White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday legislation seeking to codify same-sex marriage, left by the Senate as unfinished business before adjourning for August recess, continues to be “incredibly important” to President Biden.
Jean-Pierre, responding to question to the Washington Blade on whether Biden will reach out to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to get a vote scheduled on the Respect for Marriage Act, said she had no private conversations to read out, but pointed to a formal Statement of Administration Policy from the White House as of evidence’s support for the bill.
“As you know, we are constantly in conversation with Congress — members of Congress,” Jean-Pierre said. “This is something that we put out a SAP when it first passed the House supporting the marriage equality bill. This is incredibly important to the president. We heard from him back in 2012 when he was one of the first voices to talk about how important marriage equality was being ahead of many others. He has been an advocate for the community. He will continue to be advocate for the community.”
Jean-Pierre was making a reference to Biden’s comments in 2012 on “Meet the Press,” when he spoke out in favor of marriage rights for same-sex marriage and beat President Obama to the punch by several days in coming out for gay nuptials.
Asked by the Blade about talk of an amendment for religious accommodations to obtain the necessary 10 votes from Republicans to end a filibuster in the Senate, Jean-Pierre said the White House would leave the details to Congress.
“We’ve always said we leaver the mechanics of the Senate, or Congress, in this case the Senate, to the Senate and the leadership, but we’ll continue to have those conversations,” Jean-Pierre said, “This is an issue that is…tremendously important to this president.”
Administrators at a Nebraska school shuttered the school’s award-winning student newspaper just days after its last edition that included articles and editorials on LGBTQ issues, leading press freedom advocates to call the move an act of censorship.
The staff of Northwest Public Schools’ 54-year-old Saga newspaper was informed on May 19 of the paper’s elimination, the Grand Island Independent reported. Three days earlier, the newspaper had printed its June edition, which included an article titled, “Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+” on the origins of Pride Month and the history of homophobia. It also included an editorial opposing a Florida law that bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity and dubbed by critics as “Don’t Say Gay.”
Officials overseeing the district, which is based in Grand Island, have not said when or why the decision was made to eliminate the student paper. But an email from a school employee to the Independent cancelling the student paper’s printing services on May 22 said it was “because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.”
The paper’s demise also came a month after its staff was reprimanded for publishing students’ preferred pronouns and names. District officials told students they could only use names assigned at birth going forward.
Emma Smith, Saga’s assistant editor in 2022, said the student paper was informed that the ban on preferred names was made by the school board. That decision directly affected Saga staff writer Marcus Pennell, a transgender student, who saw his byline changed against his wishes to his birth name of “Meghan” Pennell in the June issue.
“It was the first time that the school had officially been, like, ‘We don’t really want you here,’” Pennell said. “You know, that was a big deal for me.”
Northwest Principal P.J. Smith referred the Independent’s questions to district superintendent Jeff Edwards, who declined to answer the questions of when and why the student paper was eliminated, saying only that it was “an administrative decision.”
Some school board members have made no secret of their objection to the Saga’s LGBTQ content, including board president Dan Leiser, who said “most people were upset” with it.
Board vice president Zach Mader directly cited the pro-LGBTQ editorials, adding that if district taxpayer had read the last issue of the Saga, “they would have been like, ‘Holy cow. What is going on at our school?’”
“It sounds like a ham-fisted attempt to censor students and discriminate based on disagreement with perspectives and articles that were featured in the student newspaper,” said Sara Rips, an attorney for the Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nebraska Press Association attorney Max Kautsch, who specializes in media law in Nebraska and Kansas, noted that press freedom is protected in the U.S. Constitution.
“The decision by the administration to eliminate the student newspaper violates students’ right to free speech, unless the school can show a legitimate educational reason for removing the option to participate in a class … that publishes award-winning material,” Kautsch said. “It is hard to imagine what that legitimate reason could be.”
A transgender advocate and Harvard graduate student died in police custody this month while on his honeymoon in the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.
Rodrigo Ventosilla, a 32-year-old transmasculine person from Peru, and his husband, Sebastián Marallano, were detained Aug. 7 by customs police at the Bali airport for illegal possession of marijuana, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Two days after the arrest, Ventosilla was taken to the hospital, where he died on Aug. 11 due to “failure of bodily functions,” according to police spokesperson Stefanus Satake Bayu Setianto, who added that Ventosilla became sick after taking medication that had not been confiscated by authorities.
The families of Ventosilla and Marallano, who has since returned to Peru, have accused authorities in Bali of “police violence … racial discrimination and transphobia,” according to their statement on Instagram. They are also alleging that Ventosilla was not provided access to lawyers, his family or his partner while in police custody.
“It should be noted that at all times the Indonesian police blocked access to both the lawyers hired by the family, and Harvard students who attended their aid. The family was NEVER able to communicate or know Rodrigo’s health/diagnosis,” the family wrote in a statement.
However, in a statement Wednesday, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they have not found evidence of “racial discrimination and transphobia.” Ventosilla’s family is calling for a more thorough investigation.
Kyle Knight, a senior researcher on health and LGBTQ rights at Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization, said it’s disturbing that authorities prevented “lawyers and activists and his partner from trying to get access to him. That’s indicative of something very suspicious.”
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Knight added: “It’s pretty clear from the reports that we read, things went as badly as they could have.”
Ventosilla’s death follows a growing effort to roll back LGBTQ rights in Indonesia, Knight added.
“Since 2016, there has been a government-driven effort to slander, stigmatize and render insecure LGBT people across the country,” he said, citing Human Rights Watch reports from 2018 and 2016.
Bali is a known safe haven for queer and trans Indonesians, he said. However, he added, that changed last year when LGBTQ travelers began promoting the island as a queer-friendly tourist destination and provided advice on how to avoid Covid-19 restrictions.
It comes at no surprise, he said, that authorities escalated the arrest in this location.
“Rodrigo’s case falls into a couple of different overlapping patterns, including Indonesia’s drug laws are very, very strict and very intense,” he said, adding that “the police love nabbing foreigners, particularly in tourist hotspots like Bali.”
Prior to his death, Ventosilla was pursuing a master’s degree in public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In a statement Wednesday, the school said Ventosilla’s family had raised “very serious questions that deserve clear and accurate answers.” The trans advocacy organization that Ventosilla founded, Diversidades Trans Masculinas, is also calling for justice.
“We call on all human rights organizations, feminists, transfeminists, unions, grassroots organizations and citizens in general to fight for the justice that Rodrigo deserves,” the organization wrote in a statement on Facebook. “His death should not go unpunished. When a trans person dies, they never die!”
Two Russian men were arrested after being reported by a neighbour for allegedly having gay sex.
The neighbour made a police report claiming that her young children had seen the two men, Timur, 21, and Daniil, 22, through a window pouring water over each other and “doing something resembling sex”, as reported by Baza.
The two men were detained and prosecuted under the Violent Acts of Sexual Character act. If found guilty they could face anything from 12 to 20 years in prison, as a child under 14 witnessed the alleged sexual act.
However, the mother has since tried to retract her statement.
Timur and Daniil told police that the children misunderstood what they had seen. They explained that they had undressed because they were fixing a burst pipe in the bedroom.
The two men affirmed their heterosexuality and one mentioned they had a girlfriend. According to Baza, when the mother confronted the men they were “very adequate and nice” and now she wants to “make amends”.
She now wants to retract her statement to the police as she “did not expect things to spiral out of control in this way”.
But it may be too late as Timur and Daniil have been sent to a pre-trial detention facility for two months.
Russia is notorious for its hardline, anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
In 2013 Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into effect his notorious ‘gay propaganda’ law banning any “promotion” of “non-traditional sexual relationships” among minors.
The hateful measure has been used to clamp down on LGBTQ+ advocates, prevent kids from accessing inclusive literature and stop minors from watching LGBTQ-themed content on streaming platforms. In July, plans were announced to extend the law to adults.
LGBTQ+ Russians face violence and persecution, with reports of Russia sending gay men who have escaped “gay purges” in Chechnya back to Chechen police.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry officially confirmed on August 3, 2022, that same-sex attraction and being transgender are not mental health conditions, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision brings Vietnam’s health policy in line with global health and human rights standards.
Vietnam’s new directive states that “the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization (WHO) have confirmed that homosexuality is entirely not an illness, therefore homosexuality cannot be ‘cured’ nor need[s] to be ‘cured’ and cannot be converted in any way.”
“The Vietnamese Health Ministry’s recognition that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses will bring relief to LGBT people and their families across Vietnam,” said Kyle Knight, senior health and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “LGBT people in Vietnam deserve access to health information and services without discrimination, and the Health Ministry’s new directive is a major step in the right direction.”
Vietnam has made some progress on LGBT rights in recent years, Human Rights Watch said. In 2013, the government removed same-sex unions from the list of forbidden relationships, but the update did not allow for legal recognition of same-sex relationships. In 2015, the National Assembly updated the civil code to make it no longer illegal for transgender people to change their first name and legal gender, but the revisions did not create a legal gender recognition procedure.
In 2016, Vietnam, while a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, voted in favor of a resolution on the need for protection against violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The delegation made a statement of their support before the vote, saying “the reason for Vietnam’s yes vote lay in changes both in domestic as well as international policy with respect to LGBT rights.”
However, as Human Rights Watch documented in a 2020 report, factual misunderstandings and negative stereotypes help fuel human rights abuses against LGBT people in Vietnam. The belief that same-sex attraction is a diagnosable, mental health condition is pervasive in Vietnam. This false belief is rooted in the failure of the government and medical professional associations to effectively communicate that same-sex attraction is a natural variation of human experience.
Researchers have written that Vietnam never officially adopted the initial position of the WHO, which introduced a diagnosis for homosexuality in 1969. Since the homosexuality diagnosis appears to have never officially been on the books in Vietnam, therefore the government never officially removed the diagnosis, as many countries around the world did when the WHO declassified it in 1990. The government’s treatment of homosexuality as deviant behavior, combined with prominent medical figures promoting this view, fueled the widespread belief that same-sex attraction was pathological.
Pervasive myths about homosexuality have an impact on children and youth. “There’s a lot of pressure on kids to be straight,” a school counselor in Hanoi told Human Rights Watch. “It’s constantly referenced that being attracted to someone of the same sex is something that can and should be changed and fixed.”
The anthropologist Natalie Newton wrote in a 2015 article that, “Vietnamese newspaper advice columns have also featured the opinions of medical doctors and psychologists who have written about homosexuality as a disease of the body, a genetic disorder, hormonal imbalance, or mental illness.”
International health bodies and a growing number of national health authorities and health professional associations around the world have issued policies to affirm that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses, as well as LGBT nondiscrimination policies. These include Thailand’s Public Health Ministry, which stated in 2002 that “persons loving the same sex are not considered mentally abnormal or in any way ill.” National health professional associations in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and India have affirmed that position and supported nondiscriminatory health rights for LGBT people.
The Health Ministry issued the following instructions for all medical centers across Vietnam:
Enhance information propagation and dissemination so that the medical doctors, staff, and patients at medical examination and treatment centers have a correct understanding about homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender people.
While administering medical examination or treatment for LGBT patients, health workers need to ensure gender equality and respect to avoid discrimination and prejudices against these groups.
Don’t consider homosexuality, bisexuality, and being transgender an illness.
Don’t interfere nor force treatment upon these groups of patients, if any, it must be in the form of psychological assistance and performed only by those who understand sexual identity.
Enhance internal review and inspection efforts for medical examination and treatment centers and practitioners to ensure compliance with the professional codes in medical services according to the law.
The directive follows a civil society-run petition that garnered more than 76,000 signatures and a letterfrom the WHO’s Vietnam office confirming that the “WHO firmly holds the view that any effort to convert the sexual orientation of a non-heterosexual person lacks medical justification and is morally unacceptable.”
“Vietnam now joins the growing number of governments around the world affirming that same-sex attraction and gender identity are both natural variations of human experience,” Knight said. “Vietnam’s Health Ministry has boosted fundamental rights with this directive, and LGBT people now have increasingly firm grounding for expressing themselves without fear of negative reactions.”
A new guaranteed basic income program is investing in family households to access $500/month for 2 years. This money is unrestricted COVID Disaster Relief and it is not taxable income.
Eligibility:PregnantParent/Guardian of a child younger than 6Income at less than 185% of the Federal Poverty LevelImpacted by COVID-19Applications will be available 09/01/2022 online and at these locations:
Community Action Partnership Community Baptist Church Corazón Healdsburg Petaluma People Services Center La Luz Center Child Parent Institute River to Coast Children’s Services West County Health Centers
Funded by Sonoma County ARPA and the Cities of Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and Healdsburg.
[Image description: Light blue flyer with a round photo of two adults and two children on the upper left, and the program details summarized above in black text with blue headings. The First 5 Sonoma County and Pathway to Equity logos appear at the bottom. The image on the right above is in English and the image on the left above is in Spanish.]
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¡PROXIMAMENTE! Este nuevo programa piloto de asistencia en efectivo está invirtiendo en familias para acceder a $500 mensuales durante los próximos 2 años. Este dinero es ayuda para desastres por COVID sin restricciones y no es ingreso imponible.
ElegibilidadEmbarazadxAdultx responsable de un niñx menor de 6 añosIngresos de menos de 185% del Nivel Federal de PobrezaImpactadx por COVID-19Las solicitudes estarán disponibles el 01/09/2022 en línea y en estos lugares:
Community Action Partnership Community Baptist Church Corazón Healdsburg Petaluma People Services Center La Luz Center Child Parent Institute River to Coast Children’s Services West County Health Centers
Financiado por ARPA del condado de Sonoma, y las ciudades de Santa Rosa, Petaluma y Healdsburg.
[Descripción de la imagen: volante azul claro con una foto redonda de dos adultxs y dos niñxs en la parte superior izquierda, y los detalles del programa resumidos arriba en texto negro con encabezados azules. Los logotipos de First 5 Sonoma County y Pathway to Equity aparecen en la parte inferior. La imagen de arriba a la derecha está en inglés y la imagen de arriba a la izquierda está en español.]
[En español abajo]
First 5 Sonoma County invites families to join a Work Group focused on better serving children and families through a coordinated home visiting system. The Work Group will lead implementation of strategies in one of the two priority areas, which are expanding culturally relevant services to underserved areas, and increasing the home visiting system’s capacity and efficiency.
The Work Group will meet online each month, from August or September 2022 until June 2023. Each Work Group will have 9 members. Each home visitor and parent will receive a $1,250 stipend for their participation in the Work Group.
Please complete this interest form by Wednesday, August 24th:
[Image description: White text against a purple background reading “Join a First 5 Sonoma County Home Visiting Implementation Work Group!” above purple text against a lime green background in the lower part of the slide containing the link above and response deadline. The image on the right above is in English and the image on the left above is in Spanish.]
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First 5 Sonoma County invita a las familias a unirse a un grupo colaborativo enfocado en brindar un mejor servicio a lxs niñxs y las familias a través de un sistema coordinado de visitas domiciliarias. El grupo colaborativo liderará la implementación de estrategias en una de las dos áreas prioritarias, que son la expansión de los servicios culturalmente relevantes a áreas desatendidas y el aumento de la capacidad y eficiencia del sistema de visitas domiciliarias.
El grupo colaborativo se reunirá en línea todos los meses, desde agosto o septiembre de 2022 hasta junio de 2023. Cada grupo colaborativo tendrá 9 miembros. Cada visitador del hogar y padre recibirá un estipendio de $1,250 por su participación en el grupo colaborativo.
Complete este formulario de interés antes del miércoles 24 de agosto:bit.ly/home-visiting-work-groups[Texto blanco sobre un fondo morado que dice “¡Únase a un grupo colaborativo de implementación de visitas domiciliarias de First 5 Sonoma County!” encima del texto morado sobre un fondo verde lima en la parte inferior de la diapositiva que contiene el enlace anterior y el plazo de respuesta. La imagen de arriba a la derecha está en inglés y la imagen de arriba a la izquierda está en español.]
Marsha P Johnson, born 24 August, 1945, holds a special place within the LGBTQ+ community for her larger-than-life spirit and trans rights activism. She was instrumental in the 1969 Stonewall riots which kickstarted the modern fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the US.
Along with Sylvia Rivera, who was also a key part of Stonewall, she established their landmark STAR organisation in 1970 to help homeless trans youth and other marginalised groups in New York City. She also was one of the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front.
Elle Moxley is founder and executive director of the Marsha P Johnson Institute. She say that Johnson has been “claimed by many people” over the years, but ultimately she was person who “belonged to herself… no matter how many people put a saint narrative or a heroic figure around her”.
“Marsha lived homeless for a majority of her life, faced the rejection of her community and was someone who was bigger-than-life,” Moxley told PinkNews.
Despite this, Johnson worked hard to create change during her short life (she was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992, aged 46).
“I think having that kind of impact that she had while she was alive is why we are still saying her name,” Moxley reflected.
“Marsha has been a roadmap to how one can be an activist but also how one can still belong to themselves.
“And there’s a community of Black trans people globally who need to be able to say: ‘Someone else took the journey that I’m currently on, and I have a roadmap’.
The Marsha P Johnson Institute was founded in 2019 to defend and protect Black trans people, in response to the murders of Black trans women. It is abolitionist, seeking “a world free of war, police brutality, and political corruption”. It works to eradicate systemic, community and physical violence, while also uplifting, supporting and empowering the community.
Moxley describes how Marsha P Johnson spent just as much time “in and out of jail and courtrooms as she did at protests”.
She says this part of Johnson’s life is not as widely celebrated, mirroring the experience of Black trans women today.
“We have a lot of work to reconcile around race, class and gender globally,” Moxley says. “The more we can understand the impacts of colonisation globally, and work to provide reparations to all those impacted by bondage and enslavement, we’ll have a different reality.”
Moxley adds that Johnson’s legacy means the the institute is not just fighting “on behalf” of the community, but for themselves, as it is led by Black trans people.
In many ways, Moxley says they are fighting for their ability to live a “fulfilled life”, much as Johnson did.
She says it’s always an honour to mark Johnson’s birthday because she gave herself “permission to be visible, outspoken and honest”.
“We continue to celebrate Black joy because so much of what exists today around the LGBTQ+ community would not be possible had Black joy not been part of the resistance,” Moxley says.
“We’re honoured to be able to celebrate and say ‘happy birthday’ to Marsha, because it gives us the ability to say happy birthday to so many more people, and that’s the bigger picture about Marsha’s legacy and the legacy of Black trans people.
“They were alive. We are alive.”
Moxley adds it is important to embody Marsha’s spirit and legacy year long as society “only expects that Black trans people are supposed to die”.
Sadly, violent deaths within the community are all too frequent and such occurrences have only increased in recent years as an ‘epidemic of violence’ sweeps the nation.
At least 25 trans, non-binary or gender non-conforming people have died by violent means in 2022, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The majority of these were Black trans women.
“We do not know how to honour Black trans people while we’re alive,” Moxley says. “That’s something we wrestle with every single day at the institute.
“What I’m sure many Black trans advocates across the world wrestle with is: I do this on behalf of my desire to be alive and subsequently by default of that, all these people get to benefit from my advocacy – but they do not know how to honour me.
“They do not know how to respect me and how to have grace with me when I’ve perhaps had a bad day or made a bad decision.”
Pupils must now have their parents’ or guardians’ permission to use a different name and pronouns at school, according to a memo sent to teachers and administrators, per Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Students will have to request the change to school staff, who will then notify administrators and school counsellors. When the young person’s parent or guardian gives consent, they must have a meeting with their family, school counsellor and administrator to complete a “Gender Support Plan”.
If they don’t receive permission, the young person will have to be deadnamed and misgendered by staff.
“If a student tells us that (they) are gay/gender questioning/trans, etc, parent must be notified,” the guidance says.
The new policy is a dizzying shift from the country’s previous view on LGBTQ+ pupils, where schools left it “up to the student, and the student alone, to share her/his/their identity”.
Board members did not vote for the 2018 policy to be scrapped. Instead, district officials say the change was done to comply with the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill and will be under review for several months.
But School Board members are divided about the new policy.
“The change is a win for parents, students, teachers and allows for the integrity of our public education institutions to be restored,” Sarasota school board member Bridget Ziegler told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Ziegler advised that outed students who feel unsafe seek help from district officials that report to the Florida Department of Children and Families.
School Board officials clashed on the new guidelines during a 10 August workshop, with one expressing unease at what little protections schools will now offer queer students.
School Board chair Jane Goodwin said she opposes the new policy.
“We’re at a precipice in not being able to support students as we have done in the past, which I thought was done in a good way, in a kind way, in a thoughtful way, in a way that protected students and kept them safe,” she said in a statement.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1557 on 28 March. The legislation bans public schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade, or through the 12th grade if deemed “age-appropriate” by parents and guardians.
The backlash was swift. The White House, Disney, Hollywood celebrities and countless LGBTQ+ campaign groups called out the bill for robbing queer children of their childhoods.
Since silencing classrooms, Florida has already found a new target, In just days, a ban on trans Floridians using Medicaid, a public health insurance programme for low-income people, to obtain gender-affirming healthcare will come into force.