Someone threw rocks and smashed windows at several LGBTQ organizations and businesses across town over the past week, according to a statement from the Parasol Patrol, an organization that shields young people and their families from anti-LGBTQ attacks.
The businesses included salons, a queer gym, a boutique and the Center on Colfax, one of the largest LGBTQ organizations in the state. Many of the business owners were friends.
The apparent attacks spanned the city, from Washington Park to Southwest Denver to Colfax Avenue and the River North Art District. A motive has not been determined, though queer-owned businesses say they are on edge and are well aware of the pattern.
Read the full article. My first report on this is here. Watch the video report below on YouTube. The man seen above was smashing windows with a rock.
A federal appeals court will take a second look at whether West Texas A&M University can ban drag shows, setting aside an earlier ruling that found the university’s ban likely violated students’ free speech rights. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday tossed a 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel issued in August and agreed to rehear the case before the court’s 17 active judges.
The panel’s earlier decision had sided with the student group Spectrum WT, which is represented by FIRE, after university President Walter Wendler canceled a campus drag show in 2023. The panel majority said the students would’ve likely engaged in protected expression, pointing to their drag show’s context as a ticketed event organized by a LGBTQ+ student group to raise money for a suicide prevention charity, and that the venue, Legacy Hall, was a public forum.
This year’s mayoral race in New York City is shaping up to be the most-watched and most consequential local election in the country. Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman and Democratic Socialist who cleanly won the Democratic primary earlier this year and maintains a double-digit lead in the polls, is facing off against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary.
Analysts argue that this race could have significant implications for the future of the Democratic Party. If Mamdani wins, it will represent New Yorkers’ desire for a politician who leans further left than the party’s traditional values.
These implications extend to LGBTQ rights as well, as discourse surrounding trans people has permeated discussions of the party’s future since last year’s presidential loss.
With that in mind, here are both candidates’ track records on LGBTQ issues.
Andrew Cuomo allegedly runs a whisper campaignduring his father Mario’s run for New York City mayor against Ed Koch. He uses the slogan “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo,” referencing Koch’s sexuality. Koch never publicly came out as gay and denied it until his death, but it was known in his personal circle that he was.
“The signs said, VOTE FOR CUOMO, NOT THE HOMO. Andrew says he didn’t do it, and I believe him.”
June 24, 2011
Cuomo signs the Marriage Equality Act into law, legalizing same-sex marriage and making New York the sixth state—and the largest, at the time—to pass marriage equality. The passage of the law is considered a win for gay rights. In a press statement, Cuomo says:
“New York has finally torn down the barrier that has prevented same-sex couples from exercising the freedom to marry and from receiving the fundamental protections that so many couples and families take for granted. … With the world watching, the Legislature, by a bipartisan vote, has said that all New Yorkers are equal under the law.”
June 26, 2011
Two days after signing the Marriage Equality Act, Cuomo marches in NYC Pride and is met with adoration and fanfare. He would continue to be a figure at NYC Pride for the next eight years, but since 2019 has no public record of attending.
Dec. 11, 2014
Cuomo announces regulatory guidelines to help trans people receive equal access to health insurance coverage. The new rules no longer allow insurance companies to deny medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria. The move comes before similar federal protections are introduced in 2015 under the Affordable Care Act, positioning New York ahead of national policy on trans health care.
March 31, 2015
Cuomo bans non-essential state-funded travel to Indiana after the state passes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The act enables anti-LGBTQ discrimination by saying that being forced to serve queer customers is a burden on their religious beliefs. Cuomo would lift the banApril 4, saying he believes changes made to the law will keep it from being used to discriminate against gay people. The next year, Cuomo would impose a similar travel ban for North Carolina because of their trans bathroom ban.
Oct. 22, 2015
Cuomo issues an executive order that expands discrimination protection regulations to include gender identity, transgender status and gender dysphoria. The move is praised by the American Civil Liberties Union:
“With this executive action, Gov. Cuomo has made it clear that his administration is committed to protecting transgender and gender nonconforming people in New York State. … These clear legal protections go a long way toward allowing transgender New Yorkers to enjoy dignity, respect and access to opportunity in New York.”
Jan. 25, 2019
Cuomo signs two pro-LGBTQ bills into law. The first bans conversion therapy for minors by licensed practitioners and bans insurers from covering the discredited practice. The second, known as the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), amends the state’s Human Rights Law to ban anti-trans discrimination.
“The Supreme Court says you can discriminate against transgender in the military,” Cuomo says in a statement. “We say today—no you can’t. You cannot discriminate against people by gender identity, period.”
June 30, 2019
Cuomo signs a law banning the “gay and trans panic” legal defense in New York. The law eliminates a long-established loophole in hate crime trials that allowed lawyers to argue that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity could cause a suspect to fly into a sudden violent frenzy such that they hurt or kill the victim. New York is the eighth state to ban the defense.
Enter Mamdani
Feb. 2, 2021
Zohran Mamdani on his first day as state assemblyman. Photo by @Zohrankmamdani/Instagram.
In his first session as a House Representative for New York’s 36th district, Zohran Mamdani backs the repeal of the “Walking While Trans” law, which was disproportionately used to target trans women of color under the guise of curbing sex work. In the 1970s, “wearing a skirt,” “waving at a car” and “standing somewhere other than a bus stop or taxi stand” were viewed under the law as probable cause for arrest.
That same day, Cuomo signs the repeal of portions of the law and says:
“For too long trans people have been unfairly targeted and disproportionately policed for innocent, lawful conduct based solely on their appearance. Repealing the archaic ‘walking while trans’ ban is a critical step toward reforming our policing system and reducing the harassment and criminalization transgender people face simply for being themselves. New York has always led the nation on LGBTQ rights, and we will continue that fight until we achieve true equality.”
Feb. 15, 2021
The Child-Parent Security Act, which Cuomo signed into law in 2020, goes into effect. The law legalizes compensation for gestational surrogacy, opening new paths to parenthood for both LGBTQ and heterosexual couples alike.
Feb. 17, 2021
Mamdani co-sponsors the Gender Recognition Act, which would make it easier for trans and nonbinary folks to change their gender on official government documents. It would also give them the option to choose a gender-neutral marker of “X” instead of the male/female binary and options for gender-neutral parent language on birth certificates.
Feb. 24, 2021
Cuomo is announced as the recipient of the LGBT Bar of New York’s “Community Vision Award” for his “distinguished record of service to the LGBTQ community, including a sustained commitment to achieving equal rights for all members of our community.” Just hours later, a former staffer publishes a story detailing Cuomo’s history of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.
In reaction, Cuomo is stripped of his award and barred from attending the gala.
Cuomo, April 6, 2021. Photo by New York National Guard.
In an investigation following allegations of sexual assault and workplace mistreatment by Cuomo, The New York Times reports that the governor allegedly told a male official in 2019: “You’d be a good-looking tr*nny if you get a good set of tits.”
In response to the allegation, a member of Cuomo’s team says, “He would never make a comment so vile.”
June 24, 2021
Cuomo signs the Gender Recognition Act—co-sponsored by Mamdani—into law. This is one of Cuomo’s last legislative moves before his resignation Aug. 24, 2021.
June 10, 2023
Mamdani votes for New York’s gender-affirming care “shield law” that protects providers, patients and medical records from hostile out-of-state actions. The bill is then signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul. Mamdani’s vote underscores his opposition to red-state crackdowns on trans health care.
Oct. 23, 2024
Mamdani writes an op-ed for the Queens Daily Eagle in support of Proposal 1, a state constitutional amendment which bans discrimination “based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex—including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” The amendment also introduces legal protections for housing discrimination against LGBTQ people. The following month, Prop 1 passes into law.
Feb. 8, 2025
Mamdani attends a rally for trans youth in New York City’s Union Square and says he is there “to stand up for these children” as attempts to bangender-affirming care spread across the country.
“You need not even know a trans New Yorker to stand up for trans New Yorkers. … This is a trial of all of us to see who we are willing to give up. And our answer is no one.”
March 11, 2025
Gothamist reports that Cuomo hires anti-LGBTQ activist Kristofer Graham to be his campaign treasurer. Graham worked for the Coalition to Protect Kids, a group aimed at defeating Prop 1. Before that, he worked for theSave Our State PAC on Republican Lee Zeldin’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign, which also peddledhomophobia and transphobia.
The decision provokes backlash among former Cuomo allies. Tyler Hack, a trans rights activist and the executive director of the Christopher Street Project, says:
“Cuomo is signaling that trans rights are negotiable to him. … The only takeaway we can make from that is that it’s not an accident.”
Cuomo marches in the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, September 2025. Photo by Marco.
March 27, 2025
Cuomo does not participate in a mayoral candidate forum hosted by four LGBTQ groups, including The Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, NYC Pride and Power, Equality New York and Lambda Independent Democrats. His absence further alienates him from New York’s LGBTQ community.
April 29, 2025
Cuomo is snubbed by LGBTQ advocacy groups, including the Jim Owles Liberal LGBT Club, Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn and the Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, as they use the city’s rank choice format to list Brad Lander, Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos. Several groups give Mamdani endorsements. All of them leave Cuomo off the list entirely. The head of Jim Owles credits Cuomo for his past but says he is “unsuitable to be mayor.”
“The gay community is smart. We’re not going to support Cuomo’s baggage. He’s not progressive by any stretch of the imagination.”
Mamdani speaks at Caveat Comedy Festival, May 25, 2025. Photo by Bryan Berlin.
May 22, 2025
Mamdani announces a protection plan for LGBTQ New Yorkers that includes a $65 million investment for gender-affirming care. The plan also proposes the creation of an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs to “expand and centralize the services, programs, and support LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers need across housing, employment and more.” Mamdani says NYC will become a sanctuary city in an effort to “strengthen and uphold the rights of queer and trans New Yorkers.”
June 1, 2025
Cuomo posts a video celebrating Pride and his past achievements for LGBTQ people. Along with the video is the caption:
“Happy Pride Month! I am forever proud of the work my Administration did in the fight for LGBTQ equality. I will always stand with our LGBTQ community and fight for equality and fairness for every New Yorker.”
Despite this, Cuomo does not attend NYC Pride while Mamdani does.
June 23, 2025
Queer and Jewish influencer Matt Bernstein—known online as mattxiv—endorses Mamdani. This is one of many endorsements Mamdani has received among Gen Z voters and influencers. In one Instagram post, Bernstein writes:
“We need democratic leaders who will tax billionaires, not sell their souls to them. We need democratic leaders who will stand up for the rights of immigrants and LGBTQ people, not throw us under the bus. We need Zohran.”
The Trump administration has issued a new rule for airlines requiring an end to gender demarcations besides male or female.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol issued a new rule, citing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump the first day of his new term. The regulation demands carriers to update guidance for their Advance Passenger Information System, or APIS. Under Democratic President Joe Biden, airlines could note passenger gender with as male, female or other, but can no longer afford that recognition to genders outside the binary.
“Existing APIS regulatory language provides that ‘M’ or ‘F’ (M=Male; F=Female) sex markers are to be accepted in the transmission. However, CBP systems had previously accepted characters other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ without returning an error response or requiring resubmission,” the new rule states.
“Effective July 14, 2025, air carriers will have an informed compliance period of 90-days where values other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ in the sex field will not require resubmission. After the compliance period, APIS will begin returning a resubmit or ‘X response’ which indicates insufficient information requiring resubmission, when values other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ are submitted in the sex field.”
That means as of October 12, airlines will no longer be able to submit an alternative gender. The change also makes clear if airlines submit a male or female designation that is different than anything submitted on the original travel document, the carrier won’t face any type of penalties.
Airlines who face questions must call up CBP offices in Honolulu, Miami or New York, depending on the region.
Of note, the ACLU challenged Trump’s order in February, and a judge in June issued an injunction requiring the State Department to issue passports and other travel documents with alternative gender markers. The State Department is continuing to fight in court for the right to revoke or replace those documents and require male or female designations on every form.
But CBP is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and has authority over any international flights to and from the United States.
A CBP spokesperson acknowledged to The Guardian that the gender marker on any traveler’s documents “is not criteria for an applicant’s admission into the U.S.”
The Terminal Tower, “Cleveland’s Signature Skyscraper,” beamed purple for the second straight year in support of LGBTQ youth and against bullying.
Photo: Super Nina Photography
It is the first landmark in Ohio to participate in Spirit Day, and the skyline this year expanded the purple output, with the nearby Beaux Arts post office plaza also lighting its columns, reflections in the mirrored new headquarters of Sherwin Williams, and additional purple illuminating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Photo: Super Nina Photography
The 98-year-old, 52-story, 708-foot-tall Terminal Tower is “Cleveland’s most potent symbol,” Cleveland Historical Society notes, connecting thousands of miles of rail lines and centering industrial innovation and civic pride. Lighting infrastructure by Vincent Lighting ensures that the Tower is lit in different colors each night to bring visibility and representation to hundreds of nonprofit organizations, causes, and Cleveland’s beloved sports teams every year.
Northeast Ohio’s LGBTQ community is celebrating additional recent milestones for equality with Ohio’s first county-wide passage of a bill to ban harmful conversion practices on LGBTQ youth, the passage of a Gender Freedom resolution by the Lakewood City Council that protects private health care data and deprioritizes police investigations into best practice health care, the first full-time city staff employee appointed liaison to the LGBTQ community, Carey Gibbons, and the passage this week of the CROWN Act, which bans discrimination based on hair texture and style.
Photo: Super Nina Photography
LGBTQ advocacy organizations around Northeast Ohio also participated in Spirit Day, including TransOhio and the LGBT Center, which is celebrating its 50th year.
“It is more important than ever that LGBTQ youth know they have a world of support out here for them. LGBTQ people are here to stay, our spirit is unstoppable, and we are overjoyed to again see this profound representation in the Great Lakes and greater Midwest,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.
Alice Austen, far left, and other members of The Darned Club on Oct. 29, 1891.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
Born into Victorian tradition in 1866, Alice Austen enjoyed a position in Staten Island society that gave her freedom to pursue what she dubbed “the larky life,” a whirlwind of fashionable gatherings and mischief that challenged social norms. But it was the gift of a wooden box camera from her uncle — and a chance meeting in the Catskills — that set the course for how Austen would be remembered beyond Gilded days: as one of America’s earliest and most adventurous women photographers and for her relationship with Gertrude Tate, which spanned more than half a century.
Though her father abandoned her mother when she was an infant, Austen enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle with extended family in their home called Clear Comfort, overlooking the coastline of the New York City borough of Staten Island. She perfected imagery of her natural surroundings, social doings and “the sporting society set” in a darkroom fashioned from a closet. Her photos serve as a portal to the Gilded Age, with images of the annual regatta, boathouse bathers, charity balls and lawn tennis, a sport newly open to women who were too restricted by corsets to actually run for the ball.
A self-portrait of Alice Austen on the front porch of Clear Comfort in 1892.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
When cycling took off, so did Austen, similarly constrained by long skirts that could catch in the spokes; even so, with heavy camera equipment mounted on her bicycle, she ferried to Manhattan, where she famously documented turn-of-the-century urban life, enshrining the likes of street sweepers, rag pickers, egg sellers and messengers to gelatin print — producing her 1896 “Street Types of New York” portfolio.
As adept at arranging portraiture as igniting flash powder over a night bloom of flowering cactus, Austen also delighted in making gender-bending exposures of female friends. Nicknamed “The Darned Club,” they posed in undergarments with cigarettes, men’s suits with fake mustaches and together in bed in Victorian nighties.
“She was in a period where she and her friends were really embracing this concept of the ‘New Woman,’” said Victoria Munro, executive director of the Alice Austen House, the original Austen residence, which also serves as a museum and exhibition space.
“She created clubs with these new activities that women were able to do, unchaperoned by men — and they were safe spaces for her and her circle of women friends who were, many of them lesbian, able to be together and have fun and really celebrate,” Munro said. “There was also a certain amount of freedom in the 1880s and 1890s, because women weren’t yet considered to even have a sexuality … so they weren’t even suspected of this kind of perceived bad behavior.”
The Darned Club members Alice Austen, Julia Martin and Julia Bredt dressed up on Oct. 15, 1891Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
Austen enjoyed the affections of multiple women with “decided longings in that direction,” including the amorous athlete Daisy Elliott. Elliott’s letters left little doubt about Austen’s sapphic leanings. “There is a good deal more between the lines than in them,” Elliott wrote Austen. “Read as much as you care to, and you will not be mistaken … ”
It was a romance doomed to fail, however: That same year, 1897, Austen met Tate.
Despite existing in “a very repressive, heteronormative culture,” as Munro described it, the two summered in Europe, attended the Metropolitan Opera and maintained exclusive memberships, including to the Staten Island Garden Club, which Austen founded. Tate moved in with Austen in 1917.
Bonnie Yochelson, author of “Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen,” speculates that their social conservatism and staying close to high society in their activities were protective.
“Alice’s friends knew her for decades, and they loved her. Tate was delightful and very capable. They were accepted as a couple,” Yochelson said.
Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate in a rowboat in Scotland in 1903.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
But when the 1929 stock market crash caught Austen in the crosshairs, her financial standing plummeted. Though the surrounding waterfront became industrialized, she refused to sell Clear Comfort, and she took out a mortgage not for daily expenses, but to holiday with Tate. Austen sold family heirlooms, and Tate taught dance. Foreclosure was inevitable, though they stayed on as caretakers — opening a tea room with a view of passing ships, until the frailties of age made the enterprise unsustainable.
In 1945, Austen and Tate, then in their 70s, were evicted for good.
Remarkably, the women managed to stay on the exclusive Social Register for years.
“There’s no question that they had friends, and some of their friends did abandon them as they fell on hard times,” Yochelson said. “But many people were very loyal to them … and they continued to pay their membership at a time when they were sufficiently poor that they couldn’t necessarily pay their electric bill.”
A group of friends with tennis racquets on Aug. 5, 1886.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
Austen sold her last remaining possessions to a junk dealer for $600. A preservationist at heart, she gave thousands of plates, negatives and personal treasures to an acquaintance, Loring McMillen, director of the Staten Island Historical Society (now Historic Richmond Town), who declared the women “not broken in spirit but broken in health and finance.”
Austen and Tate lived together in a small apartment until Austen’s arthritis proved too debilitating. When they were forced to separate, Tate moved to her sister’s home in Queens, New York, and Austen to a home for the aged — and eventually, at age 84, a literal poor farm. Ever devoted, Tate visited Austen regularly at the Staten Island Farm Colony.
But the 7,500 photos and negatives Austen entrusted to the Historical Society would prove a saving grace, and they would ensure her place as an eminent documentarian of a changing landscape in the immigration era.
Alice Austen, seated, and Gertrude Tate in 1944.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
In 1950, a Life magazine editor came upon Austen’s photos of 19th century American life — and learned she was alive. Life ran a story the following year, and Austen got a fee that allowed her to take up residence with a private caregiver.
Weeks after publication, the Staten Island Historical Society hosted “Alice Austen Day.” Overwhelmed and delighted to see the first public showing of her work at age 85, Austen attended with Tate and 300 guests. “I’d be taking these pictures myself if I were 100 years younger,” Austen quipped.
In June, because of Austen’s worsening condition and a bureaucratic glitch, plans were being set in motion to move her to Welfare Island, then a location of public institutions for the aged and infirm. She would not make the journey. On June 9, 1952, Tate was preparing to make the trip from Queens to visit when the phone rang: Austen had been wheeled to the nursing home porch and simply passed away, quietly bathed in morning sunlight.
Austen was buried at Staten Island’s Moravian Cemetery. Tate died 10 years later, at 91. Her family denied her wish to be buried with Austen.
The Alice Austen House Museum today.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
The couple could not have foreseen that across the decades and into a new millennium, future strangers would be moved to advocate for recognition of their devotion: from a 1994 Lesbian Avengers protest against institutional resistance to naming the pair as more than “friends” to Munro’s mission to ensure Tate’s name is discoverable in archival metadata, given a name beyond “unknown woman.”
Their story is housed within the clapboard and stone of their historic residence, now the Alice Austen House and a nationally designated site of LGBTQ history. Today, a visitor enters to find Tate’s portrait in her rightful place in family tree documentation on the wall.
“It is imperative that we center her queerness and her identity and that we celebrate this beautiful, beautiful love story,” Munro said. “People have now come back and visited the Alice Austen House and wept because they’re so happy to see this visibility.”
The owner of an LGBTQ+ bar and grill in Alabama that was forced to close down after officials denied its liquor and entertainment licenses has filed a lawsuit against the town for discrimination.
Thomas Fuller, who owned Crossroads Bar and Grill, asserts that the Town of Rockford “effectively singled [him] out because of his sexual orientation, deprived him of equal protection under the law, and forced him to close his business,” according to the lawsuit filed in September in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division.
After obtaining a business and an ABC Board liquor license in 2023, Fuller was scheduled to meet with the town council in July to request a local liquor license. This is “the same letter of approval that was issued to other businesses in Rockford,” the suit claims.
At the meeting, council members questioned Fuller about “the type of business he ran, his hours of operation, and alcohol-to-food sales ratios— requirements that were not imposed on similarly situated heterosexual-owned businesses.” His request was then pushed to the next month’s meeting.
In the meantime, Fuller scheduled a drag show at the bar, and posted advertisements for it. Rockford’s Town Council then issued him a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that a drag show was “in violation of any license Crossroads obtained” and forcing him to cancel the show. At the August meeting, the council denied his liquor license.
“Crossroads was the only business in Rockford that was denied a liquor license. The Town Council questioned Plaintiff’s character and morals during the meeting,” the lawsuit states. “However, other businesses, owned and operated by heterosexual individuals, were permitted to host live performances without objection from Rockford’s Town Council. Specifically, other businesses in Rockford had live entertainment such as live music and karaoke without being issued any such cease-and-desist letter.”
When Fuller reapplied for an entertainment license “so that he could offer entertainment at Crossroads and sell alcohol,” he was denied again by the city council in September, which also “revoked the transfer of the ABC Board Alcohol License.” Because of the denials, the suit claims that Fuller was “unable to play music, show sporting events on televisions, or offer any other entertainment at Crossroads. This was fatal to his business.”
“Plaintiff reasonably believes that Rockford’s denial of the licenses was motivated by animus toward Plaintiff’s sexual orientation,” the filing continues. “Rockford had historically granted identical approvals to businesses owned and operated by heterosexual individuals without delay or objection … Only after Plaintiff, an openly homosexual man, sought to open Crossroads did the Rockford’s Town Council begin to impose heightened scrutiny and new licensing requirements.”
“The only meaningful difference between Plaintiff and those establishments was Plaintiff’s identity as a homosexual man and his willingness to host LGBTQ-friendly entertainment,” it adds.
Fuller is seeking a trial by jury to determine damages. The Town of Rockford has been issued a court summons as of October 15, which it has 21 days to respond to.
Major changes are underway in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, where crews began removing the city’s rainbow crosswalks early Monday morning. The colorful crossings, long considered a symbol of Pride and unity, are being stripped away following a directive from Governor Greg Abbott. By sunrise, two of the four rainbow crosswalks at Westheimer and Taft had already been removed. The removal comes after days of tension, protests, and frustration within the community.
The decision follows Abbott’s call to remove what he described as “political ideologies” from roadways — guidance that traces back to a federal directive from the Trump administration earlier this year. Several protesters were arrested early Monday after standing in the roadway to block crews from removing the paint. Many residents and advocates also spent the night chalking nearby sidewalks and leaving Pride flags and flowers — a show of defiance and love they say will continue even after the paint is gone.
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, has ordered the Pentagon to restore nearly 600 books and reinstate lessons on race, gender, and identity in schoolsserving military families, ruling that the Trump administration’s restrictions on classroom content likely violated students’ First Amendment rights.
In a 44-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles concluded that the Department of Defense Education Activity removed books and altered curricula in ways that suppressed certain viewpoints and deprived students of access to ideas about race and gender. She found that the department’s actions caused real harm and were likely motivated by viewpoint discrimination. The ruling requires the Pentagon to immediately return the banned books and halt further removals while the case continues.
The case, E.K. v. Department of Defense Education Activity, was brought by 12 students from military families at DoDEA schools in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy, and Japan. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, and the ACLU of Kentucky, challenged the agency’s enforcement of three Trump executive orders issued in January that directed federal institutions to remove references to “gender ideology” and “divisive equity concepts.”
Giles wrote that public school libraries are “loci of intellectual freedom,” quoting the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Board of Education v. Pico to emphasize that students must be free to “inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding.” She found that DoDEA’s process for removing books was opaque and inconsistent, noting that officials failed to provide clear records of which titles had been withdrawn or why. The judge also criticized the department for refusing to disclose information about the censorship campaign, writing that it was unconstitutional to limit access to information and then fault the plaintiffs for not having proof of the government’s actions.
The ruling rejected the Pentagon’s claim that the removals constituted “government speech,” a legal doctrine that shields official communications from First Amendment scrutiny. Giles said that viewing school libraries as expressions of government ideology conflicts with the long-standing purpose of those institutions as spaces for academic freedom and voluntary inquiry. She warned that expanding the government speech doctrine to cover book removals in public schools would pose “dangerous” risks to intellectual freedom.
DoDEA operates 161 accredited schools across 11 countries, seven U.S. states, Guam, and Puerto Rico, educating roughly 67,000 children of active-duty service members and civilian Defense Department employees. The system, among the most diverse and high-performing in the nation, consistently ranks near the top of U.S. public school systems in reading and math proficiency.
As The Advocate previously reported, DoDEA began pulling materials shortly after Trump’s executive orders took effect, instructing school administrators to “quarantine” any books or lessons that could be seen as promoting “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology.” The removals included books and curricula addressing slavery, women’s rights, Native American history, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual health education, along with sections of the Advanced Placement Psychology course.
The ACLU said Monday’s ruling restores constitutional protections that had been stripped away from students in military-run schools. “This is an important victory for students in DoDEA schools and anyone who values full libraries and vibrant classrooms,” Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a press release. “The censorship taking place in DoDEA schools as a result of these executive orders was astonishing in its scope and scale, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the court has vindicated the First Amendment rights of the students this has impacted.”
Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said, “Removing books from school libraries just because this administration doesn’t like the content is censorship, plain and simple. The materials removed are clearly age-appropriate and are only offensive to those who are afraid of a free-thinking population.”
Matt Callahan, senior supervising attorney at the ACLU of Virginia, said the ruling affirms that “government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.”
While the injunction applies only to the five schools attended by the plaintiffs — Crossroads Elementary in Quantico, Virginia; Barsanti Elementary in Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Aviano Middle-High in Italy; and Stollars Elementary and Edgren Middle High in Japan — the decision could have far-reaching implications for schools on military bases worldwide.
Giles wrote that students in federally operated schools are entitled to the same constitutional protections as those in civilian public schools. She ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and DoDEA Director Beth Schiavino-Narvaez to comply immediately.
Mink Tyner says some people call her a “helicopter parent” because of how protective she is over her kids. Despite this, she wasn’t concerned about bringing her daughter, then 14, to the Indian River County, Florida, school board meeting in August 2023, where they were discussing changes to the state’s curriculum relating to race and slavery.
That’s why she was shocked when she saw community members at the podium reading excerpts of sexual content from books.
“I hate lights out now because my D has a mind of its own,” one woman read. Then a man came up and read, “When Doris had just turned 11, her current stepfather started having sex with her.” And a third person read, “He took a long long time peeling off my jeans and T-shirt, pink bra and panties, and a longer time stroking and kissing me.”
The meeting had turned into more of a stunt led by protestors affiliated with the local chapter of Moms for Liberty (M4L), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated far-right extremist group.
“I’m not gonna have my kid in here listening to these adults doing this shit,” Tyner remembers thinking.
She took her daughter out of the room and pleaded with security to intervene, but they refused. So she spoke up to disrupt the meeting herself, only for security from the Sheriff’s office—who told Uncloseted Media their deputies responded “appropriately and in accordance with established procedures”—to escort her out.
As she was leaving, conservative pastor John Amanchukwu, who had attended the meeting with M4L, confronted her while recording a video that he would later post to X calling her “demonic” and lashing out about her being pro-LGBTQ: “You’re okay with DEI. … You’re okay with Pride Month. You’re okay with the rainbow flag. You’re okay with all that junk,” he yelled. Tyner responded by calling him a “fucking weirdo” and walked out.
That video opened a floodgate of harassment that tormented Tyner and her family for years: She received insults, accusations of pedophilia, and persistent threats of violence from a Facebook account displaying the name CURTIS COUSINS who called her a “fent-using fat fucking dyke” and told her she deserved to have “a potato peeler peel her clit right off to the bone.”
“I never know if this week or 10 years from now somebody’s gonna show up [to my business] based on some kind of misinformation that Moms for Liberty started about me [or] want to harm me and my family,” Tyner, who owns a tattoo shop, told Uncloseted Media.
Indian River County is home to one of the first of M4L’s 320 chapters nationwide. The group’s annual summit is this weekend and will feature a variety of politicians with anti-LGBTQ track records, including Oklahoma’s former state superintendent Ryan Walters, who made headlines for making anti-trans comments after the death of 16-year-old trans teen Nex Benedict. Last year, conservative heavyweights spoke at the event, including President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
Over the last four years, M4L have built a reputation for chaos and controversy. Members have made the news for quoting Hitler, stripping at a school board meeting and offering bounties to report teachers who teach about “critical race theory.”
At one point in Indian River County, close allies of M4L made up a majority of the school board where they pressured the district to ban scores of books, many of which contain LGBTQ themes, and reverse a racial equity policy—all while harassing, doxing and defaming their adversaries.
Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science from the University of Massachusetts, says what’s playing out in Indian River County is a microcosm for so many other chapters across the country.
“[The media are] falling like suckers for this story that they’re a grassroots moms organization. They are not, they are connected to … the far right establishment,” he says. “And that’s become … more and more apparent. So this whole grassroots thing is hogwash.”
Beginnings
Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida in 2021 by three current and former school board members: Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler, the latter of whom has since left the group after being involved in a sex scandal wherein her husband allegedly prowled local bars to solicit women for threesomes.
Shortly after M4L launched, Justice tapped Jennifer Pippin, who had made a name for herself for leading activism against COVID-19 restrictions, to lead the chapter for her home county, Indian River.
While the anti-mask circles that would later be folded into M4L always had a conservative lean, multiple county residents told Uncloseted Media that the group’s discriminatory views were not initially apparent.
Tyner, a lesbian who identifies as politically independent, actually felt welcomed by the group when she worked with them on their anti-mask mandate advocacy. However, that changed as M4L’s focus turned towards opposing LGBTQ inclusion measures in schools.
“Once they organized and got the appearance of a grassroots start … and many people in the community that were siding with them, it’s like they took the steering wheel and they just steered another direction,” she says.
When Tyner began speaking up against this rhetoric, she says she was blocked from the group’s Facebook pages. But as she continued to oppose them publicly, Justice offered to meet with her to address her concerns.
Over breakfast at a local cafe, Tyner says Justice gave her a “scripted” response in the hopes of winning back her support. She even invited Tyner to an M4L chapter meeting. However, Tyner declined as the meeting was allegedly to be hosted by a community member who had made an online post suggesting necrophilia and pedophilia are part of the LGBTQ umbrella.
“I was like, ‘Alright, this is not a good or a safe movement,” says Tyner.
Justice did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Pippin told Uncloseted Media that M4L have “members and members children that are LGB in [their] chapter and across the country.”
Another local parent, who requested anonymity due to concerns about his job security, says while he’d initially been on board with M4L’s parental rights advocacy, he ran into conflict with the group when they started opposing the school district’s racial equity policies and tried to ban books with antiracist themes, including Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby”and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.” Like Tyner, he says he was approached by Justice and Pippin to win him over again but was ultimately unconvinced.
After he split from M4L, he began publicly criticizing the group’s book bans. In retaliation, some M4L members accused him of supporting pedophiles.
When he reached out to Pippin to ask for the people making such accusations against him to be held accountable, he says she waved him off—all while blocking him on social media and accusing him of “bullying.” He also says that she doxed him after another dispute—a major factor in his decision to remain anonymous.
“Her response to me basically was ‘free speech,’ ‘we don’t control what our members say.’ And I’m like, ‘But Jennifer, you know me, and you know I’m not a pedophile, and this is unacceptable,’” he told Uncloseted Media.
Building Political Power
Efforts to ban LGBTQ and racial justice-related books in schools are part of M4L’s national ammo that helped them quickly explode in popularity.
Cunningham says M4L were boosted by high-profile connections on the right. Ziegler and Descovich both served as presidents of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members, a group billed as a conservative alternative to the Florida School Board Association. Ziegler’s husband, Christian, was vice chairman of Florida’s Republican Party at the time and worked as a media surrogate for the Trump campaign in 2016.
Since their launch, M4L have had their conferences and events sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute; were directly advisedby Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell; and were a part of Project 2025’s advisory board. And this summer, Justice was hired as executive vice president of Heritage Action.
In 2022, the Indian River County chapter leveraged this influence to carve out power in local government: They got two close allies, Jacqueline Rosario and Dr. Gene Posca, elected to the school board, and they developed closerelationships with the Ron DeSantis-backed county sheriff Eric Flowers. Pippin was even appointed by Florida’s Department of Education to a statewide workgroup to develop compliance training for Florida’s classroom censorship policies, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.
As M4L became notorious for pushing exclusionary measures in schools, some officials—including school board member Peggy Jones—criticized the group. In retaliation, Jones reportedly received so many death threats that the district had to increase security detail at all school events where she was present.
In the midst of increasing chaos surrounding M4L, the group mounted a campaign of hundreds of requests to ban books containing “sexual content.”
While some librarians continued to hold the majority of books where bans were unsuccessful, M4L convinced Flowers to investigate one school library, alleging that keeping the books on the shelf could constitute a sex crime. While the investigation found that no crime had been committed, Flowers concluded that “we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children,” putting even further pressure on local librarians.
Pippin at the school board meeting in August 2023. Photo via YouTube.
This kind of direct action proved very effective. Even the reading protest where Tyner was escorted out won them 34 additional book bans from a unanimous board vote.
“You can’t deny that the kind of tactics that they have have been useful,” Cunningham says. “Some of the places they’ve taken over, [including] Sarasota County, where Bridget Ziegler was on the board, became much more conservative over the past few years.”
Silencing Opposition
In addition to school board meetings, the group has a track record of trolling progressive events. Tyner and the anonymous parent remember an incidentwhere a group of M4L members showed up to a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meeting that had been organized to discuss plans for opposition against new state regulations that required classes to portray slavery in a more positive light. Tyner says white M4L members attempted to shout down NAACP speakers, with one member allegedly using the n-word. Thomas Kenny, a M4L member who was at the event, said this “did not happen” and that one of their members using the n-word is “an absolute lie.”
Cunningham says these disruptions are part of M4L’s playbook. He pointed to the example of Jennifer Jenkins, the liberal school board member who unseated Tina Descovich in neighboring Brevard County, who says protestors spurred by M4L have turned up outside her home calling her a pedophile and burning “FU” in her lawn.
“They [use the] same kind of tactics … over and over again,” says Cunningham.
Chapter leader Jennifer Pippin has mastered those tactics, becoming widely known as one of the most influential book banners in the country. She’s also made headlines for filing a complaint against the Kilted Mermaid, a Vero Beach wine bar, alleging that they had hosted an all-ages drag event with sexual content, which the bar owner denies. M4L rallied against the bar online, spamming the posts of one of the bar’s drag performers, telling the queen to “stay away from children.” This stunt caught the attention of Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier, who launched an investigation and issued subpoenas for video recordings of the bar on the day of the event as well as identifying documents for employees and performers.
Pippin has also claimed to be a nurse, despite no public records showing that she has a license, and appeared on the antisemitic and homophobic far-right news website TruNews, where she claimed, without evidence, that anti-M4L activists have been killing pets and livestock owned by the group’s members.
Fear
Tyner and the other anonymous parent both say that they’ve had to take a step back from the school board and local activism because of the toxic environment M4L have created.
“It’s been turned into such a circus,” Tyner says.
In the meantime, things have gotten worse for the LGBTQ community in Indian River County, and in Florida overall, between the “Don’t Say Gay” law and anti-LGBTQ legislation that requires teachers to deadname trans students unless they have signed parental permission slips. The anonymous parent says he’s watched many of the LGBTQ people in his life, including one of his own children, who is a teacher, leave the state due to the hostile environment.
“It’s not safe for a lot of people,” he says.
Greener Pastures?
Despite all of this, a sea change may be on the horizon. A 2024 Brookings report found that the success rates of M4L-endorsed candidates were on the decline, and in Indian River County’s elections last year, both of M4L’s school board candidates lost. With the continued controversies of the Trump administration and the growing popularity of groups that oppose M4L’s ideology, Cunningham feels the tide may be turning for M4L’s influence in Indian River County and across America.
“In school board races, the Moms for Liberty label is toxic, so try to not get attached to that,” he says. “They’ve had quite an impact … I don’t wanna downplay that. But in terms of popular appeal and growth, I think it’s much more limited than it is portrayed.”
