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.
A police tape barricade winds its way through Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. (Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
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.
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.
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.”
New York City Council Member Ritchie Torres, left, and Housing Rights Initiative Executive Director Aaron Carr address a news conference outside Kushner Companies headquarters, in New York, Monday, March 19, 2018.Richard Drew / AP file
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.
Monday’s $35,000-a-couple fundraiser starring Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to take place at a private club in Aspen owned by two gay men, sources said Friday.
The Caribou Club in Aspen’s downtown core is set to host the VIP reception with Pence, according to sources who declined to be named. Billy Stolz, one of the owners of the club, did not return a phone message seeking comment.
Bob Jenkins, vice chair of Pitkin County Republicans, said Friday that he expects about 25 couples to attend the $35,000-per-couple VIP reception with Pence starting at 5 p.m. on Monday.
News of the fundraiser’s location only became public after the club’s chef was arrested for domestic violence and told the judge that he needed to be freed on bail because he had to cook for the vice president. Bail was then granted. Earlier this year the Caribou Club hosted a benefit for Aspen’s Gay Ski Week.
The Philadelphia Police Department are set to fire 13 officers for offensive social media posts, which included homophobic and racist sentiments.
This discipline was the result of research done by by the Plain View Project. They published thousands of Facebook posts from jurisdictions around the country, including Philadelphia, in June.
Following the publication of these posts, the Philadelphia Police Department launched an internal investigations.
Overall, the department removed 72 officers from street duty. They gave 13 a 30-day suspension with the intent to formally dismiss them.
Four other officers received a 30-day suspension, three received no other formal discipline, and the rest received varying consequences from formal reprimands to 5-day suspensions.
What did the messages say?
Most of the messages reviewed were homophobic, racist, and Islamophobic in nature.
In one post from 2014, an officer wrote a suspect ‘should be taken out back and put down like the rabid animal he is’. More recently in February, a different officer commented on a news article about an alleged murderer and wrote: ‘Hang him.’
In other posts, officers described Islam as a ‘cult’ which glorified death.
Police Commissioner Richard Ross and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney held a press conference about the matter on Thursday (18 July).
Ross said the 13 officers set to be fired all made posts that advocated violence. He added every officer going forward will receive training about social media and off-duty behavior.
Kenney commented at the conference: ‘We have a duty to represent ourselves and our city. We will not allow this incident to break down the progress we have made and we pledge to do better.’
A project investigating police
A group of Philadelphia attorneys created Plain View Project in 2016. They formed the database when they learned numerous police officers made social media posts that ‘appeared to endorse violence, racism and bigotry’.
As a research project, Plain View identifies such posts.
‘We believe that these statements could erode civilian trust and confidence in police, and we hope police departments will investigate and address them immediately,’ the group states on its website.
Dozens of Pennsylvanians were geared to make history Monday evening by raising the pride flag for the first time over Reading City Hall. Yet minutes before the event was slated to begin, the city’s mayor, Wally Scott, prohibited council members and city employees via text message from hanging the flag.
“People were disappointed at first, then they just became angry,” Ben Renkus, president of the Reading Pride Celebration, the group that planned the event, told NBC News. “The event was at 4:45 p.m. and many people had to leave work early to attend.”
The flag ceremony coincided with Reading’s 13th annual LGBTQ Pride Celebration, which kicked off this past weekend. The pride flag was supposed to be flown until Sunday, the last day of the festivities.
Following Monday’s last-minute cancellation, Renkus said the group marched to a nearby park where Scott was known to hang out after work, but the mayor wasn’t there. The group now plans to attend the next city council meeting, which is scheduled to be held Monday, with their rainbow flags in hand to express their fury.
“What was supposed to be a proud and historical moment in history today for the City of Reading, the LGBTQ+ community and our allies, turned into a show of blatant, unacceptable discrimination,” the LGBT Center of Greater Reading wrote Monday in a statementposted to its Facebook page. “To those who were on the street today in support; and to those who were with us in spirit, we are resilient; we will continue the fight for our rights.”
Scott contends that anti-LGBTQ discrimination was not behind his decision to cancel the flag-raising ceremony. He said his decision was based on his belief that the rainbow pride flag is a political symbol, and flying it would be against city policy.
“It’s the policy not to put up or endorse movements,” Scott told NBC News. “Numerous people have come into the office asking to put up flags, and we just don’t do it.”
Scott said he’s been asked to put up a Confederate flag and a flag commemorating National Pot Smokers Day, among others.
Renkus does not agree with Scott’s interpretation of the rainbow pride flag, however, and said the flag “represents and validates a specific group of people.”
The rainbow flag has been a universal symbol of LGBTQ pride, equality and inclusion since June 1978, when it made its debut at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.
Renkus filed a formal complaint with the Human Relations Commission at Reading City Hall, alleging that Walker’s actions were discriminatory.
“The city has had LGBTQ protections in its ordinance since 2009, and we believe the mayor’s refusal to allow us to fly the flag goes against those protections,” Renkus said. “He’s also the first mayor in the Pride Celebration’s history to not attend any Pride events.”
Renkus is hoping for an apology and the ability to fly the pride flag, noting that flags of other countries and a POW/MIA flag have flown over City Hall in the past.
Donna Reed, a member of the Reading City Council, said the council followed protocol and said Scott showed no indication that he would cancel the original flag ceremony beforehand.
Scott, however, claimed he did not know about Monday’s flag ceremony until the afternoon of the event and insisted “nothing was done maliciously by me.”
“I have no objections with them holding the flag on the City Hall steps,” he said. “I just didn’t want to hang it up.”
News of the incident made its way to the state level, with Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman calling on Scott to reconsider his decision. Fetterman also announced his plans to attend a pride event in Reading to show solidarity with the city’s LGBTQ community.
In May 1933, the Nazi-sympathizing German Student Union entered Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Research in Berlin.
Hirschfeld’s expansive library of sexual and gender studies was confiscated and later burned in the streets of the German capital, one of many book burnings in Nazi Germany that would decimate the records of this pioneering institute.
Some of the Institute’s records were of the countless sexual and gender minorities who passed through its doors between 1919 and 1933, and even earlier, when Hirschfeld ran the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the institute’s predecessor and world’s first LGBTQ rights organization.
“The Nazis tried to destroy information about that group by burning the books and magazines and photographs that were in that amazing institute,” independent historian Jonathan Ned Katz, founder of OutHistory.org, said.
Pastor Carl SchlegelOrganisirt
However, despite the Nazi’s best efforts and thanks to Katz’ research, the name of one of the earliest activists for homosexual rights in America has been revealed: Rev. Karl Schlegel, a German who immigrated to the United States in the late 19th century. (He was also known as Carl or Charles while living in America.)
Based on newly unearthed records that have been uploaded to OutHistory’s website, it appears Schlegel both harbored same-sex attractions and advocated on behalf of homosexuals, bisexuals and asexuals over 100 years ago.
Born in Germany in 1863, Schlegel immigrated to the United States in 1878 at age 15 and later preached as a minister. According to OutHistory.org, an August 1903 edition of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’s journal said that Schlegel visited the committee “numerous” times and “aims at an association of his Uranian fellow ministers as well as the founding of a subcommittee in New York.”
“Uranian” is an English translation of the early German word for homosexual: urning.
“Schlegel apparently considered other homosexual Protestant ministers good candidates for his U.S. emancipation organizing,” Katz wrote.
Between September and November of 1903, during a trip to Germany, Schlegel was arrested for an alleged sexual offense and later released. “Hopefully this unpleasant incident will be without further fateful consequences for him professionally,” the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’s journal wrote at the time.
In 1905, after being dismissed from his position at the First German Reformed Protestant Congregation in New York City, Schlegel relocated to New Orleans. The Times-Picayune announced his first sermon on March 27, 1905.
But less than a year later, in December 1906, the New Orleans Presbyterian Church was investigating Schlegel for unnamed “rumors.”
The church elders met and charged Schlegel with multiple counts of disseminating and defending “the naturalness and lawfulness of Sodomy, otherwise called ‘Homosexuality’ or ‘Uranism,’” according to Presbyterian Church records from that time. Schlegel pleaded not guilty, and the Presbyterian Church proceeded to trial. Entered into evidence was a German language copy of the Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Types, the annual publication of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. The panel found Schlegel guilty.
Church records quote him as saying on Jan. 29, 1907: “Let the same laws for all the intermediate stages of sexual life: the homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, asexuals, be legal as they are now in existence for the heterosexuals, that is, they should be under punishment: First, if they use compulsion. Second, if they are found to offend publicly. Third, if they use or misuse children, are dangerous and corrupting and will lead only to evil.”
The church judges responded by calling his views “evil and only evil” and finding him “totally disqualified for the office of the Christian ministry” and “do prohibit him from exercising any of the functions thereof.” By January 1907, Schlegel was jobless thanks to his LGBTQ activism.
Schlegel returned to New York, and by 1912, the New York Herald wrote that he had become a “spiritualist,” a religious movement that communicates with spirit popular at the time.
Schlegel died July 25, 1922, in New York City. He is buried at grave number 18004 at the Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
“I aspire to picnic there and say hello to the Rev. Schlegel and thank him for his early emancipation activities,” Katz told NBC News.
Katz said he hopes that this is “just the beginning” of learning about Schlegel’s life, and he encouraged members of the public with more relevant information to reach out to him at OutHistory.
The United States is “not where we need to be” on increasing employment levels of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, a top economic policymaker said on Tuesday.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said at an LGBTQ finance industry event that unemployment rates are nearly double the national average for sexual and gender minorities.
“As President of a Federal Reserve Bank, I am focused on two vital economic goals: maximum employment and stable prices for the U.S. economy,” Williams said in remarks prepared for delivery in New York. “These statistics paint a clear picture of why conferences like this one are so important: We are not where we need to be.”
Williams’ comments come as celebrations take place around the world to mark the Stonewall uprising in New York 50 years ago when patrons of a gay bar fought back against police harassment, which is seen as the fuel that sparked the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Gay pride marches will also be celebrated around the world on June 30.
Williams did not comment on his economic or policy outlook less than a week after the Fed signaled it could cut interest rates by as much as half a percentage point over the remainder of this year in response to increased economic uncertainty and a drop in expected inflation. Yet one argument for keeping rates lower for longer is that doing so can bring more marginalized people into the workforce.
