National

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Florida Ranks Last In Annual LGBTQ Safety Report

The Naples Daily News reports: Home security and safety blog SafeHome.org released their annual report of the best and worst states for LGBTQ+ safety, noting hate crimes have risen for the fourth year in a row and 71% of LGBTQ+ adults have avoided a public space due to fear of discrimination or violence. Experts ranked the 50 states on a composite safety score comprising a law score and a hate crime score. A “law score” was calculated based on pro- and anti-equality laws in each state. A “hate crime score” was also calculated based on an analysis of the incidence of hate crimes […]

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Lesbian journalist Victoria A. Brownworth dead at 69

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Victoria A. Brownworth, a lesbian journalist who wrote for The Advocate, The Bay Area Reporter, Philadelphia Gay News, and other LGBTQ+ publications, died Thursday at age 69. She “had long lived with multiple sclerosis and had battled cancer for many years,” according to an obituary in the Reporter, where she was a television critic. She had recently been hospitalized in her hometown of Philadelphia. “With an astute eye toward entertainment, Ms. Brownworth penned the B.A.R.’s Lavender Tube TV column for three decades,” the Reporter notes. “One of the great pleasures of my editorial job of the past five years was working on Victoria’s twice-monthly Lavender Tube column, which she had been writing […]

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D.C. police investigate suspected hate crime at bar for queer & trans people of color during WorldPride

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In the early hours of Black Pride weekend in Washington, D.C., someone shattered the front door of Sinners and Saints, cut the power, stole bottles of alcohol, and spray-painted the slur “fa***t” on the wall. The bar’s mission is in its name: defiance and sanctuary. It’s D.C.’s only venue created by and for queer and trans people of color. And on Friday, as revelers began arriving in the city for WorldPride, someone tried to send a message of fear. Instead, the response was community and clarity. “We are heartbroken, but we are not broken,” the bar’s team posted on Instagram. “Sinners and Saints is resistance. We will rebuild. […]

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Teacher loses job after unhinged mom accuses her of “grooming” her child “to be gay”

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An investigation by a Florida school into charges that a teacher “groomed” a student “to transition and to be gay” resulted in the school district ending her contract, despite a recommendation to only reprimand her. AP English teacher Melissa Calhoun is the first known Florida educator to lose her job as a result of a 2023 Florida Board of Education rule stating parents must provide written permission before an educator can use any alternative to a student’s legal name. The rule is part of a wave of “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and policy enacted in Florida over the last several years. The […]

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SCOTUS Rejects Hate Group’s Anti-Trans T-Shirt Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear a student’s challenge on free speech grounds to a Massachusetts public school’s decision to bar him from wearing a T-shirt reading “There are only two genders” due to concern about the message’s effect on transgender and other pupils. The justices turned away an appeal by the student, who was 12 at the time of the 2023 incident, of a lower court’s ruling upholding the ban as a reasonable restriction and rejecting his claim that the school’s action violated the U.S. Constitution’s protections against government abridgment of speech. Justices Samuel Alito and […]

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Far-right judges rules that it’s totally legal to harass LGBTQ+ employees

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Anti-LGBTQ+ federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act doesn’t protect LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination — it only protects them from discriminatory termination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling contradicts the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, a case that classified anti-LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination as a form of sex-based harassment prohibited by Title VII. In the case, the state of Texas sued the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming that the federal agency’s June 2021 guidance interpreting Title VII as prohibiting anti-LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination violated Texas’s “sovereign right” to establish governmental workplace policies dictating […]

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Federal judge knocks down key parts of Iowa’s “Don’t Say Gay” education law

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A federal judge has upheld part of Iowa’s “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibiting discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten through 6th grade. However, the judge has blocked other parts of the law that sought to block students from voluntarily being exposed to school “promotions” and “programs” that acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people. Iowa’s 2023 law S.F. 496 prohibits “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation” in grades K-6. In his split-decision issued late last week, U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher (an appointee of former President Joe Biden) ruled […]

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Federal judge in Texas rules LGBTQ+ people can be discriminated against at work

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On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—a far-right federal judge in the Northern District of Texas with a record of aligning with the GOP’s most extreme legal positions—issued a ruling declaring that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination. The decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling inBostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is, by definition, sex discrimination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights in recent memory—and sets up a direct legal challenge to one of the foundational civil rights protections for queer and trans people […]

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It’s the second time Lori Franchina has challenged – and beaten – her former employer

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A lesbian and retired Rhode Island firefighter was awarded nearly $2 million in damages in a lawsuit involving her accidental disability pension, which could balloon to $5 million after interest, local NBC affiliate WJAR reported last month.  Lori Franchina previously won over $800,000 in a separate lawsuit detailing the anti-LGBTQ+ abuse she suffered while working with her fellow firefighters. Franchina joined the Providence Fire Department in 2002. She retired on disability in 2013 after she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the habitual anti-LGBTQ+ abuse she endured on the job. She filed for accidental disability in 2011, but was denied by the retirement board. […]

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She went to prom with a transgender date. So her school expelled her.

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A Christian school in Georgia has forced a student to withdraw for bringing a transgender date to prom, just weeks before the senior was scheduled to graduate. North Cobb Christian School in the Atlanta area recently held their prom off campus. But 10 days later, the principal called senior Emily Wright into their office. “I was asked, ‘Is there anything we should know about the guest you brought to prom?’ Emily told Fox 5 News. “And I knew exactly what they were talking about, so I said, ‘Yes, he’s transgender.”   Her mother Tricia continued: “I got a call from the […]

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