Libraries in Greenville County, S.C., have been ordered to remove all displays after a manager refused to take down a Pride one.
Nathan Schmaltz , the manager of the Travelers Rest branch, rejected the library administration’s order to remove a “Read with Pride” display, prompting the board to vote to remove all displays from libraries in the district. The decision came just three months after the board instated a new policy that requires displays to be approved by the library system’s executive director.
Last year, the library system removed LGBTQ+ displays from several libraries in the district, until they were quickly returned after public backlash. Schmaltz told local news outlet The Post and Courierthat since then, no other displays have triggered action from the board.
He said that he refused to remove the display because he did not want to cause the LGBTQ+ community any more “pain or distress,” and that their branch had received comments from community members overwhelmingly in support of the display, and only one threatening phone call.
“I’m very thankful for the support the community has given us. It’s been overwhelmingly positive,” Schmaltz said. “[The board] wrote the policy. They could have written it better.”
The order from the board is temporary, and all Pride materials currently displayed can remain up until the end of June. The board also designated $25,000 for extra security at the Travelers Rest branch if needed over possible threats to the library.
At the conference following the vote, many citizens were unable to speak out against the board’s decision after Chair Allan Hill abruptly ended the meeting. Hill had allowed a Baptist pastor to ramble about “sexual proclivities” past the allotted three minutes, but forbade Stephen Shelato, a former librarian and frequent attendee, from speaking, as he had exceeded his time limit in a past meeting. Hill ordered officers to remove Shelato, then suddenly adjourned.
One patron who was unable to speak, Danielle Harbor, who frequents the Travelers Rest branch, shared her prepared remarks with The Post after the chaotic meeting.
“It is a symbol to indicate to the LGBTQ population that has so often not felt like part of the community, that they are welcome, accepted, and safe,” she said. “Is that really something you want to take away?”
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) introduced legislation on Monday that would prohibit all U.S. federal courts from allowing use of the LGBTQ panic defense, a legal tactic that has been banned in 16 states and D.C.
In criminal trials involving violent crimes against LGBTQ people, the so-called “gay panic,” “trans-panic,” or more broadly, “LGBTQ panic” defense is raised to argue for more lenient sentencing or otherwise in an attempt to lessen the defendant’s culpability in the eyes of a judge or jury.
These types of arguments, which are widely considered outdated and offensive, both exploit and work to perpetuate homophobia and transphobia in the criminal justice system, the lawmakers said in a press release Monday announcing their bill.
Markey and Pappas noted LGBTQ panic defenses have been used in criminal law for decades, perhaps most famously after the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. During trial, counsel for the defense argued their client was triggered by an unwanted sexual advance by Shepard.
The case would galvanize calls to take action against bias-motivated violence, eventually leading to Congress’s passage in 2009 of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Nevertheless, use of LGBTQ panic defenses has persisted. The lawmakers noted a prominent recent example with the 2019 prosecution of the man who murdered 17-year-old Washington teen Nikki Kuhnhausenthe. Law enforcement noted during trial that the defendant was “shocked,” “uncomfortable” and “disturbed” upon learning Kuhnhausenthe was transgender.
The LGBTQ panic defense “is not only antiquated, but actively legitimizes violence against the LGBTQ+ community and encourages homophobic and transphobic bigotry within our legal system,” Markey said.
“No one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is a defense for assault or murder,” Pappas said, “and it is time Congress follows the lead of states that have already banned this defense in their courts.”
The lawmakers also highlighted the pervasive problem of violent crimes targeting LGBTQ people, highlighting statistics compiled by the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, the Human Rights Campaign.
HRC has recorded more than 256 cases of fatal violence against trans Americans, more than 80 percent of whom were people of color. Last year, according to the organization, at least 38 trans people were killed in the U.S., the majority of whom were trans women of color.
Markey also introduces gender-affirming care bill
Also on Monday, Markey introduced the Gender Affirming Care Access Research for Equity (CARE) Act, a bill that would authorize federal health authorities to research barriers to gender affirming health treatments and study the consequences of gaps and disparities to access.
The legislation would provide for the annual allocation of $25 million over five years for the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It comes in response to efforts by lawmakers in conservative states to restrict their trans residents’ access to medically necessary care, Markey noted, with 20 states passing bans targeting youth so far this year.
“Trans health is health, and health care is a human right,” he said. “We have a moral obligation to protect, defend, and expand the fundamental right for transgender and nonbinary people to get the care they need despite the tremendous legal, financial, and social barriers they too often face when accessing their health care.”
According to a press release from Markey’s office, cosponsors for the bill include Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla (Calif.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Peter Welch (Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.)
At the end of March, Markey introduced the Trans Bill of Rights with U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), whose provisions include ensuring the community’s access to necessary medical care. The same day, Markey and other Democratic senators sent a letter urging President Joe Biden to shore up federal protections for trans Americans’ access to gender affirming care and health providers administering this care who are “facing threats of violence and limits on their ability to provide care.”
Additionally, last year the Massachusetts senator issued a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, urging them to “lift barriers to testosterone and expand access to gender-affirming hormone therapy for transgender people, including transgender men and transmasculine nonbinary people.”
Many people think anti-sodomy laws were widely used to prosecute gay men before the Supreme Court declared the laws unconstitutional in the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texasdecision. But in reality, anti-sodomy laws were mostly used to legally prosecute heterosexual men, according to Yale Law School Professor William Eskridge.
Eskridge wrote the 2008 book Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003, and in his book, he says the Puritan-age laws were long used as a way to punish straight men for public sex and rape. While gay men were more often prosecuted under other vague laws against “lewdness” and “indecency,” Eskridge told LGBTQ Nation, anti-sodomy laws were often pointed to as theoretical proof of queer people’s immorality — and, thus, their unfitness to serve as teachers, Boy Scout leaders, and military members.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Lawrence decision, Eskridge spoke with LGBTQ Nation about the history of sodomy laws, how they went from punishing straight men to punishing gay and bi men, how the Lawrence decision led to the legalization of same-sex marriage, and what would happen if the Supreme Court were ever to overturn Lawrence in the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Your book notes that anti-sodomy laws had an impact on both heterosexual and homosexual Americans. How’s that?
Most of the sodomy laws, including the one in Georgia that was upheld and Bowers v. Hardwick (the 1986 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy that criminalized private oral and anal sex) applied to heterosexual intercourse. So when Bill Clinton was being fellated by Monica Lewinsky in the District of Columbia, that was a felony under the District of Columbia sodomy law.
I think most sodomy prosecutions in American history were against different-sex sodomy. Yes, you might be astounded but that is a fact. The reason is, most sodomy prosecutions were against men for sodomizing women, girls, and boys…. The overwhelming majority of prosecutions were for forcible sodomy, [for] sex with animals — which was a big chunk of the 19th-century ones — and a much bigger chunk was [for] forcible intercourse with unconsenting typically under-age, let’s say under 21, boys and girls, and sometimes unconsenting intercourse with women or men.
It sounds like what you’re saying is that these sodomy prosecutions were more about punishing rape rather than non-vaginal intercourse.
That’s right. Some of the people prosecuted under those laws were indeed gay, lesbian, or homosexual. But if you were gay or lesbian or bisexual or whatnot, it was highly unlikely you were going to be arrested for sodomy because there had to be evidence of penetration. And the evidence — if it was a consenting engagement — the evidence could not be provided by the co-conspirator, in other words, the other adult man. You had to have independent evidence, which meant it had to be in public or have some other witness.
So that meant private, consensual sodomy was almost never prosecuted. If you were engaged in intercourse in public, in 90% of the cases, you would not be arrested for sodomy, but you’d be arrested for one of the other basket of offenses that the police used: indecency, disorderly conduct, lewd vagrancy, those were the main ones. They tended to be misdemeanors and tended to be situations where the police would arrest you… but most did not go to jail. They got off with a warning and public humiliation.
The actual sodomy prosecutions were overwhelmingly nonconsensual, as we would understand it, and were also in public.
What was the purpose of these laws?
Sodomy laws were a Puritan American law from the 19th-century church in colonial America. The following crimes in many of the colonies were punishable by death: fornication, adultery, sodomy or buggery, some form of indecent cohabitation, as well as incest. Almost no one was executed for this, though they were capital offenses.
The point of the laws was… the popular view is that criminal law creates moral guardrails that you should not traverse and it punishes people who are in non-conformance to these moral guardrails. But (gay, French philosopher Michel) Foucault told us that the other point of criminal laws is productive. So when you’re prohibiting fornication, adultery, sodomy, but you’re not really enforcing it, what you are producing is a norm where the only legally acceptable, moral, non-criminal sex is penile-vaginal sex within a procreative marriage.
And remember, there was no such thing as gay or anything like that in the 19th and early 20th centuries — there were people called “degenerates,” “perverts,” “inverts,” and “homosexuals.” The word “gay” was used in the subculture after World War II to some extent, but it was not used in popular culture very much until the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Now in the 20th century, the God thing is a decline, the marriage thing is in decline. The percentage of women working that are married increases steadily, and the percentage of women in the workforce increases steadily. And as women go into the workplace, they put off marriage, many of them don’t get married. They put off having children, they have fewer children on the whole, demographically.
So, if you’re a traditionalist and you’re swallowing [unmarried] cohabitation, what are you producing [with modern anti-sodomy laws]? Well, you’re producing heterosexuality.
In Texas, in 1973, they totally redid their criminal code. They eliminated most of the consensual crimes for heterosexual sodomy [both in and outside of marriage]. But they recreated it as a misdemeanor: the homosexual conduct law — only against homosexuals, and it was almost never enforced.
So it’s technically a crime, even though you’re not going to put people in jail for it. So most of the effect of these laws, whether they were called homosexual or not, was to hold up the possibility that you could be disciplined at any point if you were openly gay or lesbian… and the state could create whatever level of criminality it wanted.
You ask, “How much the state is willing to invest in undercover cops who parade around gay resting places — bars, restrooms, or tea rooms — waiting to be molested or invited?” So if it’s all the homosexuals who are taking over the neighborhood, you send in undercover cops and you can arrest a lot of them…. But if you don’t invest all that money in undercover cops, you ain’t got no crime. You might have a nuisance or neighbors complaining, etc., but you got no crime. So that’s the way it worked if the state wanted to go after sexual and gender minorities.
[The anti-gay military ban known as “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT)] was founded on the idea that lesbian and gay soldiers are presumptive criminals. And therefore, anybody who even has a proclivity toward illegal behavior can be kicked out. What if a school teacher is found to be a lesbian in a lesbian relationship, violating the Texas homosexual conduct law? Theoretically. You don’t catch them. What do you do with her? You fire her!
You know, what happened when [President George W.] Bush fought a war [in Iraq]? When you fight a war, you need the gays. Okay, so [DADT] collapsed. I was told by someone within the Bush administration, “No, we don’t have any interest in enforcing this… We’re at war. It’s stupid.” You need the gays because they speak Arabic. The gays are heavily skilled. If you kick them all out, then you don’t got no intelligence, right?
I’ve heard it said that in order for LGBTQ+ people to win marriage and other civil rights, we first had to strike down the sodomy laws so the public wouldn’t consider us a bunch of criminals. Do you think that’s true?
I don’t think that’s the way I would put it, but I think it was an important domino…. By the time you got to Lawrence, I think there were only about 13 states that made consensual private sodomy, including oral sex, a crime that was usually a misdemeanor.
Why would some schmuck judge agree with some plaintiffs that we should overturn a conceptual sodomy law? [Because] you can win those arguments, because it’s not giving the gays any kind of special privileges, it’s just taking the government off our backs. And you could argue, you know, during [the height of the AIDS epidemic], the doctors were all saying [anti-sodomy criminalization] actually spreads AIDS. The doctors were a united front that it was bad.
The opponents of decriminalization would make sort of wild stupid claims. Like, oh, you know, “If you make them non-criminals they’ll rape children…. It’ll be the end of marriage, etc.” And of course, when you decriminalized it, none of those things ever actually happened. So you would have our side, gathering allies — some types of religious allies, sometimes conservatives, sometimes unexpected people — and the other side making ridiculous points. And then, when the world didn’t end, they look like idiots.
Nearly every single state, [soon after its legislature] decriminalized sodomy, they passed an anti-discrimination law protecting gay people. And this predicted exactly the order in which states would legalize gay marriage.
I think the progression is like a normative progression. When sodomy laws are repealed, more people will come out of the closet. And people come out of the closet as the mother of a lesbian. Then you have a PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) you know, you build up that coalition. More people come out of the closet. And then we get another discrimination law where your job is protected. More people come out of the closet. Then companies come out of the closet, right? It’s gay support. It’s, “Hey, the gays are actually good customers! They’re good employees! They speak Arabic! They’re very handy dandy! The gays are okay! They’re okay!”
So you get more so them [coming out], and then they want to partner up. We’re no longer misfits who can’t be employed, right? But what about you know, getting married? And the straights are like, “Well, let’s compromise with civil unions. Let’s give them a euphemism.” And the gays are like, “Well, okay, but we still want marriage.” And then a lot of them get civil unions and domestic partnerships. They have children and heterosexuals like, “Wow, who, who knew?” because they didn’t know that there were gonna be lesbians with children. They’re like, “Who knew they cared for one another? Why hush my mouth, they have children, biological children! — where’d that come from?” Right? And then people were just flummoxed, and then we ultimately get Obergefell (the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide).
What do you make of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ suggestion that maybe the court should overturn Lawrence? Is this just something he said to excite conservatives or is something else going on?
Thomas and Alito are very devout Catholics. So Alito believes in this: Sex is procreative and it’s got to be heterosexual, and he believes this is all ordained by God. And if you really believe that’s the most important thing for a polity, then you don’t care if no one agrees with you. You say, “Well, God agrees with me,” and that’s that. So a lot of it is just that. That’s really what they believe.
It would be insane for them to overrule Lawrence vs. Texas. It would just be insane because a lot of sodomy laws would pop back. Texas has never repealed its law. Virginia has never repealed its law. So they would pop back, just like these abortion statutes [did when Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022].
You know, in Arizona [in 2014]… the legislature passed a statute [that would allow religious business owners to discriminate against gay people]…. It was all symbolic, you know. The Republican legislature passed it so it could rev up the base or something. And the Chamber of Commerce came down and said, “No, no, no, this is terrible.” The head of the Chamber of Commerce in Arizona — nice Republican old white guy — sits down with [then-Arizona Gov.] Jan Brewer (R) and says, “You cannot sign this piece of legislation.”
The f**king Mormon Church tells her not to sign the legislation. The Mormon legislators, a couple who have voted for the bill, said, “Oh, this was a bad idea. What was I thinking?” Because the Mormon church was now realigning…. Though they bashed the gays [by financing California’s 2008 anti-gay marriage ballot measure] Prop 8. “Oh, who is that? Not us?” [the Mormon Chuch said afterward.] “We don’t bash no gays.” … Jan Brewer — a horrible, right-wing, vicious, horrible Republican governor — vetoes this horrible statute, and then it dies. Like, no one wants to pass another statute. No, no, they won’t touch this issue anymore.
Something kind of similar happened in Arkansas, the same kind of stupid thing happened in Indiana. So you can imagine what s**t these states would take from corporations, from the gays, from women’s groups, from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). The Super Bowl — Arizona was gonna lose the Super Bowl over this, and they were scared sh**less over all the repercussions. So yeah, it would be insane. It would be insane. And plus, I don’t think you’d have to have a case where someone was actually arrested under one of the sodomy laws [in order for the issue to reach the Supreme Court], I guess. So no one’s gonna do that.
But this is the most conservative Supreme Court, I think in American history, maybe since Dred Scott (the 1857 decision that declared that Black former slaves weren’t U.S. citizens). And [the current Court is] so out of touch with America on the environment, on abortion, on religion, on about anything. America’s going one way, [and the Court] is moving back in the other direction…. I’ve never seen anything like it in American history.
On the same weekend that saw hundreds of thousands of people flocking to Boston’s Pride parade route, a much quieter walk took placeon the brick-laden backstreets of Beacon Hill. There, a handful of people gathered for the inaugural National Park Service tour honoring a little-known yet pioneering gay rights activist.
The tour explores the life of the late Prescott Townsend, a queer advocatewhose long life spanned the 19th century and the first Pride Parade in New York City in 1970, and who lived an exuberantly out gay life that flew in the face of the social and legal boundaries of his time.
At the tour’s start, on the south slope of Beacon Hill, National Park Service ranger Meaghan Michel explained how Townsend, born in 1894, was part of an old, Boston Brahmin family. He came out as gay to his parents in his teens before following a family tradition of attending Harvard.
“They accepted it, but did warn him to be careful,” said Michel. “But once he entered Harvard, once he was kind of off on his own, that’s when he started to actually act on those feelings that he confessed to them about. We don’t know the name of his first sexual encounter. What we do know is that, apparently, it was a very handsome polo player.”
Michel said Townsend cut short his Harvard studies in 1917 to enlist in the Navy during World War I. After his discharge, he joined the ranks of those who would become known as the “lost generation,” making his way to Paris. It was there he encountered — and embraced — a 1920s bohemian counterculture.
And upon his return to Beacon Hill, he sought to establish an outpost of that culture in his hometown using ample family money.
A bohemian outpost on Beacon Hill
One of the attendees on the inaugural tour was Michel’s partner, Theo Linger, who researched Townsend for a master’s thesis and helped organize the tour for the park service. They said most National Park Service tours on Beacon Hill emphasize the 1800s.
“Maybe occasionally we’ll touch on the fact that … in the later 19th century, it became more of an immigrant neighborhood,” Linger said. “But for some reason, the gay, artsy history had never really come to the forefront before. And I think that’s just an interesting fold of this neighborhood.”
The bohemian outpost sprang up on the more eclectic northern slope of Beacon Hill — another stop on the tour — where Prescott Townsend opened a bar and an experimental theater. Joining forces with a theatre producer, the two started spending a lot of time in Provincetown, Michel said.
“And it’s there that they meet members of the Provincetown players, who are also staging these very interesting Avant Garde theater productions, including plays by Eugene O’Neill,” Michel said. “So Prescott becomes friends with Eugene O’Neill. He becomes friends with these different actors and theater producers. He was very happy to bankroll them. And they were very happy to take his money.”
But Prescott’s financial situation changed abruptly when the stock market crashed in 1929. So he settled into a less entrepreneurial life around the corner from the experimental theater, which he was forced to shut down.
The next tour stop is at 75 Phillips St., where Townsend rented out affordable rooms in a property he owned, often to young, gay men.
Some sources indicate that in those Depression years, Townsend had already begun a life of gay activism by visiting the State House up the hill to ask legislators to decriminalize homosexual acts. But in 1943, during World War II, his life reached a turning point.
From Beacon Hill to behind bars
“He worked at the shipyard in Fall River,” Michel told the tour, “but one day, he was actually arrested for engaging in a sex act with another man here in Beacon Hill. They were caught … And he was actually imprisoned for 18 months out in Deer Island.”
Upon hearing that, one person on the tour, Gastónde los Reyes, suggested there might be an opportunity now to right an old wrong.
“The Park Service should lobby Mayor [Michelle] Wu to essentially pardon him for his crime of being homosexual,” said de los Reyes. “And use him as an example of how far back the need for affordable housing in Boston exists, right?”
Someone pointed out that in Massachusetts, it’s the governor, not the mayor, who holds the power to pardon — prompting a discussion about the nation’s first openly lesbian governor, Maura Healey, and how it would be appropriate for her to weigh in on this during Pride month.
Michel said Townsend’s arrest in the 1940s finally led to him being kicked out of the Social Register, and hence, ‘polite society’ — something he wore as a badge of honor.
Activism begins in earnest
After he was released from prison, Prescott Townsend moved to 15 Lindall Place, a three-story brick house with two bay windows down a short alley.
“Very early on, this house became site to some of the earliest meetings discussing specifically gay issues in Boston,” Michel said in front of the home. “And [it] was the first headquarters of the Boston chapter of the Mattachine Society. So that national society of gay men that organized and came together, there were chapters throughout the United States.”
But Michel added that Townsend balked at the early Mattachine Society members’ respectability politics.
“He was very vocal. He had a lot of opinions. He let people know what they were, and a lot of people in the society very much disagreed with what he was proposing,” Michel said. “He lost his reputation and he had nothing to lose.”
Townsend began to push for a radical acceptance of the full panoply of human sexuality by society at large — and even for the early gay rights advocates of the ’50s and early ’60s, that was just a bridge too far.
“And then in 1969, when the Stonewall riot breaks out, that is really the type of activism that he would relate to the most strongly,” said Michel.
A new generation of gay activists had risen up, and the aging Townsend had found his milieu, she said.
“He was very close to hippies and vagabonds and runaways of the young queer community,” Michel said. “So it makes sense that because he’s close to these people who also have nothing to lose, when they finally decide to fight back and fight for their rights in a different way, he’s totally on board with them.”
A Beacon Hill light shines on
On the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in New York City, an aging Townsend ventured to New York for the first Pride parade, just days after his 76th birthday.
Toward the end of the National Park Service tour, ranger Meghan Michel shared a black-and-white photograph of Prescott Townsend with her small audience. In it, the once button-down Brahmin of the early 20th century is sporting love-beads and a beret atop his long, shaggy hair, embracing young, gay activists who would walk in the trail he blazed.
An unpublished biography of Townsend, written by Adrian Cathcart and referred to on the tour, describes the advocate as a lover of freedom and “unpopular causes.”
“He loved being a star and the center of attention. He loved Harvard. He loved New England. He was proud to be Prescott Townsend. A state of being that involved not only himself, but also his ancestors. He felt this mattered,” Cathcart writes.
But after that inaugural Pride parade in New York, Townsend’s health declined quickly and he fell on hard times. A series of fires rendered him essentially homeless and destroyed almost all records documenting his extraordinary life. He died in the basement apartment of a friend on Garden Street in his beloved Beacon Hill at the age of 78.
One of the young men standing next to Townsend in that 1970 Pride parade picture was Randolfe “Randy” Wicker. Today an 85-year-old global LGBTQ+ activist, Wicker is set to be a Grand Marshal at this year’s NYC Pride March later this month.
“Well, to me, he has only one legacy, and it’s ‘love, money, uplift.’ And that doing for others brings you happiness. Those are the two most important statements you will ever hear anyone make,” Wicker said of Townsend in an oral history interview with Theo Linger.
The National Park Service says it doesn’t yet have a regular schedule for the historical walking tour of Prescott Townsend. But it’s planning more opportunities, ensuring the story of Townsend’s courage, advocacy and impact are known in his old, cherished neighborhood and beyond.
Over half of Americans surveyed in the last year reported facing online harassment and hate during their lifetime, including more than 75% of transgender respondents, advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said on Wednesday.
ADL’s fifth such annual survey showed that reports of online hate and harassment over the last 12 months increased within almost every demographic group.
About 52% of the survey respondents reported having faced online harassment, compared to 40% in the survey’s previous year.
“We’re confronted with record levels of hate across the internet, hate that too often turns into real violence and danger in our communities,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, urging tech and social media platforms to do more to tackle online hate.
The rate of harassment stood at 76% for transgender people, while 26% of Jewish respondents, 38% of Black Americans and 38% of Muslims said they had been harassed online at some point in their life.
Excluding transgender people, 47% of the LGBTQ+ community respondents reported online harassment.
“Due to the recent proliferation of extreme anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric, ADL sampled transgender individuals separately this year,” the advocacy group said.
Republican-led states have signed a flurry of bills relating to transgender youth, which proponents say are aimed at protecting minors and opponents say limit their rights. Some states have banned teachers of younger children from discussing gender or sexuality, while conservative lawmakers have also proposed or passed laws restricting drag performances.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden warned about “ugly” attacks from “hysterical” people who he said were targeting LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender youth.
The survey of 2,139 adults and 550 teenagers was conducted online from March 7 through April 6 by YouGov, a public opinion and data analytics firm, on behalf of ADL. It oversampled respondents who identified as LGBTQ or as members of various minorities.
Of those who reported being harassed, 54% indicated harassment took place on Facebook, 27% said it took place on Twitter and 21% said it occurred on Reddit.
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of an evangelical Christian web designer from Colorado who refuses to work on same-sex weddings in a decision that deals a setback to LGBTQ rights.
The justices, divided6-3on ideological lines, said that Lorie Smith, as a creative professional, has a free speech right under the Constitution’s First Amendment to refuse to endorse messages she disagrees with. As a result, she cannot be punished under Colorado’s antidiscrimination law for refusing to design websites for gay couples, the court said.
The ruling could allow other similar business owners to evade punishment under laws in 29 states that protect LGBTQ rights in public accommodations in some form. The remaining 21 states do not have laws explicitly protecting LGBTQ rights in public accommodations, although some local municipalities do.
“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place, where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.
Gorsuch, who wrote a 2020 ruling that expanded LGBTQ rights in the employment context, said that public accommodation laws play a vital role in protecting individual civil rights.
“At the same time, this court has also recognized that no public accommodation law is immune from the demands of the Constitution. In particular, this court has held, public accommodations statutes can sweep too broadly when deployed to compel speech,” he added.
Smith, who opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds and runs a business designing websites, sued the state in 2016 because she said she would like to accept customers planning opposite-sex weddings but reject requests made by same-sex couples wanting the same service. She was never penalized for rejecting a same-sex couple — and it’s unclear if she ever did — but sued on hypothetical grounds.
Smith argued that as a creative professional she has a free speech right to refuse to undertake work that conflicts with her views.
Civil rights groups said Smith was asking the conservative-majority court for a “license to discriminate” that would gut public accommodation laws that require businesses to serve all customers.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the dissent, said the court’s ruling was part of “a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities” and a type of “reactionary exclusion,” calling it “heartbreaking.”
In a stern voice, she read a summary of her dissent from the bench, saying in court that the decision allowing Smith to sell her product only to opposite-sex couples “makes a mockery of the law.”
She compared Smith’s situation to historic cases of racial discrimination in which restaurants would refuse to serve Black people inside but would allow them to collect pick-up orders from a side counter, effectively treating them like second-class citizens.
Sotomayor noted that Smith will still sell her services to LGBTQ people only if it is for an opposite-sex wedding. For LGBTQ customers, Sotomayor said, “she will sell at a side counter.”
The court’s two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, both joined Sotomayor’s dissent.
Smith’s lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, said the court had simply reaffirmed that Americans cannot be forced to say things they do not believe.
“This is a win for all Americans. The government should no more censor Lorie for speaking consistent with her beliefs about marriage than it should punish an LGBT graphic designer for declining to criticize same-sex marriage,” she added.
Civil rights groups viewed the ruling very differently, with David Cole, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, saying the court had for the first time found that some people have a green light to violate antidiscrimination laws.
“The court’s decision opens the door to any business that claims to provide customized services to discriminate against historically-marginalized groups,” he added.
December’s oral argument featured a colorful array of hypothetical questions as the justices wrestled with the potentially broad implications of the case. At one point, conservative Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether a “Black Santa“ at a shopping mall would be obliged to take a picture with a child dressed up in a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
The case was the latest example of the conflict over the Supreme Court’s own 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, which conservative Christians oppose even as Congress has moved to enact a law with bipartisan support that bolsters protections for married same-sex couples.
Smith, whose business is called 303 Creative, told NBC News she has always been drawn to creative projects but also has strongly held beliefs that “marriage is between one man and one woman — and that union is significant.”
Smith sued the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and other state officials out of concern that she could be sanctioned under its antidiscrimination law that bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public accommodations, although she has not been sanctioned yet. Lower courts ruled against Smith, prompting her to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The case gave the court a second bite at a legal question it considered but never resolved when it ruled in a similar case in 2018 in favor of a Christian baker, also from Colorado, who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court ruled then that the baker, Jack Phillips, did not receive a fair hearing before the state Civil Rights Commission because there was evidence of anti-religious bias.
State officials said in court papers that they had never investigated Smith and had no evidence that anyone had ever asked her to create a website for a same-sex wedding. Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson wrote that there is a long tradition of public accommodations laws protecting the ability of all people to obtain goods and services.
Smith, like Phillips before her, is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, which has had success arguing religious rights cases at the Supreme Court in recent years.
The Supreme Court ruled on the baker case before the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted in favor of LGBTQ rights in key cases. Now, following three appointments made by then-President Donald Trump, the court has six conservative and three liberal justices.
The highest-ranking transgender elected official in the United States, Sarah McBride, has launched a bid to become Delaware’s sole member of the US House of Representatives.
McBride is currently a senator in the Delaware state legislature and, if successful, would become the first trans person to be elected to federal office.
Lisa Blunt Rochester, the state’s current house representative, announced last week that she would be running at the next election to replace senator Tom Carper, who is retiring.
Speaking to Delaware Online, McBride said she was “certainly cognisant of the uniqueness of my candidacy, of the uniqueness that my voice would bring to the halls of Congress”.
But, she added, “Ultimately, I’m not running to be a trans member of Congress,“ instead she was “focused on making progress on all of the issues that matter to Delawareans of every background”.
Having diversity among elected officials was necessary for a health democracy, she said.
The approach is reminiscent of McBride’s campaign for the state senate, where she ran on the notion of serving as a “senator who happens to be transgender”.
McBride’s campaign video highlights her message of making “government work better for people”.
She also took aim at politicians who she said want to “divide” society, showing footage of controversial figures Florida governor Ron DeSantis and US house representative Majorie Taylor Greene.
“Blocking out the noise and focusing on what actually matters isn’t easy… it takes guts and a backbone,” McBride said.
The election is set to take place in November 2024.
Who is Sarah McBride?
McBride, 32, was elected to the Delaware State Senate in November 2020. It made her the first openly trans state senator in the US, as well as the highest-ranking trans elected official in the country.
Prior to her election, she had worked for LGBTQ+ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
In 2014, she was thanked by Delaware’s then-governor Jack Markell, for her work in helping introduce legislation to ban gender-identity discrimination in areas such as housing and employment.
As a state senator, McBride sponsored a bill that gives eligible workers up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. It was passed in early 2022 and will come into effect from the start of 2025.
According to Delaware Online, she has long been viewed as the front runner to succeed Rochester.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs issued two pro-LGBTQ executive orders on Tuesday, banning state support of so-called conversion therapy and allowing transgender state employees to receive gender-affirming health care under their insurance plan.
Hobbs made the announcement from the offices of a central Phoenix nonprofit that focuses on helping LGBTQ youth.
Under the executive actions, state agencies will be prohibited from using funds to promote or facilitate so-called conversion therapy, the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
Also, state employee health insurance plans can no longer list gender-affirming surgery as ineligible for coverage. A ban on such coverage was enacted in 2017.
The change will impact former and current state employees and public university workers.
That order effectively resolves an ongoing lawsuit brought in 2019 by Dr. Russell Toomey, a University of Arizona professor who is transgender and sought coverage for a “medically necessary” surgery. ACLU attorneys representing Toomey said Tuesday they will file a motion to settle the case.
Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise visit on Monday to the historic Stonewall Inn bar in Manhattan, where the 1969 uprising sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and Prideevents worldwide. In doing so, she became the first sitting vice president to make a stop there.
Harris first saw Christopher Park, which is part of the Stonewall National Monument established by former President Barack Obama in 2016. The park sits adjacent to the bar and has been repeatedly targeted by vandals in recent weeks. Harris visited the monument with National Park Service Superintendent Shirley McKinney, who briefed and gave her a tour.
One of the bar’s owners, Kurt Kelly, and out TV personality Andy Cohen welcomed Harris when she made it to the Stonewall Inn.
“Gay Pride was yesterday, so I’m like, woo,” Kelly joked after embracing Harris and welcoming her to the bar.
“I get it,” she replied. “The morning after.”
As a small scrum of reporters and photographers and many joyful customers listened intently, Cohen asked Harris to “tell us something that we can be optimistic about this Pride season.”
According to Harris, the Biden-Harris administration will continue to support the LGBTQ+ community in the face of attacks by GOP state legislators and right-wing extremists.
“I look at these young teachers in Florida who are in their twenties, and if they’re in a same-sex relationship, they are afraid to put up a photograph of themselves or their loved one for fear they might lose their job. It pains me, but it also reminds me that we can take nothing for granted in terms of progress. We have to be vigilant. That’s the nature of our fight for equality. And so we’re up for it. And we are not going to be overwhelmed. We are not going to be silenced. We are not going to be deterred. We are not going to tire, [and] we’re not going to throw up our hands; we’re going to roll up our sleeves.”
She emphasized, “That’s how I feel about it.”
Kelly added, “To me, Stonewall means strength in numbers. Every time you put a rock on that wall, we become stronger and stronger and stronger. And you put your rock here today.”
Harris posed for selfies with patrons once the press had been ushered out of the bar. She hung out behind the bar for a short time, chatting with people there.
Harris briefly spoke to reporters as she was leaving the Stonewall Inn.
“This place represents a real inflection moment in this movement, which is a movement that is about equality, a movement that is about freedom, a movement that is about safety,” Harris said, noting the anniversary of the raid. “I’m here because I also understand not only what we should celebrate in terms of those fighters who fought for fundamental freedoms, but understanding that this fight is not over.”
She continued, “When I look at the fact that in our country we’re looking at somewhere around 600 bills being proposed or passed — anti-LGBTQ bills — book bans, a policy approach that is ‘don’t say gay.’ People in fear for their life. People afraid to be. To be! These are fundamental issues that point to the need for us to all be vigilant [and] to stand together.”
The Stonewall Inn was raided by police in the early hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, as part of a pattern of harassment against LGBTQ+ establishments. A fight broke out instead of the patrons and allies dispersing. Six days of protests and conflict followed the raid and subsequent riot outside the bar, along nearby streets, and in Christopher Park. As one of the most significant catalysts of the movement’s dramatic expansion of protected rights, the Stonewall Riots are widely regarded as one of the most critical events in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Her motorcade then took Harris to the Upper East Side for the 24th Annual LGBTQ+ Leadership Council Gala, a campaign reception benefiting the Biden Victory Fund. In front of an enthusiastic crowd, actress Rosario Dawson introduced Harris.
Harris declared, “Pride is patriotism!”
She said, “There is nothing more patriotic than celebrating freedom, which includes the freedom to love who you love and be who you are.”
Harris then spoke about her earlier visit to the Stonewall Inn.
“I reflected on the determination and dedication of patriots like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson,” she said.
She also paid tribute to the late Jim Rivaldo, a political consultant who served as her campaign manager during her successful 2004 bid for San Francisco district attorney. Rivaldo was instrumental in Harvey Milk’s election to the city council in 1978.
Harris acknowledged Jim Obergefell, who was in attendance, for bringing the case Obergefell vs. Hodges, which established marriage equality nationwide in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
“That progress is not inevitable. It does not just happen. It takes steadfast determination and dedication,” Harris said, “the kind of determination and dedication possessed by people like Jim Obergefell.”
Additionally, Harris acknowledged Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and gay California Rep. Robert Garcia, who were all in attendance. She also celebrated the election of two lesbian governors: Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotec, who were not at the event.
She warned, however, of the current political climate and promised her and President Joe Biden’s support in the fight against the backsliding of LGBTQ+ rights nationwide.
“These extremists dare to ban books by LGBTQ+ authors or those that have LGBTQ+ characters. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2023,” she said, exasperated. “Imagine!”
Harris continued, “As we are clear-eyed about this moment, let us all see also the larger context in which this is happening because this fight is not only about teachers in Florida or young people in Tennessee. This fight is on all of us because when you attack the rights of any American, you attack the rights of all Americans.”
As the country approaches another presidential election in 2024, Harris outlined the Republican approach.
“Let’s be clear about where this is headed,” she said. “These extremists have a plan to push their agenda as far and as wide as they possibly can. Their blueprint is to attack hard-won rights and freedoms state by state: to attack the right to live as your authentic self, to attack the right to vote, to attack the rights of workers to organize, to attack the right to make decisions about one’s own body.”
Harris responded to those developments with one resounding message.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I have news for these extremists. We’re not having that!”
President Joe Biden on Friday warned that if Republicans win next year’s elections, they will go after the right to privacy that has provided the basis for legal protections for same-sex marriage and access to contraception.
“These guys are serious, man. I — I said it when the decision came out, and people looked at me like I was exaggerating,” he said. “But they’re not stopping here.”
Biden delivered the remarks during an event hosted by America’s largest pro-choice organizations in commemoration of the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Americans’ constitutional right to abortion.
Joining the president at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C. were his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Also in attendance were senior administration officials and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who spoke before Biden took the stage.
Repeating his call for Congress to pass legislation restoring the reproductive freedoms that were erased with the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Biden also denounced the abortion restrictions that were since passed in red states.
“They’re not stopping here,” he said. “Make no mistake, this election is about freedom on the ballot.”
Representatives from the abortion rights groups hosting the event — Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America — endorsed Biden’s bid for re-election, likely a signal of his campaign’s confidence that reproductive rights will be a defining feature of the 2024 presidential race.
Also on Friday, the White House issued an Executive Order on Strengthening Access to Contraception along with a fact sheet providing an “update on the work of the Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access and the administration’s ongoing efforts to defend reproductive rights.”
The executive order delineates a series of actions including plans to improve access to affordable contraception for those with private health insurance; improve access to over-the-counter contraception; support family planning services and supplies across the Medicaid program; improve Medicare coverage of contraception; ensure “robust coverage” of contraception for service members, veterans and federal employees; increase contraception access for federally supported healthcare programs; improve access to affordable contraception provided by employer sponsored health plans and institutions of higher education; and support research documenting gaps and disparities in access to contraception.
The White House’s fact sheet, meanwhile, summarizes the Biden-Harris administration’s work fighting for reproductive rights in the wake of Dobbs. This has also included a series of actions contained in two executive orders along with those in Friday’s.
Among other moves, the administration has worked to ensure access to medication abortion, protect the freedom to travel across state lines for medical care, safeguard the privacy of health information and partner with statewide abortion rights advocates.
On Saturday, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, the Human Rights Campaign, issued a press release committing the organization to fighting on behalf of reproductive freedom.
“LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by abortion bans,” according to the press release. “Even prior to the Dobbs decision, lesbian, bisexual, and queer cisgender women reported higher rates of unwanted or mistimed pregnancies relative to heterosexual women, often due to the discrimination that they face in healthcare settings.”