A 74-year-old man who owned multiple firearms and ammunition has been sentenced to 30 months in jail after sending bomb threat letters to pro-LGBTQ+ campaigners.
Robert Fehring was sentenced on Wednesday (3 August) after pleading guilty in February to one count of mailing threatening communications, according to Buzzfeed News.
The retired USA high school teacher had reportedly been arrested in December 2021 after sending at least 60 anonymous threats to Pride Month organisers, government officials, and other pro-LGBTQ+ individuals over the course of eight years.
He began his campaign of hatred in 2013 when he targeted New York’s Long Island and Manhattan institutions and advocates. He made various worrying warnings, including threatening to bomb a Pride parade in Long Island town of Huntington and plant explosives on a ferry taking people to Fire Island.
“ALL OF YOU SHOULD BE SHOT, HUNG, EXTERMINATED,” he wrote in a particularly disgusting letter to the owners of New York City’s pro-LGBTQ+ bar the Stonewall Inn. “WE WILL BLOW UP/BURN YOUR ESTABLISHMENTS DOWN.”
“WE WILL SHOOT THOSE WHO FREQUENT YOUR DENS OF FILTH, S**T, SCUM AND PERVERSION,” the letter continued before asking the owners to catch HIV and “JUST F***ING DIE!!”
Fehring also used doctored newspapers to send threatening letters, including one in 2021 addressed to the LGBTQ+ CEO of Newsday that contained photographs of a local Pride event, with a caption below reading “ONLY 350 UNNATURAL PERVERTS LESBOS & F****TS SHOW UP!!”
One of the six victims to speak at the sentencing was gay activist David Kilmnick, who said being sent targeted threats for who you are “changes you”.
“You have no luxury of safety – even doing the most mundane daily chores,” he continued. “From the first time I received one of his ‘anonymous’ letters [threatening] my life due to being an LGBT advocate and fighting for the rights and safety of our community, I no longer felt safe going to get the mail, taking out the garbage and even starting my car each day.”
After a search warrant was made in November 2021, FBI agents found several stolen Pride flags, two loaded shotguns along with nearly 400 rounds of ammunition, two stun guns, and a stamped envelope containing a dead bird that he had reportedly planned to send to a pro-LGBTQ+ attorney.
And cops found several photos taken by Robert Fehring, including those of a Pride parade in New York City, as part of a plot “to further terrify victims”.
He was eventually arrested after a criminal complaint was filed in federal court, revealing the disturbing contents of his letters. In a statement after Fehring’s arrest, NYC Pride executive director Sandra Pérez thanked the Justice Department for investigating the situation, adding: “We are cooperating in any way we can, and we remain committed to the safety and well-being of the LGBTQIA+ community.”
According to Fehring himself, he marked each letter’s envelope with a “confidential stamp” to ensure the letters were taken seriously by recipients.
“The fact that the defendant sent his threats and then appears at the above-described locations while he was the owner of multiple firearms and ammunition is particularly serious,” the prosecution said in a sentencing memo. “The defendant has a First Amendment right to hold bigoted beliefs; he does not have a right to threaten people based on his bigoted beliefs,” the prosecution added.
While prosecutors initially aimed for Robert Fehring to serve a total of 51 months, this was cut on appeal after attorneys argued his history of physical and mental health issues would make incarceration particularly difficult for him at his age. He is required to surrender to prison by 2 September.
“Today’s sentence makes clear that threats to kill and commit acts of violence against the LGBTQ+ community will be met with significant punishment,” said attorney Breon Peace.
We are facing a public health emergency. On August 1, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to combat the spread of monkeypox. Three days later, the administration of President Joe Biden declared a public health emergency at the federal level as well. The emergency declarations will help ensure we obtain the critical resources needed to combat the spread of this virus. While this outbreak is very different from the coronavirus pandemic, we have learned many lessons over the past two years to help us battle the spread of infectious diseases.
To date, we have learned of 17 cases of confirmed monkeypox among Sonoma County residents. This represents an increase from the county’s numbers last week and is suggestive of accelerating spread. Despite this jump, monkeypox continues to pose a low risk to the vast majority of Sonoma County residents.
Although it is a viral infection, monkeypox does not behave or transmit like COVID-19. Monkeypox is less contagious than COVID-19 and is largely spread by intimate contact, including kissing, hugging and sexual activity, between an infected or contagious individual and another person.
We want to reiterate that monkeypox can affect anyone. Currently, the vast majority of cases are in the social network of self-identified men who have sex with men, and they need the most support.
Public health officials at all levels are working to distribute the Jynneos vaccine to limit the spread from infectious individuals to others. Unfortunately, manufacturers have not produced vaccine supplies sufficient to meet the demand.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California Department of Public Health, and Sonoma County Department of Health Services are distributing existing supplies and prioritizing distribution to those who have been exposed to someone with monkeypox or have a higher risk of being exposed to the virus. Again, most individuals in the general population are at low risk of exposure and infection.
To date, Sonoma County has received 820 doses of the vaccine. The doses have been distributed to all of the major health systems and the Federally Qualified Health Centers as well as Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma County Indian Health Services Program and the Lazy Bear event in Guerneville. Since supplies of the vaccine remain insufficient to meet the needs of the County, we also need to focus on preventing and reducing the risk of acquiring and transmitting the virus. Combining both prevention, vaccination and treatment will give us the best chance of slowing the spread of the illness.
Consistent with World Health Organization guidance, we recommend individuals who face the greatest risk consider limiting their number of intimate, skin to skin contacts, reconsider the risks of intimate contact with a new partner, and exchange contact details with any new partners to allow follow up if needed for the time being. These individual steps will lower their risk of infection and reduce the spread until sufficient vaccine supply is available to receive a dose of the Orthopox vaccine.
It is critical that public health officials, members of the health care provider community and others in our broader community support members of the LGBTQ community and recognize that they are facing the greatest risks of this disease at this time. While men who have sex with men currently face the greatest risk, a person’s sexuality and sexual orientation is not the route of transmission. Anyone who has direct contact, especially skin to skin contact, with an infected person can contract the disease.
Using the same care and compassion that Sonoma County residents displayed for populations disproportionately affected during the COVID pandemic, we will work together to combat the monkeypox outbreak and continue to have a healthy, safe and vibrant community.
Sincerely,
Tina Rivera, Director Department of Health Services Gabriel Kaplan, Director Public Health Division Dr. Sundari Mase, Health Officer Dr. Kismet Baldwin, Deputy Public Health Officer
How to protect yourself from monkeypox:
Avoid close contact with anyone who has symptoms
Avoid share bedding, towels or clothing with others who have symptoms
Before having close, physical contact with others, talk to your partners about their health and any recent rashes or sores
Consider limiting the number of intimate skin-to-skin encounters or events with large numbers of people where close skin to skin contact can occur
Stay aware if traveling to countries where there are outbreaks
How to protect others:
If you have symptoms particularly a rash consistent with monkeypox, or if you have been in contact with someone who has been diagnosed with monkeypox:
Stay home if you are feeling sick
Contact a health care provider as soon as possible for an evaluation
Avoid skin-to-skin, or close contact with others, including sexual contact, until a medical evaluation has been completed
To the best of your ability, know how to contact your intimate partners so they can receive post exposure prophylaxis
Inform sex partners about any symptoms you are experiencing
Cover the rash with clean, dry, loose-fitting clothing
Wear a well-fitted mask
If you are contacted by public health officials, answer their confidential questions to help protect others who may have been exposed
How to get help:
If you do not have a provider, or have difficulty scheduling an appointment, you can be seen at a community clinic in Sonoma County.
More information about monkeypox can be found here:
A Washington, D.C., gay couple was attacked on Sunday by a pair of teenagers who reportedly called them “monkeypox f****ts.”
The couple says they were walking in the Shaw neighborhood when they encountered a group of teens who began calling them “monkeypox f****ts.” According to Metro Weekly, Robert, 25, and Antonio, 23, were followed down the street by one of the teens. When Robert turned to confront him, the teen punched him in the forehead, knocking him to the ground.
A second teen then punched Antonio in the face. The first teen struck Robert again, breaking his glasses. An onlooker called the police, and most of the teens fled. However, two young women who had been with the group approached Robert and Antonio to apologize.
“One of them said their dad was gay and it was messed up that they attacked us. But I was still pretty pissed at the whole incident, so I let them pass,” Robert said.
Police took the couple to the emergency room at Howard University Hospital, where they remained for six hours to ensure they didn’t have concussions. Antonio also received stitches to his upper lip.
“I mainly feel shock that this could happen in D.C. in broad daylight, only three or four blocks from U Street, walking from a gay bar to public transit,” said Robert.
“I’ve actually had more experiences of homophobia the past couple of months than I have ever before, just this summer alone,” he continued. “A few months ago, a friend of mine and I were on the Metro coming home on the Red Line from a pool party. And some guy told us not to—he just said some homophobic things to us, saying that where he was from, they ‘kill gay people’ or something along those lines.”
“And then even as we were walking down 7th Street, just minutes before, someone shook his head at us and said, ‘That ain’t right,’ which I think was a reference to what Antonio was wearing, which was just a crop top. So yeah, it’s just kind of crazy that it seems like there’s been way more homophobia than I’ve experienced before, even growing up in Texas.”
“There is more overt homophobia here,” added Antonio, who has lived in D.C. since 2020. “There are more altercations on the street or verbal comments from random people versus at home.”
A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books. Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
The vote leaves the library with funds through the first quarter of next year. Once a reserve fund is used up, it would be forced to close, Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told Bridge Michigan – harming not just readers but the community at large.
Beyond books, residents visit the library for its wifi, he said, and it houses the very room where the vote took place. The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library.
Actor Kevin Spacey has been ordered to pay nearly $31 million in damages to production company MRC for alleged sexual misconduct behind the scenes of the Netflix series House of Cards.
The order from Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recana confirmed an award previously handed down by an arbitrator in October, 2020.
Spacey, who was an executive producer on the series and played president Frank Underwood, was dropped from both roles just days after the allegations came to light in 2017.
Spacey was first accused of misconduct by actor Anthony Rapp in a Buzzfeed story alleging that Spacey had made a sexual advance on him in Spacey’s apartment in 1986, when Rapp was 14. Production on the show was suspended two days later.
Two days after that, CNN reported that Spacey created a “toxic” work environment on set, making overtly crude comments and touching young male staffers without consent.
The allegations of groping prompted an MRC internal investigation.
MRC argued that the two-time Oscar-winning actor owed them millions in lost profits because his misconduct forced them to remove Spacey from House of Card’s sixth season and cut the show’s episode order from thirteen to eight episodes. The arbitrator ruled in MRC’s favor, finding Spacey’s behavior violated the production company’s sexual harassment policy with respect to five House of Cards crew members, and constituted a material breach of his agreements as an actor and executive producer.
Earlier this year, Spacey’s attorneys, Stephen G. Larson and Jonathan E. Phillips, sued to throw out the multi-million dollar judgement, arguing, “The truth is that while Spacey participated in a pervasive on-set culture that was filled with sexual innuendoes, jokes, and innocent horseplay, he never sexually harassed anyone. In fact, as the evidence established and the Arbitrator recognized in the Award, the few times Spacey was told that his conduct made someone feel uncomfortable or was in any way unwanted, he stopped.”
In May, Spacey was charged by the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service with four counts of sexual assault and one count of “causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.” The alleged incidents took place in London and Gloucestershire between 2005 and 2013.
Spacey, 62, stars in the upcoming feature Peter Five Eight — his first major role in five years — playing “a charismatic man in black.”
The tagline for the film is, “The guilty always pay the price.”
The public library in a small Iowa farming town has been embroiled in a monthslong controversy spurred by anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, attempts to censor books with progressive and LGBTQ themes and the alleged harassment of LGBTQ staff members.
The situation reached a tipping point last month when the library — a place referred to by some as the “heart of the community” — was forced to close for more than a week after its interim director resigned, saying he felt ostracized for being gay.
It’s indicative of an undercurrent of homophobia that exists in the town among a small portion of its 5,000 residents, according to more than a dozen current and former Vinton residents. Although not representative of the entire community, the controversy has divided it in recent months, racking up national headlines and leaving some LGBTQ residents feeling unsafe and unwelcome.
With efforts to censor LGBTQ books in many communities across the U.S., along with increased threats targeting Drag Queen Story Hour events, the situation in Vinton appears to be a microcosm of a nationwide trend. It also marks the arrival of a new battleground in the culture wars: public libraries.
“This in particular has really put a dark cloud over the community,” said Dan Engledow, a 42-year-old gay man who has lived in Vinton all his life. “There’s a small group of people who have caused lots of problems.”
Vinton now finds itself facing not only a dearth of library services, which many residents depend on, but also larger questions about how welcoming the community is toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.
“Like any small, Midwestern community, it’s really not that open to a lot of the LGBTQ community,” said Molly Jennings, a former editor at The Vinton Eagle and Cedar Valley Times. “It’s the first time that I recall that it has been this blatant.”
‘Not what this town is about’
The library’s simmering culture clash dates back to late 2020, a few months after Janette McMahon, a woman with decades of experience as a library administrator, took over as director from Virginia Holsten, who retired after more than 30 years at the library, McMahon said.
“Change gets really hard when things have stayed the same a long time,” McMahon said.
In January 2021, she hired Colton Neely, who is gay, as the new children’s librarian. She called him “utterly fantastic” but said that after hiring him, the environment some patrons were creating at the library started to become less “comfortable.”
Within a few months after Neely was hired, McMahon said, a patron whom she did not name — though others familiar with the matter, including Neely, have identified this person as the pastor’s wife — checked out several children’s books and refused to return them for a prolonged period of time. One of them was written by first lady Jill Biden and another was by Vice President Kamala Harris (Harris visited the library in 2019 to read hers). “Sometimes People March,” a book about activism that was checked out, referenced the Black Lives Matter movement and the Pride flag.
Eventually, the books came back, but McMahon said some patrons had already started accusing her of having a liberal agenda.
“Gossip runs rampant in lots of places, but in small towns it tends to go very fast,” she said.
In April 2021, the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Vinton sent an email to a board member who has since resigned expressing concern that the library was biased toward “certain political positions and a certain political party,” according to a copy of the email shared with NBC News. The pastor, Stephen Preus, took issue with the same books and asked why the library had not chosen to instead display a biography of former President Donald Trump and a book by former Vice President Mike Pence. What Preus found even more concerning, according to his email, was what he called the library’s promotion of leftist ideologies, including “the LGBT agenda,” “transgenderism” and “Black Lives Matter Inc.”
Preus did not respond to a request for comment.
Eventually, McMahon said, the growing fervor in the town made her decide she couldn’t effectively run the library. She resigned in July 2021, after serving just over a year, and moved about an hour and a half away. She now leads a public library in Dewitt, Iowa.
With McMahon gone, Neely stepped into her shoes until the library’s board of trustees could hire a more permanent replacement. For months, Neely said, he operated the library from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. essentially by himself. All the while, he alleged, he dealt with both subtle and blatant homophobia from a handful of patrons.
One day, when he was wearing a bow tie, a patron told him to “dress down,” he recalled. “She said, ‘That’s not what this library is about; that’s not what this town is about.’”
Neely also alleged that longtime Vinton resident Brooke Kruckenberg made comments that Neely perceived as homophobic in front of him and her children while at the library. McMahon corroborated that she had heard Kruckenberg and other patrons refer to Neely as “the gay man” in what she perceived as a negative way and that Neely had been the target of what she characterized as microaggressions from Kruckenberg.
And while he was interim director, Neely said, the secretary and treasurer of the library board, Jennifer Kreutner, suggested the library obscure certain titles — including those covering LGBTQ topics — with book sleeves. Kreutner had previously objected to a summer reading challenge that had encouraged patrons to read books by people of color and LGBTQ authors, according to Neely, McMahon and another person familiar with the matter.
Kreutner’s suggestion to cover certain books with sleeves or move them elsewhere in the library was the topic of a heated library board meeting Tuesday night. During the meeting, another board member accused Kreutner of censorship, and several board members argued with Kreutner about some of her behaviors while on the board, according to an audio recording of the meeting shared with NBC News.
“I don’t think it’s a conflict of interest to represent people in the community that come forward with their views and concerns,” Kreutner said at the meeting. She then apologized after a board member accused her of only representing a conservative Christian viewpoint, though she added, “I represent the entire rural community, but most of them are conservative Christians.”
Neither Kruckenberg nor Kreutner responded to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Jimmy Kelly, chair of the library’s board of trustees, said the board was not officially made aware of any discrimination of Neely or other staff at the time of the alleged incidents. He also said in an interview before Tuesday’s board meeting that he had no prior knowledge of Kreutner’s alleged suggestion to obscure certain titles with book covers.
‘Something wasn’t right’
In November, the library board hired a new director. Renee Greenlee, a librarian with years of experience and a master’s degree in library and information science, was someone Neely thought “could fight this crowd back.”
“From the moment I shook her hand, I was like, ‘She’s the one to be in this position,’” Neely said.
Greenlee had worked for about three years as a library assistant at a publiclibrary in Marion, Iowa, where she helped facilitate Marion’s first LGBTQ Pride event, including a drag queen storytime event and a parade around the library. In January, shortly after taking the job in Vinton, she was selected from more than 1,300 librarians around the country by the American Library Association for the I Love My Librarian Award.
Neely said circumstances started to improve at the library after Greenlee took over, and he moved back into the children’s librarian position. Still, he struggled at times to attract families to his storytime events. He said he believes this was partly because parents seemed to disapprove of the fact that he is gay.
“Deep down, I felt like something wasn’t right,” he said.
At a library board meeting March 9, a motion was put on the agenda to establish gender-neutral bathrooms in the building. It passed unanimously, but at the meeting, Kruckenberg joined the chorus of residents claiming the library staff had a “liberal agenda.”
“I don’t believe the library is representing our town well with hiring a majority of staff who are openly a part of the LGBTQ community,” she wrote in a statement, which she then read at the meeting, according to attendees and meeting minutes. Neely and Joey Anderson, who were two of the library’s six employees at the time, are openly LGBTQ, Neely said.
Kruckenberg said she took issue with a “subtle, yet noticeable, display of the LGBTQ agenda,” taking form in the “choices of books on display, the cross-dressing of employees, Facebook posts and the question of non-gender bathrooms being considered.”
Greenlee left that March meeting “white as a ghost,” Neely said.
Anderson, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said in an email to NBC News that Greenlee pulled them into her office the day after the meeting to tell them what had happened. They called the experience “devastating.”
“It contributed to some pretty terrible dysphoria over the next several months,” they said.
According to meeting minutes, a prepared statement shared with NBC News and local news reports, Kruckenberg alleged at the March meeting that she had spoken to library members and parents in the community who had decided to step back from supporting the library, or stop coming completely, because of “staffing decisions” and the “liberal books that are on the shelves.” She said she wasn’t asking for any books to be banned or removed from the library, but instead for the books to be “balanced.”
“For every book on display with a topic of becoming a transgender,” Kruckenberg’s prepared statement said, “I would ask that there is a book on display that discusses how God created and designed people as either male or female from birth, for life.”
Kreutner, who takes the meeting minutes, recorded the March meeting, but she declined to produce the audio file for Greenlee and the city administrator when they asked her for it, board members said during Tuesday’s meeting. The board then spent $300 retaining a lawyer, who sent a letter to Kreutner telling her she was legally obligated to produce the file under public records laws, a copy of the letter shows.Kelly, the board chair, confirmed Kreutner eventually turned over the audio file.
After the March board meeting, Greenlee compiled a seven-page response to Kruckenberg’s allegations that included a diversity audit of the children’s book collection. At an April 13 library board meeting, she presented her findings, which showed that of the nearly 5,800 children’s books and other materials in the library, only seven books had subject headings with the terms “LGBT,” “gay” or “transgender.” There were 31 books with Christian-related subject headings.
Greenlee also condemned Kruckenberg’s comments from the March meeting, video of the April meeting shows, saying they were “discriminatory” and “hurtful” and that she had instructed her staff to let her know if they felt unsafe, threatened or harassed.
“I very much wish that every community member could be happy with all aspects of the library, but I have been in libraries long enough to know that is not realistic,” she wrote in a public statement, which she read in full at the meeting.
Neely was sitting behind Kruckenberg and her family — whom several residents described as a powerful force in town. When Greenlee finished speaking, Neely said many of them started shaking their heads.
“They were just clearly not taking it,” he said.
By May 23, Greenlee called her staff into her office, according to Anderson, and tearfully told them she had put in her resignation letter and accepted a position at the Cedar Rapids Public Library. She said she would leave in early June.
“We’d be without a director, yet again, and still under attack by community members, leaders, and board members,” Anderson said in an email to NBC News.
Greenlee declined to comment on the record for this story.
The library board accepted Greenlee’s resignation and reappointed Neely as interim director at a June 8 board meeting. The meeting drew about 100 people, a crowd so big it had to be moved to City Hall, according to Neely and Kelly, the board chair, both of whom attended the meeting.
Molly Rach, a library assistant for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who’s lived in Vinton with her husband for eight years, was one of many residents who spoke at the meeting to express disappointment in the situation, saying the community had “run out two highly qualified, highly credentialed library directors.”
“This library is indeed going to suffer, but not because of diverse books or staff members who identify as LGBTQIA+,” she said at the meeting, “but because you are going to have a hard time finding anyone who is willing to put up with being targeted by community members for simply doing their job.”
‘I’ve had it’
It was just a matter of weeks before Neely left, too.
“You could tell half the crowd was just like, ‘Ugh, you’re disgusting,’” he said of the June 8 meeting. “That was the board meeting where I was just like, ‘I’ve had it.’”
He penned a resignation letter to the library board on June 27, writing that despite his hard-earned qualifications, he felt reduced to just “the gay man of the library.”
“It hurts and I am disappointed,” he wrote.
Neely’s departure coincided with that of another staffer.The sudden exitsforced the library to close for more than a week at the beginning of July, leaving residents who relied on the library, like Kelsey Ann Wiederin, a stay-at-home mom of three, in the lurch.
“They just closed their doors, and that was it,” she said.
Wiederin moved to Vinton from the nearby community of La Porte City about a year ago. She said Neely had a knack for interacting with her oldest child, who has a disability. Finding out he resigned earlier this summer was “heartbreaking,” she said.
The other staffer who left around the time of Neely’s departure was Connie Bennett, who confirmed to NBC News she was put on administrative leave. In an email to NBC News, Anderson accused Bennett of previously making what they perceived to be subtle transphobic remarks. During Tuesday’s board meeting, Kelly said an investigation into a staff member, whom he did not identify, had concluded, and that the staff member would be returning to work. He also said theboard voted to refer the situation to the city’s Title VI coordinator for continued monitoring. Title VI is a provision in the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination of protected classes in programs that receive federal funding.
When contacted by NBC News, Bennett would only confirm that she would be returning to work and referred additional questions to the city administrator, Chris Ward, who said in an email that any records regarding personal employee information are confidential unless that employee has been fired, demoted or decided to quit.
After learning that Bennett would return to work at the library, Anderson, who had been the only remaining staff member since Neely’s departure, resigned Tuesday.
The library building is now open for half of its usual hours, but only because seven of the nine board members were trained to help run the library, Kelly said. On Tuesday, the board selected a new director, though she likely won’t start for another month. The incoming director asked that her name not be published before she resigns from her current job.
Meanwhile, the library’s diminished capacity means reduced summer programs and less access to the building’s resources, such as free internet and office supplies for the low-income residents who need them.
Last week, Vinton resident Crystal Pladsen-Coder spoke at a City Council meeting, reading from a petition with more than 400 signatures that urged city leaders to “take a stand” and “lead the way as we reclaim our city.” As the controversy at the library unfolded, she also led an effort to place Pride signs on yards across Vinton in recent months. Shortly after she spoke, someone else used the public comment period to decry the dangers of “critical race” and “critical gender” theory.
Another resident said the words of “one person have been used to brand an entire community,” a sentiment many current and former residents of Vinton share.
“The people that are the loudest kind of get all the attention,” said Tracie Walker, a former Vinton resident who now lives close by.
Walker said she found herself disappointed as she followed the controversy over the past few months. She said she felt like Vinton residents have been lumped together with what she called a very small group of people who don’t represent everyone.
Walker raised her two sons, who are gay, in Vinton in a house near the library. One of her sons, Jordan, said he didn’t always know he was gay, but growing up in Vinton, what he knew for sure was that in some places, he felt comfortable, and in others, he didn’t.
One of the places he felt safe was the library. He was there all the time from fifth grade until about high school, when he said he started “working tirelessly to be passibly straight.”
After high school, Jordan, now 37, felt compelled to leave and eventually landed in Chicago, which he called the “perfect spot” for someone who missed the Midwest to live as his “true self.”
Like many moms, Tracie Walker said she had always hoped her sons would move back near their hometown and raise their families in the area. The past few months, however, have made her realize that dream may be a lost cause.
A 74-year-old retired schoolteacher from a New York City suburb was sentenced to 30 months in prison Wednesday for mailing dozens of violent threats to LGBTQ affiliated individuals, groups and businesses over several years.
According to prosecutors, Robert Fehring threatened to blow up the Stonewall Inn, a historic bar in Manhattan considered the birthplace of the gay rights movement. He also threatened to place explosives at 2021 New York City Pride march that would “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk,” referring to the 2016 attack in which 49 people were killed and dozens wounded at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Other messages threatened to kill, shoot and bomb LGBTQ affiliated businesses and individuals, including an African American-owned barbershop in Brooklyn that Fehring wrote in one letter “is the perfect place for a bombing.”
Fehring pleaded guilty in February to mailing threatening communications through the postal service.
“We are disappointed in the length of the sentence, but Mr. Fehring is happy to be putting this nightmare behind him,” his attorney, Glenn Obedin, said in an email. “He is deeply remorseful for what occurred, and looks forward to living quietly with his family once he has served his sentence.”
An FBI search of Fehring’s home last November in Bayport, Long Island, yielded two loaded shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in addition to copies of letters containing threats. Investigators also found a stamped envelope addressed to an LGBTQ-affiliated attorney containing the remains of a dead bird, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
“Robert Fehring made heinous threats against members of the LGBTQ community in locations throughout New York, including Suffolk County, for nearly eight years,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said in a statement. “Thanks to the tireless efforts of our department’s Hate Crimes Unit detectives and the diligent work of our law enforcement partners, Fehring is being held accountable for his crimes.”
A southwest Florida school district added warning labels to more than 100 books, many of which touch on issues related to race or the LGBTQ community.
Collier County Public Schools, a district that includes part of Naples, added the labels both on physical copies of the books and in Destiny, the district’s online catalog, according to the nonprofit Florida Freedom to Read Project. The top of the label, according to a photo shared with NBC News by Florida Freedom to Read Project, says “Advisory notice to parents” in capital letters.
“This Advisory Notice shall serve to inform you that this book has been identified by some community members as unsuitable for students,” the label states. “This book will also be identified in the Destiny system with the same notation. The decision as to whether this book is suitable or unsuitable shall be the decision of the parent(s) who has the right to oversee his/her child’s education consistent with state law.”A sticker of the notice is on the front inside cover of the books, according to Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which advocates against censorship in Florida schools. Ferrell said a media specialist in the school district shared photos of the labels with her in June.
After a series of public records requests about the labels, challenged books and the district’s creation of a committee that reviews school materials, Ferrell said she received a phone call from Elizabeth Alves, associate superintendent of teaching and learning for Collier County Public Schools.
Ferrell said Alves told her the district began adding the labels in February, after the district’s legal representative spoke with the Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group that last year issued a “Porn in Schools Report.” The report included a list of books that “promote gender self-identification and same-sex marriage” as well as titles that include “indecent and offensive material,” according to the group.
Alves defended the decision as “a compromise,” Ferrell said.
“I said, ‘It’s unfortunate, because this is a literary work. The sticker that they chose to put on there, the language that they chose, would make any reader who would otherwise pick up the book based on the cover and the description, it would make them think twice about reading the book,’” Ferrell said of her response to Alves.
Chad Oliver, a spokesman for Collier County Public Schools, confirmed that Alves spoke to Ferrell but denied that the warning labels were added in response to a conversation with the Florida Citizens Alliance.
“Based upon advice from the General Counsel, we placed advisory notices on books about which parents and community members had expressed concern and in accordance with the recently passed Parents’ Bill of Rights Law (HB 241),” Oliver said in an email, referring to a state law that allows parents to object to instructional materials.
A total of 110 books feature the advisory labels, according to PEN America, a nonprofit group that promotes free speech. This list, which PEN America shared with NBC News, has significant overlap with a list of at least 112 books that the Florida Citizens Alliance inquired about in a Dec. 11 email sent to Collier County Public Schools. Ferrell, who obtained the email through a public records request, shared a copy with NBC News.
Keith Flaugh, CEO and co-founder of the Florida Citizens Alliance, confirmed his group submitted a public records request about 112 novels in the district.
“Many of these contain sexually explicit and age inappropriate content,” which he said in an email is in direct violation of Florida laws on obscenity and the sale of harmful materials to minors. He also citeda 2017 law that the group helped draft that allows parents and any residents of the state to object to instructional materials and provide evidence for why they believe the material is inappropriate.
Some of the titles that appear on both lists — and now have an “advisory notice to parents” warning label in Collier County Public Schools — include LGBTQ- and race-related books that have landed on banned-book lists across the country. These titles include “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. The list also includes literary classics like “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Also included is the popular children’s book “Everywhere Babies,” a rhyming, illustrated book about what babies do. The illustrations include what could be interpreted as a few same-sex couples, but they are never identified as such in the text. The book first landed on a banned-book list in Walton County, Florida, in the spring, after the Florida Citizens Alliance included it in its 2021 “Porn in Schools Report.”
“It’s a really good example of just how extreme this is getting,” Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education programs at PEN America, said in a phone interview. Some of the images in the book are “assumed to be gay,” he added, and as a result some critics think they require a warning.
“These warning labels are like something you might see on a cigarette package,” Friedman said. “They’re treating it like a controlled, alarming substance. This is literature for young people.”
Oliver said none of the books were removed from the district’s media centers and that parents were made aware of the labels in a districtwide email prior to spring break.
He added that the district is “very mindful and concerned with protecting the rights of all students and employees.”
“At no time were the members of the LGBTQ community a focus of the district’s review,” Oliver said. “Whether we are following new State laws or responding to concerns from community members, Collier County Public Schools is mindful of both U.S. Supreme Court precedent based upon the First Amendment principals, Fourteenth Amendment equal protection principles, and Florida Civil Rights Law.”
The Florida Citizens Alliance supported the Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by LGBTQ advocates, which bans instruction about sexual orientation and 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.”
Ferrell, a mom of two kids in Orange County Public Schools, said she’s worried about the message the label will send to parents about books that their child might love. For example, she said her son loves the series “The Bad Guys,” by Aaron Blabey, which has been challenged in Florida.
She added that the sticker doesn’t include a disclosure that it was placed there at the request of the parents and community members, and, as a result, it sends the message that the district agrees with the sticker’s sentiment.
“Now, I cannot go in there and make a decision for myself without seeing somebody else’s opinion on this book,” Ferrell said.
Before the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision was overturned, the family-building landscape for LGBTQ couples was already fraught with legal and financial obstacles. But now, with the uncertainty following the Roe reversal in June — including how it may affect the legality of certain reproductive procedures — health and legal experts are advising LGBTQ prospective parents to consult with attorneys versed in the specific laws of their states before they begin their family-planning journeys.
Primary care physician Eric Kutscher and his husband, medical student Lala Tanmoy Das, of New York, are starting a family, which they have been thinking about doing for years.
“We talked about having kids literally on our second date,” Das said.
The couple have already gone through in vitro fertilization, or IVF, which entailed using the sperm of one of the men to fertilize a donated egg. The next step on their journey is to find a surrogate to carry the embryo to term. However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade has given them pause.
Many potential surrogates live in states that have restricted abortion access after the high court decision, Das and Kutscher noted, and should there be a complication during the pregnancy, they do not want their surrogate’s options limited.
“Eric and I are extremely pro-choice people,” Das said. “Maternal health comes first, no matter what.”
Kristin Marsoli, the director of marketing for Circle Surrogacy of Boston, said her agency adjusted its screening process and questionnaires last year after Texas changed its laws to ban abortionafter detection of a fetal heartbeat.She said the agency wanted to “ensure that surrogates from Texas were properly educated about what a termination would mean if it came up in their journeys.”
Marsoli said the agency — where nearly half (44% to 46%) of the intended parents identify as LGBTQ — is prepared to make further adjustments as conservative states seek to restrict abortion and reproductive care after the reversal of Roe. Since the decision on June 24, 14 states have already banned or restricted abortion, and seven more are considering similar restrictions.
“Our legal team is keeping a close eye on trigger laws and other changes being made in each state and providing regular updates to our teams so that we can continue to adjust our process as needed,” she said.
For now, the agency is not advising couples like Das and Kutscher to geographically restrict their search for surrogates when the wait for surrogates can easily take up to a year and the legal landscape is still in flux.
“There is still so much that is unknown,” Marsoli said.
Just a few days after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, Louisiana legislators debated a bill that would have defined life as beginning at fertilization with no exception for assisted reproductive treatments like IVF.
While Louisiana’s personhood bill was scuttled after debate on the House floor, the Dobbs ruling opened the door for states to pass laws that not only dramatically restrict or ban abortion, but also have potential effects on assisted reproductive services.
“Roe was holding up a floor. Legislators couldn’t restrict reproductive health decisions beyond what Roe protected,” said Cathryn Oakley, the state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group. “States have basically the unfettered ability to regulate those issues as they see fit.”
Depending on the exact wording of state abortion bans, such measures could affect reproductive technologies like IVF, because the process may result in discarding fertilized human embryos.
“If the law says that life begins at the moment of fertilization … that means that those embryos have rights,” Oakley said, even if the fertilization happens outside the body. “It may be impossible for folks in some states to get IVF where they live.”
From 1% to 2% of all U.S. births are the products of IVF every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while it is not uncommon for heterosexual couples to use IVF in their family-building journeys, same-sex couples do so disproportionately. A report last year from the U.K.’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority found a fourfold increase in the use of IVF among female same-sex couples: In 2009, 489 IVF cycles (1% of all cycles) involved female partners, compared to 2,435 IVF cycles (4% of all cycles) in 2019.
While many anti-abortion rights groups support IVF, others advocate against access to the procedure. A coalition of anti-abortion rights groups called The Personhood Alliance objects to IVF on the ground that it violates the rights of the embryo.
Missouri, Kansas, Georgia and Alabama already have fetal personhood laws, and legislators in six more states have introduced such measures, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group. The Alabama attorney general’s office has said the law will not affect IVF treatment; the consequences of personhood laws in other states remain unclear.
Existing challenges
LGBTQ people are disproportionately affected by any law restricting access to assisted reproductive health care, like IVF.
“The fact is that in the LGBTQ community, a larger percentage of their family-building journeys are going to access assisted reproductive technology,” said Dr. Roger Shedlin, the CEO of Connecticut-based WINFertility. “By definition, you could see that the community is disproportionately impacted.”
And the reversal of Roe comes in the context of an already difficult legal landscape for LGBTQ parents and prospective parents, because states are free to establish their own parentage laws.
“Dobbs doesn’t just drop into a vacuum,” said Polly Crozier, a senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD. “Already we have seen attacks on LGBTQ families, because there have been cases in the past few years attacking nonbiological parents. We will probably see more challenges to the marital presumption of parentage and challenges to rights of nonbiological parents.”
Many states have not updated parentage laws to accommodate the reality that at least one of the two parents may not be biologically connected to their children, which is the case for many LGBTQ couples with kids.
“Nonbiological parents are already feeling that vulnerability, and then you see all the anti-LGBTQ bills,” Crozier said. (State legislators have already introduced more than 340 anti-LGBTQ bills this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign.)
She added that LGBTQ families should take the legal steps necessary — like second parent adoption or voluntary acknowledgment — to make sure their families are protected.
“This is really the time to make sure those core protections are in place,” Crozier said.
There is even less consistency when it comes to other kinds of laws about assisted reproduction. For example, Louisiana law restricts IVF already. Dr. Nicole Ulrich, a reproductive endocrinologist and specialist in fertility medicine at Audubon Fertility in New Orleans, said her clinic does not store embryos in the state long term. “We store them in Texas right now,” she said.
Ulrich, who estimated that as many as 20% of her patients are LGBTQ, said the clinic is making “contingency plans” about how to make other arrangements for patients in case laws in Texas change, requiring it to relocate the embryos again.
In addition, Louisiana law prohibits the use of a donor egg or donor sperm in a gestational carrier, meaning only couples able to use their own sperm and eggs can access gestational services.
“Because of regulations in Louisiana, we actually can’t help same-sex male couples conceive,” Ulrich said.
“It’s frustrating to essentially be forced to exclude a whole population.”
Financial obstacles can also make treatments like IVF and services like surrogacy prohibitively expensive for many LGBTQ people, and they are often not covered by health insurance.
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, people can expect to spend an average of $12,400 for one cycle of IVF, and surrogacy can cost anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000.
“To add any additional burden or barrier of crossing state lines, staying in a hotel, that’s all going to really add additional burdens for something that is already not accessible for so many people,” Oakley said.
Over the past several years, insurance companies have been improving coverage for assisted reproduction, Shedlin said. However, because of the medical definition of infertility, even some LGBTQ people who have insurance face barriers to accessing those benefits. In many instances, laws designed for heterosexual couples require them to establish histories of infertility before they qualify for coverage.
“Just to access your coverage, you face six months to a year, because we have a medical focus,” Crozier said of qualifying for insurance coverage. “They are essentially treating LGBTQ couples differently than non-LGBTQ couples.”
There is an overall context of heteronormativity, which can produce discrimination and exclusion for LGBTQ people, said Rebecca Kluchin, a professor of history at California State University, Sacramento, focusing on American reproductive history.
“We have this assumption that pregnancy is the purview of straight women,” Kluchin said. “There is an assumption that reproduction is still heterosexual.”
Despite the legal uncertainty and financial obstacles, Kutscher and Das are moving ahead with plans to build their family.
“It means the world to us,” Das said. “We definitely have qualms about what the future will hold — and what the child’s reality will be, what the world will be like … but we’re excited, and we feel ready.”
n response to a mean-spirited tweet sent by Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida about her appearance, a queer activist from Texas has gotten the last laugh. In addition to clapping back hard, she has raised more than $1.5 million to support abortion care as of Friday.
Olivia Julianna, a political strategist for Gen-Z for Change, a social justice advocacy group led by young people, revealed to The Advocate that she wasn’t prepared for her overnight success but appreciated it. She uses her first and middle names publicly for privacy concerns.
“I’m in shock at the amount of support that we’ve gotten from people across the country,” she says.
Julianna says she could never have imagined the level of impact she will have had with her deft navigation of the situation that Gaetz inadvertently made possible.
As of midday Thursday, donations to a fundraiser she established were $3,000 short of $700,000, she told The Advocate. On Friday that number reached $1.5 million, she tweeted.
“We’ve now hit $1.5 million raised!! That’s 500K+ just in the last day,” she wrote. “Any celebrities or philanthropists want to close that gap to 2 million[?]”
“I would like to say thank you to him for giving me such a big platform to share my message and share my work with,” she says.
The activist launched the fundraiser for the nonprofit organization’s abortion fund after being body-shamed by Gaetz on Twitter. Julianna had responded to remarks Gaetz made last weekend. The congressman mocked abortion rights activists, calling them “disgusting” and overweight. Julianna criticized the congressman’s comments online.
“It’s come to my attention that Matt Gaetz — alleged pedophile — has said that it’s always the ‘odious…5’2 350 pound’ women that ‘nobody wants to impregnate’ who rally for abortion,” she began in her tweet.
“I’m actually 5’11. 6’4 in heels. I wear them so the small men like you are reminded of your place,” she continued.
Gaetz responded by tweeting an image of her next to a news article mentioning his comments.
Julianna raised the clap-back level several notches and replied, referencing Gaetz’s ongoing potential legal troubles for alleged sexual encounters with underage women.
Then she announced a fundraising campaign on behalf of Gen-Z for Change, a 500-strong youth-led group that supports abortion rights and says it seeks to create tangible change on “issues adversely affecting young people.”
A reporter asked Gaetz whether he believed women who attended abortion rights rallies were “ugly and overweight” after his comments at the weekend rally at the conservative Turning Point USA Student Action Summit drew condemnation, and Gaetz doubled down on his remarks, according to The Washington Post.
He replied to those offended by the comments: “Be offended.”
It’s taken just a little more than 48 hours for Julianna to raise three-quarters of a million dollars.
Among other reproductive health care services, Julianna says donations will be split among 50 abortion funds.
As for Gaetz’s political acumen, Julianna says he lacks any.
“I think it’s hilarious that Matt Gaetz underestimated me and didn’t think that I would clap back in such a strong way,” she says.
The incident has taught Julianna one thing that she hopes will benefit other young people.
“It goes to show no matter how young you are, no matter what position of power you’re in, you can make a difference,” she says. “I hope that this absolute insane event that’s taken place will motivate young people across the country to make their voices heard and fight for the things that they believe them.”
And Julianna has one final assessment of Gaetz: “He’s a joke,” she says.