n a ruling on Thursday (August 1), Chief Justice Matthew Durrant said “same-sex couples must be afforded all of the benefits the State has linked to marriage and freely grants to opposite sex-couples.”
The case was brought to the Supreme Court by an unnamed married gay couple in 2017, after a judge refused to approve their surrogacy agreement with a heterosexual couple.
At the time, Utah’s law only permitted surrogacy if the “intended mother is unable to bear a child or is unable to do so without unreasonable risk to her physical or mental health or to the unborn child.”
The judge argued that the law’s use of the words ‘mother’ and ‘her’ plainly referred to a woman, and that because neither of the legally married intended parents were women, he could not permit the surrogacy.
This law was written before gay marriage was legalised in the US in 2015.
But this week the Justices of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously to strike down this portion of the law, which presents a major barrier to parenthood for those in same-sex marriages.
“A valid gestational agreement is undoubtedly a benefit linked to marriage,” Chief Justice Durrant wrote.
“Obtaining a valid gestational agreement is, in many cases, one of the most important benefits afforded to couples who may not be medically capable of having a biological child. Such an agreement works to secure parental rights to an unborn child and bestows rights and benefits on the intended parents.
“The State has explicitly conditioned this benefit on a petitioner’s marital status; no unmarried couple may obtain one. It is therefore unquestionably linked to marriage.”
The gay couple who challenged the law say they hope that the landmark ruling “will help Utah’s law overcome the barrier of discrimination.”
Bisexual individuals may feel discriminated against and have high rates of stress and depression because they believe that their sexual identity is often questioned or denied by others, according to a Rutgers study.- Advertisement –
“Our findings suggest that the unique experiences of discrimination that bisexual individuals deal with on a regular basis may negatively impact their own feelings of acceptance in the world and their mental health,” said Melanie Maimon, lead researcher and a graduate student of social psychology at Rutgers.
The study, which appears in the journal Self and Identity, is among the first to examine and find that concerns about belonging are associated with depressive symptoms for bisexual people.
The researchers found that bisexual individuals experienced identity denial, which made them feel less accepted and open to greater depressive symptoms, according to the study.
Across two samples, 445 bisexual individuals were recruited and participated in an online questionnaire. The participants responded to inquires about their experiences with identity denial, how much they thought others endorsed negative stereotypes about bisexuality, their thoughts on societal beliefs that bisexuality is not a legitimate identity and their concerns about their belonging. Participants were also asked to indicate any depressive symptoms that arose after they realized their sexual orientation.
The study asked questions such as, “When your sexuality comes up in conversation, how frequently have others said or implied that you’re just confused about your sexuality?” and “To what extent do you think that other people believe that people who identify as bisexual are cheaters?”
Rutgers researchers found that bisexual individuals who experience identity denial are more likely to believe that society endorses negative stereotypes about them, such as the belief that bisexuality is not a real sexual orientation and that bisexuals are actually heterosexual, gay or lesbian.
Past work has found that bisexual individuals tend to have higher rates of mood disorders than do heterosexuals, gay individuals and lesbians. These findings may help explain why this difference in mental health may occur, Maimon said.
“With a better understanding of the relationships between depressive symptoms, identity denial, uncertainty about belonging and beliefs that society has negative views of bisexuality, we can attempt to reduce the negative experiences that seem to be harming bisexuals and their mental health,” said Diana Sanchez, coauthor and professor of psychology at Rutgers–New Brunswick’s School of Arts and Sciences.
The researchers recommended the general public be open-minded when interacting with people who are bisexual, learn more about bisexuality and respect how bisexual individuals choose to identify.
This year was the first time an openly gay candidate participated in a presidential debate, and both NBC’s debate in June and CNN’s debate this week included openly LGBTQ moderators. However, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer issues earned barely a mention during nearly 10 hours of debate over four nights involving 21 Democratic candidates for president.
On Night 1 of this week’s debate in Detroit, CNN anchor Dana Bash asked Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, about the student loan debt still held by him and his husband. Buttigieg dove into an answer about debt-free college. Aside from that, no LGBTQ-related questions or answers came up until Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, in his closing statement, reprised a past criticism and called President Donald Trump a “homophobe.”
On Night 2, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York was the first candidate to bring up the LGBTQ community in any significant way. In her opening statement, Gillibrand said her mother, one of only three women in her law school class, had “worked with gay couples for basic rights.”
“As a freshman senator, I was told you couldn’t repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Even members of my own party told me it wasn’t convenient,” Gillibrand continued. “When are civil rights ever convenient? We stood up to the Pentagon and got it done — not impossible.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also made brief mention of the LGBTQ community when answering a question about how he would heal racial divides.
“I’ve never been a black teenager pulled over in a white neighborhood. I’ve never been a woman talked over in a meeting. I’ve never been an LGBTQ member subject to a slur,” Inslee said.
The absence of any direct question about the LGBTQ community from CNN moderators Dana Bash, Jake Tapper and Don Lemon did not go unnoticed.
“Questions about LGBTQ people weren’t included during either night of this week’s #DemDebate,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, tweeted Wednesday night. “This is unacceptable especially as the Trump administration continues to attack the lives of LGBTQ people.”
In the June debate hosted by NBC News in Miami, LGBTQ issues only came up in a significant way when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii was asked about her past anti-LGBTQ activities, like working for an organization led by her father that advocated for same-sex marriage bans and “gay conversion therapy.”
In response, Gabbard touted her vote for the Equality Act — a federal bill that would modify existing civil rights legislation to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people — and said that she held views when she was younger “that I no longer hold today.”
But Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey interjected after Gabbard’s response, saying, “This is not enough.”
“We do not talk enough about trans Americans, especially African American trans Americans, and the incredibly high rates of murder right now,” he said.
Over the course of three 2016 presidential debates between then-candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the LGBTQ community came up twice. In their third debate, in response to an opening question about the Supreme Court, Clinton said she felt strongly that the court “needs to stand on the side of the American people.”
“For me, that means that we need a Supreme Court that will stand up on behalf of women’s rights, on behalf of the rights of the LGBT community, that will stand up and say no to Citizens United, a decision that has undermined the election system in our country because of the way it permits dark, unaccountable money to come into our electoral system,” she said.
Later in the debate, while attacking the Clinton Foundation’s Arab donors, Trump said: “You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people that push gays off business — off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.”
During the vice presidential debates between Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic nominee, and Mike Pence, Pence was never asked about his extensive anti-LGBTQ record as governor of Indiana and a member of Congress, which many advocates saw as a major “missed opportunity.“
On October 10, the Democratic presidential hopefuls will have an opportunity to directly address LGBTQ issues in a candidate forumhosted by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. The event, which will not be a debate but rather a forum in which candidates speak one by one, has yet to officially announce which candidates will participate.
On Friday, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law Executive Order No. 97, which directs the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services to ensure no state tax money is used for conversion therapy for LGBTQ children. The order prohibits any medical or mental health provider receiving state or federal funds allocated to the North Carolina DHHS to use those funds for conversion therapy for patients under 18 years of age.
In a statement on the bill, Gov. Cooper said, “State taxpayer money shouldn’t be used for a practice on children that major medical associations agree is harmful and ineffective. Conversion therapy has been shown to pose serious health risks, and we should be protecting all of our children, including those who identify as LGBTQ, instead of subjecting them to a dangerous practice.”
The latest research found that hate crimes increased by nine percent to 2,009 cases in the 30 cities surveyed by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) at California State University San Bernardino, which released the report on Tuesday (July 30).
It revealed that the surge in hate crimes marks the steepest rise since 2015 and the fifth increase in consecutive years.
This increase comes despite overall crimes decreasing in the cities examined, according to the report.
The publication showed that the most common hate crime victims reported to police in major cities in 2018 were LGBT+ people, Jews and black people.
While the research found that extremist homicides “decreased markedly” in 2018 to 22, it said that the most frequent hate killings were carried out by white nationalists and those in the far right, with these murders increasing to 17 2018 up from 13 the year before.
LGBTQ, Jewish and black people most common hate crime victims in 2018, says report
Jewish people were the direct target of half of the extremist murders in 2018, which the report said was the “worst year ever for anti-Semitic killings in the United States.”
It concluded there was a spike in hate-motivated murders occurred around political events, such as the mid-term elections.
“The overwhelming majority of declining extremist domestic homicides in 2018 were by white nationalist/far right sole assailants who attacked around the mid-term elections,” reads the report.
“Thus, the risk of extremist violence by them will likely continue into this current nascent political season, around catalytic events in campaigns, international conflicts, terrorism, and heated rhetoric.”
PinkNews has contacted CSHE for comment.
In 2018, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) recorded at least 26 killings of trans people in the USA.
The overwhelming majority of declining extremist domestic homicides in 2018 were by white nationalist/far right sole assailants.
The figures come as research suggests that hate crimes are on the rise internationally.
In the UK, it was recently revealed that homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have more than doubled in the past four years, according to analysis carried out by the Guardian.
Donald Zarda is one of three LGBTI people whose employment discrimination case will be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) this year.
The Supreme Court will decide whether LGBTI people are granted civil protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Zarda’s team are arguing the provision protecting people from sex-based discrimination must also apply to sexual orientation, as the two are inextricably linked.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor, this could mean LGBTI people cannot be fired from a job based on their sexuality under federal law. If ruled against, LGBTI people would have to rely on state and city statutes for protection, leaving many without.
The third one is Altitude Express, Inc, v Melissa Zarda. (Donald Zarda unfortunately passed away in a skydiving accident. His sister, Melissa, and partner, Bill, are now the petitioners)
What this Supreme Court case is about
Donald Zarda was an employee at Altitude Express, Inc, formerly doing business as Skydive Long Island, under New York laws.
During the summer of 2010, Rosanna Orellana and her boyfriend, David Kengle, went skydiving with Altitude Express. They both purchased tandem skydives. This means the instructor is strapped hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with the client, allowing the instructor to deploy the parachute.
Zarda was Orellana’s instructor.
At some point during the experience, Zarda told Orellana that he was gay and ‘had an ex-husband’. Zarda said he tells female clients of his sexual orientation in order to avoid any awkwardness at being strapped so close together.
Afterwards, Orellana told her boyfriend Zarda touched her inappropriately during the dive. She claims he used his sexual orientation to excuse his ‘inappropriate behavior’.
Kenge complained to Altitude Express’ owner, Ray Maynard. He then fired Zarda, claiming he had a history of similar complaints of inappropriate behavior. However, when Zarda sought unemployment welfare, Altitude Express told the New York Department for Labor that Zarda was fired ‘for shar[ing] inappropriate information with [customers] regarding his personal life’.
A month after being fired, Zarda filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
In it, he claims ‘[a]ll of the men at [his workplace] made light of the intimate nature of being strapped to a member of the opposite sex’. However, he says he was fired because he ‘honestly referred to [his] sexual orientation and did not conform to the straight male macho stereotype.’
How the case progressed
The District Court (and later affirmed by the Second Circuit court) dismissed Zarda’s original claims of discrimination on sex-based stereotypes.
Instead, in an appeal, Zarda asked the Second Circuit to reconsider its interpretation of Title VII to include sexual orientation with sex discrimination.
The Second Circuit court ruled in favor of Zarda, stating it’s impossible to discuss sexual orientation without referencing someone’s sex. Chief Judge Katzman of the Second Circuit explained that to ‘identify the sexual orientation of a particular person, we need to know the sex of the person and that of the people to who he or she is attracted.’
So, in this case, an employer who says a man attracted to other men cannot work at the business, but takes no action against a woman attracted to men, is discriminating based on the person’s sex.
Support and contest
Over 2,000 signatories submitted nearly 50 friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the three LGBTI cases. Friend-of-the-court briefs are documents offering expertise or insight to the court submitted by someone who is not part of the hearing, nor have they been solicited by a party involved.
Businesses – including heavyweights like Apple and the Bank of America – argue affirming protections for LGBTI workers would be beneficial. The companies argue this will allow them to recruit and retain top talent, as well as generate ideas from a diverse background. They can only do this if the employee doesn’t fear unemployment if they disclose their gender identity or sexuality.
Thirty-five high-ranking Republicans are in favor of the decision, arguing for civil rights protections from a conservative point-of-view.
Chairperson for the Republican National Committee (2005 – 2007), Kenneth Mehlman, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times: ‘Our party should support people’s ability to reap the rewards of their labor – to earn a fair and honest living and to work where they want to work.
‘We are the party of economic freedom, personal liberty and limited governmental interference.’
Religious groups, such as the Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Muslims for Progressive Values filed a brief supporting the dignity and worth of all people, including LGBTI people.
However, not everyone is in support of affirming these rights. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has argued against it.
In their brief, the Justice Department says: ‘The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination.
‘It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.’
What happens now?
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for the case on 8 October. A decision is likely to be handed down in spring 2020, during the presidential race.
The Supreme Court currently has a conservative majority. Trump has nominated two conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The U.S. House approved on Wednesday — with zero opposition — legislation that would allow same-sex couples to obtain an estimated $67 million in tax refunds if they married before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.
The legislation, known as the PRIDE Act, or the Promoting Respect for Individuals’ Dignity and Equality Act, was introduced by Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Andy Levin (D-Mich.)
The PRIDE Act was approved Wednesday as amended by a voice vote. No recorded vote was taken in opposition either by Democrats or Republicans.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who’s gay and co-chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus, spoke out in favor of the bill on the House floor.
“Equality takes many forms,” Takano said. “It means civil, social and financial equality. This legislation directly tackles financial inequality created by parts of our tax code head on.”
The PRIDE Act would remove gendered language — like husband and wife — from the U.S. tax code. Additionally, the legislation comprises the Refund Equality Act, which would allow same-sex couples who married before DOMA was struck down to claim tax refunds for which they would’ve been eligible in the past if not for the anti-gay federal law, which barred recognition of same-sex marriage for the purposes of federal benefits.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down DOMA in 2013 as of a lawsuit filed by lesbian widow Edie Windsor, the Internal Revenue Service for the first-time allowed individuals in same-sex marriages to file jointly — potentially making them eligible for tax refund not eligible to them as single filers.
The IRS also allowed these couples to file an amended return for a tax refund for up to three years in the past: 2010, 2011, and 2012. The PRIDE Act would extend that period, allowing the IRS to provide refunds to married same-sex couples from previous years they lived in state that recognized their union.
Jurisdictions that recognized same-sex marriage more than three years before the DOMA decision were Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and D.C.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement the PRIDE Act is about “honoring our diversity and providing long-overdue justice to countless same-sex couples across the country who have been denied critical tax refunds because of who they are and who they love.”
“Advancing the PRIDE Act is a critical step in bringing our nation closer to fulfilling its founding promise that all are created equal,” Pelosi said. “As we celebrate this important success, House Democrats will continue to drive progress for all Americans, making clear that liberty, justice and equality are America’s guiding principles – not bigotry or discrimination.”
The PRIDE Act and the Refund Equality Act would allow same-sex couples to regain from and cost the federal government an estimated $67 million, according to scoring from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
A Democratic aide said the PRIDE Act wouldn’t require same-sex couple married before the DOMA decision to file amended return, so they won’t be forced to pay additional taxes in the event they would have had to pay more — not less — by filing a joint return.
Democratic aides said the only change made to the PRIDE Act upon amendment on the House floor was the inclusion of pay-for language regarding failure to file penalties and PAYGO scorecard language added as amendments at the House Rules Committee.
The legislation now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has endorsed companion legislation known as the Refund Equality Act.
The pro-LGBT bill will likely face an uphill climb in that chamber.Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) controls the floor and is the self-avowed “grim reaper” for legislation approved the House.
Erin Hatch, a Chu spokesperson, however, was optimistic of the prospects of the PRIDE Act in the Senate.
“Given the bipartisan support the bill received in the House, we’d be very disappointed if Sen. McConnell didn’t bring it up for a vote,” Hatch said.
The Washington Blade has placed a request in with McConnell’s office seeking comment on whether he’ll bring up the PRIDE Act for a vote.
A same-sex couple in Georgia said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the U.S. State Department is unconstitutionally refusing to recognize their daughter’s rightful American citizenship.
The State Department’s policy treats married same-sex couples as if their marriages do not exist and treats them differently from married straight couples in violation of the law and the Constitution, according to the suit filed in federal court in Atlanta. It was filed on behalf of Derek Mize and Jonathan Gregg, whose daughter Simone was born in England in July 2018 via surrogate.
Both men are U.S. citizens and are listed as her parents on the birth certificate. But because only one has a biological connection to her, the lawsuit says, the State Department is treating her as if she was born outside of marriage, triggering additional conditions for the recognition of her citizenship.
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
A child born abroad to married U.S. citizens is automatically a U.S. citizen as long as one parent has lived in the U.S., the lawsuit says. But there are additional requirements if the parents are not married or if only one is a U.S. citizen.
Mize was born and raised in Mississippi, while Gregg was born in London to a U.S. citizen mother and British father and was raised in London with dual citizenship.
The couple met in 2014 in New York, where Mize was living. Gregg soon moved to New York so they could be together, and the pair married in 2015. They moved to Georgia in 2017.
A close friend in England agreed to be their surrogate. Mize stayed in England with her for most of the pregnancy, and Gregg joined them for the final five weeks. Both men were present for Simone’s birth in July 2018 — Gregg cut the umbilical cord while Mize held her. They returned to their home in Decatur, just outside Atlanta, in September.
Preparing to file their taxes in March, Mize went to get a Social Security Number for Simone to claim her as a dependent, he said in a phone interview. The Social Security office staff told him they needed a consular record of birth abroad or a U.S. passport for her and that he would need to get that from the U.S. embassy in London.
The couple brought Simone to London in April, armed with their U.S. passports, their marriage certificate and Simone’s birth certificate. Once the embassy staff realized both parents were men, they started asking invasive questions about how Simone was conceived and who the biological parent was, Mize said. After three hours of questions and waiting, Mize said, the embassy staff said Simone was not eligible for citizenship.
Since she’s the child of two men and not biologically related to both, the State Department treated her as if she was born “out of wedlock,” the lawsuit says. And because Gregg, the biological parent, hadn’t lived in the U.S. for five years prior to Simone’s birth, the State Department determined she’s not a U.S. citizen.
Simone, who has British citizenship through Gregg, was allowed to return to the U.S. in April on a tourist visa. But that visa expires soon, leaving her without legal status here, which Mize says is a terrifying prospect.
The lawsuit was their last resort, he said. It was filed by lawyers with Lambda Legal and Immigration Equality, advocates for LGBTQ rights.
The law presumes that when a child is born to a married couple, both are legal parents, and the State Department routinely makes that assumption for male-female married couples, said Lambda Legal lawyer Karen Loewy. The department’s policy does not apply that same presumption to same-sex couples despite a legal requirement to do so, she said.
During their three-hour wait at the embassy, Mize and Gregg watched about 20 male-female couples come in, present the same documents they had provided and walk out with passports for their children, Mize said. None of them were asked how the child was conceived and whether they were biologically related, he said.
Having experienced discrimination because of his sexual orientation in the past, Mize said he often wondered during the early months of Simone’s life whether people were judging his family. But by the time they went to the embassy, he said, “I was really starting to believe all that paranoia was unfounded.”
When the embassy staff didn’t recognize his marriage or his parental relationship to his daughter, he said, it all came rushing back.
“In that moment, every anxiety I’ve ever had in my life about being gay and different came into my body and I just wanted to cry,” he said.
A former Air Force captain who is once again running against a Texas congressman whose sprawling district borders the U.S.-Mexico border on July 18 described the Trump administration’s immigration policy as “a moral crisis.”
“It’s shortsighted at best,” Gina Ortiz Jones told the Washington Blade during an interview at a Mexican restaurant near her home in San Antonio. “It’s cruel at worst.”
Jones in 2018 lost to U.S. Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) by 926 votes. She announced in May that she will challenge him again.
Hurd represents Texas’ 23rd congressional district, which includes 40 percent of the entire U.S.-Mexico border. The U.S. Border Patrol Station in Clint, Texas, where hundreds of migrant children have been kept in crowded, unsanitary conditions, and the border cities of Eagle Pass and Del Rio are located within the district.
Jones said Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano, who is openly gay, recently told her his city loses $40,000 a day in revenue because of vehicles have stopped traveling to Del Rio because of long wait times to drive over the Del Rio International Bridge that separates it from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Jones also said Del Rio officials have tapped into their budget to help migrants who are in their city.
“It’s an economic crisis,” said Jones, referring to the Trump administration’s immigration policy. “It’s certainly a moral crisis when you think about what’s happening in some of these detention centers and Texas 23 is on the frontline of this, I mean literally and figuratively.”
‘We obviously challenged a lot of assumptions’
Jones, 38, is a first-generation Filipina American whose single mother immigrated from the Philippines.
Jones and her sister grew up on San Antonio’s West Side. Jones graduated from John Jay High School.
She was an intelligence officer in the Air Force during the Iraq war. Jones served under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
She would be the first openly LGBT person to represent Texas in Congress if she were to beat Hurd in November. The LGBTQ Victory Fund is among the organizations that have endorsed Jones.
“We obviously challenged a lot of assumptions about what it takes to win in Texas,” she said. “926 votes is all that I came up short the last time.”
Jones added her sexual orientation is “not something obviously that I have hidden or shied away from discussing, everything from my coming out story to how that experience allows me to identify with, empathize with communities that have been left behind.”
“That’s everything from our Dreamers to people who live in a rural area that feel like no one’s paying attention to them, no one’s looking out for them,” she said.
Jones last month attended Del Rio’s first Pride event. She was the grand marshal of the Eagle Pass Pride Parade that took place in October 2018.
Jones acknowledged “we are much further along” on LGBT-specific issues in San Antonio and in El Paso, which is just outside Texas’ 23rd congressional district. She conceded, however, the Texas Legislature remains hostile to LGBT rights.
“While we are making great progress, in the last session there were 20 some odd bills that were aimed at denying us rights,” said Jones.
Jones said “elections matter” when the Blade asked her about passage of the Equality Act,which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights law, in the U.S. House of Representatives in May. Jones added it is “unfortunate” the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate “won’t bring it up for a vote.”
“That speaks to Sen. McConnell’s leadership or lack there of,” she said.
“So we’re moving in the right direction,” added Jones, referring to the Equality Act and the Democratic-controlled House. “People can see what is possible. For me it’s just a reminder of what’s at stake.”
Jones also criticized Trump over the reinstatement of the ban on openly transgender servicemembers.
“The fight is not done on a number of fronts,” she said.
Jones told the Blade that Hurd’s stance on LGBT issues is among the reasons that prompted her to challenge him again. Jones pointed out Hurd, who is seen as a moderate Republican, has voted against the expansion of Social Security and Medicare and opposed an increase in the federal minimum wage.
Jones also told the Blade that Hurd supports a Justice Department lawsuit that says the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
“My community is working class,” said Jones. “I’m a product of this community … I served in countries where women and minorities are targeted, where governments disregard for conflict of interest has hollowed out their country. They attack institutions, so I can speak to the moment as well, but also understanding the impact of these votes on my community and how that makes it harder for people just like me to grow up healthy, get an education and serve our country.”
“At the end of the day I look at what somebody does and not what they say,” she added. “When I look at his voting record, it’s a vote that has time and time again hurt the district.”
In heavily Democratic New York City, the toughest part of political elections typically takes place in the primaries, long before the general election. Indeed, after Rep. José Serrano, a longtime congressman representing the southern Bronx, captured the Democratic nomination for New York’s 15th Congressional District in 2018, he went on to beat his Republican opponent with 96 percent of the vote; Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both won the district with over 90 percent of the vote.
But Serrano is retiring, and when New York Democrats go to polls in the June 2020 primary for the 15th Congressional District, they will have the choice of two of the best-known and most dissimilar New York City Council members: Ritchie Torres and Ruben Diaz Sr.
Torres, 31, is the youngest member of the New York City Council and one of its five openly gay members. Torres said he’s throwing his hat in the ring for Congress because federal office is the best venue for pursuing his legislative passions of overhauling public housing and focusing on the issues of concentrated poverty.
“I’m a legislator at heart; I’m a fighter at heart,” Torres said, “and on the City Council, I chair the Committee on Oversight and Investigations, and I could easily imagine myself as an effective questioner or cross examiner in Washington, D.C.”
‘It’s personal’
Torres speaks with the confidence of someone who has already overcome much to be where he is. As the youngest member of the New York City Council and its only openly LGBTQ Afro-Latino member, he said he had to overcome homophobia in the Bronx to win his first election — and he blames fellow council member and current congressional opponent Ruben Diaz Sr.
Diaz, a 76-year-old Pentecostal minister, has made news outside his council district for a series of deeply homophobic remarks he has made over decades.
“I remember when I first ran,” Torres said. “I had no ties to the party machine. I had no ties to a political dynasty. I was a 24-year-old, Afro-Latino, gay kid struggling to fully come to terms with his sexual identity, and terrified to run as an openly LGBT candidate because of the homophobic culture that people like Ruben Diaz Sr. created in the Bronx.”
“It’s personal,” Diaz added. “He made the experience of running for public office more terrifying for me.”
But Torres won and became the youngest member of the council, where he sits in the Democratic caucus alongside both Ruben Diaz Sr. and speaker Corey Johnson, who is also gay. Earlier this year, Torres and Johnson worked together to strip Diaz of committee positions after he said that the New York City Council is “controlled by the homosexual community.”
The Diaz family is one of New York City’s political dynasties; Ruben Diaz Jr. is currently the Bronx Borough President and one of the city’s most popular elected officials. Ruben Diaz Sr.’s career spans the New York City Council and the New York State Senate — and were he to win the generally low-turnout Democratic primary next year, he would stand a solid chance of being elected to Congress as a Democrat running in a solidly Democratic district.
“My issue with him is that there’s a party for people like him: It’s the Republican Party,” Torres said. “He should be running in a Republican primary. He is a Trump Republican masquerading as a Democrat.”
“He had the temerity to bring Ted Cruz to the South Bronx,” Torres said, also noting Diaz’s vote against New York’s 2011 same-sex marriage bill. “He has been a supporter of the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself. The contrast between the reverend and me could not be more pronounced. It is a choice between making history and turning the clock back.”
NBC News asked Ruben Diaz Sr. to respond to Torres’ assertions that he is a homophobic supporter of Donald Trump. Diaz responded with the following in an email: “While some people like to do the talk. I concentrate on the walk. This is what I do for the community,” Diaz wrote, and included a link to a press release about a charity event where he, along with the NYPD and a Catholic charity, gave free backpacks and school supplies to kids.
‘Champion of the urban poor’
Making history by being elected the country’s first Afro-Latino LGBTQ congressperson and one of the country’s youngest legislators, along with becoming the face of one of the nation’s poorest congressional districts, seems to be a role Torres would relish. He has made expanding access to affordable housing one of his main political fights.
“I feel like if I’m going to be a congressman who represents the South Bronx, I have to be the most visible and vocal champion of the urban poor and of working people,” he said. The district he is running to represent, NY-15, is the nation’s poorest in terms of median income.
“Most of the policies affecting health and housing are federal in nature — think of housing, section 8 public housing, low income housing tax credits, tax-exempt bond financing — all of those are federal programs, so if you are on a mission to fight racially concentrated poverty, if you are on a mission to lift the lives of working people in the poorest parts of our country like the South Bronx, then you have to be a policymaker on the national stage, because Washington, D.C., is where the rules are set,” Torres explained.
Torres, who grew up in public housing, said to be a proper champion of the urban poor requires, in part, “a commitment to what I would call ‘social housing.’”
“Whether it’s public housing, or project based Section 8, or mandatory inclusionary housing, or rent regulated housing, there should be a national strategy for maximizing the amount of social housing in the United States,” Torres explained. He also said he’s in favor of using federal funding “to mandate land-use reforms, even if it means rethinking single family zoning,” a growing political movement on the left known as “upzoning” that seeks to increase residential density, reduce carbon emissions and increase affordable housing by banning the type of land-use regulations that ban apartment buildings and require homes to be separated by land.
The AOC Effect
Since the winner of the Bronx Democratic primary is expected to be the winner of the general election, Torres’ path to Washington could be similar to his newly elected Congressional neighbor, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents NY-14.
Ocasio-Cortez also ran an insurgent campaign to defeat a more entrenched, older politician, and won, taking advantage of low-turnout Democratic primary votes and relying on a strong ground organization to deliver voters to the polls on primary day.
“In the end, I’m confident that Bronx voters are going to want an established fighter, and this is a change moment,” Torres said. Even so, “if the race were held today, he would win,” Torres said of Diaz.
That’s in part, he said, because of the paradoxical nature of NY-15. Torres has to win the primary in order to win the election, and Diaz is in some ways an establishment candidate — at least in terms of name recognition. Even so, Torres said, Ruben Diaz Sr. “is a homophobe and he has a long documented record of homophobia.”
“I think a lesson learned from AOC’s win is that a charismatic messenger with a compelling message can matter more than money and machine,” Torres said.
But unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Torres has money, if not yet a machine: He’s been fundraising since April and said he has raised more than “all combined by two-fold,” referring to his primary opponents’ hauls thus far.
“So the reverend has the name, but I have the record — and the resources,” Torres said.