Public school teachers in Florida are now banned from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity after Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the controversial “Parental Rights in Education” bill.
The bill, which some opponents have called “Don’t Say Gay,” was signed by DeSantis on Monday. It reads, “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels.”
But DeSantis was defiant in the face of critics, “I don’t care what Hollywood says. I don’t care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I am not backing down.”
Read the full article. Note that DeSantis had young children crowd around to applaud the signing.
A U.N. committee has found a law that criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual activity in Sri Lanka has violated a lesbian activist’s rights.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on Wednesday published its decision in the case of Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, executive director of Equal Ground, a Sri Lankan LGBTQ rights group.
The decision notes Flamer-Caldera in 1997 “discovered that same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults was a criminal offense under section 365A of the (Sri Lanka) Penal Code of 1883.” The decision further indicates Flamer-Caldera has been “threatened frequently and has faced abuse from the media and the public” since she co-founded a support group for lesbian and bisexual women in 1999.
Flamer-Caldera in 2004 founded Equal Ground.
“She has faced continual challenges running the organization,” reads the decision.
The decision notes the Sri Lanka Police’s Women and Children’s Bureau in December 2012 and January 2013 “made presentations asserting that child abuse was increasing mostly due to the ‘growing homosexual culture.’”
“The author’s picture was shown together with her name and position with Equal Ground, claiming that she and her organization were responsible for spreading homosexuality, implying that they were also responsible for spreading pedophilia,” notes the decision. “She did not complain to the police out of fear of being arrested. The (Sri Lanka Police’s) Criminal Investigation Department has placed her and Equal Ground under surveillance, which forced her to move the organization’s materials to a secure location, as the department had deemed any homosexual material to be pornography, which could provoke arrest.”
The decision further notes the Criminal Investigation Department in July 2013 raided an organization with which Equal Ground works “on the basis of the allegation that it was ‘spreading homosexuality.’” Flamer-Caldera in the complaint she filed with the committee also said a delivery man in the spring of 2018 “verbally abused” her and “threatened” her “with violence.”
“The criminalization of same-sex sexual activity has meant that the discrimination, violence and harassment faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Sri Lanka continue with impunity,” reads the decision. “Members of the community are not protected against police harassment. The law has altered how she lives and conducts herself in public and private. She has a constant fear of arrest and keeps her door locked and curtains drawn when she is at home with her girlfriend.”
Flamer-Caldera presented her case under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Human Dignity Trust, a London-based NGO that challenges criminalization laws around the world, represented Flamer-Caldera.
“The committee notes that the criminalization of same-sex sexual activity between women in Sri Lanka has meant that the author (Flamer-Caldera) has had difficulties with finding a partner, has to hide her relations and runs the risk of being investigated and prosecuted in this context,” it notes. “The committee therefore finds that the state party has breached the author’s rights under Article 16 of the convention.”
Flamer-Caldera on Thursday welcomed the decision.
“This decision will have an impact on millions of lesbian and bisexual women around the globe,” she told the Washington Blade. “I am happy and proud to have played such a pivotal role in this process.”
Sri Lanka is one of more than 70 countries around the world in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized. The U.K. implemented many of these laws in Commonwealth countries when it colonized them.
Then-British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018 said she “deeply” regrets these colonial-era criminalization laws.
The Arizona Legislature passed bills Thursday to prohibit gender reassignment surgery for minors and ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams, joining a growing list of Republican-controlled states attempting to restrict transgender rights as they gain more visibility in culture and society.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has not said whether he will sign either bill. Two GOP governors this week bucked conservatives in their party and vetoed bills in Indiana and Utah requiring trans girls to play on boys sports teams.
Republicans have said blocking transgender players from girls sports teams would protect the integrity of women’s sports, fearing that trans athletes would have an advantage.
Many point to the transgender collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, who won an individual title at the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championship last week.
But there are few trans athletes in Arizona schools. Since 2017, about 16 trans athletes have received waivers to play on teams that align with their gender identities out of about 170,000 school-based athletes in the state, according to the Arizona Interscholastic Association.
“This bill to me is all about biology,” said Republican Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who said she played on a coed team in the 1980s but could not have made the high school boys team. “In my opinion, its unfair to allow biological males to compete with biological girls sports.”
Critics said the legislation dehumanizes trans youth to address an issue that hasn’t been a problem.
“We’re talking about legislating bullying against children who are already struggling just to get by,” said Democratic Rep. Kelli Butler. fighting back tears.
Until two years ago, no state had passed a law regulating gender-designated youth sports. But the issue has become front-and-center in Republican-led statehouses since Idaho lawmakers passed the nation’s first sports participation law in 2020. It’s now blocked in court, along with another in West Virginia.
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“This bill is creating a pointless and harmful solution to a non-existent issue,” Skyler Morrison, a 13-year-old transgender girl, told lawmakers during a committee hearing earlier this month. “It’s obvious this bill is just an excuse to discriminate against transgender girls.”
Republicans around the country have leaned into culture war issues including transgender rights. The debate and vote on the transgender sports legislation came the same morning the House considered and passed a ban on abortions after 15-week gestation. Republicans said little during debates on all three bills.
Arizona is one of 20 states that have considered legislation to restrict gender-affirming health care. The bill originally would have banned all gender-affirming care, including hormone therapies and puberty blockers, but was scaled back in the Senate.
Similar legislation passed the Idaho House earlier this month but it died in the Senate amid concerns from some Republicans about restricting parental rights.
Supporters of the Arizona bill said it would prevent children from making permanent decisions that they might later come to regret. Republican Rep. John Kavanagh compared the vote to the Legislature’s unanimous decision in years past to ban genital mutilation.
“We should stand the same way today because this is mutilation of children,” Kavanagh said. “It is irreversible. It is horrific.”
Critics said the decision should be left to parents, their children and the health care team caring for them. They said operations are performed only after extensive care and therapy.
“We’re talking about our kids, who are already going to be taking the proper steps with their parents to be able to be who they are,” said Democratic Rep. Andres Cano.
In early January, a day before students returned from winter break, Jeremy Glenn, the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas, told a group of librarians he’d summoned to a district meeting room that he needed to speak from his heart.
“I want to talk about our community,” Glenn said, according to a recording of the Jan. 10 meeting obtained and verified by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Glenn explained that Granbury, the largest city in a county where 81 percent of residents voted for then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, is “very, very conservative.”
He noted that members of Granbury’s school board — his bosses — were also very conservative. And to any school employees who might have different political beliefs, Glenn said, “You better hide it,” adding, “Here in this community, we’re going to be conservative.”
That’s why, he said, he needed to talk to them about some of the books available in the school district’s libraries.
For months, conservative parents and politicians across Texas had been pressuring districts to remove from school libraries any booksthat contain explicit descriptions of sex, labeling several young adult novels as “pornography.” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called for criminal investigations into school employees who make such content available to students.
Many of the titles targeted statewide have featured queer characters and storylines, but those calling for the books’ removal have repeatedly said they are concerned only with sex and vulgarity, not with suppressing the views of LGBTQ students and authors.
Glenn made a similar argument during his closed-door meeting with librarians in Granbury, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Dallas.
“I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries,” Glenn said.
He also made it clear that his concerns specifically included books with LGBTQ themes, even if they do not describe sex. Those comments, according to legal experts, raise concerns about possible violations of the First Amendment and federal civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on their gender and sexuality.
“And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” he said, according to the recording. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”
Minutes later, after someone asked whether titles on racism were acceptable, Glenn said books on different cultures “are great.”
“Specifically, what we’re getting at, let’s call it what it is, and I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn said. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”
Over the next two weeks, the school district embarked on one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review. Nearly three-quarters of the removed books featured LGBTQ characters or themes, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis. Others dealt with racism, sex ed, abortion and women’s rights.
Two months later, a volunteer review committee voted to permanently ban three of the books and return the others to shelves. But that may not be the end of the process.
In his recorded comments to librarians, Glenn described the review of 130 titles as the first step in a broader appraisal of library content, and a new policy approved by the school board later in January grants him and other administrators broad authority to unilaterally remove additional titles they deem inappropriate, with no formal review and no way for the public to easily find out what has been pulled from shelves.
Legal, education and First Amendment experts contacted by NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune said the audio of the superintendent, combined with the decision to abruptly remove books from circulation, even temporarily, raises constitutional concerns.
Glenn’s comments also call into question the district’s commitment to fostering a safe and inclusive school environment for LGBTQ students and could be grounds for a complaint to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws, the experts said.
“This audio is very much evidence of anti-LGBTQ and particularly anti-trans discrimination,” said Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, who reviewed the recording at the request of NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune. “It is very much saying the quiet part out loud in a way that provides very significant evidence that book removals in the district are occurring because of anti-LGBTQ bias.”
In a written statement, Glenn said the district was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds. And although he said the district’s primary focus is educating students, “the values of our community will always be reflected in our schools.”
“In Granbury and across Texas we are seeing parents push back and demand elected officials put safeguards in place to protect their children from materials that serve no academic purpose, but rather push a political narrative,” Glenn said in the statement. “As a result, classrooms and libraries have turned schools into battle grounds for partisan politics.”
None of Granbury’s school board trustees responded to messages requesting comment. District spokesperson Jeff Meador sent a statement emphasizing that all of the books permanently removed from shelves in Granbury are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate” and noting that district libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including books which analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”
The three books the committee voted to remove were “This Book Is Gay,” a coming out guide for LGBTQ teens by transgender author Juno Dawson that includes detailed descriptions of sex; “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Pérez, a young adult novel about a romance between a Mexican American girl and a Black boy that includes a rape scene and other mature content; and “We Are the Ants,” by Shaun David Hutchinson, a coming-of-age novel about a gay teenager that includes explicit sexual language.
At least one member of the volunteer review committee was dissatisfied that only three books have been permanently removed so far, and she has started calling for a second review of the ones that have been returned.
“There are people who want to tear down values and force theirs and then also force acceptance,” Monica Brown, the committee member, said in a Facebook video following the decision. Brown did not respond to a request for comment.
One of the Granbury ISD employees in attendance at the Jan. 10 meeting with librarians said that regardless of which books are pulled from shelves or returned, Glenn’s comments left her afraid to display or purchase LGBTQ books going forward — a chilling effect that she said could limit the diversity of Granbury library catalogs for years to come. The staff member, who was not the source of the audio, spoke on the condition that she not be named, because she feared retaliation from the district.
“He literally said books on trans issues have no place in a school,” she said. “It was alarming.”
The superintendent’s comments reflect a broader national debate. Conservative state legislatures across the country have been considering bills to restrict the ways educators teach about gender and sexuality in schools. This month, the Florida Legislature passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its critics, which restricts or bans discussion of LGBTQ issues in the classroom.
Conservative activists and politicians pushing these changes nationally say the goal is to prevent teachers from having sensitive conversations with students unless the parents give their consent. Some have at times conflated sex and sexual orientation, accusing educators of attempting to “groom” young children because the teachers had discussed the existence of transgender people and same-sex relationships. Opponents contend that the measures discriminate against LGBTQ students and educators and violate federal laws meant to prevent discrimination in schools.
These changes coincide with attempts in several conservative states to limit the rights of transgender minors to participate in school sports and to access gender-affirming medical care. Last month, Abbott issued a directive — temporarily halted by a Texas judge — ordering the state’s child welfare agency to open abuse investigations into any reported instances of minors receiving such medical care, including the prescription of puberty blockers or hormones.
As superintendent of a district that’s home to more than 7,400 students, Glenn is responsible for implementing and enforcing policies that ensure that children are not discriminated against based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
After listening to the recording of Glenn’s remarks, Lou Whiting, a nonbinary junior at Granbury High School, said they were outraged. Whiting and another student who’s part of the LGBTQ community said classmates at Granbury have harassed them at school, but they’ve avoided reporting the harassment because they worried administrators wouldn’t take their complaints seriously.
Glenn’s comments validated those fears, Whiting said.
“I don’t feel incredibly safe or welcomed by a large majority of the students at my school,” Whiting said. “I’ve been called slurs. I’ve been verbally attacked. I’ve been physically attacked. But it kind of feels worse when the attacks are coming from adults, from the people who are supposed to keep us safe.”‘A very conservative board’
The meeting with librarians wasn’t the first time Glenn had publicly embraced socially conservative values in schools.
In 2014, when he was superintendent at another district, he and a pair of education professors wrote a book called “Daily Devotionals for Superintendents,” which lamented the legalization of same-sex marriage and the passage of state laws “making it a crime to counsel gay young people about changing their sexual orientation.”
In another section of the book, Glenn and his co-authors said those pushing for broader acceptance of “alternative lifestyles” and other cultural changes are doing so through the indoctrination of children in schools, as “was done by Hitler when he took over Germany.” They warned that school superintendents will face pressure to “recognize the demands of alternative life-style adults,” adding, “As a superintendent, you will have to be strong and courageous to stand against the onslaught of the enemy. Your country and your children’s future are at stake”
Glenn, who arrived at Granbury ISD in 2018 following stints leading two other Texas districts, said he couldn’t recall if he wrote those specific passages, but he acknowledged co-authoring the book, adding, “It’s fair to say I am aware of its content.”
In November, voters in Granbury elected a pair of school board members who, while campaigning, also raised concerns about the spread of LGBTQ-affirming curricula in schools. Melanie Graft rose to local prominence after leading a conservative movement in 2015 to remove a pair of LGBTQ-themed picture books from the children’s section at Granbury’s public library. She ran alongside Courtney Gore, the co-host of a local far-right internet talk show.
As candidates, the women promised to stop the “indoctrination” of students and rid the district of educational materials they said promote LGBTQ ideology or what they referred to as critical race theory, a university-level academic framework based on the idea that racism is embedded in U.S. legal and other structures.
In the weeks after Graft’s and Gore’s election victories, Glenn began asking district administrators about several books, including “This Book Is Gay,” that an unnamed school board member had found on the district’s online card catalog, according to text messages obtained by a parent through an open records request and shared with the news organizations.
The text messages included screenshots of eight titles, all of which deal with LGBTQ topics, with the keyword search terms “gay,” “trans” and “gender” highlighted in some of the book descriptions.
In a December text message, Glenn asked an administrator in charge of overseeing district libraries if any of the books were physically on shelves and available to students. Librarians needed to have a sense of urgency in responding to community complaints about books, Glenn wrote, “otherwise this will consume us in the spring.”
The list comprised titles that were aimed at helping transgender and LGBTQ teens navigate life and that told teen love stories through an LGBTQ lens, as well as an LGBTQ-themed fairy tale. Although some of the books included descriptions of sex, others did not.
Glenn referred to concerns from a board member during his Jan. 10 meeting with librarians.
“We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said, according to the recording. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”
NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune spoke to three Granbury teachers who were not present at the Jan. 10 meeting but who have listened to the recording and said they were troubled by Glenn’s remarks. The teachers said they’ve seen additional library books being pulled from district shelves — mostly young adult books containing talk of sex — that haven’t been subject to a formal review, raising concerns among staff members that content is being eliminated with no oversight from the public.
The teachers said they feared retribution and spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing Glenn’s comments advising educators against sharing opinions that don’t align with the conservative views of district leaders.
“I was disturbed that our superintendent would say those things,” one of the teachers said, referring to Glenn’s comments about there being no place for transgender and LGBTQ content in school libraries.
Schools have wide latitude to remove library books that are deemed age-inappropriate or “pervasively vulgar.” But free speech advocates say Republican politicians and school districts have applied an overly broad definition to the phrase in recent months, mislabeling coming-of-age stories and sex-ed books as pornography.
“The most striking feature of the current crop of book challenges is this effort to mischaracterize literature and sexual education resources, which clearly have educational value, and stigmatizing them by claiming that they violate obscenity statutes,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Under a 40-year-old U.S. Supreme Court legal decision, Island Trees School District v. Pico, a public school system can’t remove a book because school board members or administrators disagree with its viewpoints or ideas, including its discussion of LGBTQ identities.
The 1982 case dealt with the removal of books deemed “anti-American” and “anti-Christian” by a school district in Levittown, New York. At the time, a school board member testified that he believed it was his duty to make decisions for the school district that reflected the community’s conservative values. Those comments were echoed decades later in the Granbury superintendent’s directive to librarians.
“If the evidence shows that the motivation for a book removal is to keep these ideas from getting to children, then the courts are very skeptical,” said North Carolina attorney Neal Ramee, who advises school districts on constitutional issues. “That could potentially lead to a finding of a violation of the First Amendment.”
Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor, former clerk for two Supreme Court justices and author of “The Schoolhouse Gate,” which analyzes legal battles over education, said the similarities between the Pico case and the Granbury situation are “striking and overwhelming.” As a result, he said, Glenn’s statements to librarians “would seem to place the school district in an unenviable litigating position.”
Yet because the Pico case was a divided opinion, some legal scholars said the issue is ripe for another appearance in front of the Supreme Court.LGBTQ students push back
On Jan. 11, a day after Glenn’s meeting with librarians, Kennedy Tackett, a 17-year-old senior at Granbury High School, was working in a student-run store on campus when one of her friends approached, looking upset.
The friend had been volunteering in the school library and noticed several boxes filled with books that had been taken off of shelves.
“She said, ‘Kennedy, a lot of them look like they’re LGBTQ,’” said Tackett, who is bisexual. “And so I immediately texted my parents, and I was like, ‘Hey, have y’all heard about this?’”
In the days that followed, Tackett and her father, a former school board trustee who has criticized the school district’s conservative shift, used public records requests to unearth what the district hadn’t shared publicly: the list of more than 130 books that librarians had been directed to immediately remove from shelves. (The records also included the December text messages about the eight LGBTQ books.)
Some of the 130 books had no sexual content whatsoever, including “George” by Alex Gino, a book meant for children in elementary school that tells the story of a transgender child who’s coming to terms with her gender identity.
Most of the books appeared to come from a larger list of 850 titlesdealing with racism, sex and LGBTQ themes that had been compiled by state Rep. Matt Krause. The Republican lawmaker said in a letter sent to districts across Texas that the books might violate a new state law that restricts the ways teachers can talk about “currently controversial” issues, including racism and sexuality. Krause did not respond to a request for comment.
Tackett created an online petition calling on the district to return the books to shelves, quickly drawing more than 600 signatures. A couple of weeks later, on Jan. 24, she and several other LGBTQ students showed up at a meeting of the Granbury ISD board of trustees and called on the district to reverse course.
Instead, the board voted to amend a district policy that required contested books to remain on shelves while a committee reviewed them, giving administrators more discretion to remove titles that they deem to lack “educational suitability.”
“The job of the superintendent and the school board is not only to protect the students in this district, but to make them feel like they have a place in this community,” Tackett told the board during public comments prior to the vote. “But I gotta tell you, from what I’ve seen so far, you are failing at your job.”
The comments, which would later go viral and be broadcast on national news reports, drew a rebuke from Glenn during the meeting. Glenn announced that the district had previously removed five books unrelated to LGBTQ themes that were written by Abbi Glines, an author known for including explicit sex scenes that push the boundaries of young adult fiction.
“Let’s not misrepresent things. We’re not taking Shakespeare or Hemingway off the shelves,” Glenn said, at one point referring to those who frequently speak out at school board meetings as “radicals” and emphasizing that the district was focused on sexually explicit content. “We’re not going and grabbing every socially, culturally or religiously diverse book and pulling them. That’s absurd. And the people that are saying that are gaslighters, and it’s designed to incite division.”
Those comments gave Whiting, the nonbinary Granbury junior, an idea: Using Granbury’s G logo, Whiting designed a T-shirt with the words “Radical Gaslighter” and created a page where students could buy them. They ended up selling nearly 250 to people all over the country, raising more than $2,000 for the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation.
By early February, word began to spread through Granbury that someone had recorded Glenn’s comments to librarians. The employee who’d made the recording did not post it publicly or share it with reporters, but soon a copy of it was circulating among a small group of educators and community activists.
That month, the ACLU of Texas sent a letter to Granbury calling on the district to apologize for the book removals and to release a statement affirming its commitment to “LGBTQ+ and racial inclusivity.” That was before Huddleston, the ACLU lawyer, reviewed the recording at the request of reporters.
Huddleston said the recorded comments also raise serious questions about what else has been said behind closed doors, not just in Granbury, but also in other districts where books are being banned.
“This is very strong evidence of what is happening in the background,” she said. “But it also raises a host of questions about all the other districts in Texas where this is happening and we don’t have audio.”
Tackett, the Granbury senior, cried after listening to the recording of Glenn’s remarks. She thought of his public comments accusing critics of trying to deceive the public about the district’s motivations for removing and reviewing books. If anyone was gaslighting the community, Tackett said, it was him.
“It’s unsettling,” she said. “You can’t just turn your back on the students you’re supposed to be protecting.”
LGBT+ Friendship Mixer April 4th 1 to 3 pm Come meet your LGBT+ Friends and Neighbors
What: LGBT+ Friendship Mixer When: Monday April 4th, 1 – 3 pm Where: Sebastopol Senior Center in person Why: Meet new LGBT+ folks Cost: Free to members, $5 non-members Go HERE to register: Or call our front desk: 707-829-2440 We will be in the back room with the double doors open to the outside. Folks may sit out side during this Mixer. This event is for everyone wanting to make a new friend. We will spend the first hour in a structured activity, “speed friending,” where you will get to talk with new people (both men and women). You will spend 5 minutes in a 1 on 1 conversation where you can get to know each other a little better. After 5 minutes, when the bell rings, participants will move on to their next 1 on 1 conversation. During the 2nd hour, there will be an informal mixer game. You will be provided questions to ask other folks of your choice. This is a fantastic way to connect with like-minded souls. We will be Relating Authentically, which is the practice of listening and speaking from a place of presence and honesty, allowing us to weave richer and more truthful connections.
Men’s Connection Group for Gay, Bi and Trans Men Every Wednesday 4 PM on Zoom, Free Brothers! We can enjoy each other online. You are welcome to connect with us in this safe and supportive Zoom Group to explore issue of aging, friendship, sexuality, and more! We also have fun teasing each other and cracking jokes too. All Men who love men are welcome: gay, bi, trans. We all agree to confidentiality. What is shared in this group, stays in this group. Many friendships have been formed since we stated meeting in June of 2020. And we are ready to welcome new members. What: Gay Bi & Trans Men’s Connection Zoom group 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm (1 hour) When: Thursdays at 4 to 5 PM Where: Your Home, On Zoom Why: Be connected and make Friends with Gay Bi & Trans Men Cost: Free Go HERE to register and to receive the Zoom link, email SCOTTY with any questions.
Get On the Bus With Friendly Seniors and Ride With Us!
Ride the bus with Scotty and Judy to Santa Rosa! Have lunch, shop as a group, and then take the bus home. What: Take the bus together to Santa Rosa as a group When: Wednesday April 20th 10 AM Where: meet at the Sebastopol Transit Hub Why: Learn to take the bus to Santa Rosa and Meet new friends Cost: Bus fair and money for lunch / shopping Go HERE to register, or call our front desk: 707-829-2440
We will meet at the Sebastopol Transit Hub (across from the police station, near the movie theater) at 10am to catch the 10:11am #20 bus to Santa Rosa. You can also catch the #24 bus from the Senior Center at 9:30am to get to the Transit Hub in time (it gets to hub at 10am).
If you want to preview the bus schedules, click here: #20 #24
We will pick up the #20 bus at the Sebastopol Transit Hub (across from the police station, near the movie theater) at 10am on April 20th.
Santa Rosa Pride Parade is Coming: Saturday June 4th
-March in the Parade with US -Ride On the Float -Wave a Rainbow Flag -Help Us Decorate Our Float Beforehand -Help Us Staff Our Senior Center Booth in Courthouse Square -Join the After Party -Come Dancing
Would you like to help build the float? Email me (SCOTTY) with questions, and Register HERE and we will let you know when we know more. Everyone is welcome to the Pride Parade. Let us know if you will be coming so we can let you know our position as to where to meet and things like that. We will have a booth at the festival after the parade in in Courthouse Square. Plan on staying after the parade to help celebrate.
Go HERE to register, or call our front desk: 707-829-2440
SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 2022 AT 11 AM – 5 PM Sonoma County’s 35th Annual Pride Parade & Festival 37 Old Courthouse Square SAVE THE DATE! Sonoma County Pride is excited to announce returning to Downtown Santa Rosa for the 35th annual Sonoma County Pride Parade and Festival. ! More details about the Parade Festival and other weekend events will be coming soon!
May 2022 LGBT+ Activities?
Let Us Know Your Ideas for Our May LGBT+ Activities:
-Sing-a-Long outside by our Coyote of High Street -Movie night at the Center with LGBT+ friends & fresh popcorn -Hike with your LGBT+ friends -Outdoor LGBT+ mixer -Swing dance lesson in the park -Game day, potluck, group outing -Walk laps (around the block) with Scotty -Coming out group -Lesbian connection group -Tantric breathing LGBT+ workshop -Other
Please email SCOTTY your new ideas or select from those above! We love your input and involvement!
Creating Intergenerational Connections Between LGBT+ Teens and Seniors at the Library!
From Rosalie Abbott, Young Adult & Teen Services Librarian: “Dear LGBT+ Seniors, Award-winning West County High School Teacher, Rachel Ambrose, and I would like to invite you to an intergenerational programming experience here at the Library. We would LOVE to help facilitate the creation of intergenerational connections between LGBTQ teens and seniors, through conversations about LGBT-related topics and experiences—and life in general. Depending on the level of interest, this could look like a panel discussion with seniors and teens together, and a Q&A at the end—or if there is an overwhelming interest, it could look more like one-on-one conversations or interviews. We hope that connections will be made, insight, empathy, and new perspectives will be gained for everyone participating. Our hope is to host the event on Friday, April 8th. Please email me if you are interested. [email protected]“
And that is all for this time. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions. You can call or email me.
Sincerely,
Scotty King Manager of Special Services Volunteer Driver Program ∙ LGBT+ Liaison 707-827-8429 direct 707-829-2440 main Sebastopol Senior Center 167 N. High Street Sebastopol CA 95472 [email protected]
The Metropolitan Police made assumptions about “the lifestyles of gay men” in investigating the crimes of Stephen Port, according to a leaked report from the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC).
The unpublished report, seen by Channel 4 News, states that “the public cannot be satisfied that police are making decisions based on evidence and fact” because of the assumptions made in the investigation into Port, who murdered four gay men.
Port, known as a the “Grindr killer”, murdered Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor over a 15-month period in 2014 and 2015.
He approached his victims via dating apps before giving them fatal doses of the date rape drug GHB, and was finally sentenced to life in prison in 2016.
Last year, following a lengthy inquest, a jury ruled that there had been police “failures” in investigating Port’s crimes and, had they been avoided, some of his victims may still be alive.
But the leaked IOPC report tells a different story.
It states that officers made assumptions about “the lifestyles of gay men”, and adds: “The investigations into the four deaths reveal that assumptions were made and could have been based, consciously or unconsciously, on discriminatory views.”
The families of Stephen Port victims want an inquiry into whether there is institutional ‘homophobia’ within the Met
Although the idea that homophobia could have allowed Stephen Port’s murder spree to continue is reprehensible, it could come as some relief for the families of his victims.
A petition launched by the families, which has been signed by more than 42,000 people, is calling for an inquiry into homophobia in the Met, and for officers involved in the investigation to be harshly punished.
During the recent inquest, it was revealed that five police officers who were reprimanded for “performance failings” have since been promoted to more senior roles.
Furthermore, following Port’s arrest, nine detectives were told by the IOPC that their performance had “fallen below the standard required”.
Yet not a single officer was fired.
The petition reads: “We need justice for Jack, Anthony, Gabriel and Daniel.
“The families need justice. The officers need to be held accountable. They should not be in the positions of authority they currently hold.
“There is widespread homophobic and gender-phobic discrimination in the police forces, a full public inquiry should be launched to fully investigate the police failings and make an example of those who let down the families of Stephen Port victims.”
In December, a group of 18 MPs wrote a letter to then Met Police chief Cressida Dick to demand a public inquiry into whether the Met Police is “institutionally homophobic”.
They said: “The key question everyone is asking is yet to be answered – whether institutional homophobia in the Met played a role in these investigations… It is imperative that a public inquiry takes place urgently to consider if institutional homophobia played a role in this case.”
In a statement to Channel 4 News, a spokesperson for the Met Police said: “In an organisation of more than 44,000 people, we have already acknowledged there will be a small number with attitudes and beliefs that are not welcome in the Met; we will challenge, educate and discipline as appropriate.”
“We are concerned to hear that, anecdotally, the IOPC has learned some of our LGBT+ advisers have experienced discrimination from colleagues,” they added.
“This is a serious matter and we will be exploring this further.”
PinkNews has contacted the Met Police and the IOPC for comment.
A lesbian woman has been stabbed to death in Umlazi, South Africa, after reportedly rejecting a man’s advances, leaving the local community “very disturbed”.
IOL Daily News reported that 32-year-old Pinky Shongwe was stabbed to death while going to a local shop after an “unknown” man allegedly harassed her with unwanted advances.
A spokesperson for Umlazi police, lieutenant-colonel Nqobile Gwala, said that the case is now being investigated as a murder.
“She was found lying on the road and was taken to hospital where she succumbed to her injuries on arrival. The motive of the killing is unknown and the matter is still under investigation,” Gwala said.
A spokesperson for KwaZulu-Natal Social Development said he was “disturbed” to hear about the incident after several awareness campaigns for LGBT+ equality in the area.
Mhlaba Memela told IOL Daily News: “We are very disturbed to hear of another brutal murder of a lesbian woman.
“We are angry after our department has done a lot of public awareness campaigns to teach people to accept and live side by side with gays and lesbians. We have been telling people that gay and lesbian rights were protected by the constitution.
“We believe it is high time that our courts start treating this violence differently, and not be lenient when sentencing the perpetrators.”
The tragic stabbing comes after a slew of violent crimes against the LGBT+ population in South Africa in recent years, including the murder of another lesbian in September 2021 in an area only around 15 miles away from Shongwe’s killing.
Previous victims also include Lonwabo Jack, a 22-year-old gay man found tragically murdered on his birthday.
Nonhlanhla Khoza, a politician serving in the Department of Social Development, said in a 2021 statement: “We are deeply ashamed that, in our nation, we still have people facing discrimination based on their sexual orientation.
“This is a gross violation of basic human rights and we should unite to end such crimes.
“It must sink in the minds of all those involved in such crimes that no one has a right to take a life and abuse someone else because of their sexuality.
“Our government has made giant strides towards safeguarding LGBTQ+ rights. However, incidents similar to this one water down all efforts that have been made.”
The Supreme Court says it won’t review the case of a Seattle-based Christian organization that was sued after declining to hire a bisexual lawyer who applied for a job. A lower court let the case go forward, and the high court said Monday it wouldn’t intervene.
Two justices, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed with the decision not to hear the case at this stage but said that “the day may soon come” when the court needs to confront the issue the case presents.
The case the high court declined to hear involves Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. In addition to providing food and shelter to the homeless the organization offers addiction recovery, job placement and legal services. In 2016 it was looking for an attorney to help staff its legal-aid clinic.
One of the applicants was Matthew Woods, who had volunteered at the clinic for more than three years. Woods identifies as bisexual and was in a same-sex relationship. He was told before he applied that his application would be rejected because the organization’s “code of conduct excludes homosexual activity.” Woods sued, arguing that the organization violated state law by discriminating against him on the basis of his sexual orientation.
A state trial court judge ruled for Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and dismissed Woods’ lawsuit. The judge ruled that the organization is exempt from the state’s anti-discrimination law. But the Washington Supreme Court reversed the decision and let the lawsuit go forward.
The Supreme Court does already have a different high-profile dispute involving a clash between religion and the rights of LGBTQ people on its docket. That dispute involves a Colorado web designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her from offering wedding website designs to gay couples. That case is expected to be argued in the fall.
In today’s heightened culture war, the coffers of the anti-gay movement are overflowing. According to publicly available annual returns, 11 nonprofit groups identified as anti-LGBTQ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center took in over$110 million in contributions during the financial year ending in 2020.
The dollar amount represents a recent high-water mark for the organizations, whose take of donations, grants and other noncash contributions has increased steadily since 2016, when the same 11 groups reported more than $87 million in such contributions.
In just four years, their total revenue swelled by over 25 percent, with some indication that the positive trend continued into 2021. The multimillion-dollar war chest has bolstered a movement that just a few years ago appeared to be losing ground in America’s decadeslong culture war around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights. Far from retreating, the groups have won significant battles at all levels of American government and society — from local school boards to the federal courts.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, based in Montgomery, Alabama, has tracked the anti-LGBTQ movement for more than a decade. In 2011, the SPLC published its first list of 13 “hate groups” that propagate known falsehoods and pseudoscience to disparage gender and sexual minorities. Since 2020, the organization has been tracking more than 40 entities,of which many engage in a host of issues beyond LGBTQ rights, like abortion and Covid-related mandates. Several groups are also churches, which are exempt from filing annual returns and therefore do not disclose their finances.
Many of these groups assert that LGBTQ people are a threat to society itself. “
SCOTT MCCOY, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
Then, as now, a loose affiliation of fundamentalist churches, conservative law centers and far-right advocacy organizations makes up the anti-LGBTQ movement.
“Many of those, while not specifically tied to a church, are rooted in the conservative Christian, biblical sense of human sexuality,” said Scott McCoy, the interim deputy legal director for LGBTQ rights and special litigation for the SPLC and the SPLC Action Fund, the group’s political action committee.
But simply holding a religious belief that views homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful does not automatically land a church or an organization on the SPLC’s list of hate groups.
“Many of these groups assert that LGBTQ people are a threat to society itself. That kind of extremist rhetoric and belief is part of what goes into our decision-making process,” McCoy said. He also pointed to groups that justify violence against LGBTQ people, like Westboro Baptist Church.
‘The hard core of the anti-gay movement’
When the SPLC began tracking anti-LGBTQ hate in the early 2010s,the organization noted that “a small coterie of groups now comprise the hard core of the anti-gay movement.” The same groups — many now flush with financial resources — continue to shape the anti-LGBTQ agenda.
“As of today, there probably are five or six key players,” McCoy said, highlighting the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel and the American College of Pediatricians as parts of the core.
From 2011 to 2021, the total revenue of the Family Research Council — an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that, according to its website, believes “homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it” and “is also harmful to society at large” — jumped from over $12 million to more than $23 million.
During the same period, contributions to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, more than doubled, from over $34.5 million in 2011 to more than $76 million in 2021. According to its website, the group aims to secure “generational wins” to ensure “the law respects God’s creative order for marriage, the family, and human sexuality.”
In a statement, Jeremy Tedesco, the senior counsel and senior vice president of corporate engagement at the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted its judicial track record and alleged that the SPLC has “destroyed its own credibility because of its blatant partisan agenda.”
“Alliance Defending Freedom is among the largest and most effective legal advocacy organizations dedicated to protecting the religious freedom and free speech rights of all Americans. Our record since 2011 includes 13 Supreme Court victories, including two wins last year and one upcoming case next term,” Tedesco said. “Our track record of success is due in large part to those who generously support our work, and increased giving demonstrates the growing movement to protect Americans’ First Amendment freedoms.”
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Florida, said that the organization is “neither anti-LGBTQ nor a hate group” and that the SPLC’s “self-appointed hate group list is false and defamatory.”
“We hate no one and oppose violence and demeaning language or behavior towards anyone,” Staver said in a statement. “We believe every person is created in the image of God and has inherent dignity and value. Liberty Counsel believes everyone is entitled to religious freedom and freedom of speech.”
The Family Research Council and the American College of Pediatricians did not respond to requests for comment. They have previously rejected the accusation that they are hate groups.
‘Outliers’ who ‘wield a pretty big hammer’
The significant flows of contributions to the groups, however, do not reflect a growing antagonism toward the LGBTQ community in broader American society.
Survey after survey confirms that Americans of many different political stripes and religious affiliations have become more supportive of LGBTQ rights over the past decade. According to the2021 American Values Atlas, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of Americans supported same-sex marriage last year, up from 47 percent a decade before. That included majorities of historically conservative religious groups, like Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and nearly half of all Republicans.
The same survey found even greater public support for protections against discrimination in the workplace and public accommodations for LGBTQ people.In 2021, the American Values Atlas reported that 79 percent of respondents supported such protections.
One group in the American Values Atlas continues to lag behind the rest of the country when it comes to affirming LGBTQ equality: white evangelical Protestants, whose fringe, far-right elements comprise the core of the anti-LGBTQ movement in the U.S. today.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/qDAUKZK?_showcaption=true&app=1
“As someone who writes social science, I can’t tell you how many sentences I have begun with the words ‘with the lone exception of white evangelical Protestants,’” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, the organization behind the American Values Atlas. “Whether it is on immigration, LGBTQ issues, abortion — white evangelical Christians are increasingly outliers to the middle of the country, not just to the left.”
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Jones, a scholar of white Christianity in the U.S., has spent years tracking the cultural and political power of white evangelical Protestants.
“I think the biggest marker of change among white evangelicals over the last decade has just been the internal shifts that they have undergone,” Jones said. “They have shrunk by nearly a third just over the last decade. Today, they are 14.5 percent of the population. And as they have shrunk, they have been hemorrhaging young people. I think that is one of the reasons why they have become increasingly out of step with the middle of the country.”
Despite the bleed of parishioners, white evangelicals have managed to maintain their power in electoral politics by solidifying their stake in the Republican Party. Between 2016 and 2020, Pew Research Center found that white evangelical voters’ support of President Trump rose from 77 percent to 84 percent. Although this voting bloc only accounted for 19 percent of the total electorate in 2020, it made up 34 percent of all Trump voters.
“When you’re a third of one party’s base, you wield a pretty big hammer,” Jones said.
Without the broad support of white evangelicals, Pew Research Center observed, Trump would have lost to Joe Biden by more than 20 points in the last presidential election.
From the start of his foray in national politics, Trump made an effort to woo this key constituency. In 2016, during his first run for the Oval Office, Trump formed a so-called evangelical executive advisory board to help shape his political platform. Among the people in the group of advisers were heavy hitters in evangelical Christianity, as well as the anti-LGBTQ movement, including James Dobson, an Alliance Defending Freedom co-founder and the founder and former leader of the fundamentalist Christian organization Focus on the Family.
“We saw this shift throughout Trump’s presidency — and it has certainly lasted past it — of the term ‘evangelical’ becoming more of a political signifier than it is a religious one, that being almost a stand-in for white, Christian nationalist beliefs,” said Maggie Siddiqi, the senior director of Religion and Faith at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.
It was not just Trump who welcomed evangelical leaders into the highest levels of politics and policy. In 2018, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appointed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 that is “dedicated to defending the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad.” At the time, Heidi Beirich, then the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, called Perkins’ appointment “deeply disturbing.” His current term on the commission expires in May.
Siddiqi noted that among evangelicals, there is some noted resistance to marrying faith with contemporary American politics. For example, in 2019, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty launched the campaign Christians Against Christian Nationalism, which, among other tenets, holds that “conflating religious authority and political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups.”
Still, conservative white evangelicals have found in the modern Republican Party champions for a political agenda that extends well beyond LGBTQ rights. On issues of abortion, religious freedom and, more recently, Covid vaccination mandates, today’s GOP has aligned itself with the interests of many white evangelicals, affording the group outsized power in the U.S.’s two-party political system.
With so many evangelicals flocking to one side of the political spectrum, Jones said, they have “yielded disproportionate influence in the public, by leveraging a political party.”
A strategic ‘pivot’
At the same time, the political arenas where conservatives and progressives battle over LGBTQ rights and other fraught social issues have continued to evolve.
“There’s been a focus downward to more local places like school boards, boards of health, bodies of that nature,” said McCoy of the SPLC. “Now they are taking up the latest fault lines in the culture war, whether it be mask mandates, LGBTQ school policies or even critical race theory.”
There has also been “a pivot” to targeting the transgender community, said Sharita Gruberg, the vice president for the LGBTQI+ Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.
“The groups that are opposed to LGBTQ equality did their message testing and found that attacking gay people is no longer the broadly popular culture war totem that they used in the ’90s,” Gruberg said. “From the bathroom bills in 2015 and 2016 to the bans on trans kids playing school sports, it is easier for these groups to frame attacks to focus on trans kids paired with policies that they say are restoring parental rights. It’s a bit of a Trojan horse.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/j2EQSqk?_showcaption=true&app=1
The Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its critics — which is on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk, is a case in point. If it is signed into law, it would prohibit “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in the state’s primary schools. Opponents say the law would harm LGBTQ youths by creating an antagonistic educational environment. But Republican state Rep. Joe Harding, who introduced the bill in the House in January, contends the measure is about “empowering parents.”
Last month, Harding defended his bill in a blog post for the Family Research Council, an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group since 2011.
Gruberg contends that protecting LGBTQ rights nationwide would require federal intervention. Congress is considering the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. But passage of the law is far from ensured: All Democratic-voting senators and 10 Senate Republicans would need to vote in favor of the measure to overcome the filibuster.
Even then, the law could still meet its demise in the courts. While the Supreme Court has a history of affirming LGBTQ rights, conservatives now command a solid majority.
The most recent addition to the court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, even has a past with members of the anti-LGBTQ movement. From 2011 to 2016, Barrett gave lectures on five different occasions to theBlackstone Legal Fellowship, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s flagship summer program for Christian law students. During her confirmation hearing in 2020, Barrett described her experience with the Blackstone Legal Fellowship as a “wonderful one” but also said that “nothing about any of my interactions … were ever indicative of any kind of discrimination on the basis of anything.”
For Jones, the pace at which LGBTQ equality has advanced has created a “last stand mentality” among white Christian conservatives, who have worked diligently over the decade to shore up their power on the federal bench.
“It’s that dynamic that is driving the fundraising,” he said. “There’s a kind of last-stand desperation, an apocalyptic feeling that if we don’t do something now, we will lose the country. And if we don’t do something to win it back, there will never be another opportunity.”
Horizons Foundation, the world’s first LGBTQ community foundation, will host a panel with leading experts in the fight against hate and extremism discussing new global research on conversion therapy, the discredited practice of trying to change one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Produced by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a grantee partner of Horizons Foundation’s Global Faith and Equality Fund, this research exposes how tech companies, many of which are based in the SF Bay Area, have failed to root out anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy disinformation and ban providers pushing the discredited practice, even though many claim to do so.
Entitled “Deplatforming LGBTQ Hate: Stopping Conversion Therapy Online,” the free, public event will take place virtually on March 30 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. PT. Registration is now open online.
The event will include a panel and Q&A in which the report’s authors will share the research results and new information on the impact of the research so far. The panel will be moderated by Francisco Buchting, Horizons’ vice president of grants, programs, and communications, and will feature the co-founders of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and co-authors of the research, Dr. Wendy Via and Dr. Heidi Beirich.
To view this significant and timely research beforehand, the two reports can be accessed online: The first report finds that the internet is filled with disinformation, and the second report profiles 25 conversion therapy providers around the world.
Horizons Foundation is proud to host the event as the first of the Horizons Forum, a series of panel discussions on topics of interest to the LGBTQ community.
About Horizons Foundation
Horizons Foundation (www.horizonsfoundation.org) envisions a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully. The world’s first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people, Horizons invests in LGBTQ organizations, strengthens a culture of LGBTQ giving, and builds a permanent endowment to secure our community’s future for generations to come. Learn more at horizonsfoundation.org.