Even though you still hear about schools barring same-sex couples from dances, did you know that doing so is likely to be against the law?
As long ago as 1980, a federal court upheld high-school senior Aaron Fricke’s right to bring his male date to the prom.
The court also ruled that how other students might react to Aaron and his date did not justify banning them.
Supreme Court and federal court cases since then affirm that policies or actions that block same-sex couples from proms and dances—and policies created to make such discrimination possible—violates students’ rights to free expression and association, which are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
A federal court upheld this fundamental right to equal treatment in 2008. The court ordered Scottsboro High School in Alabama to let two female students attend the prom together and defeated the school board’s efforts to block them.
If you’re planning to attend a prom or dance with a same-sex date, you have a right to have fun, and the school must ensure your safety as it does of all students. If you want more information on how to prepare or respond to any challenges you might encounter, click here.
At dances and beyond, limits on public displays of affection in schools must apply to everyone, not just LGBTQ students. Expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity generally fall under First Amendment protections.
If you’re an educator and want more information about how to make sure all students enjoy proms and dances, click here.
Lawmakers in Illinois have pushed forward a bill that would require schools to teach LGBT history to students in the state.
The state looks set to approve a bill that would require all public elementary and high schools to teach “the significant role of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in society.”
It would mean the state will use LGBT inclusive textbooks, as well as dedicating teaching time to LGBT history.
The bill was given its second reading earlier this week and was later supported by the state’s education committee with an 8-2 vote.
The proposed bill would teach pupils about both LGBT history in the US and in Illinois specifically.
However, it does not mandate how much time is to be spent on teaching LGBT history, leaving the decision up to local school boards and authorities.
The bill has been sponsored by state Senator Heather Steans and has been welcomed by LGBT groups in the state.
People need to see their history to understand that they are a part of our society,” Illinois state Senator Heather Steans told The Hill.
At Transamerica, our responsibility goes beyond our clients’ retirement accounts. Quite simply, we are in the business of helping people live well.
Brian Johnson, CEO of the LGBT organisation Equality Illinois, said the bill would help widen pupils’ understanding of the world and promote acceptance of LGBT people.
“People learn about Jane Addams, [the founder of social work as a job in the United States], for example, but don’t know she’s a lesbian.
“We don’t think there is true justice for the LGBT community unless we can learn about our history.”
However, conservative groups have hit back against the proposed legislation, with one group calling it an “indoctrination bill.”
“The left’s motive is what it always is: it is to normalise homosexuality,” said Laurie Higgins, on behalf of the Illinois Family Institute.
If the bill passes, Illinois will become only the second US state to require LGBT history as part of their curriculum.
In 2016, the California Board of Education unanimously approved changing instructions given to teachers to comply with a new state law that requires public schools to include historic gay Americans and mark LGBT milestones.
If the Illinois bill is passed, it is expected to be implemented in all public elementary and high schools from this July.
Two victims were attacked by four young men in Miami Beach after the city’s Gay Pride Parade Sunday in what police think may have been a hate crime.
In video footage of the incident, four young men — one wearing a Florida International University T-shirt — are seen walking up to a bathroom area on Ocean Drive and Sixth Street at about 7:40 p.m. Sunday. Two other men walk out, and are immediately attacked by the four. One of the attackers shouts a Spanish slur used to refer to LGBT men before he and the other attackers begin repeatedly punching the two men.
When the two victims, who sustained multiple injuries to their faces, began to run away, the attackers chased them, Miami Beach police said.
The Miami Beach Police Department is asking the public’s help in identifying a group of men who started a fight on Ocean Drive following the gay pride parade on April 8, 2018. Miami Beach Police Department Miami Beach Police Department
That’s when Helmut Muller, who was standing near the bathrooms at the time of the fight, went after the attackers to break up the fight. Muller said he saw when the men walked up and said the fight was completely unprovoked.
“It happened so quick,” said Muller, 29. “They almost killed this guy, literally.”
Muller said the two victims were injured badly, with multiple bruises and cuts.
When he tried to break up the fight, one of the attackers knocked him out and he hit his head on the concrete, he said. The fall left Muller with a large gash on the back of his head that required four stitches and a pool of blood on the pavement. The attackers then ran toward the beach.
One of the victims told NBC 6 News that he and his partner were holding hands when they were attacked.
“For me, the way we were dressed and everything and we were together, for me it was like, yes, it was a hate crime,” he said.
Police are asking for help to identify the men involved in the attack. Three are described as Hispanic white males, each about 5 foot 8, and between the ages of 19 and 24. Anyone with information should call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.
Muller said the motivation behind the assault was “horrible.”
“I don’t agree with it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight, we all should respect each other.”
The four young men who police are searching for in connection to a felony battery investigation in Miami Beach. The men randomly attacked two men near Ocean Drive and Sixth Street on Sunday evening after the Gay Pride parade in Miami Beach. Miami Beach Police
Gay dating app Grindr is sharing the HIV status of its users with outside firms, it has been revealed.
A Norwegian nonprofit has discovered that the information is being shared with two private companies that help “optimise” apps, Localytics and Apptimize.
The information also includes users’ screen names, GPS data, email address and phone ID.
“Thousands of companies use these highly-regarded platforms. These are standard practices in the mobile app ecosystem,” Grindr Chief Technology Officer Scott Chen told BuzzFeed, who verified the claims.
“No Grindr user information is sold to third parties. We pay these software vendors to utilise their services.”
“The limited information shared with these platforms is done under strict contractual terms that provide for the highest level of confidentiality, data security, and user privacy.”
Grindr’s privacy policy warns users that information shared on the platform can be disclosed.
James Krellenstein, a member of ACT UP New York, told BuzzFeed: “To then have that data shared with third parties that you weren’t explicitly notified about, and having that possibly threaten your health or safety — that is an extremely, extremely egregious breach of basic standards that we wouldn’t expect from a company that likes to brand itself as a supporter of the queer community.”
The company also shares users’ sexual orientation, relationship status, “tribe,” and ethnicity with the companies if the information is listed in their profile.
It is the latest Grindr security flaw to be exposed in the past month after it was revealed location data is being shared, even when users opt out.
The security flaws were discovered by Trevor Faden after he created C*ckblocked, a website that enabled Grindr users to find out who had blocked them.
In order to take advantage of the feature, users were made to enter their username and password.
Once they had, Mr Faden was able access a large amount of private data, including unread messages, deleted photos and user location data.
Wendy Becker, who married her longtime partner, Mary Norton, in Massachusetts in 2006, told NPR that she welcomes the change.
“It really normalizes our experience on an American government form so that everybody looking at it and everybody filling it out sees that we exist,” said Becker, who is part of an early census test run in Rhode Island.
Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution requires that a population count be taken every 10 years. The first census was taken in 1790; the 2020 census will be the 24th count.
The data gathered in the census is used for reapportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and calculating the distribution of federal funds to state and local governments. The number of representatives allocated to each state also determines the number of electors each state has in a presidential election.
By law, the Census Bureau cannot share answers from individual persons with the CIA, FBI, Internal Revenue Service or any other government agency.
Cecilia Chung, senior director of strategic projects for the Transgender Law Center, told NPR that she’d like to see the Census Bureau add additional questions about sexual orientation and gender identity.
“You know, these are all labels,” Chung said. “But if we don’t have the proper labels when we try to look at the picture, there will be a lot of missing pieces, like jigsaw puzzles.”
Instantly recognisable with his pink hair and nose ring, Christopher Wylie claims to have helped create data analysis company Cambridge Analytica before turning whistleblower and becoming “the face” of the crisis engulfing Facebook.
Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian journalist who worked with Wylie for a year on the story, described him as “clever, funny, bitchy, profound, intellectually ravenous, compelling. A master storyteller. A politicker. A data science nerd.”
The bespectacled 28-year-old describes himself as “the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool,” referring to Trump’s former adviser, whom the report said had deep links with Cambridge Analytica (CA).
With Wylie’s help, Cadwalladr revealed how CA scooped up data from millions of Facebook users in the US.
They then used the information to build political and psychological profiles, in order to create targeted messages for voters.
Facebook insists it did not know the data taken from its site were being used, but the revelations have raised urgent questions over how data of 50 million users ended up in CA’s hands.
Shares of the tech giant have since tumbled, with $70 billion (56 billion euros) wiped off in 10 days.
Wylie studied law and then fashion, before entering the British political sphere when he landed a job working for the Liberal Democrats.
Former Lib Dem colleague Ben Rathe had a less complementary description of Wylie, tweeting that he “thinks he’s Edward Snowden, when he’s actually Walter Mitty” — a reference to a fictional character with a vivid fantasy life.
Wylie became a research director for Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), the parent company of CA, in 2014.
“I helped create that company,” he said of CA in an interview with several European newspapers.
“I got caught up in my own curiosity, in the work I was doing. It’s not an excuse, but I found myself doing the research work I wanted to do, with a budget of several million, it was really very tempting,” he told French daily Liberation.
Initially, he enjoyed the globetrotting lifestyle, meeting with ministers from around the world.
But the job took a dark turn when he discovered that his predecessor had died in a Kenyan hotel. He believes the victim paid the price when a “deal went sour”.
“People suspected poisoning,” he told a British parliamentary committee investigating “fake news” on Tuesday.
– ‘Repair Facebook!’ –
His appearance before MPs saw him swap his usual loud T-shirts for a sober suit and tie, producing hours of testimony against the firm that he left in 2014.
He said he eventually decided to speak out after US President Donald Trump’s shock election victory, which he partly attributed to the misuse of personal data for political purposes.
Cambridge Analytica vigorously denies the charges levelled against it, saying that Wylie was merely “a part-time employee who left his position in July 2014” and had no direct knowledge of how the firm had operated since.
Wylie urged British MPs to dig deeper into the story, insisting that his concern was not political and was focussed on abuses in the democratic process — including during the Brexit referendum campaign.
“I supported Leave, despite having pink hair and my nose ring,” he said.
He claimed that various pro-Brexit organisations worked together to get around campaign finance rules, using the services of Aggregate IQ, a Canadian company linked to the SCL group.
Wylie believes that it is “very reasonable” to say that CA’s activities may have swung the Brexit vote, although he stressed he was not anti-Facebook, anti-social media or anti-data.
“I don’t say ‘delete Facebook’, but ‘repair Facebook’,” he told the European newspapers.
However, he admitted to MPs that he had “become the face” of the scandal.
The Milwaukee Common Council Tuesday voted to ban a controversial therapy that aims to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, a practice known as “conversion therapy.”
Aldermen vote 12-2 in favor of the ban, with one abstention.
Supporters and opponents of the ban packed Tuesday’s meeting at City Hall, with opponents occasionally shouting “Amen!”
“This is real,” said Ald. Cavalier Johnson, the measure’s lead sponsor. “This affects real people.”
A Milwaukee council committee approved the measure earlier this month.
Opponents said Tuesday they didn’t have advance notice to gather opposition to the measure.
Johnson introduced the ordinance to ban the practice for anyone under 18. He called it a “proactive piece of legislation” to address the practice that is commonly tied to religious values.
He stressed Tuesday that it did not affect free therapy or counseling.
But Ald. Bob Donovan, who opposes the measure, said it was government overreach. He said supporters “did not make the case that this problem even exists in Milwaukee.”
Last year, state lawmakers proposed a bill to penalize mental health providers or counselors who performed conversion therapy, but it did not get a hearing or committee vote. Several other states and cities have passed similar bans.
Major medical and mental health organizations have condemned conversion therapy, said Tony Snell, a member of the city’s Equal Rights Commission.
A 2009 American Psychological Association report concluded such practices can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths, including depression, substance abuse, stress and suicidal thoughts.
A 2015 federal report found no existing research that such practices can change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation and instead found those practices often are “coercive, can be harmful and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.”
The city proposal went before the council’s Public Safety and Health Committee where aldermen heard support for the ban from LGBTQ advocates and mental health experts from Alverno College and Mount Mary University.
Natalie Zanoni, director of client and program services at the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, read a statement from a 29-year-old graduate student in Milwaukee who experienced conversation therapy.
The student came out as gay to his parents at age 16 and a youth pastor suggested Exodus International, a national conversion therapy nonprofit that has since been shut down.
“But what is worst of all is the emotional and spiritual damage it caused, the deep-rooted shame that came along with attempting to change my orientation,” he wrote.
Several council members asked about the prevalence of conversion therapy practices in Milwaukee.
Snell said they are present in the metro area but said it’s difficult to quantify.
“A lot of these folks who have gone through this are living in the shadows,” he said, later adding, “I think we need to send the message proactively and say this won’t be tolerated here in the city of Milwaukee.”
The committee previously voted 2 to 0 to approve the measure. Ald. Chantia Lewis and Ald. Jose Perez offered strong support, each signing on as co-sponsors and voting in favor of it. Ald. Mark Borkowski and Ald. Bob Donovan abstained from voting at the committee level.
The proposed ban carries a fine between $500 to $1,000 for each violation. The Milwaukee Police Department would have the power to enforce the ordinance, if it’s approved.
Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez, the bisexual president of Stoneman Douglas High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance, has spoken out about the way her sexuality fuels her activism.
Together with fellow students like David Hogg and Cameron Kasky, the 18-year-old has prompted a tidal wave of public sentiment in favour of better gun regulation following the shooting in Florida.
She has been at the forefront of the #NeverAgain movement since her impassioned speech at a rally last month in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when she emotively repeated the phrase “We call BS” about NRA-funded politicians, gun advocates and those who don’t believe the Parkland teenagers know enough to speak up.
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At the March For Our Lives rally in Washington DC, she made an emotional speech which left her and many of the hundreds of thousands of protesters in tears.
And speaking to Yahoo, she said that being open with her bisexuality meant she was able to speak out in this powerful way as one of the leaders of the Never Again MSD movement.
“They’re definitely linked for me personally,” she said. “If I wasn’t so open about who I was I never would’ve been able to do this.
“In ninth grade,” she recalled, “I was in a creative writing class where I could actually really effectively communicate what I was feeling, and it especially helped me come to terms with who I was.
“That definitely was when I really understood who I am, and when I came to terms with it, and when I told most people.”
This experience, she explained, “helped me understand that everybody, no matter who they are and what they look like, is going through a lot of different things.”
She has become an icon (Getty)
Gonzalez’s position as head of her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance has also been a crucial part of making her the activist she is today, she said.
“It’s really helped me get used to shifting plans very quickly, planning in advance, and also being flexible… understanding that maybe you organise a club meeting with this one person in mind and they just don’t come because they aren’t coming to school, and you can’t get upset,” she said.
“Because most of the kids in GSA either have depression or they’re dealing with a lot of stuff at home, and it’s like, I can understand that.
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“And there are so many people in the country who are dealing with that, in relation to gun violence. You have no idea.
“You don’t know how many people you talk to on a daily basis that have actually been shot before, or have lost someone through gun violence.
“With GSA it’s the same. Everything’s incredibly far-reaching and widespread,” added the teenager.
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During her speech at yesterday’s rally, Gonzalez showed exactly how inspiring she could be.
“Six minutes and about 20 seconds,” she told the crowd. “In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured and everyone in the Douglas community was forever altered.
“Everyone who was there understands. Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands. For us, long, tearful, chaotic hours in the scorching afternoon sun were spent not knowing.
“No one understood the extent of what had happened.”
Gonzalez listed off the names of those who died in the mass shooting last month with actions – like joking, smiling and playing basketball – that the young victims “would never” do again.
Apart from sporadic shouting and chanting, the immense number of protesters did the same, staying quiet.
When she broke the silence, Gonzalez told the crowd: “Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle”.
She ended the speech with the message: “Fight for your lives, before it’s someone else’s job.”
The trial of the wife of Pulse shooter Omar Mateen has taken a dramatic twist – after it emerged that Mateen’s father was an FBI informant.
Forty-nine people died at Orlando’s Pulse gay club during a horrific mass shooting in June 2016, when Omar Mateen, who had pledged support for ISIS, opened fire at the crowd.
At the time it was the most deadly mass shooting in recent US history, though it has since been surpassed.
Mateen was killed in a shootout with the local police during the attack, but his wife Noor Salman is currently standing trial over allegations that she knew about the attack in advance.
But there was a dramatic development in the case this week, as Salman’s lawyers pushed for a mistrial – alleging that prosecutors failed to provide information to their client.
The defence alleges that Omar Mateen’s father Seddique Mateen was an FBI informant between January 2005 and June 2016 – details they claims were concealed ahead of the trial.
The FBI had previously confirmed it investigated Omar Mateen twice ahead of the attack but concluded he was not a potential terrorist.
The Intercept reports claims that FBI agents consulted Mateen’s father, who was already an FBI informant at the time of the investigation into his son.
Salman’s lawyers claimed: “Because the government violated Ms Salman’s Fifth Amendment right to due process and Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, this Court must dismiss the Government’s case.
“In the alternative, if this Court does not dismiss this action, it should order a mistrial in order to safeguard these fundamental constitutional rights. Indeed, an analysis of the government’s conduct in this case establishes a consistent pattern of withholding evidence that directly impacted presentation of Ms Salman’s defense.”
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However, the motion was dismissed.
Judge Paul Byron denied the motion, saying: “It doesn’t change the dynamic about this case involving Noor Salman.”
Salman, 31, stands accused of obstruction of justice and of aiding and abetting Mateen over the attack.
She stands accused of knowing about the plans for the attack in advance, but her attorneys and family insist she did not know what her husband was planning.
Prosecutors believe that while planning the shooting, Mateen asked Salman whether attacking a Disney site would have a bigger impact than attacking a nightclub.
It was also previously alleged she had “driven him to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out” and “was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster”.
But Salman’s uncle Al Salman insists that the 30-year-old was “simple and innocent”, and that she had been abused by Mateen.
The study, which tracked more than 500 couples in Vermont over the course of 12 years, also revealed that women in same-sex marriages were the most likely to break up.
Lesbian unions are twice as likely as gay marriages and 1.5 times as likely as straight marriages to end, according to the research.
Professor Esther Rothblum, the study’s author and a visiting scholar at the Williams Institute who also teaches women’s studies at San Diego State University, said that one explanation was the results was that women expected more than men.
“Other studies on heterosexual couples have found that women have higher standards for relationship quality than men,” she said.
“We suspect that similar dynamics may be at play with the lesbian couples in our study, leading to the higher dissolution rate.”
The Williams Institute research also revealed the reasons why same-sex unions last.
For lesbian couples, with every extra year that the relationship lasts, the odds of a breakup are reduced by a huge 13 percent.
If you’re a learned pair of female lovers, you’re also better-suited to the world of relationships, with each year of education causing the odds of a split to plummet by 16 percent.
Older couples are also less likely to break up.
If you’re wondering whether having children will help or damage your marriage’s chances of lasting, the study found that having a baby has no effect.
Another author of the study, Kimberly Balsam from Palo Alto University, said the study was “crucial in combating stereotypes about same-sex couples,” adding that she hoped it would “inform policy and program development to support healthy relationships for all couples.”
The author of the research, Ritch C. Savin-Williams, explained that the study proved sexuality was a “continuum,” adding that he wants it to help clear up misconceptions and stigma about bisexual people – in particular, bisexual men.
“Men have gotten so much cultural crap put on them that even if a man does have some sexual attraction to guys, they would never say it,” Savin-Williams said.
