Cissie Graham Lynch, the granddaughter of late evangelical pastor Billy Graham and daughter of evangelist Franklin Graham, gave a primetime speech at the Republican National Convention aimed at boasting about President Donald Trump’s policies that protect so-called religious liberty.
During her speech, she referred to transgender girls as “boys” while discussing policies that aim to accommodate transgender people based on their gender identity.
“Democrats pressured schools to allow boys to compete in girls sports and use girls locker rooms,” she said.
There were no efforts to “pressure” schools. However, there have been legal battles provoked by conservatives after largely Democratic lawmakers passed various measures to accommodate transgender Americans.
In a statement shared with NBC News, the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group, called Lynch’s remarks “dehumanizing and demeaning.”
“What is particularly shameful is the targeting of some of the most vulnerable in our community: transgender kids,” HRC President Alphonso David said. “Cissie Graham Lynch’s comments were despicable and must be widely condemned by anyone who claims to be an ally of LGBTQ people.”
A growing number of conversion therapy survivors are sharing their trauma on TikTok amid growing efforts to outlaw the discredited practice.
Nearly 700,000 Americans have undergone conversion therapy, half when under 18, according to the UCLA’s Williams Institute. The so-called therapycan range from counselling or “praying away the gay” to torturous electric shocks, but all forms have been rejected by every mainstream health organisation for decades.
Now survivors are shedding light on the secretive practice, sharing support and advice for others who may be forced to undergo what they did.
30-year-old Mike Dorn began talking about his experience when the US went into lockdown. “I was going through a pretty dark time being at home all the time and I knew that I needed to talk about it,” they told Reuters.
They were forced to endure conversion therapy at age 15 when their conservative Christian parents shipped them off to a “disciplinary camp” in California.
In a series of six videos they recounted how they were isolated, broken down, told they would go to hell, forced to dig holes and shoved if they disobeyed orders.
“I was physically abused if I said anything or did anything they didn’t approve of,” they said. “I was verbally abused almost every second of every day, because if they weren’t going to put the fear of God into you, you weren’t going to change.”
Mike’s videos have been viewed 1 million times and they’ve been overwhelmed with thousands of messages of support. Roughly half were from countries including Britain, Mexico and Indonesia, most of whom went through conversion therapy as teens.
“A lot of people were messaging me, and it was this form of love and support and family that I’ve never experienced before,” they said.
Another conversion therapy victim, 20-year-old Merry, shared her story in hopes she could help others. One of her videos, “How to survive conversion therapy”, has been watched more than 500,000 times since December.
“Don’t tell them anything about your past,” she warns in the video. “Anything traumatic in your life, you do not get to tell them about… They are going to get inside your head and convince you that that is why you are gay.”
Her videos instantly resonated with viewers and after she posted the first one she began receiving five or six messages a day. She now estimates she’s been contacted by about 50 at-risk people and 20 survivors from their teens to late 40s.
After a virtual Democratic convention that didn’t showcase the party’s diversity so much as simply present it as a matter of fact, the Trump campaign responded on Saturday with the creation of 13 new coalitions to make the point that, as the campaign put it, “President Trump Delivers Success for All Americans, Regardless of Background.”
The new affinity groups included what appeared to be an L.G.B.T.Q. coalition, “Trump Pride,” as well as groups for truckers, gun owners, firefighters, and Albanian and Ukrainian Americans.
Also on the list: Assyrians for Trump, Chaldeans for Trump, German Americans for Trump, Italian Americans for Trump, Medical Professionals for Trump, Polish Americans for Trump and Serbian Americans for Trump.
The former head of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum has agreed to pay a $1 million settlement for his role in a massive state pension fund pay-to-play scandal. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced the deal with Bill White on Thursday.
Cuomo charged that White acted as an unlicensed paid middleman for investment companies seeking lucrative state pension fund business during disgraced former Controller Alan Hevesi’s tenure.
White “secretly” received more than $570,000 in fees from the deal, Cuomo said. He also not only gave $10,000 to Hevesi’s 2006 reelection campaign, but bundled $50,000 in donations from two Guggenheim principals.
They are throwing a $5 million fund-raiser for President Trump this winter, and are quick to make it known that they have the president’s sons’ cellphone numbers on speed dial. They have poured more than $50,000 of their own money into supporting the president, who smiles in photos on the bookshelves of their home.
But Bill White and his husband, Bryan Eure, are not red state evangelicals or die-hard right-wingers. In fact, for years, they were key players among a cohort that Mr. Trump loathes: Manhattan’s liberal elite.
The couple say they have been condemned not just for hypocrisy, but for what has been seen as a betrayal of their own community, by backing a man who has scaled back L.G.B.T. protections. They dismiss such concerns. “I don’t like identity politics,” Mr. Eure said.
The “anti-gay” white couple who stood outside their mansion and pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters will “definitely” speak at the Republican Party convention this month.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who are both personal injury lawyers, made headlines around the world after they were filmed pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters from the steps of their palatial mansion in Portland Place, Missouri.
On Monday, August 17, the McCloskey’s lawyer told the New York Times that the couple would “definitely be speaking” at the Republican National Convention (RNC).
Albert Watkins said in an interview that Mark McCloskey, who threatened Black Lives Matter protesters with an AR-15, would speak at the Republican convention with his handgun-toting wife, Patricia, by his side.
However, Watkins added that Patricia was not expected to speak as “she is not built for this”.
The lawyer said that the couple would take part in a video presentation at the RNC, and added: “They, like many Americans, are horrified, if not mortified, at the prospect of their constitutional rights being compromised by the constitutional rights of others.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they once sued their neighbourhood’s trustees to demand they enforce a document called the Trust Agreement, which prohibited unmarried people from living together.
Neighbours said it was because the McCloskeys “didn’t want gay couples living on the block”.
As the McCloskeys unsuccessfully appealed the case all the way to the state Supreme Court, trustees voted to impeach Patricia, accusing her of being anti-gay in 1992.
However, during a deposition in 2002 Mark refuted the claims, and said: “Certain people on Portland Place, for political reasons, wanted to make it a gay issue.”
The lead U.S. foreign aid agency has proposed a new policy on gender and women’s empowerment that eliminates any mention of transgender people or contraceptives, running counter to its own long-standing practices in deciding what programs to support.
The draft policy released by the U.S. Agency for International Development on Wednesday was billed as an update and replacement to the original 2012 policy, released under the Obama administration. Though written subtly, the agency’s gender policy is parsed closely by experts and grantees as a clue to the kind of initiatives the agency will prioritize, and it guides USAID’s grant-making and development work worldwide.
The updated policy has been in the works for months and has been the subject of much scrutiny and internal controversy. It states its goal as “a prosperous and peaceful world in which women, girls, men, and boys enjoy equal economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights and are equally empowered to secure better lives for themselves, their families, their communities, and their countries.”
Get Our Top Investigations
Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.Email addressThis site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Perhaps the starkest difference is how the old and new policies refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — indeed, whether those populations are mentioned at all. The 2012 policy mentions LGBT people twice — once in a footnote and once in a reference to partnering with LGBT advocates to advance gender equity. It also used the phrase “gender identity” eight times, in recognition of the transgender experience, in which a person’s assigned sex does not accord with their own gender identiity.
The new policy doesn’t use the acronym LGBT or its more inclusive variants or the words “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” “transgender” or “identity” at all.
“It sends a message when an overarching umbrella policy that is supposed to inform all of USAID’s practices and initiatives is missing those factors,” said Gayatri Patel, director of gender advocacy at CARE, a humanitarian organization, though she added it is difficult to know yet how the new policy will impact future USAID programming.
That omission sparked an internal email exchange among USAID officials this week, which was seen by ProPublica. A USAID official passed along a comment from a colleague, noting the exclusion of those words. In a response sent around an hour later, Timothy Meisburger, USAID’s director of the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance, wrote that while staff should feel free to comment on the policy, they should “keep in mind that the policies of the current Administration may differ from those of previous Administrations, and that it is our duty as civil servants to faithfully execute the policy of the current Administration.”
Meisburger, a political appointee who joined the agency in 2017, did not respond to a text message and email requesting comment.
In a section on inclusivity, the 2012 policy is specific, saying it applies to people “regardless of age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic area, migratory status, forced displacement or HIV/AIDS status.”
The new policy is far more vague, saying in its inclusivity section that the agency wants to ensure “all people, including those who face discrimination and thus may have limited access to a country’s benefits, legal protections, or social participation, are fully included and can actively participate in and benefit from development processes and activities.”
In a section on maternal health, the new draft policy mentions only “fertility awareness” and “healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies” as family planning methods, even though USAID has funded the provision of contraceptives in developing countries for decades. The 2012 policy discussed the global lack of access to contraceptives.
That change is in line with the Trump administration’s yearslong effort to advance its socially conservative views on family planning in the global arena.
“For the gender policy to be silent on that is another glaring omission,” Patel said.
Gender experts and advocates said the new policy falls far short of providing the up-to-date technical expertise that the agency needs to grapple with gender issues in development.
Officials at USAID warned that favoring Christian groups in Iraq could be unconstitutional and inflame religious tensions. When one colleague lost her job, they said she had been “Penced.”
“The field has progressed in the eight years since 2012,” said Susan Markham, USAID’s former senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment. “But this document does not do that. It is not based on technical advances or knowledge. It’s clearly a political document about the word gender.”
The proposed USAID policy also adopts the phrase “unalienable rights,” which did not appear in the 2012 version. That phrase mirrors the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, a panel launched by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019.
When he unveiled the commission’s draft report in July, Pompeo derided the “proliferation of rights.” Critics say establishing such a hierarchy of rights endangers the lives and safety of vulnerable groups like LGBT people and women around the world. The commission’s draft report asserted that the two foremost unalienable rights, in the view of America’s founders, were the right to property and religious liberty, and describes same-sex marriage as a “divisive social and political” controversy.
The new policy is in tension with another set of USAID rules, the Automated Directives System, which lays out the agency’s organization and functions. A section of that rulebook dealing with gender, updated in 2017, addresses lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and emphasizes the importance of gender identity when conducting analysis.
Officials at USAID have repeatedly pushed back release of the revised gender policy. It was originally slated for release in late 2019, said three people familiar with the process, and was delayed in part by the coronavirus pandemic. The policy rewrite has also been shrouded in secrecy, with outside advocates and even gender experts within the agency getting little chance to offer input until the very final stages.
Members of the public have until early next week to submit comments on the draft.
One official involved in the policy update process was Bethany Kozma, the USAID deputy chief of staff. Before joining the Trump administration in 2017, Kozma advocated against Obama-era guidelines that schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. During her time in the administration, she has played a key role in advancing conservative causes globally, such as opposing references to sexual and reproductive health in United Nations documents.
In the last few months, USAID’s leadership has been seeded with several right-wing political appointees, including Mark Kevin Lloyd, a Tea Party activist with a history of making and sharing anti-Islamic comments, who was named the agency’s new religious freedom adviser; Kozma, who was elevated to a higher position as the agency’s deputy chief of staff; and Merritt Corrigan, the agency’s former deputy White House liaison, who had made repeated anti-LGBT statements on social media. Corrigan left USAID this month after she unleashed a tirade against the agency on Twitter, though she later claimed she did not send those tweets.
The mother and father of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard gave their full blessing to Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night (August 18).
Judy and Dennis Shepard joined several of Biden’s former rivals, including Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, in wholeheartedly pledging their support for Biden, announcing their state’s votes and helping to formally nominate the Democrat.
Speaking from their home in Wyoming, the couple praised Biden’s efforts in helping to extend federal protections to LGBT+ people like their late son.
“After our son’s death in Wyoming, Joe Biden helped pass the legislation to protect LGBTQ Americans from hate crimes,” Dennis Shepard said during the Democratic National Convention roll call.
“He understands more than most our grief over Matt’s death. But we see in Joe so much of what made Matt’s life special: his commitment to equality, his passion for social justice, and his boundless compassion for others.”
The votes announced by the Shepards — who were joined in the roll call by Indiana’s Pete Buttigieg, gay Maine state rep Craig Hickman and representatives for the other 53 states and territories — mean that Biden is now the official Democratic nominee, and Kamala Harris the vice presidential nominee.
Matthew Shephard murdered at 21.
Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old gay college student who was beaten, tortured and left to die in an anti-gay hate crime in 1998. His killers claimed that they had only intended to rob him but were moved to murder when Shepard made sexual advances towards them.
The case became one of the most prominent examples of the “gay panic” defence being used in an attempt to justify a homophobic hate crime, and it sparked a campaign to extend protections towards the LGBT+ community.
Three gay Democrats will jointly deliver the Democratic National Convention keynote address on Tuesday (August 18) — becoming the first LGBT+ people ever to do so.
The trio of rising stars are Pennsylvania representative Malcolm Kenyatta, Georgia rep. Sam Park, and Long Beach, California mayor Robert Garcia.
Usually the keynote speech is delivered by a single individual, but this year Kenyatta, Park, and Garcia will be among 17 Democratic trailblazers to share the address, offering “a diversity of different ideas and perspectives on how to move America forward”, a DNC spokesperson said.
By speaking in one of the most prestigious slots at the convention the three LGBT+ members will break new ground for queer representation in politics, but they already boast several historic firsts between them.
Park is the sole LGBT+ Asian-American lawmaker in the Georgia General Assembly. He regularly braves open homophobia as he works to pass progressive legislation in the Conservative stronghold state, including a bill to bring healthcare access to low-income households.
“It’s important for us to introduce and work on passing legislation we think would benefit the state to at least demonstrate to those we represent what exactly it is that we are fighting for,” he told NBC News.
“Being in the minority, it’s difficult to pass legislation, but that still doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
Democratic National Convention 2020 keynote to also platform queer Latino and Black politicians.
Garcia, who is Latino, is the youngest mayor in Long Beach history as well as the first LGBT+ person ever to hold the position. Over the past few months he’s been leading the fight against coronavirus in his city, even as he lost his mother and stepfather to the deadly virus.
And Kenyatta is the first gay Black man to be seated in the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
“As somebody who inhabits all of these intersections, growing up in an incredibly poor neighbourhood to a working poor family, as one of only two openly LGBTQ members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the only one that’s a person of colour, I see all the different ways that frankly our systems are broken,” he told LGBTQ Nation earlier this year.
Kenyatta predicted the conference is going to be a “huge historic moment across the board”.
“Being a young person, a Black person, and a queer person — all those different intersections bring a certain perspective,” he told the Pennsylvania Capital Star.
“And I think it’s important because this president has tried very hard to divide folks up along race, class, gender and economic status. He is actively working to make life more difficult for the people he has sworn to serve. So all of the intersections that embody us are people Trump has gone after.”
GLAAD and Georgia Equality, the state’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, are condemning GOP primary winner Marjorie Taylor Greene for racist and anti-LGBTQ views, as well as her embrace of dangerous conspiracies.
Greene defeated John Cowan in the Republican primary runoff on Tuesday, after moving to the district following a previous failed run for Congress.
Georgia Equality and the Southern Poverty Law Center have been tracking Greene’s anti-LGBTQ and racist history since she launched her political career in 2019.
Here’s some of what they and others found to help inform your coverage of Greene’s general election campaign:
Posting on Facebook about a Drag Queen Story Time event at an Alpharetta library: “Trans does not mean gender change, it just means a gender refusal and gender pretending. Truth is truth, it is not a choice!!!”
Recording a 90-minute video at the story time event, where Greene staged a confrontation with library staff and called the event “an attack on our children” while calling the host, who performs as Miss Terra Cotta Sugarbaker, an “abomination”
Recording and posting multiple Facebook videos about an “Islamic invasion” after two Muslims won office and describing Black Americans as “slaves” to the Democratic party, comparing Black Lives Matter activists to neo-Nazis and denying there are racial disparities in the U.S.: “Guess what? Slavery is over,” Greene says in a video. “Black people have equal rights.”
Theorizing that the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history in Las Vegas in 2017 was a plot against the Second Amendment and calling a Parkland school shooting survivor “Little Hitler”
Greene has also embraced the far-right beliefs of “QAnon,” the pro-Trump conspiracy theory movement identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat. Its followers are tied to two murders, a kidnapping, vandalism of a church and a heavily armed standoff near the Hoover Dam.
Of QAnon and the sprawling, unproven and unbalanced online conspiracies promoted by the anonymous “Q,” Greene said, “Q is a patriot” and that she hoped the chatter was educating Pres. Trump. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it,” Greene said in a YouTube video.
While Greene’s views are extreme, divisive and uninformed, party leaders and other candidates for office are lining up to support her:
Pres. Trump praised Greene as a “future Republican star”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and House Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Jim Jordan have backed Greene and other Freedom Caucus members maintained their endorsement after the racist videos were revealed
Georgia Republican Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and Doug Collins both called to congratulate Greene, offering no criticism of her racist language and beliefs
Republican TV analyst Amanda Carpenter suggested party leaders should not seat Greene in Congress if she wins the general election. While that may not be possible, GOP leaders say there’s no plan to limit her visibility or power. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’soffice says Greene would be welcomed into the GOP conference and given seats on congressional committees.
About Georgia Equality: Celebrating its 25th year, Georgia Equality is the state’s largest advocacy organization working to advance fairness, safety and opportunity for Georgia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender communities and our allies. For more information, please visit www.GeorgiaEquality.org or connect with Georgia Equality on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Kamala Harris’ chief of staff has been named as Karine Jean-Pierre, a proud Black lesbian and political heavyweight.
Jean-Pierre is a Haitian-American political campaigner, activist and lecturer who has worked on presidential campaigns for John Edwards, Martin O’Malley and former US president Barack Obama.
The political powerhouse was announced as the chief of staff to the vice presidential candidate yesterday (August 11) just hours before it was announced that Harris was officially on the ticket. She becomes the first Black person to serve as chief of staff to a vice presidential candidate.
Confirming the news on Twitter, Jean-Pierre said she was “incredibly proud” to be working to elect Biden and Harris.
“Let’s go!” she added.
Kamala Harris’ chief of staff Karine Jean-Pierre is a powerful LGBT+ advocate.
Karine Jean-Pierre has long been a vocal advocate for LGBT+ rights and equality.ADVERTISING
She is well-known as a political pundit thanks to appearances on NBC News and MSNBC.
Jean-Pierre served as national public affairs officer for progressive policy advocacy group MoveOn, and briefly went viral in June 2019 when, during a campaign event, she protected Kamala Harris from a stage invader.
In 2011 she spoke about her experiences working in politics as an openly gay woman.
Shortly after she left her position in the Obama administration, she told The Advocate: “What’s been wonderful is that I was not the only; I was one of many.
“President Obama didn’t hire LGBT staffers, he hired experienced individuals who happen to be LGBT.
“Serving and working for president Obama where you can be openly gay has been an amazing honour.
“It felt incredible to be a part of an administration that priorities LGBT issues,” she added.
My daughter is going to ask me, ‘What were you doing?’
Jean-Pierre shares a daughter, Soleil, with her partner, CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux. She has credited Soleil with keeping her in politics after the disappointment of Donald Trump’s 2016 election win.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do after Hilary lost,” she told Shondaland.
“At that time, my daughter was two and the only president she knew was Obama, she’s even met him a few times. But when she’s 12, or whenever she learns about the president and wonders how this man got elected, she’s going to ask me, ‘What were you doing at the time?’
“And I want her to know that I fought and worked for an organisation that mobilised hundreds and thousands of people to do calls to actions and to get involved. I want her to know that I didn’t say silent.”
Harris ‘honoured’ to join Biden’s ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.
Harris was confirmed as Biden’s running mate yesterday following months of speculation about who would round out the Democratic ticket.
The decision makes Harris the first Black woman and the first Asian-American to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, despite the fact that she and Biden were briefly fierce rivals for the Democratic nomination.
“I have the great honour to announce that I’ve picked Kamala Harris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate,” Biden tweeted Tuesday (August 11).
He went on to note that Harris had worked closely with his late son, Beau, during her stint as California’s attorney general.
“I watched as they took on the big banks, lifted up working people, and protected women and kids from abuse,” he continued.
“I was proud then, and I’m proud now to have her as my partner in this campaign.”
Harris tweeted: “Joe Biden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals.
“I’m honoured to join him as our party’s nominee for vice president, and do what it takes to make him our commander-in-chief.”
The Human Rights Campaign was one of many groups to congratulate Harris, tweeting: “This fall, we have the opportunity to vote for the most historic, pro-equality ticket in history.”
A grandfather who came out as gay at 90 has told other older people who are in the closet that it’s “never too late” to be their authentic selves.
Kenneth Felts kept his sexuality hidden all his life, but that changed when memories of his first love flooded back as he sat down to write a memoir earlier this year.
He went on to come out to his lesbian daughter before revealing his sexuality to the world.
Now, he is urging other older LGBT+ people to consider coming out of the closet.
“I know I’m in an unusual position and I just came out just like that,” Felts told USA Today.
“I hadn’t even planned on it or no, nothing, but I would think that if a person is contemplating coming out, they first need to check on what support systems are available to them.”
Gay grandfather Kenneth Felts discovered the LGBT+ community is full of love.
He said he has been heartened by the wave of love and support he was met with when he came out as gay, and told other older queer people that they should expect the same.
“It’s amazing how much love there is out in the community,” he said.
“And they’re going to share it with you. They’re going to pour it on you by the bucket full.
“And so I think other people will kind of have the same experience that they might be surprised just how many people support them.”
He concluded: “It’s never too late to come out.”
I got memo after memo telling me how they are supporting me and they love me.
Kenneth Felts also opened up about the moment he and his old flame Phillip “hit it off real good” when they were working together.
The pair started “going out for coffee” and then stated dating, before they moved in together.
The couple lived in bliss for nine or 10 months, but the relationship crumbled one Sunday morning when they visited a church.
Felts’ “Christian values” came back to him and he began to wonder if what he was doing was really OK.
Their relationship lasted just one more month, before Felts decided to live as a straight man.
“And I left and have actually been kind of looking for Phillip ever since then.”
His first love Phillip had already passed away by the time Kenneth tracked him down.
Heartbreakingly, Felts’ search for Phillip ended in tragedy last month when he finally tracked him down, only to discover that he had already passed away.
He told Newsweek in July that a woman who lived on the East Coast contacted him in an effort to track down his first love.
“But she discovered a week or so ago that he had passed away around two years ago. So it’s very difficult and very painful,” Felts said at the time.
“To me, he died less than two weeks ago. I posted what I felt was an obituary for him online and people have been overwhelmingly supportive, saying how sorry they are that I missed seeing him.
“But it still hurts.”
The heartbroken 90-year-old added: “In all the relationships I’ve had since Phillip, nothing has ever measured up to him, and I don’t anticipate that anything ever will.”
He said he is “more concerned” with the “quiet aspects of a relationship” such as holding hands and “being close”.
“I’d like to have a boyfriend; companionship and somebody there when the days get longer,” he wrote.
