A gay 19-year-old from a small town in Maine has become one of the youngest elected officials in the US, after winning a spot on the city council.
Keagan Roberts took home the second-largest share of the votes for a seat on the South Berwick Town Council, which serves a town with a population just shy of 7,500 people.
Roberts, whose twin brother is also gay, toldOut magazine that South Berwick is the kind of small town where “everyone knows everyone” and that it had been “such a great place to grow up” as a young gay person, after coming out in middle school.
“My school was super understanding,” he said. “I really didn’t face too much bullying, at least to my face, which was nice. I also have a twin brother who’s gay, so that kind of made high school a little bit easier. It’s amazing. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
The teenager said he was speechless when the results of the vote came in.
“I didn’t realise my message had touched so many people,” he said. “I was just really proud of what I was able to do and just what I was able to accomplish.”
After he is sworn in, Roberts will be the youngest-ever city council member in South Berwick’s history.
He will also be one of the youngest elected officials in the US.
Roberts’ mum is Tiffany Roberts-Lovell, the local representative in the MaineHouse of Representatives, where she has served since 2018.
He said that she taught him how to inspire people and how to run a grassroots campaign.
“My mom definitely had to coach me through, and some days were better than others,” he said. “I also work, so it’d be like, ‘Let’s go knock on 100 doors and then you can go work your shift.’ Some days I’d ask, ‘Mom, do we have to do this?’ And she said, ‘Yep, you have to do this. This is how we get votes.’”
He added that he hopes his win will inspire other young LGBT+ people to run for public office.
“I hope that it doesn’t matter how young you are, it doesn’t matter how you identify, you can do whatever you put your mind to,” he said.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Wednesday submitted a letter to HIV drugmaker Gilead Science’s board of directors demanding a shareholder “clawback” policy. The shareholder proposal, if approved by the board, would empower the board to “recoup” some of the money paid to top Gilead executives, like CEO Daniel O’Day.
Stringer, as comptroller of America’s largest city, is responsible for administering New York City’s vast pension funds, estimated in June to comprise $208 billion in investments. Acting as a fiduciary for the funds’ exposure to stocks like Gilead’s, Stringer also represents a large number of the pharma giant’s shareholders. New York City’s pension funds pay the city’s retired teachers, firefighters, police officers and other municipal workers.
The clawback, Stringer said, is in response to allegations — including those made in a class action lawsuit filed in May — that the company engaged in anti-competitive practices in order to charge “exorbitant prices” for its lifesaving HIV drugs. In particular, Gilead is accused of withholding a safer version of tenofovir from the market. Tenofovir is a family of drugs that comprises the backbone of Gilead’s multibillion-dollar suite of HIV treatment and prevention medicines, such as Stribild, Biktarvy and Truvada, which is commonly known as PrEP — or HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis.
“Ethics matter — and companies should hold their employees accountable when they commit misconduct,” Stringer said in a statement. “There is strong evidence that suggests Gilead purposefully raised drug prices to exorbitant levels — and that people living with HIV were denied the medicine they need to survive. It’s outrageous and now the company is facing long-term consequences.”
New York City’s comptroller’s office has proposed 18 clawbacks since 2014, and 11 were enacted. Stringer pointed to his office’s successful effort to recoup Wells Fargo executive pay after it was shown that the company defrauded customers by opening accounts without their knowledge.
In a statement emailed to NBC News, Gilead spokesman Ryan McKeel said the company has “received the proposal and will evaluate it.”
Part of the proposed resolution sent to Gilead’s board notes that the company “is the subject of U.S. congressional and other federal investigations alleging anti-competitive practices to prevent the entry of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) drugs into the market, and the U.S. government has sued Gilead alleging patent infringement relating to its HIV drugs.”
The proposal also alleges that Gilead worked with other companies to “unlawfully extend patent protection” and slow the entry of competitively priced generic HIV drugs to market.
“Such circumstances cause financial and reputational harm,” the proposal reads. “As long-term shareholders, we believe compensation policies should promote sustainable value creation.”
Activists with the PrEP4All Collaboration have for over a year argued that Gilead improperly claimed patent protection — and the right to set a high list price for Truvada tablets exclusively sold by Gilead — since PrEP was approved in 2012. A lawsuit filed this month against Gilead shows that the Department of Health and Human Services agrees with the PrEP4All position, and if Gilead’s patent protections are invalidated by a judge, the HIV-prevention treatment could potentially be made more widely available, a key goal of the Trump administration’s plan to end the HIV epidemic.
Peter Staley, a longtime HIV activist and a plaintiff named in the lawsuit Stringer cited in his letter to Gilead’s board, predicted the clawback resolution would fail but said he “wholeheartedly” endorses the sentiment.
“O’Day lied multiple times to Congress, and his arrogance towards the American taxpayers’ contributions to ending AIDS will cost his company dearly,” Staley said in a statement to NBC News. “Institutional stockholders of Gilead are in for a shock as Staley v Gilead and United States v Gilead play out.”
In May, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., grilled O’Day over the high price of Truvada.
“The list price is almost $2,000 in the United States. Why is it $8 in Australia?” Ocasio-Cortez asked, after noting the company made $3 billion in revenue off the once-a-day pill in 2018.
O’Day responded that “Truvada still has patent protection in the United States, and in the rest of the world it is generic.” He noted that the drug is set to be generically available in the U.S. in September 2020.
“There’s no reason this should be $2,000 a month,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who had pushed for the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. “People are dying because of it, and there’s no enforceable reason for it.”
A ‘Christian’ printing company in Alabama, US, has refused to print an issue of a college magazine because it contains content about LGBT+ people.
Interstate Printing representatives cite their “First Amendment Right” to refuse to print images of drag queens, queer folk, disabled students and people of various religious beliefs on the grounds of religion.
University of South Alabama magazine Due South was denied printing by the Mobile company because their latest issue, which discusses diversity, does not align with their values.
Sydney McDonald, managing editor of the student-ran publication, first broke the story on Due South on Thursday.
Defiant editors have not let themselves be detracted, however, and have sought printing from a different company instead.
Ahead of their Fall 2019 issue, Due South editors were busy approving copy and editing images. With the finished version completed, it was sent to the printers on Wednesday.
“They emailed me back and said they would be exercising their right to decline printing this issue because it does not adhere to their Christian values and they hope to print with us in the future,” said editor-in-chief Sara Boone to AL.com.
The 21-year-old added: “It’s very ironic for me because this particular issue of Due South is a special topics issue on diversity and inclusion.
“And it’s the very first special topics issue that we have ever produced.
“For them to decline printing it because it’s so diverse and the content is incredibly ironic.”
Printing company goes cold over magazine expressing ‘freedom of lifestyles’.
Rupturing the magazine’s seven year-long relationship with the printing company, Boone explained that the company had quoted $5,000 for 3,500 copies of the magazine.
“As the magazine expresses freedom of lifestyles, we must express our freedom by declining to print on the principle that we are a Christian company that does not adhere to the content,” Tracy Smith of Interstate Printing wrote in the email.
“We value the 40-plus years relationship we have with the University of South Alabama, and look forward to continuing our work with USA on other print and mail service projects.”
Interstate Printing’s front-page has a Bible verse on it. It reads: “We are a Christian company that will serve the Lord God Almighty in any way we can.”
The company aims to achieve this by printing bridal magazines or flyers for a local high-school football game, sponsored by Reece’s Pieces.
This isn’t the first time a religion printers has rejected printing material containing LGBT+ content.
In Illinois earlier this year, a print shop denied printing a queer charity’s brochure claiming it “promoted” the gay lifestyle.
A former Kentucky school principal has been indicted on child pornography charges, a decade after he first made headlines for banning books with LGBTQ storylines.
Phillip Todd Wilson, the former principal of the Clark County Area Technology Center in Winchester, Kentucky, was charged with 17 child pornography and distribution charges in August, according to Kentucky state police.
A spokesperson for the Kentucky Department of Education told NBC News that Wilson was no longer employed at the school.
Phillip Todd Wilson.Clark County Detention Center
Wilson, 54, was the principal of the Montgomery County High School, another institution in Kentucky, 10 years ago when he banded together with other administrators to remove several young-adult novels that had been listed as optional reading in English classes. Wilson fought to ban books with “homosexual content,” as well as those that mentioned drugs, sex, child abuse and suicide, because he deemed these topics “inappropriate” for students, according to a 2009 article from The Lexington Herald-Leader.
More than half of the top 11 most frequently challenged and banned books of 2018 include LGBTQ content, according to a report by the American Library Association.
The four books that were reportedly challenged by Wilson and his associates and eventually pulled from the curriculum were “Twisted” by Laurie Halse Anderson, “Deadline” by Chris Crutcher, “Lessons from a Dead Girl” by Jo Knowles and “Unwind” by Neal Shusterman.
Though Knowles’ book is about a girl who endures sexual and emotional abuse from a female friend, Knowles said her book was banned for “homosexual content.”
“I was a very new author at the time all this happened and the press coverage was overwhelming,” Knowles, author of “Lessons from a Dead Girl,” wrote in a recent post on Facebook. “I was horrified by the accusations he and the superintendent made. And heartbroken for the brave teacher, Risha Allen Mullins, who stood up for our books and faced so much unfair criticism.”
In response to news of Wilson’s indictment, Knowles added, “As I said to some friends last night when I got the news, ‘You can’t make this sh– up.’”
Laurie Halse Anderson — whose book “Twisted” examines toxic masculinity and includes a character accused of being gay after he turns down sex with a girl who is too intoxicated to consent — also took to Twitter after learning about the charges against Wilson.
“Books that help kids examine the violence, abuse and shame they’ve endured are very threatening to the people who commit those acts of violence, abuse, and shaming,” she wrote.
Of the 7,120 hate crime incidents reported in 2018, more than 1,300 — or nearly 19 percent — stemmed from anti-LGBTQ bias, according to the FBI’s latest Hate Crime Statistics report.
According to the FBI data, of the nearly 1,200 incidents targeting people due to their sexual orientation, the majority targeted gay men (roughly 60 percent), while approximately 12 percent targeted lesbians, 1.5 percent targeted bisexuals, 1.4 percent targeted heterosexuals and the remaining incidents targeted a mixed group of LGBTQ people. Transgender and gender-nonconforming people were the targets in 168 reported incidents, approximately 2.4 percent of all reported hate crime incidents last year.
When compared to 2017, the number of reported incidents targeting the LGBTQ community increased from 1,217 to 1,347, jumping from roughly 17 percent to 19 percent of each year’s total number of reported hate crime incidents.
In particular, reports of anti-trans violence is growing: Between 2017 and 2018, the number of these reported incidents increased 34 percent.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community is estimated by Gallup to comprise 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, yet according to the FBI’s newly released report, they comprise 18.5 percent of hate crime victims.
While the 7,120 overall reported hate crime incidents recorded in 2018 are slightly fewer than in 2017, both years represent historically high levels of reported hate crimes, with only 2008 recording more in the past decade: 7,783. In 2014, hate crimes hit a decade-low rate of 5,479 incidents.
Another noteworthy trend is that reported hate crimes increasingly targeted people (like assault) instead of property (like vandalism), even as the nation enjoys continued decreases in both violent and property crimes.
In 2018, nearly 66 percent of hate crime offenses were directed toward people, while 31 percent were directed toward property. In 2017, 60 percent of hate crimes were directed toward people, while 37 percent were directed toward property.
According to FBI data released in September, this goes against overall nationwide crime trends. In 2018, the national violent crime rate fell 4 percent compared to 2017, while the property crime rate declined 7 percent.
According to this latest report, Jewish and black communities continue to shoulder a disproportionate percentage of federally reported hate crimes: Jewish people comprise an estimated 2 percent of the U.S. population but make up 10 percent of hate crime victims, and the black community is an estimated 13.4 percent of the U.S. population but makes up 26 percent of hate crime victims.
The FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics report tells just part of the story. Of the 16,039 law enforcement agencies across the country that voluntarily participated in the Hate Crime Statistics Program, only 2,026 reported any hate crime incidents at all, according to the FBI. The state of Alabama, for example, did not report a single hate crime in all of 2018.
Rhode Island’s governor kicked off Veteran’s Day weekend by approving legislation that will extend local and state benefits to veterans who were dishonourably discharged for their sexuality.
It’s estimated that more than 100,000 LGBT+ people were ‘dishonourably’ or ‘less than honourably’ discharged from the US military between World War II and the repeal of the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell‘ policy in 2011.
On Friday, November 8, Governor Gina Raimondo ceremoniously signed the crucial legislation allowing these veterans to reclaim the benefits they deserve.
“In the state of Rhode Island, if you’re a veteran who’s served, you oughta be eligible for veterans benefits that the state provides,” she told local stationWLNE-TV.
The bill, which also encompasses gender identity and gender expression, was first signed into law in June. It provides a streamlined petition process to have a discharge from service recorded as honourable, thus restoring the veteran’s benefits.
Local leaders and former members of the military celebrate the end of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ on September 20, 2011 in San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
“Far too many veterans have been discharged, shamed and left without the benefits they earned because of decades of a dehumanising policy that said they couldn’t serve,” Rhode Island Senator Dawn Euer, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement.
“They deserved gratitude and honour, and we should be doing everything we can to ensure that these wrongs are righted and that they get the respect they deserve.”
For years after ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was repealed, the process for scrapping a dishonourable discharge was a “cumbersome” process that was “shrouded in mystery,” according to Andy Blevins, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America.
He told NBC: “If an individual is discharged under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ with something less than honourable, like most of them were, they would not receive those benefits.
“There was nothing enacted after ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ that would give those benefits back, and that’s why what Rhode Island did is so incredible.”
Two well-known scientific groups have dropped job postings from their websites from Brigham Young University because of the school’s LGBTQ policies, igniting a debate on whether research organizations should take a stance on social issues.
The Washington-based American Geophysical Union and the Colorado-based Geological Society of America took down the ads amid mounting pressure from members, the Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday.
Both groups say the ads require applicants to abide by the school’s honor code, which includes a ban on homosexual behavior. Members of both nonprofits criticized the ads as discriminatory.
The Geological Society of America, which has 27,000 members, told the newspaper it has returned the $800 cost of the job post to BYU.
BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins declined to comment.
The Provo, Utah, university is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and mandates students follow the code that also prohibits premarital sex and the consumption of alcohol among other rules.
The code prohibits “not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.”
As a private school and religious institution, the school can legally maintain the honor code.
Benjamin Abbott, a professor in BYU’s College of Life Sciences, believes dropping the ads limits diversity in religious ideologies.
“It removes an opportunity for a diverse candidate from outside of the BYU system from finding the job,” Abbott said. “If we want to learn from and potentially influence others, we shouldn’t cut them off.”
Ellen Alexander, a doctoral student in geology at UCLA who identifies as LGBTQ, was one of several people who complained on social media after the American Geophysical Union initially declined to take the ad down.
“That ideology does not deserve an equal seat at the table,” Alexander said. “It’s not a belief. It’s discrimination.”
Other national groups have previously faced controversy for collaborating with BYU. The Society for Political Methodology apologized in April 2018 for holding an annual conference at the school. The group said many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender participants declined to take part. As a result, the group relocated several conference events off-campus.
The winners have been announced in a global competition to design a memorial set to be built on the site of the Pulse nightclub.
The competition was held by the onePULSE Foundation with the purpose of selecting a design team to realize a permanent memorial to honor the victims and survivors of the Pulse shooting, which took place on Sunday June 12, 2016 when a 29-year-old security guard entered the Orlando gay night club with two semi-automatic weapons and opened fire on the crowd. 49 people were killed and 68 wounded. The gunman was shot and killed by police after a three-hour standoff. It was at the time the largest mass shooting in US history, and it remains the nation’s deadliest attack targeting LGBTQ people to date.
The onePULSE Foundation was established, according to its mission statement, “to create a sanctuary of hope following the tragic day in American history… to honor the 49 angels that were taken, the 68 others who were injured and the countless first responders and healthcare professionals who treated them.
“This fund is intended to support a memorial that opens hearts, a museum that opens minds, educational programs that open eyes and endowed scholarships that open doors. All donations will be used for the construction and operation of the National memorial and museum, educational programs and 49 Legacy Scholarships. This is a defining mission and healing initiative that we hope inspires supporters who share our vision and understand the solemn and sacred responsibility to which this community has been entrusted.”
Design concept for the new National Pulse Memorial and Museum (image Coldefy & Associés with RDAI/onePULSE Foundation)
The design was chosen out of 68 submissions from 19 countries. It was selected by a blue-ribbon jury comprised of onePULSE community members, civic decision-makers, global thought leaders and world-renowned architects following a public viewing and comment period in early October. Informed by over 2,300 comments from victim’s families, survivors, first responders and the public, the Jury felt the winning concept best reflected the interests expressed by the community, demonstrated design excellence, inventiveness, creativity and alignment with onePULSE’s core values.
The winning design concept was created by Coldefy & Associés with RDAI, Orlando-based HHCP Architects, Xavier Veilhan, dUCKS scéno, Agence TER, and Prof. Laila Farah. It features looping paths, a reflecting pool, and a garden planted with 49 trees — all created in a color palette of 49 colors. The museum, which will be located at 438 West Kaley Street, will feature interactive sculptures, vertical gardens, and a rooftop promenade.
Barbara Poma, a former co-owner of the club and the CEO of the onePULSE Foundation, created the nonprofit in the wake of the shooting. In a statement, she said the site, which will include a memorial and a museum, will serve as both a gathering place and educational center. She expressed her hope that it would teach “visitors and future generations [about] the profound impact the tragedy had on Orlando, the U.S., and the world.”
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, a member of the jury that selected the winning design, also issued a statement calling this unveiling an important step for the community.
“We will never bring back the 49 innocent victims whose lives were taken on June 12, 2016, or erase the pain that the horrific act brought to so many,” he said, “but the establishment of this memorial is an important part of our community healing process.”
A temporary memorial (also created by onePULSE is currently located on the site. The new permanent memorial, as well as the nearby museum, will begin construction in 2021, with a projected opening in 2022.
The “rainbow wave” of the 2018 elections continued Tuesday, with 99 of 200 known LGBTQ candidates winning their races — including a number of successes in historically conservative states such as Virginia and Kentucky.
The Victory Fund, a group that trains, supports and advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer candidates who are pro-choice, said 80 of its 111 endorsed candidates emerged victorious Tuesday. So far in 2019, the organization found 144 LGBTQ contenders won in 382 races, for an overall victory rate of 38 percent.
LGBTQ men ran in much higher numbers than their women counterparts, though queer women had a higher success rate, 46 percent to 37 percent, according to Victory’s election tracker. Trans women specifically — who won in state races in Virginia, Utah, Massachusetts and Iowa — had a success rate at 56 percent. The vast majority of LGBTQ candidates (83 percent) ran as Democrats, with just 2.4 percent running as Republicans. LGBTQ Democrats had a success of 40 percent, compared to 33 percent for their GOP counterparts.
Among Tuesday’s noteworthy winners were twice-elected transgender state Rep. Danica Roem, gay, black Muslim school board member N.J. Akbar, and the new LGBTQ members of the Indianapolis City Council.
Akbar, who won a seat on the Akron Board of Education in Ohio, became one of the first gay, Muslim, African Americans ever elected to any office in the U.S., according to the Victory Fund.
“As one of the first openly LGBTQ Muslims elected in United States history, N.J. will become a role model for so many LGBTQ students, students of color and Muslim students who too rarely see people like them in positions of power,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the Victory Fund, said in a statement.
In Virginia, State Delegate Danica Roem, the first openly trans person elected to statewide office, won a second term. In 2017, Roem ran on expanding Medicaid to her constituents and fixing the traffic-clogged Route 28 in Manassas.
“I’m grateful to represent you because of who you are – never despite it,” Roem wrote on Twitter. “I’ll see you Nov. 20 at our next #fixRoute28 public hearing.”
The Indianapolis City Council tripled its number of LGBTQ representatives by re-electing Zach Adamson and newly electing Alison Brown and Keith Potts. Brown is the first out LGBTQ woman elected to that body.
Not all noteworthy races in question have been called. The nationally watched race for Texas’ 28th state legislative district is heading for a runoff with no candidate having secured an outright majority. Democrat and out lesbian Elizabeth Markowitz ran against six Republicans and won roughly 40 percent of the vote. Markowitz will now face Republican Gary Gates in a runoff election that has not yet been scheduled by the governor.
Anti-trans ads: A losing strategy?
In several states that saw transphobic political attack ads flop against LGBTQ-supportive candidates, political watchers are asking whether such ads will be effective heading into 2020’s general election.
The apparent victory of pro-LGBTQ Democrat Andy Beshear in Kentucky in the race for governor, signaled that outside efforts to use transphobic election scare tactics — like one that implied transgender inclusion in sports, would mean that “anyone at any time could change teams for any reason” — are not a clear path to electoral victory.
Chris Hartman, executive director of Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign, a LGBTQ advocacy group, said the anti-transgender ads run in Kentucky “looked initially like a desperate ploy” and noted that he and his LGBTQ friends were heavily targeted with these ads on YouTube and Hulu.
“As more information came out, we learned that we were a testing group for what the conservatives thought was going to be their new election tactic, in the way that trans bathrooms used to work for them, in the way that gay rights used to work for them,” Hartman said. “They’re testing the field to see if anti-trans bias is strong enough to propel them to victory in places that have unpopular candidates.”
Don Haider-Markel, a professor of political science at the University of Kansas, said that a 2015 ballot measure in Houston, used “fear-based advertising” around transgender people’s access to public accommodations and bathrooms.
“It’s clear that that was effective,” Haider-Markel said. However, “the ads in Kentucky about high school sports and things like that don’t seem to have the same traction.”
“Tagging that to a candidate instead of an issue on the ballot is something different,” Haider-Markel continued. “For LGBTQ candidates, success doesn’t come from what your sexual orientation or gender identity is, success comes from focusing on the issues that people care about in their local community.”
Danica Roem is “a prime example of that,” Haider-Markel said.
An ad attacking Delegate Danica Roem from The Family Foundation Action on Facebook.via Facebook
Danica Roem, a transgender woman who was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, was the highest ranking LGBTQ winner Tuesday. Her re-election makes her the longest serving transgender state legislator in U.S. history, and the first to ever win re-election.
Although she is a history maker and was targeted because of her transgender identity, Roem has become known to her constituents for her laser focus on her district’s Route 28 — a traffic-clogged artery that many of her district’s voters struggle with on a daily basis as they commute into Washington, D.C.
“The success of trans candidates this Election Night – in states red and blue – is a warning to those using cynical campaign tactics to divide communities for their own political gain,” Victory’s Parker said in a statement.
Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, echoed Parker, saying “the biggest topline takeaway” from Tuesday’s results is that “voters care about equality.”
“What we saw in Virginia specifically is that anti-equality candidates have been using an outdated and offensive playbook that is not working anymore,” David said.
The Ames man accused of tearing down a pride banner from Ames United Church of Christ and setting it on fire was found guilty by a jury Wednesday morning.
Adolfo Martinez, 30, was found guilty of a hate crime, third-degree harassment, reckless use of fire and habitual offender, Story County Attorney Jessica Reynolds said. The habitual offender charge associates with previous reckless use of fire crimes.
It was the first time a hate crime has gone before a jury in Story County, Reynolds said. “Hate crimes will not be tolerated in our jurisdiction,” she said. “Offenders will be held accountable.” A date for sentencing was not immediately set, but he faces up to 15 years in prison.
