Iowa students are turning to Instagram to call out teachers and peers for the routine homophobia, racism, misogyny and sexual harassment they experience everyday at school.
Submitting their stories anonymously via three Instagram accounts – dedicated to exposing anti-LGBT+ hate, racism and misogyny respectively – students have painted a damning picture of what it’s like to be a minority in the Iowa City community school district.
Their accounts reveal racist and homophobic slurs being used with abandon, students being shunned for their sexuality and rampant anti-LGBT+ bullying going unchecked by school authorities.
“Everyday I walk into school feeling like an outcast,” one writes. “I just wish students and at least teachers would see me as a normal human… But no, I can’t get through at least one week without being called a faggot or queer.”
“I had to deal with a lot of violent, homophobic bullying at Northwest Junior High,” says another. “When I was there none of the administration seemed to do anything about that despite witnessing it happen to me and other students.
“[The principal] is completely incompetent when it comes to protecting the kids that are the most vulnerable.”
Another writes simply: “Once, I wore my flag to school, and was told to burn it to the ground. That hurt.”
Black students reported being shown images of lynchings, hearing the N-word and having to endure classmates using Blackface. Multiple girls reported being sexualised, sexually harassed and even raped.
City High freshman Rachel Johnson started the @lgbtaticcsd account after seeing the stories of racism and sexual harassment in the school district on @blackaticcsd and @girlsaticcsd.
Since the account opened on July 22, Johnson and her friends have posted more than 100 stories from LGBT+ students across the district.
The submissions identify a variety of discrimination and bullying LGBT+ students face, but two patterns in particular stood out to her.
“One was just how many people talked about constantly hearing the F-slur and hearing ‘gay’ used as an insult,” Johnson told the Daily Iowan. “Just so many people talked about that and how it was just a normalised thing.”
The other trend she noticed was the name of particular teachers that recurred in multiple stories.
The posts have now gained so much traction they’ve caught the attention of teachers and administrators.
“It just makes your heart hurt for students that have either experienced those things or witnessed those things in our school community,” interim superintendent Matt Degner said.
“That’s definitely not what we want to be about, or the type of or the time of experience and climate we want to have for our students … As a human being and as an educator, I just feel bad and feel that we have a lot of work to do, and we have a lot of improvements to make so that students don’t have that experience in our schools.”
Queer Black American men suffer disproportionate levels of police discrimination, which in turn may contribute to increased risks of HIV, depression and anxiety, a study has found.
Research by Rutgers University, published in Social Science & Medicine, asked over 1,100 queer Black men to self-report any incidents of police discrimination, arrests and incarceration.
Between 2017 and 2018, some 43 per cent reported suffering discrimination at the hands of police and other law enforcement.
The results reinforced the notion that injustice is systemic and cyclical, with prior incarceration linked to later police and law enforcement discrimination, which in turn was linked to further arrest.
Lead study author Devin English, assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, said that despite the evidence suggesting queer Black men in the US may face “some of the highest rates of policing and incarceration in the world… research examining the health impacts of the US carceral system rarely focuses on their experiences”.
“This study helps to address this gap,” he added.
Scott Greenberg, executive director of the LGBTQ Freedom Fund, was unsurprised by the research. He told PinkNews: “With Black people five times more likely to be imprisoned in the US and sexual minorities three-fold more likely to be incarcerated, Black LGBTQ people occupy a reconstitutive crossing of inequity in the criminal legal system.
“One startling demographic disparity aggravates the other, in vicious cycles of poverty and discrimination — in school, employment, policing, family, and society at large.”
Police discrimination may contribute to high levels of HIV among Black queer men.
Respondents were also quizzed on their metal health and sexual behaviour, including their willingness to take PrEP.
Researchers found that those who had suffered high levels of police discrimination were also likely to be at higher risk of HIV and psychological distress, and were more reluctant to take PrEP than their peers.
Those who had been incarcerated or recently arrested were also vulnerable to a higher HIV risk and were less willing to take PrEP.
The study’s authors suggest that police discrimination and incarceration may lead to “a conscious, and potentially adaptive, avoidance of institutions” with a history of discriminating against queer Black men.
Queer Black men are the group most at risk of acquiring HIV in the US. In 2018, they made up 26 per cent of all new HIV diagnoses and 37 per cent of new diagnoses among queer men. Black Americans make up 13 per cent of the US population.
Previous studies have suggested queer Black men are less likely to be on PrEP due to a mistrust of medical establishments, racism on the part of the prescribing physician, internalised and externalised stigma and ineffectivemessaging among other factors.
As Matthew Hodson, executive director of the UK-based Aidsmap, told PinkNews, it is these many and layered forms of discrimination that is perpetuating the epidemic of HIV among Black queer men, who are “at the intersection of two communities with high HIV rates”.
“Experience of mistreatment in healthcare services, racism, homophobia and a number of structural inequalities all intersect to deter black men who have sex with men from seeking out PrEP as a means of preventing HIV infection,” Hodson said.
“Although the US was the first country to introduce PrEP, take up among Black and Hispanic queer men has always lagged behind that of white men. A recent projection estimated that half of all US Black men who have sex with men were likely to acquire HIV in their lifetime, compared to one in four Hispanic men and nine per cent of white gay or bisexual men.”
He added: “The racial patterns of PrEP use we see in the US are also reflected in other western countries, including the UK, France, and Australia.”
Lisa Bowleg, professor of psychology at The George Washington University and co-author on the study, said the new findings “rightly directs attention to the structural intersectional discrimination that negatively affects Black sexual minority men’s health”.
“Despite experiencing a disproportionate burden of violence and discrimination at the hands of the police, and extremely high carceral rates, Black queer men are largely invisible in discourse on anti-Black policing and incarceration,” added co-author Joseph Carter, doctoral student of health psychology at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
“Our study provides empirical support for the intersectional health impacts of police and carceral discrimination that have been systemically perpetrated onto Black queer men.”
As the hearse carrying John Lewis’ body drove through Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Wednesday, it made a lengthy and symbolic stop at a rainbow crosswalk as dozens of people gathered on the sidewalk to watch the procession pass.
“It feels very appropriate that that stop was prolonged for John Lewis’ legacy,” Victoria Kirby York of the National LGBTQ Task Forcetold NBC News. “I believe his vocal leadership and support in championing LGBTQ equality — even prior to it becoming a cool thing for people to hop on the bandwagon for — was critical in being able to shift public opinion across the country.”
York added: “He was about civil rights, equality and liberation for everybody. Period. Full stop.”
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., speaks at a news conference in Washington, D.C., on June 6, 2006, to oppose a proposal for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage.Scott J. Ferrell / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images file
The stop by Lewis’ motorcade — lasting nearly a minute — was an acknowledgement of his vocal advocacy over the years for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans.
An early advocate
Lewis, who represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from 1987 until his death on July 17, did not wait until it was politically safe to stand up for LGBTQ rights.
In 1996, when 65 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, Lewis delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor decrying the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA — federal legislation that sought to define marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman — as a “mean” and “cruel” bill.
“This bill is a slap in the face of the Declaration of Independence. It denies gay men and women the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage is a basic human right,” he said. “You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say when people talked about interracial marriage and I quote: ‘Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.’”
DOMA, considered a political compromise at the time, easily passed both the House and Senate and was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in September 1996. It was the law of the land until 2013, when United States v. Windsor chipped away at the heart of the legislation. Same-sex marriage would not be legal across the U.S. until 2015, when the Supreme Court handed down its Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
York said Lewis’ early support for LGBTQ rights was unsurprising, given his activism in the preceding decades.
“When you’ve stared death in the face solely because of the color of your skin, it gives you a different view of justice,” York said, referring to Lewis’ multiple near-death experiences fighting for civil rights, including during the infamous “Bloody Sunday” protest on Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. “He put his body on the line to create the world that we all thought was impossible.”
“John Lewis’ moral compass overruled whatever the stigma of the day was,” she added. “Equality for black people means equality for Black LGBTQ people, and equality for Black LGBTQ people means equality for all LGBTQ people, and I think that was a clear through-line for him.”
A decades-long ally
Lewis would continue to be on the forefront of nearly every major congressional proposal to advance LGBTQ rights.
On Lewis’ congressional website, there is a page dedicated to LGBTQ issues, which prominently features a powerful quote from Lewis.
“I fought too long and too hard to end discrimination based on race and color, to not stand up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” it reads. He then goes on to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he led the movement for racial equality, saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Lewis was a co-sponsor or vocal advocate for over a dozen congressional bills that sought to either expand LGBTQ rights or limit anti-LGBTQ discrimination, including the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) and the Respect for Marriage Act.
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, noted that Lewis worked closely with Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., during the drafting of the Equality Act — which would modify existing civil rights legislation to add protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity— and was a lead sponsor of the legislation.
Following Lewis’ death, Alphonso David, the Human Rights Campaign’s first Black president, called Lewis “a hero and civil rights icon who pushed our country closer to the promise of a more perfect union.”
“Future generations will learn how he faced down discrimination with courage and defiance, boldly challenging the United States to envision a future where every person, no matter their race, sexual orientation or gender identity, has an equal chance at the American Dream,” David said in a statement.
Lewis appeared at an HRC fundraiser in 2016 and told the crowd of mostly LGBTQ people, “You and I are partners.”
“We are part of an ongoing struggle to redeem the soul of America, to help people in this country and around the world come to grips with one simple truth: We are one people,” he added. “We are one family. We are the human family.”
York said she hopes Lewis’ drive to fight for equality — even if not for a group to which he belonged — will inspire others to do the same.
“He gave full-throated, passionate appeals that all of God’s children be treated equally, and that that included LGBTQ people, and that meant so much to me, both in my career as an advocate and advocating for other marginalized communities that I may not identify with, like the transgender community and intersex community,” she said. “He was a powerful example of how we should be doing advocacy at the margins, and I hope every member of Congress has taken a lesson from him.
A changer of hearts and minds
While Lewis’ LGBTQ advocacy undoubtedly changed hearts and minds across demographic spectrums, York, who is Black, said there was a special significance and power in having a straight, cisgender Black man as such a visible ally.
“I think that all of those identities that he carried helped Black fathers, brothers, nephews all across the country learn how to talk and accept their own children, their own relatives who had been hurt by homophobia and transphobia,” she said, adding that he “gave permission for so many others who were potential allies to be able to step out of their fear” and support LGBTQ equality.
“John Lewis is a man of deep faith — no one could question that,” she added. “So for someone who is a man of deep faith to say that LGBTQ people matter, are equal and deserve protection and dignity, that gave other people the language to be able to say the same thing in their families, in their churches, in their homes. I believe that probably saved countless lives.”
In a sobering survey released this month, The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis prevention organization, found that 2 in 5 LGBTQ youth in the U.S. have “seriously considered” suicide in the past year.
“I do believe that those numbers could have been even higher if it wasn’t for the full-throated advocacy that John Lewis gave, and by him doing that, the permission he gave to others to really show up as the fathers that they wanted to be for their children,” she said.
‘Power of his legacy’
In a posthumous op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday, Lewis wrote: “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”
York said this message underscores the “power of his legacy.”
“We all have the capacity to create change,” she said, adding that Lewis “started as a teenager doing work to bring equality for all people, and that’s something that our youth should be excited about.”
“These protests and rallies over the course of this summer are moving this country forward,” she added. “If we can just stay in it together — despite hurt feelings, despite trauma, despite the healing we’ve got to do together, despite our blindness to other people’s experiences — if we remain open to it all, we can create a country we can be proud of for our children and our children’s children.”
York said this coming together of different groups is also part of Lewis’ legacy.
“It hasn’t been about one group over the other,” she said. “It’s been about all of us getting across the bridge together.”
And, if Lewis’ many supporters are successful, that bridge could one day be named after him.
A gay Baltimore intensive care doctor passed away from coronavirus in his husband’s arms after months of battling the pandemic on the front line.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Dr Joseph Costa, 56, was the chief of the critical care division at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
As he was dying in the hospital he worked at on Saturday, 25 July, his husband of 28 years David Hart held him, while around 20 of Costa’s colleagues held a vigil.
Hart said: “Those who cared for Joe were his best friends. A housekeeper who knelt by his bed and shook with grief said: ‘I’m now losing my best friend.’”
He described his husband, who had worked at Mercy Medical Center since 1997, as the bravest man he ever knew.
Costa was an “egalitarian person”, Hart said, who often volunteered to work on holidays so his colleagues could spend time with their children.
The couple had a farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and Hart said: “Being married to a doctor isn’t easy and you give up a lot.
“When Joe and I were at the farm we always had such a good time. He was a workaholic and he told me I taught him how to relax.”
Hart said his husband’s death makes him even more frustrated to see people not taking the proper precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
There have been more that 3,000 deaths in Maryland due to COVID-19, and Hart added: “I keep thinking, now there is one less ICU doctor to care for pandemic patients in Baltimore.”
“It makes me want to take a bar of soap and write on my car’s rearview window that ‘My husband who saved so many lives died of COVID-19. Wear a mask!’”
Mercy Medical Center released a statement on death of the gay Baltimore doctor from coronavirus, saying Costa was “admired and respected” throughout Baltimore for “his clinical expertise”.
It added: “He was beloved by his patients and their family members – known for his warm and comforting bedside manner as well as his direct and informative communication style.
“When he counselled our patients and families, he did so with great compassion and empathy.
“For all the nurses and staff who worked closely with Joe on the intensive care unit, he was like an older brother that all admired and revered… A life so beautifully lived deserves to be beautifully remembered.
“Planning is underway now for a memorial service and details will be shared as soon as possible. We will grieve together and we will get through this challenging time together.”
Before Edafe Okporo founded New York City’s first and only shelter for asylum-seekers and refugees, he was wandering the streets of Elizabeth, New Jersey, a refugee with nowhere to go. Although he was homeless, Okporo was happy to be in the United States.
“Everything just changed when I stepped my feet into this country,” said Okporo, 30, an LGBTQ activist who fled his homeland, Nigeria, in 2016, “because there is an opportunity to dream of a better future, to have a path here as a gay man.”
Okporo grew up in Warri, a city in southern Nigeria. Not only was he poor growing up, but he also struggled with his sexuality. When high school classmates discovered that Okporo was interested in boys, he said, they outed him to his parents, who made him undergo conversion therapy.
Guest lay in beds provided at the shelter.Zac Hacmon
Later, while attending college in Enugu, Nigeria, he arranged a meeting with a man he had met through a dating website. What he thought was a date, he said, turned out to be a “siege.” Once he was inside the man’s apartment, he said, a group of men jumped out of a closet and held him hostage while they stole money from his bank account.
“That was the first time I realized that it’s not just that my parents were trying to prevent me from being gay,” he said, “but they were trying to protect me from such kind of persecution.”
Many such laws are thought to be rooted in the British Empire: According to a report published in the Cambridge Review of External Affairs in 2014, former British colonies are “much more likely” to criminalize same-sex acts than other countries. Since 1999, however, some parts of northern Nigeria that are governed by Sharia law punish homosexual activity with “caning, imprisonment or death by stoning,” according to Human Rights Watch.
Traumatized by the attack, Okporo spent the rest of college forcing himself to date women. He joined a church and even became a pastor. But after he graduated in 2014 — the same year Nigeria made same-sex relationships punishable by up to 10 years in prison — he decided he could no longer live a lie. He moved to the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where he helped found the International Centre for Advocacy on Right to Health, an LGBTQ rights organization and HIV clinic.
But Okporo’s activism made him a target. One night in 2016, alone in his apartment, he was startled awake by a loud noise. A mob, he said, was ramming down his door. They rushed in, dragged him into the street and beat him unconscious. Some good Samaritans found him, saw his ID card and carried him to the clinic where he worked.
“When I woke up in the clinic, I knew I had to leave Nigeria for me to be safe,” he said.
After fleeing to Dubai and then returning to Nigeria, he obtained a visa to attend the International LGBTQ Leaders Conference, organized by the Victory Institute, in Washington D.C. — a chance to seek asylum in the U.S., where same-sex marriage had recently been legalized and which he pictured as “a very accepting place.”
Clothes at the RDJ Refugee Shelter thrift store.Zac Hacmon
That image, he said, turned out to be different from the reality. Okporo approached an admission officer at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and explained that he was seeking asylum. He said the officer took him to an airport jail cell, where he was forced to sign deportation papers.
“The officer came and he put handcuffs on me,” Okporo said, “and drove me to the detention center in New Jersey.”
Okporo would spend five harrowing months in a detention center in Elizabeth. Immigration Equality, a group that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants, connected him with a lawyer who helped him fight deportation in court. After winning his case, he was released from detention, but he had nowhere to go.
His only resource was a phone number advertised on a flyer tacked to the wall of the detention center. The number belonged to First Friends of New Jersey and New York, an organization that supports detained immigrants and asylum-seekers.
A volunteer picked Okporo up and drove him to a YMCA shelter in Newark, New Jersey. He used a computer at the public library to connect with a former colleague from the International Centre for Advocacy on Right to Health, who was living in Queens, New York. She agreed to let him stay with her for three months while he found work, first at a New Jersey-based catering company and then at a nearby HIV clinic.
But Okporo wanted to do more to help asylum-seekers and refugees like himself. He persuaded the leaders of the RDJ Refugee Shelter in Harlem — named after homeless advocate Robert Daniel Jones — to turn the shelter into a full-time transitional refuge for migrants fleeing violence and persecution abroad.
Housed in a former church, the shelter is New York City’s only full-time refuge for asylum-seekers and refugees. The 10-bed shelter has provided temporary housing for more than 80 migrants, said Okporo, the shelter’s director. The shelter also provides legal counseling and job assistance.
The number of refugees in the U.S. is the lowest since 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. The Trump administration last year capped the number of refugees permitted into the U.S. at 18,000, down from 30,000. The administration also enacted a rulelast year that prevented immigrants from claiming asylum in the U.S. if they did not first try to claim it in a country they passed through on their way to the U.S. border.
Late last month, a federal judge ruled that the restriction was illegal. However, a newly proposed rule would allow the Trump administration to deny asylum to immigrants who are considered public health risks because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under those restrictions, Okporo said, asylum-seekers would face more barriers coming to the U.S. than ever before.
A bathroom at the shelter.Zac Hacmon
“The pandemic has given the administration an opportunity to really close the door for a lot of the refugees and asylum-seekers who usually expect America to be that place of safety when they think about fleeing their countries,” he said.
Not everyone fleeing homophobic and transphobic violence abroad is from a country that criminalizes homosexuality, he said, noting that a majority of those housed in the RDJ Refugee Shelter who have received asylum are from Honduras and Jamaica. While sex between men is outlawed in Jamaica, same-sex activity is legal in Honduras. Still, LGBTQ migrants, particularly those who are transgender, face widespread persecution in both countries, Okporo said. Many non-LGBTQ migrants, he added, are fleeing war-torn regions.
All too often, LGBTQ asylum-seekers who make the journey across the border end up homeless, he said, because family and friends with permanent residence in the U.S. will not open their doors to them.
“Most of them face a kind of rejection even from their community in New York,” Okporo said. “The shelter provides them that space to be themselves even in New York City.”
Okporo, who has a degree in food science, considers himself lucky. Many asylum-seekers do not have the education or proper documentation to qualify for jobs or shelter, he said. Transgender asylum-seekers and refugees in the process of transitioning are especially vulnerable, he said, because they often lack documentation and frequently experience discrimination and violence in shelters.
“Knowing that New York is one of the most liberal places in the world and people are still subjected to such kind of persecution just makes me wonder where else in the world can LGBTQ migrants be safe,” he said.
Edafe Okporo and Juan, a guest at the shelter for asylum seekers in New York City.Zac Hacmon
Okporo is a finalist for the David Prize, an initiative of the Walentas Family Foundation that awards grants to New Yorkers who are making a difference. Okporo said that if he is selected, he will use the money to expand the RDJ Refugee Shelter, which subsists largely on grants and donations. He would also train faith leaders around New York City to use their churches, mosques and temples as places of refuge for migrants fleeing violence and persecution.
Okporo no longer feels the need to hide who he is.
“I have wanted to be open about my sexuality all my life,” said Okporo, who is unashamed to hold hands with his boyfriend, Nicolas, when they walk the streets together. “There is no way I’m going to hide it.”
In June, for the second year in a row, Okporo shared his story during NYC Pride’s annual LGBTQ celebrations, which this year were virtual. He has also written a book, “Compassion is Worth More: Using Your Civil Power to Create Change.” He said it is important for people to listen to the struggles of LGBTQ migrants, who are unable to vote, and to understand that the fight for civil rights did not end with marriage equality.
“When I came to the U.S., I discovered that some states, they have laws that permit conversion therapy. I was shocked. … In the U.S., I thought that gay marriage had eliminated such kind of struggles,” he said.
“A lot of gay people in America after gay marriage think that it is over,” Okporo added. “It’s not over.”
CORRECTION (July 26, 2020, 11:30 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Okporo’s hometown of Warri. It is a city of more than 500,000 people in southern Nigeria; it is not a village.
The Republican Party in North Dakota has been condemned by a raft of party officials after it published vile and offensive remarks about the LGBT+ community.
In the party’s extended policy platform, they claimed that LGBT+ people “recruit children” and “prey” on women.
The policy document refers to bills that would advance LGBT+ rights as “SOGI bills”, meaning “sexual orientation and gender identity” bills.
It also argues that advancements in LGBT+ rights would impact adversely on the rights of straight and cisgender people – an argument queer people hear far too often — and goes on to make wildly offensive statements about the queer community without citing any evidence to back up their claims.
LGBT+ ‘practices’ are ‘unhealthy and dangerous’, according to the Republican Party in North Dakota.
“The Republican Party of North Dakota recognises that arbitrary discrimination is best sorted out in the free market which is invariably unforgiving in instances of unwarranted discrimination,” the platform says.
It then claims that LGBT+ identities – or “compulsions”, as they’re described – are “developed” rather than being genetic.
“SOGI laws empower those practicing LGBT behaviours to assume positions of mentorships of minors often over objection to parents influencing their emotions and thereby recruiting for their lifestyles,” it adds.
It goes on to say that legislative advancements in LGBT+ rights will be used to “attack religious freedom, free speech and livelihood of others”.
“Many LGBT practices are unhealthy and dangerous, sometimes endangering or shortening life and sometimes infecting society at large,” it adds.
“Therefore, be it resolved: The Republican Party of North Dakota opposes the passage of legislation which adds sexual orientation and gender identity to our century code as protected classes.”
Many LGBT practices are unhealthy and dangerous, sometimes endangering or shortening life and sometimes infecting society at large.
The document has been condemned by both Republican and Democrat lawmakers, as well as Republican governor of North Dakota Doug Burgum.
“As I’ve long said, all North Dakotans deserve to be treated equally and live free of discrimination,” he wrote on Twitter Thursday (July 23).
“There’s no place for the hurtful and divisive rhetoric in the NDGOP resolutions. We can respect one another’s freedoms without disrespecting or discriminating against the LGBT members of our state and our party, whom we support.”
North Dakota GOP regrets causing ‘any offence’ – but falls short of apologising.
Corby Kemmer, the executive director of the North Dakota GOP, said in a statement that they regret causing offence.
“We regret any offence this may have caused, and we will be reconsidering this resolution at a future meeting to bring it more in line with what delegates were attempting to communicate,” he said.
Democrat Josh Boschee, a gay man, told InForumsaid the arguments put forward in the resolution are harmful and give the state a bad name.
“Statements like this by the majority party don’t help when it comes to workforce recruitment or retaining the students we educate for 12 to 16 years,” he said.
“We see a lot of people leave the state because of bigotry like that.”
Meanwhile, Republican representative Thomas Beadle, who is running for state treasurer, lashed out at the anti-LGBT+ language on Twitter.
He said the party should be “welcoming to others, not discriminatory against people for how god made them”.
Republican senators Ray Holmberg, Curt Kreun and Scott Meyer said in a letter on Wednesday (July 22) that they stand with the LGBT+ community and would try to change the party.
US representative Kelly Armstrong said the party needs to do “a lot better”and must wipe out “hateful and divisive rhetoric”.
Davie Police Chief Dale Engle told town officials last week that he plans to retire on Sept. 3, the South Florida SunSentinel reported. He has been on paid leave for three months and will continue to be paid until he retires.
Engle was accused of saying Broward Sheriff’s school resource officer Shannon Bennett died because of his lifestyle. On Monday night, Engle told the SunSentinel he didn’t make the remark.
“I maintain my innocence,” he said.
Engle was placed on leave shortly after the state’s Fraternal Order of Police filed a complaint against him.
He said Davie officials didn’t pressure him to retire. Engle said he is leaving on his own with no pressure from the city. His decision to retire was fueled by a toxic backlash his teenage children received on social media after the allegations surfaced, he told the newspaper.
Students at the University of North Texas (UNT) are trying to get a “Young Conservatives” group banned from campus due to “racism, transphobia and homophobia”.
The Young Conservatives of Texas is a state-wide organisation that has chapters in 20 universities.
Ryan Semegran, president of the university’s LGBT+ alliance organisation GLAD UNT, was one of the students who started the petition.
Semegran told PinkNews that they want the Young Conservatives chapter removed from campus due to “blatant homophobia, transphobia, and racism” towards students.
The petition links to a tweet posted by the UNT chapter of Young Conservatives in September of 2019 that said: “Pronouns in your twitter bio isn’t a personality trait”.
During the same month, the group told UNT GLAD in a since-deleted tweet that their group was based on “having HIV”.
In October of last year, the group tweeted: “It’s #NationalComingOutDay so come to the fountain mall today at 12pm to come out as a conservative – and get snacks.”
Semegran’s petition said the tweet “dismissed the countless LGBT+ individuals who bravely come out and publicly express their gender identity and sexual orientation”.
The students have also accused the group of racism over a bake sale in 2016where the price list charged people different amounts based on their gender and ethnicity.
LGBT+ students and people of colour are being made to feel ‘unsafe’ by Young Conservatives at the Texas university.
“UNT is a minority serving university that prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity but seems to turn a blind eye when those minority students feel unsafe on campus with an organisation like Young Conservatives of Texas there,” Semegran said.
“They claim we are attacking their conservative values when it isn’t that at all. We are speaking out against their blatant hateful actions that they do not take accountability for.”
Semegran said the Young Conservatives group is a hate group disguised as a conservative organisation.
“Students of colour, queer students and international students go to find refuge at universities like UNT,” they added.
“It champions freedom of speech; however under UNT’s own policy, this is not applicable to hateful speech that makes students feel unsafe or is strenuous on their health/wellbeing.”
Semegran said they have received “countless testimonies” from queer students, past and present, as well as their family members, claiming that they have been made to feel unsafe on campus by the Young Conservatives group.
LGBT+ students should feel safe to be who they are without being harassed online or on campus grounds. It’s basic human decency.
“If this is how a group thinks they can act towards the LGBT+ community and to people of colour on campus, this is probably how they are going to act once they are out of college.”
Semegran said the comments made by the UNT chapter of the Young Conservatives about the LGBT+ community and about people of colour have been “downright scary”.
“At the end of the day this is ultimately a campus safety issue,” Semegran said.
“LGBT+ students should feel safe to be who they are without being harassed online or on campus grounds. It’s basic human decency.”
PinkNews has contacted the University of North Texas, the Young Conservatives chapter at UNT and the Young Conservatives of Texas for comment.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued Thursday for a more limited U.S. view of global human rights advocacy based on the principals laid out by America’s Founding Fathers, a suggestion critics assumed meant stepping away from more modern concepts such as support for women and the LGBTQ communities around the world.
Pompeo, speaking in Philadelphia, singled out property rights and religious freedom as “foremost” principals in a speech that elsewhere complained about the “proliferation” of protections in international agreements related to human rights.
“As was clear from the start, Secretary Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights was designed to challenge the international consensus with a narrow view of human rights, that among other things would leave LGBTQ people even more vulnerable to violence and discrimination.”
DAVID STACY, HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN
“We are forced to grapple with tough choices about which rights to promote and how to think about this,” he said. “Americans have not only unalienable rights, but also positive rights granted by governments, courts and multilateral bodies. Many are worth defending in light of our founding; others aren’t.”
Pompeo on Thursday released a report produced by the Commission on Unalienable Rights, which he tasked last year with conducting a broad review of U.S. human rights policy, arguing at the time that it had “lost its bearings.”
Before its release, many human rights groups were skeptical of the commission, whose chairwoman was conservative legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
Pompeo noted that the report emphasizes property rights and religious liberty. “No one can enjoy the pursuit of happiness if you cannot own the fruits of your own labor. And no society can retain its legitimacy or a virtuous character without religious freedom,” he said.
The report did not produce any specific recommendations and steered clear of endorsing policy proposals. But experts who parsed it for direction noted, for example, that it referred to abortion and same-sex marriage not as rights but “divisive social and political controversies.”
Critics such as Sen. Bob Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the report would damage the United States’ reputation as a champion of human rights around the world by narrowing the scope of who deserves protection.
“As feared, Secretary Pompeo used his speech to insinuate a hierarchy of rights where property rights and religious liberty are ‘foremost’ rights and some rights are not ‘worth defending,’” said the New Jersey Democrat.
Critics also faulted the makeup of the commission, saying it was weighted with conservatives, and the public did not have sufficient opportunity to weigh in on its findings before the report’s release.
“As was clear from the start, Secretary Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights was designed to challenge the international consensus with a narrow view of human rights, that among other things would leave LGBTQ people even more vulnerable to violence and discrimination,” said David Stacy, government affairs director of Human Rights Campaign.
Pompeo also took aim in his speech at demonstrators “pulling down statues” and “desecrating monuments,” in echoes of President Donald Trump’s recent speech at Mount Rushmore. The secretary of state said it was an attack on the people who fought for the rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence.
He also criticized The New York Times for its 1619 Project, an award-winning explanation of the persistent legacy of slavery in the United States.
“America is fundamentally good and has much to offer the world because our founders recognized the existence of God-given unalienable rights and designed a durable system to protect them,” he said. “But these days I must say even saying America is fundamentally good has become controversial.”
At least 843 LGBTQ people currently serve in elected offices across the United States, constituting a 21 percent increase since June 2019, according to the LGBTQ Victory Institute’s “Out for America 2020” census of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer elected officials.
Particularly pronounced increases were seen in the number of LGBTQ mayors, with a 35 percent year-over-year jump; the number of bisexual and queer-identified people, with increases of 53 percent and 71 percent, respectively; and the number of transgender women serving in elected office, with a 40 percent year-over-year rise.
“In a world where our civil rights are under attack, and many are questioning their place in the world, the affirming power of such representation cannot be overstated,” said Mondaire Jones, who recently won the Democratic nomination in New York’s 17th Congressional District and, if elected in November, could be the first openly gay Black man elected to Congress.
Much of this increase was driven by what Victory called a “rainbow wave” — a surge in LGBTQ wins in the 2018 and 2019 elections. Victory hopes that 2020 will usher even more LGBTQ people into elected office.
“While LGBTQ people are running for office in historic numbers, we remain severely underrepresented at every level of government — and that must change,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, said in a statement.
According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, roughly 5 percent of U.S. adults say they are LGBTQ. According to the Victory Institute, just 0.17 percent of roughly a half million elected officials are known to be LGBTQ. The Victory Institute says that in order for LGBTQ people to achieve “equitable representation,” there would need to be 22,544 more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in elected office.
But LGBTQ political gains are not evenly distributed. In some types of political office, LGBTQ people are near equity, which Victory defines as having the percentage of elected positions held by openly LGBTQ elected officials equal to the percentage of LGBTQ people in the U.S. adult population (currently 4.5 percent). At the governor level, there would need to be one more LGBTQ person elected to reach that goal (total of 3 governors). In the U.S. Senate, three more LGBTQ elected officials would achieve equity (5 senators total).
State legislatures, on the other hand, lag behind: One-hundred-and-seventy-three LGBTQ people would need to be elected in order to achieve equity, according to Victory’s tally.
The majority of the 843 LGBTQ officials — 54 percent — are gay men, followed by 30 percent lesbians, 6 percent bisexuals and 5 percent queer officials.
The vast majority of all LGBTQ officials are cisgender — 94 percent. Roughly 2 percent are trans women and a half of 1 percent are trans men. Less than 1 percent of elected officials identify as intersex, two-spirit, gender-nonconforming or nonbinary.
America’s LGBTQ elected officials are mostly white — 77 percent — followed by 10 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Black, 2 percent multiracial, 2 percent Asian or Pacific Islander and less than 1 percent each for indigenous and Middle Eastern.
“One of the most energizing features of this campaign is the sheer volume of messages I have received from members of the LGBTQ community, young and old, saying that my candidacy as an openly gay, Black person has inspired them to accept their own identities and live authentic lives,” Jones said in a text message to NBC News.
“I’m so humbled to be in a position to provide representation that I never had growing up,” Jones said.
The other openly gay Black man running for Congress is Ritchie Torres, currently the youngest member of the New York City Council, who has a strong lead in vote returns for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 15th Congressional District, which is also overwhelmingly Democratic. (The New York City Board of Elections began counting absentee ballots in the second week of July, and NBC News has not yet officially called the NY-15 election.)
While both Jones and Torres would be the House’s first openly gay Black members, they apparently would not be the body’s first gay Black members.
That honor is thought to belong to Barbara Jordan of Texas, who in 1972 became the first Black woman to represent the South in Congress, and in 1976 became the first Black woman to be a keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention. It was only after her death in 1996 that her lesbian identity, hidden out of fear of political ramifications, was finally revealed.
