a statement the final rule not only obstructs LGBTQ people from job opportunities, but may block them from obtaining benefits for a same-sex spouse and child as an employee of a federal contractor.
“This rule effectively allows almost any federal contractor to claim a right to fire a person, deny health benefits or take other forms of discriminatory action for marrying a same-sex partner or coming out as transgender, or who the employer or would-be employer discovers is transgender, for living in accordance with their gender identity,” Buchert said. “The harm to those who already face pervasive discrimination is incalculable.”
A lesbian firefighter has alleged she was fired after enduring years of sexual harassment from a male colleague.
In a lawsuit filed in the Middlesex County Superior Court, Kira Castellon said she was sacked from her role as a fire inspector in Piscataway, New Jersey, because she made an allegation of sexual harassment, according to My Central Jersey.
In the lawsuit, filed against the township, Arbor Hose Company 1 and Fire District 3, Castellon said she joined the fire service in 2015, where she was the only female firefighter on staff.
Her sexuality was “generally known” by her co-workers and did not pose a problem until she was promoted in September 2016.
Following her promotion, a male colleague allegedly began an “almost daily” campaign of sexual harassment against her, beginning in late 2016 and continuing until January 2019.
During this time, the male colleague allegedly kissed and groped her repeatedly. According to the lawsuit, he “thrust his pelvis into (her) from all directions as his way of saying hello and goodbye”.
He also allegedly told Castellon on a number of occasions: “I’ll make you straight again.”
The campaign of harassment reportedly occurred in the presence of other staff members.
“The sexual harassment was open and notorious which became widely known throughout the firehouse,” the lawsuit said.
The sexual harassment continued after Castellon returned to work following surgery. At one point, while on crutches, she struggled “to stay upright as he groped her and thrust his pelvis into her rear-end”.
In her lawsuit, Castellon said she reported the abuse but that the company made no effort to enforce an anti-harassment policy.
Her employment was eventually terminated on 30 October, 2019, after the company accused her of using its tax-exempt status to buy personal goods at a local store. The company alleged that she used the tax exempt code for personal goods, but Castellon said in her lawsuit that the items she bought were used at the the firehouse.
“It is clear that (Castellon’s) prior reports of sexual harassment and her continued efforts to combat the workplace harassment which tortured her experience at the firehouse since she arrived, were a motivating, if not sole factor in (the) decision to terminate her employment,” the lawsuit said.
When she heard a knock on the door, Colin Monahan figured it had to be about the new garage.
Monahan and her wife, Shannon Lastowski Monahan, had just finished dinner. Their guests had all departed, leaving the couple alone at their log home well off the main road in the rural community of Wapiti, a village of a few hundred in northwest Wyoming. Colin had just finished installing a new, prefabricated garage on their property, painted in a shade of brown to complement the waving grasses of the surrounding valley.
Donning their masks and opening the door, the couple were greeted by five people standing on their porch, there to discuss a “neighborhood issue” — presumably, Colin thought, the garage.
It would have been a strange complaint. The couple had received permission to install it from the subdivision’s management, and the area’s lack of a homeowners’ association made concerns over aesthetics questionable at best. The iconic Smith Mansion — a twisting structure looming on a bluff overlooking Highway 14 — is visible from the couple’s porch, while the subdivisions surrounding them feature a broad mix of architectural styles that had sprouted amid a flood of new residents discovering the Wyoming countryside.
The garage, as it turned out, wasn’t the problem, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
Shannon Lastowski Monahan and Colin Monahan sit on the front porch of their home in Wapiti, Wyo. Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.Cayla Nimmo / AP
Looking over the group, the Monahans — a same-sex couple originally from the Chicago area — recognized a familiar face, a man who the couple said had previously harassed them on social media. Both Colin and Shannon, residents of the subdivision four years now, quickly came to realize that the conversation was never about a garage, and was never intended to be.
It was about Colin, who dresses masculine but, in her own words, could be seen as either male or female. She goes by “Colleen” as often as she does “Colin.”
“One of the women said to us, ‘Your kind is not welcome here. You are not welcome in Cody Country and you need to leave,’” Shannon recalled in an interview shortly after the October incident. “She told Colin, ‘You pretend to be a man, and you need to leave.’”
The incident sparked a conversation that reverberated through Wapiti and into the greater Park County community, including Cody, a popular tourist town of 10,000.
Some businesses made clear their support for the LGBTQ community. Sunlight Sports, a sporting goods store on Cody’s main strip, declared on its social media pages that bigots were not welcome inside.
The owners, Wes and Melissa Allen, stressed that they believed that 99 percent of county residents are good people. But they had an unblinking message for the rest.
“If you hate your neighbors so much for who they are — who they love, the color of their skin, where they were born, where they worship, or any of the other things that make up that person — that you need to treat them differently or harass them or make them feel unsafe in their own home, don’t come into our business,” they wrote.
Other businesses began stocking merchandise in solidarity with the couple, producing stickers and buttons with rainbow flags and slogans supportive of the LGBTQ community. But that, in turn, touched off a wave of bigotry on social media, directed at the couple as well as others who publicly supported them. On one local Facebook group, a man described the couple as “liberal socialist democratic homosexual transvestites from Chicago” who “hate this country.” Suggestions of the need for a hate crime bill were described in a letter to the local newspaper as “dangerous” and “Orwellian,” while others cast doubt that the incident happened at all.
“It leads to social justice warriors proclaiming far and wide that Wapiti and all of Wyoming is a racist and homophobic state and needs hate crime laws enacted because all allegations must be immediately and totally believed,” one woman wrote on another Facebook group.
Isolated among a few individuals or not, that response was seen by some as a symptom of a rage brewing among a vocal minority of Park County during a time of dramatic change. But that bigotry also prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”
The question is, will it be?
“We have employees and friends and neighbors who don’t fit the ‘white Caucasian’ profile who have been made to feel uncomfortable in our town in recent months,” Wes Allen said in an interview. “Our perception was that it was getting worse. And we’ve already been having conversations in our community when this happened. But this was the time we knew we had to come out and say something. Because if we weren’t going to say something publicly when something bad happened, we have no right to say anything at all.”
A community in flux
Nestled in the foothills at the end of a winding maze of dirt and gravel, the cabin shared by Colin, Shannon and their two dogs doesn’t stand out much from the rest of the homes in the Cody Country subdivision, which sits between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.
From the small porch of the couple’s slice of land, a herd of elk could be seen resting in the distant prairie. Around them, snow-capped peaks stretch around the periphery of the Shoshone River Valley and the North Fork Highway below.
It’s an easy place to disappear in, and plenty have over the years, drawn by the promise of seclusion and the region’s beautiful surroundings.
Manda Siebert’s family has owned a gas station in Wapiti for decades. In that time she has watched the area grow from a minuscule farming community into a tapestry of subdivided ranchland and new construction, with each new subdivision constructed over the past two decades as controversial as the next. “Cultural issues,” as they were called at the time, were of concern even in 2004, when residents raised an uproar over the development of the Copperleaf subdivision, with one man saying at the time that it was not the subdivision itself that was controversial but “the product anticipated which makes it so contentious.”
“There’s been a little bit of an uproar from people upset that more and more people are moving here,” said Siebert, whose business sits across the street from a former hayfield. “But when I was a kid, this was all open. None of this was subdivided. If somebody hadn’t sold their land, those people would not be living here, either. You have to put the shoe on the other foot: If you were living in these big cities and wanted something different, wouldn’t you want to move out here?”
That change has been accelerating in the region. When a Star-Tribune reporter called the Park County planning office last month, an official there said that inquiries concerning building permits and subdivisions have roughly tripled this year, while the rate of home sales among COVID-19 refugees — like similarly attractive corners of the Mountain West — continues to outpace annual averages. According to reporting by the Enterprise, 2020 presented one of the office’s busiest years on record, with the office processing more applications for building permits and subdivisions through the month of July than it did all of last year.
That, in turn, has created tension among some who fear the new arrivals are spoiling the promise of Wyoming.
“There’s a really strong sentiment of resentment when people are buying property here,” Shannon said. “When you’re used to having the view a certain way and then people move in… There’s even been someone — we don’t know who — who has been tearing up the ‘for sale’ signs by the gate.”
Cody Mayor Matt Hall said the first tinges of such a change were felt with the arrival of rapper Kanye West last year. That feeling, the Cody native says, has been amplified by conservative-leaning newcomers in the last few years who believed they would find a city of like-minded people waiting for them upon their arrival. New businesses in town are attracting new residents as well, changing the fabric of the community.
“I talk to the police chief a lot about making sure that we’re managing people’s reactions to things in a way that is going to be fair for everyone, that we’re not going to pull somebody over just because they don’t look like you or anything like that,” Hall said. “It’s interesting to have to grapple with those kind of issues.”
That feeling has bled into the local politics as well. The area’s Republican primary between Rep. Sandy Newsome and former Hot Springs County Clerk Nina Webber featured some of the most vicious politics seen anywhere in Wyoming this election cycle. Meanwhile, members of the community marching in solidarity with the national Black Lives Matter movement earlier this summer were met with armed residents wary of perceived threats from outside agitators that never coalesced. Community Facebook pages with names such as the “Wapiti Whisper” or “Cody Chit Chat” have been increasingly dominated by political discussions fueled by rage and contempt, with dissenting voices being shouted down.
“They’re just really hard to read,” said Sarah Growney, a local business owner and a Cody resident of nearly two decades who has been an active supporter of the Monahans. “It just creates a culture of acceptance for that kind of language or hate. My honest-to-God opinion is that we are not talking about a lot of people, but they’re just very loud. Most people who live in Wapiti or Cody aren’t bad. I think most are good. It’s just the ones who express this kind of hatred are really loud.”
It’s contributed to a shift in sensibilities local leaders say are as much a byproduct of the current pandemic as it is a symptom of a greater demographic shift in the Equality State. Longtime Wyoming residents such as Hall say his community has grown increasingly conservative in the Trump era, and in particular since the tail end of Gov. Matt Mead’s administration, a trend residents say has been exacerbated by outsiders attracted to the area’s natural beauty as much as the state’s deep red politics.
But some people haven’t realized just how diverse their community has become. When counterprotests emerged in the wake of June’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Hall found himself playing intermediary between marchers and armed residents unconvinced that a fellow Wyomingite could have different politics than they did.
“I was talking to some friends of mine who estimated at least 70% of that crowd was from outside of the area,” said Hall, a lifelong Cody resident. “Almost every one of them was from the Bighorn Basin. I said, ‘Instead of sitting there with your gun waiting for them to give you a reason to try and shoot them, why don’t you try talking to them?’ We all like to live here, we all like to fish and hunt here. I mean … the commonalities probably exist way more than probably the disparities.”
Small towns, long streets
Wyoming is often characterized as a “small town with long streets,” both for its small population and the neighborly disposition of its residents. Given that reality, how can some people be so blind to their neighbors or unwilling to accept people who might be different?
It’s a paradox that some, like Allen, the shop owner whose social media post provoked a considerable response, have come to understand.
“Wyoming’s always been so lightly populated that you don’t get to really choose your neighbors,” he said. “If you’re going to survive here, you need to develop this thing where you can get along with everybody. If you are mad because your neighbor was one thing or another and you only had like three neighbors, and when things got bad if you would antagonize them … there would be nobody for you to fall back on. And so the culture has become one of tolerance in general.”
Park County already has a small but vibrant LGBTQ community, and one that existed prior to the migration that’s brought many new faces to the area of late.
One of the members of that community is Nikki Flowers, a Cody resident who moved to the area as a high school sophomore nearly two decades ago. In 2014, Flowers became one of the first women to be granted a same-sex marriage license in Park County with her spouse, Desiree, whom she first met in the halls of Cody High School. Even with same-sex marriage controversial in Wyoming at the time, Flowers said she received little pushback in the community save for her mother and the county clerk at the time, who refused to perform the ceremony.
Then the incident in Wapiti happened.
“It hurt my heart,” she said. “What happened to that couple was just terrifying. I mean, I don’t know what I would do. If something like that happened to me… It’s scary. And I’ve never felt scared in this town.”
Newcomers still find themselves wary of the state’s legacy, still tainted by memories of the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. Growney, who has two fathers, dealt with it the first time her dad came to visit, fearful of the way he was dressed and of those who weren’t accepting of people like him. Over time, however, her fear subsided with the growing understanding of her neighbors, who had regularly begun to interact with her fathers and over time began to understand that the men were just like them in a plethora of ways.
“I’m a believer in the idea that ignorance breeds fear,” Growney said. “These folks are anti-whatever they are because they don’t know someone gay, they’ve never lived with black people, or they’ve never been away to school. Their whole existence has been here, in Wyoming.”
Changing the conversation
But sheer exposure is not a sufficient antidote for bigotry.
In a converted greenhouse in the atrium of Cody High School, Amy Gerber — a science teacher of 32 years — had just finished a consultation with a student who had run into issues at home when a reporter arrived to talk with Gerber.
For the past several years, she has served as faculty adviser for the school’s Gay Straight Alliance, a role she developed as a way to provide a safe space for students who felt they did not have one either in the classroom or at home.
A mother to a gay son, Gerber herself saw bigotry on its face when a group of her 14-year-old son’s classmates threw a slur at him as they drove through the parking lot.
“It just broke my heart,” she said. “That’s the last thing you want as a mom. You don’t want people to be mean to your kid. You want people to care about you and care about your kid, and not judge them for being gay.”
Her son asked her not to respond, fearing it would put an even bigger target on his back. But she wanted to do something.
Ten years later — long after her son had graduated — she decided to hang a rainbow flag in her room, a sign of solidarity for a group of students she knew existed but had no means of connecting with. That small show of solidarity, she said, eventually grew into the school’s GSA, which today counts several dozen students among its ranks.
It was an unthinkable prospect during the time her son was in school. She knew several members of the local school board would fight her on it, while the effort itself encouraged opponents to come out of the woodwork. One caller into a morning talk show at the time, she recalled, asked why the school needed a club where “boys were liking boys and girls were liking girls.”
“It was ridiculous. But that was the perception,” Gerber said. “For me, I wasn’t sure whether that was the perception of the whole community, or if it was just a handful of people who have this type of worldview and are just really vocal about it? You really just don’t know.”
The incident in Wapiti drew similar feelings. After being quoted in a local news article about what happened, Gerber was barraged with hate mail and comments on Facebook disparaging her, prompting a former student of hers — the one who helped her start the GSA — to tell community members that the hatred he saw emerging was precisely the Cody he knew.
“I would love to say collectively as a community, there’s way more of us who support the live-and-let-live mentality, that you’re welcome here,” Gerber said. “Gay, straight, black, white doesn’t matter. Like, you’re welcome. But the truth is, even if it’s not the majority, there is a fraction of our community that is just loud, and makes the community seem like it stands for something that it doesn’t.”
The aftermath
Several weeks after the incident, Colin and Shannon are both in good spirits, but still on edge.
Colin, a hunter and an owner of several guns, was just days removed from getting fingerprinted for a concealed carry permit, a little extra security should the worst happen. What worries her most, she said, is the prospect of what won’t happen.
In the years since Shepard’s murder set off a national movement for hate crime legislation, Wyoming lawmakers have failed to enact a similar law despite the pleas of various nonpartisan commissions, small businesses and even the LGBTQ community itself. Critics of hate crime legislation say the state’s constitution is sufficient to protect the rights of everyone.
But Colin, who has faced hate up close, doesn’t feel that protection.
“The bigger story is this culture here, and ultimately, why Wyoming needs hate crime legislation,” she said. “They don’t think that they have an issue, and yet they repeatedly have issues here.”
Still, there are growing signs of tolerance and support. People in Cody and Wapiti banded together in their own way to reject what had happened in their communities. A conservative family near the couple brought them fresh vegetables. Newsome, the Republican lawmaker, announced efforts to co-sponsor hate crime legislation in the coming session. Businesses and community members have been vocal in their support. Across from the town hall, a rainbow flag could be seen hanging from a porch. Down the street, Growney’s gift shop, The Thistle, had already sold out of one batch of pro-LGBTQ stickers.
So what happens now? Will the incident that provoked so much debate and consternation lead to real change?
Colin Monahan and Shannon Lastowski Monahan shared their story, and the community stood up to respond. They just hope that the risk they took was not made in vain, and that their experience — a couple singled out for who they love — underscores the need for a greater level of protection for people like them.
“We can’t be protected by weapons,” Shannon said. “We have an alarm system, surveillance cameras, all of that, but that can only help so much. It gives you a small sense of reducing the risks. But the courts aren’t going to protect us. … It’s just a simple trespass. I guess I just never realized before how vulnerable we are.”
President-elect Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed to make LGBTQ rights a priority in his administration. But he won’t be working alone: The former vice president has already tapped LGBTQ appointees for several key roles and gay rights advocates are hopeful that more will be named, including the first out Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate. There’s also a push, should an opening become available, for him to nominate the first openly LGBTQ justice to the Supreme Court.
The Biden-Harris transition team has promoted the president-elect’s “commitment to building an administration that looks like America.”
On Sunday, Karine Jean-Pierre, an out lesbian and chief of staff for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, was announced as deputy press secretary, and Pili Tobar, an immigration rights advocate and former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was named deputy White House communications director. Tobar, a lesbian, also worked as a communications director for the Biden campaign.
In November, Carlos Elizondo, who is gay and was Biden’s social secretary when Biden was vice president, was named White House social secretary.
‘Smart choices’ and ‘intersectionality’
Ruben Gonzales, vice president of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, which trains and advocates for queer candidates at all levels of government, noted that the LGBTQ people named to the incoming administration so far are all people of color.
“I think it speaks to the president-elect’s understanding of intersectionality,” he said.
Karine Jean-Pierre.Gary Gershoff / Getty Images
Gonzales said it’s important to have LGBTQ people in the administration because “we know our lives better — we know what protections mean in health care, in housing, in the workplace.”
“Look at how Trump changed guidance about bathrooms, for example,” he added. “A trans person understands what that means in really stark terms.”
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan became the first openly transgender person to work in the White House when President Barack Obama appointed her to the Presidential Personnel Office in 2015.
She praised the Biden team’s “smart choices,” saying it selected talented candidates with impressive resumes.
“Just because they’re coming in doesn’t mean they’ll be working on LGBTQ issues,” she told NBC News. “When I was in the White House, the vast majority of us weren’t. We were working for the EPA, the Small Business Administration, on security issues. Having LGBTQ people at every table, at every level, is still crucial, though, because we are everywhere and are impacted by everything. You don’t want an initiative to land flat or miss an important segment of the population.”
Beyond an out Cabinet member, Freedman-Gurspan predicts a nonbinary person will be appointed at some level. “I know there are some interviewing,” she said.
Biden has also named LGBTQ personnel to his transition team, including the agency review teams, responsible for scrutinizing federal agencies before he takes office. According to a release from the Biden-Harris team, roughly 40 percent of agency review members members represent “communities historically underrepresented in the federal government, including people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities.”
Chai Feldblum, a former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member who was instrumental in drafting the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Pamela Karlan, co-counsel in United States v. Windsor, which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, are reviewing the Department of Justice and related agencies for the Biden transition team, the Advocate reported, including the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Civil Rights.
Dave Noble, former deputy director of the Presidential Personnel Office for Obama, is part of the teams advising NASA and the Office of National Drug Control Policy for the transition. Shawn Skelly, a transgender Navy veteran and executive secretary for the Department of Transportation under Obama, has been named to the Department of Defense review board.
“Allies are invaluable, but the impact of policies on LGBTQ lives is not always fully understood by someone outside our community.”
ANNISE PARKER, LGBTQ VICTORY FUND
Throughout the campaign, Biden promised to move swiftly to repeal President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members.
He’s also vowed to restore nondiscrimination requirements for federal contractors, advocate for LGBTQ rights on the global stage and sign the Equality Act within his first 100 days in office. The Equality Act, which passed the House last year but was never given a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, education, public accommodation and other sectors.
These are big commitments, which advocates say require input from the community.
“Members of Joe Biden’s Cabinet will have tremendous influence over the policies and direction of the next administration, so it is essential an LGBTQ voice is at the table,” Annise Parker, president of the LGBTQ Victory Institute and LGBTQ Victory Fund, said in a statement. “Allies are invaluable, but the impact of policies on LGBTQ lives is not always fully understood by someone outside our community.”
‘Biden’s legacy on equality’
Part of Ruben Gonzales’ role at the Victory Institute is to oversee its Presidential Appointments Initiative, a nonpartisan endeavor to get LGBTQ staffers into administration roles.
“It began during the Clinton administration with David Mixner leveraging his influence to advocate for LGBTQ appointees, but it was really informal then,” Gonzales told NBC News.
The program became more standardized during the Obama administration, which welcomed a record 330 out staffers, many assisted by the Presidential Appointments Initiative.
The hope is to make Biden’s administration even more inclusive: So far Gonzales’ office has fielded more than 750 resumes, from those applying for Cabinet-level posts to those seeking their first job in government.
He said the ultimate goal is for the Biden White House to have the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet member approved by the Senate.
“An LGBTQ Cabinet appointment will ensure our community is part of decision-making at the highest levels,” Gonzales said, “and would also be a lasting piece of Joe Biden’s legacy on equality.”
In February, Trump appointed a gay man, Richard Grenell, as acting director of national intelligence, making him the first out member of a presidential Cabinet. But Grenell’s appointment, which lasted only three months, was never confirmed by the Senate.
Gonzales is hopeful Biden will break that barrier and says there’s a strong surplus of contenders. The Victory Institute intends to put forward former presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg as a possible secretary of Veterans Affairs and former Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau as secretary of education.
In 2009, Juneau, a lesbian, became the first Native American woman elected to statewide office in the U.S. “As a woman, a former teacher and a Native American, Denise would be such an asset,” Gonzales said.
Other names being floated include Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to head up Health and Human Services and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., for secretary of Veterans Affairs.
At the very top of Gonzales’ personal wish list, though, is Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, one of just a few transgender officials in government. Gonzales would like to see her confirmed as surgeon general.
“Having a transgender person taking that kind of leadership role would be a win on so many levels — from her understanding of the complexities of health care in America to helping people understand trans lives,” he said. “Dr. Levine received unanimous support in Pennsylvania when she was nominated — from Democrats and Republicans both — and we hope the Senate will follow that example.”
Photographers around the world now have access to new guidelines aimed at helping them more accurately capture transgender subjects in their stock and commercial imagery. The guidelines were released Wednesday by Getty Images, one of the world’s largest stock photo agencies, and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ advocacy organization.
Stock images are photos that are licensed for use in a variety of places — from corporate websites to advertising campaigns and even on news sites. Examples could range from an image of child models playing with a toy for a retail company’s catalog to a photo of Hong Kong’s skyline for a news article about the world’s most expensive cities.
Nick Adams, GLAAD’s director of transgender representation, said the wide reach of Getty’s clients (NBC News among them) will hopefully mean people around the world will be exposed to — and eventually accustomed to — seeing transgender people in a variety of visual campaigns and stories that go beyond those that are specifically about transgender people. The guidelines hope to give trans individuals — who experience a disproportionate amount of discrimination and violence — exposure by making available stock images of them doing everyday things, like getting a cup of coffee or shopping with friends.
Stock photo showing a portrait of a senior transgender person.trisha ward / Getty Images
“In the past, trans images in stock photography have included many tropes and cliches or even replaced actual transgender people with impersonal symbols like flags,” Adams said.
“Stock images tell a story without words,” he added. “When those images don’t reflect the full diversity that exists within the transgender community, then our story isn’t being told in an authentic way.”
Getty Images said there has been a demand from editorial and advertising clients for photos of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people in its stock and editorial photo library, based on internal metrics, which prompted the company to begin working with GLAAD this year. Images in Getty’s library are used mainly for advertising, in-house corporate imagery and news and entertainment stories.
All of Getty’s contributors around the world will have access to the new guidelines, which have been translated into multiple languages, according to Guy Merrill, global head of art at Getty Images and iStock.
The guidelines cover a variety of different creative aspects for stock photos and ensure that models have control over how they are referred to in captions, making sure no assumptions are made about their gender identities. Additionally, photographers have a set of guidelines to make transgender subjects feel comfortable and empowered on set.
Merrill stressed that simply shooting trans people in stock photography is not enough, adding that there has to be an effort to consistently include the community in photographs and ensure that harmful stereotypes about trans people are not perpetuated. The goal of the partnership between Getty and GLAAD, he added, is to empower trans people in the realm of stock imagery, not use their likeness for any narrative.
Merrill admitted that when Getty looked through its archives over the last five or six years, the company found “very little, if any” photos of the trans community and described the ones that were in the company’s archive as “tokenistic.”
“We are not looking for our contributors to go out and just shoot some portraits of transgender persons. That is not the point at all,” Merrill said. “It’s that level of nuance that brings in that authenticity in terms of people you choose. It is all those small moments that really kind of authentically tell that broader story.”
Gillian Branstetter, founding member of the Trans Journalist Association, said the new guidelines “could be really beneficial for both trans people who want to see our lived experiences in the world around us” and “cisgender people as well.”
“I think a lot of reporting tends to treat trans people as if we live in a vacuum and live on a separate planet and we don’t interact with the systems that cis people do,” she told NBC News. “I think the press, and photographers as well, could play a huge part in showing who trans people are instead of focusing on what’s most sensationalized and exploitative.”
Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who will fight to retain her seat during a Georgia runoffelection in January, donated large portions of her Senate salary to anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights organizations.
Among these organizations are several “crisis pregnancy centers” that often pose as abortion clinics in order to dissuade people from getting the procedure, and an adoption agency that has a strong anti-LGBTQ ethos and bans same-sex couples from using it.
Loeffler is the wealthiest member of Congress. She and her husband hold a roughly $500 million stake in the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, Forbes reported, estimating that the couple’s net worth is at least $800 million.
Because of this, Loeffler pledged to donate her $174,000 congressional salary to Georgia charities each quarter. Over the last two financial quarters, she donated $26,600 to seven anti-abortion pregnancy centers, and $3,800 to Covenant Care Adoptions, an anti-LGBTQ agency.
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Covenant Care Adoptions, a nonprofit adoption and counseling agency based in Georgia, requires that all adoptive parents be “husband and wife” who agree to the Statement of Faith listed on its website. The statement says that “the term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union,” and that “any form of sexual immorality (including … homosexual behavior, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, and use of pornography) is sinful and offensive to God.”
The statement also says, “Rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person,” and it is “imperative” that anyone who works for or volunteers with Covenant Care Adoptions or who wants to adopt a child through the organization “share these beliefs.”
Loeffler’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her choice to donate to Covenant Care Adoptions, or whether she agrees with the organization’s anti-LGBTQ statement.
She has served in the Senate for less than a year, after being appointed to the seat in January, and has been an ally of President Donald Trump’s. She faced a challenge from fellow Republican Rep. Doug Collins as well as Democrat Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s all-party primary in November. Loeffler was forced into a runoff against Warnock, as neither candidate passed the necessary 50% vote threshold they needed to win the seat in November. The runoff will take place Jan. 5.
Of the seven crisis pregnancy centers Loeffler donated to this year, one is the Georgia branch of Obria Medical Clinics, a California-based company that has been embroiled in controversy over the past few years.
In 2019, Obria obtained a $5.1 million federal grant of Title X funding that would be doled out over three years, specifically intended to subsidize clinics providing birth control. Obria does not provide patients with any kind of contraception, instead recommending abstinence or the highly ineffective “rhythm method,” which recommends people only have sex while they are not ovulating in order to not conceive.
Obria’s grant was a part of the Trump administration’s attempt to redistribute Title X money to conservative, anti-abortion organizations instead of Planned Parenthood, which previously received a large portion of the grant. (The money was legally barred from being used for abortions.)
Campaign for Accountability — a progressive watchdog group that sued Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services for information about its use of federal family planning funds — argued in 2019 that Obria is in violation of the requirements for receiving the grant. Before the Trump administration altered the grant requirements (triggering ongoing lawsuits), it included providing contraception and abortion counseling, services Obria does not provide.
In response, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement to Politico that it would not force Obria to comply with the contraception requirements.
Obria also says on its website that it provides “abortion pill reversal,” an unproven idea that suggests that taking a hormone called progesterone can halt the termination of a pregnancy after a pregnant person has taken the first of two pills required for a medication abortion. There is no evidence this is possible, and no clear understanding of possible side effects. Two major studies of abortion reversal were shut down for ethical and safety issues.
Obria CEO Kathleen Eaton Bravo also faced pushback from abortion rights advocates after the Guardian unearthed her 2015 interview with the Catholic World Report, in which she said that Christianity began to “die out” in Europe “when its nations accepted contraception and abortion.”
“With Europeans having no children, immigrant Muslims came in to replace them, and now the culture of Europe is changing,” she said.
Loeffler donated $3,800 of her Senate salary to Obria over the last two financial quarters. Obria did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump will campaign for Loeffler and Republican Sen. David Perdue, who is also in a runoff, in Georgia on Saturday.
Daniel Corona drove home from City Hall in West Wendover, Nevada, on a recent Tuesday evening, passing the familiar bright waving hand of “Wendover Will.”
Originally part of a local casino, the 63-foot neon cowboy sign has been a community landmark for 68 years, a brightly lit beacon letting weary travelers know they had almost made it to the city after a long, dark drive through the Great Basin Desert.
“He’s seen it all,” Corona later said. “He’s been here for all of it.”
It had been a week since Election Day, and minutes earlier, Corona had been sworn in as West Wendover’s mayor, marking the beginning of his second term. His first victory in 2016, won by just 100 votes, not only made him the state’s youngest mayor at 25, but also Nevada’s first openly gay, Latino mayor — a win he did not expect in this rural, northeastern Nevada city nestled in Elko County, one of the state’s most conservative regions.
On his drives home, Corona usually slowed to glance up at Wendover Will. Donated to the city in 2004, the sign reminded Corona of the community’s resilience, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit West Wendover hard, forcing its five casinos to temporarily shutter earlier this year.
Corona also saw Wendover Will as a reminder to those outside the community of a little more than 4,200 people that the city had its own identity. Elko County is a predominantly white area in whichmining remains the top industry; West Wendover is a casino town in which more than 60 percent of the population is Latino.
This year, while Elko County remained a Republican stronghold,Democratic candidates — from the presidential election to a county commissioner’s race — won in West Wendover, making it the only city in the deep red county to go blue. Though the margin was narrow, residents and city officials believe the results reflect increased voting by the community’s younger Latino residents whose beliefs lean left — similar to other states around the country where that demographic led Democrats to victory.
Corona is only about a month younger than West Wendover, which incorporated in 1991.
Less than 8 square miles, West Wendover sits on the edge of the Utah border, so close that the city runs on Mountain Standard Time instead of Pacific Standard Time like the rest of Nevada. Prior to the pandemic, the dusty, desert city saw about 15,000 to 20,000 tourists, mostly from the Salt Lake City region, coming to its casinos each weekend.
A close-knit community in which everyone knows one another by one to two degrees of separation, West Wendover is a place where neighbors leave groceries on the doorsteps of families struggling financially without being asked, residents said.
When Corona told people in high school that he was gay, he was comforted by how accepting most of his classmates were. He found the same reception during his mayoral campaign in 2016, with few residents focusing on his sexual orientation. If anything, he said, they had more concerns about his age or that he still lived with his mother.
“Or they wanted to know more about how I was a Democrat,” Corona said, laughing.
The city voted for Republican presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 and has only recently begun to lean more liberal in local and national elections, as the number of registered voters rose from 661 in 2008 to 1,125 in 2020. Residents also say that the city’s younger voters — the median age in West Wendover is 31 — became more active in the political process.
Corona became interested in politics at 16 when he heard a speech by Barack Obama. After high school, he moved to Salt Lake City and then Las Vegas to attend college, but he returned to West Wendover in 2015 to be closer to family.
Tired of casino interests influencing West Wendover’s local government — people in upper management at the casinos often won city council seats — and pledging to diversify the city’s economy, Corona signed up to run for mayor. During his 2016 campaign, residents saw him canvassing the city for months, knocking on almost every door, learning about what the community wanted.
“I’d never seen or heard of anyone really doing anything like that in town before,” Carolyn Santillanez, 51, who was raised in West Wendover, said. “I think a lot of people came out to vote for him because he was actually talking to people.”
Wendover Boulevard, the city’s main strip.Kim Raff / for NBC News
Corona believes he won over the city’s residents with his support for a 2016 state ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana, which he promised to bring to West Wendover as a new industry. While the initiative failed in Elko County, it passed in West Wendover with about 56 percent of the vote, and in Nevada as a whole.
By December 2019, Corona helped open the first marijuana dispensary in the county. The dispensary not only created at least 50 new jobs, but it has also generated $500,000 in tax revenue since it opened, even with a two-month Covid-19 closure, city officials said.
Corona also made local government more accessible — posting city news updates on social media — and exposed the community to more liberal viewpoints. In July 2019, Corona invited then-Democratic presidential hopeful Julian Castro to West Wendover, which marked the first visit of a presidential candidate.
In 2017, Corona spearheaded and passed a city resolution that supported the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA, which allowed immigrants who came to the United States as children but later lacked legal status to remain in the country, after President Donald Trump tried to shut it down.
“To me that really meant a lot that Mayor Corona and the city would even just put their support out there,” Alan Rojas, 25, said. A DACA recipient, Rojas was born in Mexico but had lived in West Wendover since he was a year old. “I still couldn’t vote this year, but I made sure that I told everyone I knew here that they should.”
West Wendover City Councilwoman Kathy Durham, who was elected in 2018, believes Corona inspired more civic engagement, especially with the city’s younger Latino voters.
Councilwoman Kathy Durham is also a teacher at West Wendover High School.Kim Raff / for NBC News
“They identify with him and see that he can make changes,” Durham, who teaches U.S. history, government and broadcast journalism at the local high school, said.
Jorge Aguirre, 20, said that the recent changes in the city, from the dispensary to the promise of a dog park, made him excited to vote this year. He organized a Black Lives Matter rally in June with three friends, the first of any kind of protest in the city that residents can remember.
“We really wanted to make our own community aware of what was going around in the rest of the country even if they felt like it didn’t affect them,” Aguirre said.
Jorge Aguirre, 20, helped organize a Black Lives Matter rally in West Wendover.Kim Raff / for NBC News
All of Corona’s other mayoral duties seemed simpler compared to leading West Wendover through the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly 75 percent of the city’s residents are casino employees, and when Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered a shutdown in March, most were furloughed or laid off.
That included Corona, who at the time worked as a poker room manager (the mayor’s position only pays $7,200 per year). He lost his job, like hundreds of his constituents. For months, he waited for his unemployment insurance to come through — making choices on which bills to pay — while helping other residents navigate the same process. Corona visited the local food bank, which had gone from seeing 20 families a week to 300, to ensure it had enough supplies for the community, while also picking up food for himself.
“It was a really humbling experience and in the end I feel like it brought me closer to the community, because we all knew we were going through the same thing,” he said.
The city’s casinos reopened this summer. Most residents complied with Corona’s daily reminders on social media to follow the governor’s mask mandate and social distancing guidance. Some West Wendover residents said that when traveling to other parts of Elko County for groceries or work, they’ve noticed people not taking the same measures. Last week, top state health officials criticized the county for not having clear messaging on Covid-19 safety precautions, noting that cases in the county had quintupled compared to the previous month.
But Elko County commissioners continue to push back on the state’s safety restrictions. After Nevada’s governor limited capacity in casinos and restaurants across the state to 25 percent, Commissioner Jon Karr said in an email that he and the other commissioners were working with the state to come up with a more “reasonable” plan.
The county’s human resources director, Amanda Osborne, told The Associated Press that in Elko County, “local political leadership is very divided. It’s very difficult to have an enforcement plan.”
Since March, the virus has infected more than 300 West Wendover residents, and taken the lives of four.
“Because we’re so small, everyone who passes away is a face, not just a number, and that’s probably been one of the hardest parts of all this,” Corona said.The voters’ choice
When Election Day approached, Corona was nervous. He knew the results would depend largely on how residents believed he’d handled the pandemic.
Corona wound up beating his opponent, Mike Katsonis, by a 387-vote margin, more than triple his margin in 2016. Katsonis, 69, a Republican, said he ran in the nonpartisan mayoral election so that Corona did not go unopposed. He knew that winning would be a long shot because Corona was popular and the city seemed to be leaning blue.
“In fact, I even told him after he won, ‘If I had won, I would’ve demanded a recount,’” Katsonis, a retired pharmacist, said.
The results showed the city still has a strong red contingent: Joe Biden beat Trump in West Wendover, but only by 10 votes, much less than Corona’s margin.
Kris Andersen, 55, who’s lived in the community for 29 years, said she liked Corona and appreciated his efforts to diversify the town’s economy, but did not vote for him.
“I think he’s very, very liberal and I’m much more conservative,” Andersen, a substitute teacher, said. She wanted to make sure that conservative voters remained heard in West Wendover. “I think he’s a good guy, but I just don’t think we have the same political ideas.”
As he drove home after being sworn in as mayor earlier this month, with the casinos’ neon lights in his rearview mirror, Corona worried about the record-setting rise in coronavirus cases in Nevada and the possibility of another shutdown. Corona is not sure if the city’s casinos can survive another closure.
Mayor Daniel Corona in front of City Hall.Kim Raff / for NBC News
But he took heart in the mandate from voters he saw in the election results: He received 620 votes, while Biden received only 427 and Trump received 417 in West Wendover.
“To me that means, a lot of people who voted for Trump also voted for me, which is strange because I think of myself as the opposite of him,” Corona said. “But it also shows me that there’s a lot of people who understand that I’m not just a mayor for one group or party, but working for everyone who lives here.”
Indiana’s attorney general has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that allows same-sex couples to both be listed as parents on their child’s birth certificate.
The ruling came after a four-year legal battle fought by two lesbian parents, Ashlee and Ruby Henderson, who sued county health officials when they refused to include them both on their son’s birth certificate.
Their lawsuit argued that it was discriminatory to force one mother from a same-sex marriage to fork over $4,000 to $5,000 to legally adopt their child.
Seven additional couples joined the suit as plaintiffs, and in January 2020 the courts finally ruled that since Indiana law presumes a husband to be the biological father of a child born in wedlock, a same-sex spouse should also be considered a parent on the birth certificate.
Ten months later, Indiana attorney general Curtis Hill is seeking to overturn it all.
He’s submitted a brief asking the Supreme Court to review the landmark decision — a move that had the Hendersons’ attorney wondering why state officials “continue to fight against families headed by same-sex spouses,” Indystar said.
Hill’s 46-page brief argues that upholding the lower court’s decision would violate common sense and throw into jeopardy parental rights based on biology.
“A birth mother’s wife will never be the biological father of the child, meaning that, whenever a birth-mother’s wife gains presumptive ‘parentage’ status, a biological father’s rights and obligations to the child have necessarily been undermined without proper adjudication,” he wrote.
When a similar case from Arkansas came before the Supreme Court in 2017, judges determined that precluding one parent from a birth certificate infringes upon their rights as a married couple. But the courts could reach a very different outcome in Indiana now that Trump has stacked the judiciary in his favour.
It’s among the first cases submitted to the Supreme Court dealing with same-sex marriage since the confirmation of justice Amy Coney Barrett, and is likely to be a test of things to come.
Deb Price, a trailblazing lesbian journalist who helped open America’s eyes to LGBT+ lives, has died aged 62.
Price made history when she started writing a column for the Detroit News in 1992 exclusively focusing on gay issues, becoming the first columnist nationwide to do so.
The legendary journalist died on 20 November in Hong Kong from interstitial pneumonitis, an autoimmune condition that causes damage to the lungs.
Price’s wife, Joyce Murdoch, told the Bay Area Reporter that she was diagnosed with the condition 13-years-ago and that it “gradually diminished her lung capacity”.
Murdoch said Price “lived life fully” and continued working at the South China Morning Post right up until she was hospitalised in September as her condition worsened.
There has been an outpouring of grief after trailblazing lesbian journalist Deb Price died.
There has been an outpouring of grief from those who knew and loved Price, with many former co-workers and editors praising her as a trailblazing figure unafraid to tackle LGBT+ issues in her work.
Bob Giles, the editor and publisher who commissioned Price’s first gay-themed column, told the Detroit News: “She gave us a stack [of columns] that were really well done and they seemed to fit into the idea that it was a changing world and Deb had a capacity for expressing that.”
Reflecting on her incredible legacy, Joshua Benton, founder of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter: “I am very sorry to report the death of Deb Price, a tremendous journalist, a Nieman Fellow (Class of 2011), and a real trailblazer for LGBTQ people in newsrooms and around the country.”
Benton said it was “hard to overestimate” how significant her column was.
“This was long before the internet gave Americans a window into any topic or community they wanted. Most people got a huge share of their information about the world from the local daily and local TV news.
“Most Americans in 1992 said they didn’t know a single gay person. Then suddenly there was Deb, on the breakfast table next to the sports section.
“She wasn’t just running in New York City and San Francisco, either – she was reaching people in red states too.”
Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.
Benton shared images of just some of the abuse Price received in letters to the editor written in response to her column, with one reader saying she was “breaking God’s laws”, while another said the newspaper was “morally wrong” to publish her words.
However, he also shared letters written to the editor showing the love LGBT+ readers showed her, while other straight readers thanked the newspaper for educating them on a topic they had not previously understood.
Dana Nessel, attorney general of Michigan, also mourned Price’s death, writing on Twitter: “I was one of your regular readers. Thank you for making me feel less alone and hopeful for a world that might one day embrace LGBTQ people instead of loathing us.
“Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.”
Nate Hurst, a political journalist, also heaped praise on Price’s legacy, writing: “Deb Price was the first coworker I came out to – before I had the courage to tell my friends and family. She also showed me the ropes on Capitol Hill. Deb was a fierce reporter, a humble trailblazer, and an unstoppable force for good in the world.
“She is very much missed.”
Price and her wife later compiled her columns and published them in a book titled And Say Hi to Joyce. They dedicated the book to “all the gay readers who’ve put 25 cents in a newspaper box and found nothing reflecting their own lives inside.”
Speaking to Associated Press in 1992 about her first column, Price said she asked readers how she should “introduce Joyce” to others. A reader suggested that she should introduce Joyce as her “partner in perversity”.
“I think it’s really important for me to remember (and) for other people to remember that if there weren’t hostility and if there weren’t misunderstandings about gay people, there would be no point in doing this column,” she said at the time.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been running for 96 years, but 2020 saw the first-ever performance for an all LGBT+ marching band.
The Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps (LGBAC) was formed in 1979, a decade after the Stonewall uprising, and has been applying to take part in the New York parade for years.
However this year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade organisers made the decision to limit the number of participants and only select local bands from New York and the tri-state area to perform.
The restrictions meant that the LGBAC finally got their chance to perform in the parade, watched by more than 20 million people across the country, with one band member describing the opportunity as “bucket list material”.
The all-queer band performed “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=lilylwakefield&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1331995857156263936&lang=en-gb&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk%2F2020%2F11%2F28%2Flgbt-marching-band-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade-lesbian-gay-big-apple-corps%2F&siteScreenName=PinkNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px
The marching band’s artistic director Marita Begley told NBC New York: “There are families out there in middle America, throughout the country, that are going to see this and it’s going to give hope to young people who are questioning their sexuality, their gender.”
Founding band member Joe Avena added: “People will see that we’re part of them, and part of their lives, and part of what they love.”
Members of the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps march the Annual Mermaid Parade Held In Coney Island on June 22, 2019 in New York City. (Kena Betancur/Getty)
Begley, who joined the LGBT+ marching band in the 1980s, described the LGBAC’s brand of “quiet activism” in an interview with The Atlantic.
She said: “We were quiet activists. No one would invite ACT UP to their parade. But small towns were inviting the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps to march in their Fourth of July parade.”
Begley described attending local parades, and how it would slowly dawn on those watching that the marching band had all LGBT+ members. Some, she said, would give a thumbs down, but others just kept clapping.
She said: “It was almost subversive to use the most mom-and-apple-pie, all-American of mediums, the marching band, to open minds. It really is.”
