Members of the Proud Boys disrupted yet another Pride-themed children’s program at a public library earlier this week. On Monday, seven men wearing the violent far-right group’s signature black and yellow polo shirts and other Proud Boys paraphernalia entered the St. Joseph County Public Library’s Virginia M. Tutt Branch in South Bend, IN where the Rainbow Family Storytime and arts and crafts event was scheduled to take place.
Photos posted on social media also show the men flashing white supremacist hand signs while smiling for the camera.
Members of the extremist group, whose leaders were indicted earlier this month on charges of seditious conspiracy for their alleged roles in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, entered the library before the event was scheduled to begin. Local police were called, but the disruption forced the library to cancel the event.
“This definitely came as a shock,” library system communications manager Marissa Gebhard told WVPE News. “We were not anticipating any problems.”
She added that the library plans to reschedule the event in the coming months and is determining whether additional security measures are necessary going forward.
“The bottom line is that the library will continue to offer inclusive programming,” Gebhard said. “A library is a place of belonging, and it’s a place for everyone.”
This is the fourth reported incident this month of Proud Boys members disrupting children’s events at libraries. Over the weekend, pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters created a human shield to block a group protesting an event at a library in Texas, while in Nevada a Proud Boys member reportedly armed with a gun disrupted a Drag Queen Story Hour event. Earlier this month, members of the hate group, which has been designated a terrorist organization in Canada and New Zealand, stormed a Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library in California and another Pride Story Time event in Wilmington, North Carolina, reportedly with the support of local police.
Far-right groups like the Proud Boys have been targeting family-friendly Pride events all month, instigated in part by anti-LGBTQ social media disinformation, right-wing media, and rhetoric from Republican lawmakers accusing the LGBTQ community and its allies of “grooming” children for abuse.
As Republican attacks on transgender people continue nationwide, five Democratic House representatives have introduced a Transgender Bill of Rights that would protect trans and non-binary people.
The bill would ban discrimination against gender identity and expression in public accommodations, employment, housing, and credit. The bill would also ensure access to gender-affirming medical care — including abortion and contraception — and would ban forced surgery on intersex children and infants. Intersex individuals are often subject to unnecessary genital surgeries before they can provide informed consent.
The bill would ban so-called “conversion therapy,” the pseudoscientific form of mental torture that purports to turn trans and non-binary people cisgender. The bill would also invest in community services to prevent anti-trans and anti-nonbinary violence as well as mental health services to assist survivors of violence and other community members.
Last, the bill would require the U.S. attorney general to designate a liaison within the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to enforce the civil rights of transgender people.
The bill was introduced by Democratic Representatives Pramila Jayapal (WA), David Cicilline (RI), Marie Newman (IL), Mark Takano (CA), and Ritchie Torres (NY). Cicilline, Takano, and Torres are out as gay. Newman, who just lost her primary election to a moderate, has a transgender daughter, and Jayapal has a non-binary child. The bill has 83 co-sponsors.
Between January and May of 2022, Republicans in state legislatures across the country introduced more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills, most of them targeting transgender youth, Takano said. Many of the anti-trans bills try to block youth access to sports, school sports and gender-affirming care — all of which can increase mental distress and suicidal ideation among trans people.
“Our transgender and non-binary siblings are hurting,” said Cicilline, Chair of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus. “Across the country, radical right-wing Republicans have introduced hundreds of bills attacking the LGBTQ+ community — particularly transgender and nonbinary youth — to score political points…. As Members of Congress we need to not just condemn these efforts but also put forward a vision of what equality truly looks like.”
Newman said, “The ability for trans folks to live free from discrimination is quite literally a life-and-death issue. This legislation is especially crucial right now, as right-wing extremists have grown increasingly vicious and targeted in their harassment of transgender Americans, both through the legislative process and outside of it.”
The bill also has the support of 26 LGBTQ and allied organizations including the Human Rights Campaign, the Movement Advancement Project, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and PFLAG National.
While the bill is unlikely to find the 10 Republican senators necessary to bypass the chamber’s filibuster, it still provides a roadmap for other states, cities, and organizations looking to protect trans and non-binary people’s civil rights.
As Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law — or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — comes into effect Friday, some of the state’s public school districts have begun rolling out new policies to limit LGBTQ issues and identities from being discussed in the classroom.
On Tuesday night, the Leon County School Board unanimously approved its “LGBTQ Inclusive School Guide,” which includes a provision to alert parents if a student who is “open about their gender identity” is in their child’s physical education class or with them on an overnight school trip.
“Upon notification or determination of a student who is open about their gender identity, parents of the affected students will be notified of reasonable accommodation options available,” the guidelines read. “Parents or students who have concerns about rooming assignments for their student’s upcoming overnight event based on religious or privacy concerns may request an accommodation.”
Representatives of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association accused school officials Monday of verbally warning educators not to wear rainbow articles of clothing, to remove pictures of their same-sex spouses from their desks andto remove LGBTQ safe space stickers from classroom doors. The district’s legal department confirmed in a statement provided to the teachers’ association that covers the Orlando area that staff who come into contact with students in kindergarten through third grade were cautioned concerning LGBTQ issues.
And late last month, the School District of Palm Beach County sent out a questionnaire to its teachers, asking them to review all course material and flag any books with references to sexual orientation, gender identity or race, a Palm Beach County high school special education teacher, Michael Woods, told NBC News. Several weeks prior, the district removed two books — “I Am Jazz” and “Call Me Max” — which touch upon gender identity, he said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the Parental Rights in Education bill at Classical Preparatory School in Shady Hills, Fla. on Mar. 28, 2022.Douglas R. Clifford / AP file
The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, HB 1557, bans “instruction” about sexual orientation or gender identity “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” A provision in the law also requires school staff to alert parents on “critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,” which many advocates have interpreted as a method to force educators to out their gay or trans students. In cases where teachers “believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect,” they are exempt from doing so.
Lawmakers who support the legislation — which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed in March — have repeatedly stressed that it will only apply to children in kindergarten through third grade and is about giving parents more jurisdiction over their young children’s education. They have also contended that it will not prohibit teachers and students from talking about their LGBTQ families or bar classroom discussions about LGBTQ history, including events like the 2016 attack at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando.
But critics and legal experts have said that the broad language of the law could open school districts and teachers to lawsuits from parents who believe any conversation about LGBTQ people or issues is “not age appropriate.” (Parents will be able to sue school districts for alleged violations, damages or legal fees.)
The state’s Department of Education is expected to release more information on the parameters of its standards later this summer. In an interview in April with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, DeSantis suggested the standards would apply the law beyond third grade and added “things like woke gender ideology have no place in the schools, period.”
State Rep. Carlos Smith, a Florida Democrat who is gay and has been an outspoken critic of the new law, said he was “not surprised” by the policies and guidelines being announced by schools in the state.
“We talked about this from the beginning,” he said. “What’s happening right now — with the censorship of rainbow flags and school districts preparing to basically push LGBTQ students and teachers into the closet — is exactly what we said would happen with the ‘Don’t Say Gay law.’”
When asked if the governor wanted to respond to school districts’ new guidelines on LGBTQ issues that appear to supersede the parameters of the new law, DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, said the state Department of Education is responsible for working with school districts to implement policies.
“This is not something the governor himself does,” she wrote in an email.
Members and supporters of the LGBTQ community attend the “Say Gay Anyway” rally in Miami Beach, Fl .,on March 13, 2022.Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images file
Beyond Florida, five other states — all of them in the South — have enacted laws that limit instruction or discussions about LGBTQ people or issues in school, and at least 32 other states have proposed such measures so far this year, according to according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank that has been tracking the bills.
Smith stressed that these policies will have consequences for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students, pointing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide attempts among the nation’s LGBTQ youths. A survey this year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that nearly 50% of the 35,000 LGBTQ youths surveyed said they seriously considered suicide within the last year.
“Creating safe spaces for LGBTQ kids in schools is a matter of life or death,” Smith said. “Ron DeSantis is creating toxic environments in our classrooms that can have devastating consequences for queer youth, and he does not care. It’s all about politics for him.”
In a letter addressed to the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, the district’s general counsel claimed a number of statements about what the Parental Rights in Education law would prohibit are not accurate, including a claim that “safe space stickers will be removed from classroom doors.” However, the letter then states it is “recommended that the safe space stickers be removed from K-3 classrooms so that classroom instruction did not inadvertently occur on the prohibited content of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Out of one side of their mouth, they’re saying it’s not accurate, and out of the other side, they’re saying, ‘Yeah, you might want to be careful,’” Clinton McCracken, the president-elect of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, said.
He expressed overall frustration with the new law and said his district’s attempt to clarify the legislation created even more confusion.
“So, which is it? Are teachers in K through eight supposed to go back into the closet, according to our legal team? Or are they allowed to act like every other heterosexual teacher who has a picture of a spouse on their desk?”
In Palm Beach County, Woods, who is gay, said that after receiving the questionnaire from school officials to flag course material or books with LGBTQ references, many of his colleagues are nervous they’ll be reprimanded if they miss something.
“I’ve had colleagues say to me, ‘Well, I’m just going to pack all of my books away and not have any out at all,’” he said. “That sounds like a knee-jerk reaction, but when you’re in that situation, it’s just one more stressor that you’re going to put on yourself. And is that really the hill you want to die on?”
Some LGBTQ teachers in school districts where guidelines have yet to be issued are even less sure of what they can or cannot say and wear next school year.
Brian Kerekes teaches math at a high school in Osceola County, which has yet to issue guidance for complying with the new law. Without guidelines in place, he worries that mistakes are bound to happen. Recently, he said, a staffer was asked to remove a “genderbread person” — an animated diagram used to teach children about gender identity — from his office.
“We’re just caught in the middle trying to figure out what is and isn’t OK while still trying to do what is our primary function, which is supporting our students and giving them a safe space to learn,” he said. “It’s going to be a mess.”
Kerekes said he also anticipates school districts will start letting go of teachers who are accused of violating the law even if they are found to have done nothing wrong. He points to the fact that all of the state’s public school teachers are hired on a year-to-year contractual basis and that the law prohibits school districts from recouping legal fees in cases where they win.
“Even if an investigation turns out to be bogus, a principal could still decide that it just isn’t worth having the teacher around anymore and just drop them,” he said. “I just worry that we’re going to be spending our time on nonissues instead of doing our jobs.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted at the possibility of legislation to codify the right of same-sex couples to marry, which many fear is in danger after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, as part of an effort to secure “freedoms which Americans currently enjoy.”
Pelosi suggested such legislation could be in the works in a “Dear Colleague” letter on Monday to fellow members of the House Democratic caucus addressing plans for congressional action after the ruling last week in Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right for women to access an abortion.
The concurrence of U.S. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is a core component of the letter from Pelosi, who expressed consternation about his rejection of finding unenumerated rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“It is still appalling to me that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would agree that a Constitutional right does not exist if it was not spelled out explicitly and in public when the 14th Amendment was ratified over 150 years ago,” Pelosi said. “While this extremist Supreme Court works to punish and control the American people, Democrats must continue our fight to expand freedom in America. Doing so is foundational to our oath of office and our fidelity to the Constitution.”
Thomas said in his concurring opinion he welcomes vehicles that would allow the court to revisit other major decisions, such as the Griswold decision guaranteeing the right to contraceptives; the Lawrence decision decriminalizing sodomy for same-sex couples and others; and the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
Although Pelosi doesn’t explicitly say she’ll introduce legislation on same-sex marriage, she brought up “access to contraception and in-vitro fertilization to marriage equality,” then added, “Legislation is being introduced to further codify freedoms which Americans currently enjoy. More information to follow.”
“It is clear from how Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell stacked the Supreme Court that elections have ramifications,” Pelosi said. “It is essential that we protect and expand our pro-choice Majorities in the House and Senate in November so that we can eliminate the filibuster so that we can restore women’s fundamental rights – and freedom for every American.”
Any legislation seeking to codify marriage equality would have to get around marriage being an issue administered by the states under the guidelines of the U.S. Constitution. In the past, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has introduced the Respect for Marriage Act, which would have required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage and states to recognize same-sex marriage performed elsewhere.
Pelosi’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on the possibility of marriage legislation or the timeline for U.S. House approval of such a measure. Nadler’s office also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed interest in loosening libel and defamation laws to allow an anti-LGBTQ hate church to sue an organization that called them out as a hate group.
Thomas, who supports ending same-sex marriage in the U.S., expressed this interest in his recent dissent disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the anti-LGBTQ church’s case.
He was the lone dissenter to comment on the court’s recent refusal to hear a lawsuit brought by D. James Kennedy Ministries, an evangelical Christian media company that operates the Florida-based Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM).
CRM sued the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) for libelous defamation after SLPC listing CRM as a hate group. CRM said that in 2017, the online retailer Amazon cited the SLPC’s listing as a reason to block CRM from participating in its AmazonSmile program. The program lets Amazon users to donate to nonprofit organizations. (AmazonSmile has a history of allowing other anti-LGBTQ groups to fundraise through its platform.)
The SLPC noted that the church was founded by Rev. D. James Kennedy, a man who promoted the anti-gay works of R.J. Rushdoony, a man who supported the death penalty for homosexual “abominators.” Kennedy’s 1989 CRM newsletter included photos of kids along with the tagline, “Sex With Children? Homosexuals Say Yes!”
In 2009, CRM hired anti-gay activist Robert Knight as a senior writer. Knight has opposed letting “pansexual, cross-dressing” homosexuals serve openly in the military. Knight has written that gay marriage “entices children to experiment with homosexuality” and said that acceptance of homosexuality leads to “a loss of stability in communities, with a rise in crime, sexually transmitted diseases and other social pathologies. Still another is a shortage of employable, stable people,” the SLPC noted.
When CRM sued SLPC, a federal district court judge dismissed CRM’s defamation claim because Supreme Court precedent says that a libel charge must prove malicious intent. CRM couldn’t, but they appealed the judge’s decision anyway. The group received a second legal defeat in July 2021 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the lower court’s dismissal, Law & Crime reported.
“We hold that the district court was correct in finding that Coral Ridge’s interpretation of Title II would violate the First Amendment by essentially forcing Amazon to donate to organizations it does not support,” the three-judge panel wrote in its decision.
The Supreme Court declined to hear CRM’s case on Monday. In his dissent, Thomas wrote that the SPLC “caused Coral Ridge concrete financial injury by excluding it from the AmazonSmile donation program.” He also said that the court should revisit the “actual malice” standard in libel cases established by the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.
In that case, the then-Montgomery, Alabama Public Safety Commissioner L.B. Sullivan sued The New York Times for publishing an ad that had several factual inaccuracies about the local police. Since his post oversees police action, the ad defamed him by proxy, he argued.
The court ruled that the First Amendment allows newspapers to defame public officials, even with false statements, as long as they don’t act with “actual malice.” Actual malice was defined as making a false statement to deliberately harm another person or with reckless disregard for whether a statement is true or false.
The court’s ruling sets U.S. libel law from that of other countries, such as the United Kingdom. In the U.K., libel law requires that one must simply prove that a false statement has harmed one’s reputation, regardless of intent.
In his dissent, Thomas wrote, “This case is one of many showing how New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”
He said that the Supreme Court justices who decided the New York Times case issued “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.” He added that the justices “never even inquired whether ‘the First or Fourteenth Amendment, as originally understood, encompasses an actual-malice standard.’”
Thomas’ willingness to weaken libel laws follows his stated wish to overturn previous Supreme Court decisions legalizing access to contraceptives and same-sex marriage rights as well as the 2003 ruling that struck down anti-sodomy laws as discriminatory against gay people.
In his footnote on the recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court “erroneously” decided in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to treat abortion as a fundamental right that should be free from government interference, something known in legal terms as “substantive due process.”
Thomas wrote, “We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents. We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents… For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the case that granted the right to contraception] Lawrence [the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws], and Obergefell [the case that legalized marriage equality].”
The most recent round of primary elections this week saw wins for LGBTQ lawmakers in at least three states ahead of November’s general election.
Former meteorologist Eric Sorensen won the Democratic primary for Illinois’s 17th Congressional District, putting him on track to be the first out LGBTQ lawmaker ever elected to Congress from the state. He’ll face off against Republican nominee Esther Joy King in November in a race that the New York Times is calling a toss-up.
In Colorado, incumbent Gov. Jared Polis (D) will defend his seat against Republican nominee Heidi Ganahl. The only out gay man elected governor of a U.S. state, Polis ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Elsewhere in the state, incumbent state Rep. Brianna Titone (D), the first transgender person to serve in the Colorado legislature, will now face Republican nominee Christina Carlino in the race to represent Colorado’s 27th congressional district.
Oklahoma state Rep. Mauree Turner (D), the first nonbinary person elected to any state legislature, handily beat challenger Joe Lewis in the Democratic primary, and will now go on to face independent Jed Green in the general.
In Utah, state Sen. Derek Kitchen (D), the only out LGBTQ member of the state’s legislature, leads challenger Dr. Jennifer Plumb by two points. That primary has not yet been called.
Tuesday’s elections also saw Rep Marie Newman (D-IL) lose her race against fellow incumbent Rep. Sean Casten. The two lawmakers found themselves competing in the same district after Illinois legislators redrew the state’s congressional map. Newman, whose daughter is transgender, was seen as the more progressive of the two Representatives. The defeat would seem to bring to an end her ongoing battle with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose office is located across from hers, over a trans Pride flag Newman posted outside her door.
Meanwhile, anti-LGBTQ extremist Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her primary after denouncing the separation of church and state, one of the cornerstones of American democracy.
“And I’m tired of this ‘separation of church and state’ junk, that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does,” Boebert recently told the crowd at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colorado.
Nearly a dozen anti-LGBTQ bills are scheduled to go into effect today in states across the U.S. Alabama, Florida, Indiana, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah will all see restrictions placed on trans athletes, bans on LGBTQ topics in public schools, and other laws.
More than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state houses across the county this year. Over two dozen have passed, and ten of those go into effect today—a grim record for 2022. According to the Trevor Project, July 1 represents the single day when the most anti-LGBTQ bills will be implemented this year.
“We’ve already seen the impact of debating bills targeting our young people,” Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs for The Trevor Project said. “85% of transgender and nonbinary youth say recent debates about state laws restricting the rights of transgender people have negatively impacted their mental health. And now, LGBTQ youth will have to face the reality of these harmful bills being enacted into law, waking up to find they are no longer able to say who they are at school, safely use the bathroom, or play sports with their friends.”
One of the laws taking effect today is Florida’s infamous HB 1557, commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill for its ban on any mention of LGBTQ issues, people, or history in kindergarten through third grade. The bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law earlier this year, has provided a template for similar laws across the U.S., some of which go into effect today as well.
But new polling data released this week by The Trevor Project and Morning Consult finds that most Florida voters oppose banning or limiting LGBTQ content in public schools. They’re also less likely to vote for candidates who support criminalizing gender-affirming care for trans youth.
Florida’s so-called “Stop Woke Act” also takes effect today. The law aims to limit the instruction of topics related to the history of racism in the U.S.
Florida’s new laws may be the most high-profile, but they certainly aren’t the only anti-LGBTQ laws taking effect today. In Alabama, HB 322 will restrict transgender students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity and ban instruction of LGBTQ topics in schools, similar to Florida’s law.
Bans on transgender women and girls competing in sports take effect in both Indiana and South Dakota. South Dakota’s HB 1012 will also place restrictions on LGBTQ topics in higher education.
In Tennessee, a total of three anti-LGBTQ laws take effect today. Two are aimed at limiting trans participation in sports, while a third restricts LGBTQ materials available in schools. And yet another law banning transgender women and girls from participating in sports takes effect today in Utah.
“Pride Month may be over, but the fight goes on,” Ames said. “We enter July with a reminder that the LGBTQ community is part of a legacy of resistance and resilience. And we call on every elected official, company, community member and leader who wore a rainbow flag yesterday to make good on that commitment today. It will take each of us working together to build a safer, more affirming world for LGBTQ youth.”
Kentucky’s 2022 Teacher of the Year, who is gay, says he is leaving the K-12 classroom “to make the most difference, and the discrimination and lack of support prevent me from making that difference.”
After 17 years being a public school teacher, Willie Carver Jr. said he decided to leave the classroom and take a position at the University of Kentucky in student support services.
Carver, who had been teaching high school in Montgomery County, told the Herald-Leader that “vocal anti-LGBTQ extremists at school board meetings (and on social media) have been personally attacking me and my former students.” Carver said he had been unable to find support from his school administration.
As voters head to the polls today for primaries in 5 states and the District of Columbia, a record number of LGBTQ candidates for federal office are bringing the prospect of equal representation in Washington ever closer to reality.
A record 104 LGBTQ candidates have mounted campaigns for House or Senate seats this year, with 57 candidates still in the running.
Currently, 11 out LGBTQ lawmakers serve in Congress, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), plus nine members of the House, all running for reelection.
Nine more LGBTQ candidates for House seats are in competitive races. Wins in their states would bring total LGBTQ representation in the House to 4%, or about half of the estimated population of LGBTQ people in the US.
Those nine include 4 women, 2 Latinx candidates, and an LGBTQ immigrant.
Here’s a breakdown:
In Vermont, state senator Becca Balint is facing off against three other Democrats in the August 9 primary for a shot at an open seat representing Vermont’s At-Large Congressional District. Balint is the first woman and first out gay person to serve as the Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore, and would be the first out LGBTQ person and the first woman elected to Congress from Vermont.
In North Carolina, County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, won the Democratic primary handily and faces off against Republican Chuck Edwards for a seat currently occupied by primary loser Madison Cawthorn.
Beach-Ferrara is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the founding Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) and would be the first out LGBTQ person elected to any federal position from North Carolina.
In Arizona, state representative Daniel Hernandez faces off against two other candidates in the Democratic primary in August for an open seat in Arizona’s 6th congressional district.
Hernandez attended the University of Arizona and interned for then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, whom he was with the day she was shot; he was the first to administer first aid to the Congresswoman before the EMTs arrived. He was named a national hero by President Obama.
Hernandez would be the second Latinx out LGBTQ member of Congress.
In New York, former Congressional aide and businessman Robert Zimmerman will face off against five other Democrats for an open seat in the August 23 primary in Long Island’s 3rd congressional district.
Zimmerman has been honored by the LGBTQ Network of Long Island and Queens and the Long Island Progressive Coalition, in addition to serving as President of Great Neck B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Congress Long Island Division.
The Empire State’s congressional delegation currently includes three LGBTQ members: Ritchie Torres, the first out LGBTQ Afro-Latinx person elected to the U.S. Congress; Mondaire Jones, one of the first two Black gay men, along with Torres, elected to Congress; and Sean Patrick Maloney.
Zimmerman would be the first out LGBTQ member of Congress from Long Island.
In California, two-term Long Beach mayor Robert Garcia is running for an open seat to represent the city in Congress from California’s 42nd district. Garcia was re-elected to a second term as mayor by almost 80% of the vote in 2018.
Garcia immigrated to the United States at age 5 and holds an M.A. from the University of Southern California and an Ed.D. in Higher Education from Cal State Long Beach, where he also earned his B.A. in Communications. He won an open primary in June with 46% of the vote, 20 points higher than his general election opponent for the seat, Republican John Briscoe.
Garcia would be the first out LGBTQ immigrant elected to Congress.
Also in California, former federal prosecutor Will Rollins is running to represent Riverside County in the state’s 41st district against Republican Congressman Ken Calvert in the 42nd district. Rollins won the Democratic primary June 7.
Rollins earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth in 2007 and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 2012. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he helped prosecute some of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
Rollins’ election would make him the second out gay man from California to serve in congress, after incumbent Mark Takano, from the same district; Takano is running in 2022 for a seat in the state’s 39th following re-districting.
In Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner is running as the Democratic nominee for an open seat representing the state’s 5th district, after winning a primary in May 15 points ahead of her opponent. She faces Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in the general.
McLeod-Skinner currently serves as an elected board member of the Jefferson County Education Service District. This is her second run at Congress, after a change-making grassroots campaign for Oregon’s second district in 2018, resulting in the largest voter swing (+26) of all congressional races that year.
McLeod-Skinner would be Oregon’s first out LGBTQ member of Congress.
In Maryland, former Assembly member Heather Mizeur is running to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District. Mizeur faces one other opponent in Maryland’s July primary to face off against Republican incumbent Andrew Harris in the general.
In the Maryland Assembly, Mizeur took a leading role in passing marriage equality, banning fracking, enacting criminal justice reforms, and expanding health insurance for children, women, and families.
Mizeur would be the first out LGBTQ member of Congress from the state.
In Illinois, popular TV meteorologist Eric Sorensen is running against five opponents in the Democratic primary for an open seat to represent the state’s 17th congressional district.
Sorenson says he was pushed out of his first television gig in Texas, with a copy of his contract sitting on his boss’s desk and the “morals clause” highlighted.
Sorenson would be the first out LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Illinois.
Clela Rorex, a former Colorado county clerk considered a pioneer in the gay rights movement for being the first public official to issue a same-sex marriage license in 1975, has died. She was 78.
Rorex died Sunday of complications from recent surgery at a hospice care facility in Longmont, the Daily Camera reported.
Rorex was a newly elected Boulder County clerk when a gay couple denied a marriage license elsewhere sought her help in March 1975. She told The Associated Press in 2014 that she saw a parallel with the women’s movement and found nothing in state law preventing it.
The then-31-year-old agreed and, in the end, issued a total of six licenses to gay couples before Colorado’s attorney general at the time ordered her to stop.
State and federal law didn’t recognize gay marriage at the time. Rorex recalled that she had little public support and didn’t challenge the attorney general.
A recall effort was launched against Rorex, a single mother and University of Colorado graduate student. Suffering from chronic migraines and dealing with hate mail, she resigned halfway through her term.
Colorado legalized gay marriage in 2014 after a state court and a Denver federal court struck down a 2006 ban enacted by state voters. A 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision recognized the fundamental right nationwide.
Jared Polis, Colorado’s first openly gay governor, paid tribute to Rorex upon learning of her passing.
“Her certification of same-sex marriages (until the Attorney General shut her down) was a pivotal moment in the long struggle for marriage equality that led to Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which legalized marriage equality nationally,” Polis wrote on Facebook. “So many families, including First Gentleman Marlon Reis and I, are grateful for the visionary leadership of Clela Rorex, a woman ahead of her time.”
Glenda Russell, a retired writer and LGTBQ community historian, told the Camera that Rorex faced significant backlash after issuing the first license.
“Nationally at the time, most people didn’t take it too seriously because they didn’t worry about it happening again, but in Boulder, the reaction was forceful and mean spirited. She got hit with all the homophobia and heterosexism that the LGBTQ community was facing,” Russell said.
In later years, Rorex advocated for gay and lesbian rights, speaking in schools and expressing exasperation with the slow pace of change.
According to Out Boulder County, an LGTBQ advocacy organization, Rorex was born in Denver on July 23, 1943. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Colorado before running for county clerk and recorder. After resigning as clerk in 1977 she obtained post-graduate degrees and served a legal administrator for the Native American Rights Fund.
A celebration of life was planned for July 23, Out Boulder County said.
The county courthouse in Boulder where she issued the licenses has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
