The percentage of adults in the U.S. who identify as LGBTQ increased slightly year over year, to 7.2% last year, according to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday.
While that’s just a slight increase from 7.1% in 2021, it’s more than double what it was a decade ago, when Gallup found just 3.5% of the U.S. population identified as something other than heterosexual in 2012.
Gallup asked more than 10,000 adults nationwide how they identify in telephone interviews last year.
For the first time, the organization recorded the identities of LGBTQ people who said they are something other than lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. It found that about 5% of LGBTQ adults identified outside those terms. Most of them — about 0.1% of all U.S. adults — said they are queer, pansexual or asexual.
“Queer” is an umbrella term that generally refers to people who aren’t heterosexual or cisgender, meaning they don’t identify with their assigned sexes at birth. “Pansexual” means someone experiences sexual or romantic attraction regardless of sex or gender identity. “Asexual” describes someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction to others.
Bisexuals continue to make up the majority of LGBTQ adults, at 58.2% (or 4.2% of all U.S. adults), Gallup found, while 20.2% identify as gay, 13.4% identify as lesbian, and 8.8% identify as transgender.
Those who said they are straight or heterosexual made up 86% of respondents, while 7% chose not to answer the question.
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Continuing previous trends, Generation Z, or those ages 19 to 26, are the most likely to identify as LGBTQ, at 19.7%, compared to 11.2% of millennials, who are 27 to 42; 3.3% of Generation X, who are 43 to 58; 2.7% of Baby boomers, who are 59 to 77; and 1.7% of the Silent Generation, who are 78 or older.
Gallup found that younger generations are much more likely to identify as bisexual than older generations. For example, 66% of LGBTQ people in Generation Z and 62% of LGBTQ millennials identify as bisexual, compared to 48% of Generation X, 26% of baby boomers and 35% of the Silent Generation.
LGBTQ respondents in the two oldest generations are most likely to identify as gay (37% of baby boomers and 47% of the Silent Generation) and lesbian (26% of baby boomers and 12% of the Silent Generation).
Gallup noted that the share of LGBTQ adults in the U.S. is expected to continue to grow but that the growth “depends on younger people who enter adulthood in future years continuing to be much more likely to identify as LGBT than their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.”
In the latest blow to trans people in Hungary, the country’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling that will continue to block new applications from transgender people for legal gender recognition. The judgment effectively creates two categories of trans people in Hungary: those who applied early enough to pursue gender recognition and those who did not.
In 2020, Hungary’s parliament passed a law banning transgender or intersex people from legally changing their gender, putting them at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence when they need to use identity documents. In 2021, the Constitutional Court ruled the ban on legal gender recognition does not apply retroactively, so trans people who started their legal process before May 29, 2020, were able to continue doing so. But yesterday the Constitutional Court rejected a petitioner’s plea that they be recognized based on an application submitted in 2021.
Hungarian jurisprudence already contains strong support for transgender and intersex people’s rights to legal recognition. A 2018 Constitutional Court ruling found that Hungary’s Fundamental Law requires the state to allow trans people to self-identify. “The right to bear a name” consistent with one’s gender, the court found, “is a fundamental right deductible from the right to human dignity.”
“The Hungarian government’s practice sanctioned by the Constitutional Court is one of total disenfranchisement,” said Eszter Polgári, legal program director of Háttér Society, a Hungarian (Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) LGBT rights group.
Háttér Society plans to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. There is an emerging norm across Europe to eliminate barriers to legal gender recognition, not create them as Hungary has. In a 2002 case, the court held that refusal to change identification documents in the UK could amount to discrimination and violate the right to privacy. In another case in 2003, that court found Germany had failed to respect “the applicant’s freedom to define herself as a female person, one of the most basic essentials of self-determination.”
The Constitutional Court invoked concerns about criminality and health care in rejecting the petition, claiming someone’s sex assigned at birth is critical to know in health care and legal settings. Such claims, as a reason to reject legal gender recognition, do not stand up to scrutiny. The Hungarian government’s insistence on undermining the dignity of trans people is contrary to the right to private life and does not hold up against Hungary’s international and European human rights obligations.
A trans woman is facing an upcoming trial in which she has been charged with five felony counts of indecent exposure for an incident that occurred at a Los Angeles spa.
A judge recently ruled that the trial of Darren Merager can move forward after multiple witnesses testified in a pre-trial hearing that in the summer of 2021 Merager made them uncomfortable while naked in the spa’s women’s locker room due to her exposed penis.
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Witnesses cannot agree on whether or not Merager’s penis was erect, but the possibility that an erection took place was enough for the judge to move the case forward, according toLos Angeles Magazine (LAMag). The judge, Lana S. Kim, also said that the spa’s antidiscrimination policy protecting trans customers “was not an affirmative defense.”
At the time of the alleged incident, a video of a woman complaining to spa staff about a “man” in the women’s locker room went viral and the dispute quickly became a right-wing conspiracy. The spa in question at first denied a trans woman was using the facilities at the time and no evidence had publicly been made available showing otherwise.
But weeks later, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) charged Merager with indecent exposure and said she was already a registered sex offender due to indecent exposure incidents in 2002 and 2003.
The woman, going by the online moniker Cubana Angel, was complaining in the video that a man was allegedly posing as a woman to use women’s facilities at the spa, and that he tried to expose himself to women in the room. Customers at the family-friendly facilities are frequently undressed while bathing and soaking in the hot water.
In the video, the woman shouts, “There is no such thing as transgender. He has a dick.”
With the spa maintaining that there was no trans woman or cisgender man pretending to be a trans woman knowingly sharing the facilities with cis women at the time, several media outlets deemed the entire controversy likely to be a conspiracy or hoax based on misinformation. Yet the LAPD and right-wing media remained fixated on the incident.
QAnon believers quickly seized on the video as “evidence” for the conspiracy theory that Democratic politicians and celebrities belong to a pedophilic cannibal cult run by aliens. Adherents spread similar false rumors about a D.C. pizza parlor, claiming the restaurant’s basement was a nexus for pedophiles.
In 2018, the LAPD printed public information posters saying Merager often “claims to be female in order to gain access to women’s locker rooms and showers.”
In an interview at the time, Merager claimed the witnesses at the spa were spewing “a bunch of garbage and lies.”
“She never saw me naked,” Merager reportedly told a right-wing journalist at the time. “I was underwater with water all the way up to my chest.”
“If you go into an area where you’re expected to be nude, there has to be an indecent exposure exemption,” Merager also said.
At the pre-trial hearing, a witness named Claudia, who was present at the spa with her two daughters, reportedly stated that Merager “was relaxed, like it was normal.”
“He was walking, like in a beauty contest, completely naked, like it was normal for a guy to walk around naked there.” (Merager has previously told LAMag that she uses both she/her and he/him pronouns. Her driver’s license has reportedly identified her as female since 2019).
According to both Claudia and her daughters, Merager was sitting on the edge of the jacuzzi with her legs opened 45 degrees. They said she did not try to get their attention but that it made them uncomfortable nonetheless.
Claudia said she was worried about her 14-year-old daughter. “I was afraid for her – here’s this guy with an erect penis.”
Another witness named Christina had previously told a detective that Merager’s penis was “partially erect.” Meanwhile, Claudia’s 14-year-old testified that the penis was “soft” but that she felt “unsafe” and “uncomfortable” anyway because she had never seen anyone’s penis before. Claudia’s other daughter claimed Merager’s penis was erect.
But in the original viral videos, there was reportedly no mention of an erect penis, and Merager is claiming the witnesses have changed their stories.
“Every single one of these witnesses that get up on the stand decided it’s an erection a month later. Where are my witnesses?” Merager told LAMag during the pre-trial hearing. “Why weren’t the two dozen women in the spa indecently exposed? Only men can be indecently exposed, but women can’t? Only the penis is indecent.”
Arraignment for the case will take place on February 21st.
During the recent Speaker voting chaos, the world had an unprecedented view of the House Chamber through uncensored camera footage. Self-described citizen journalist V Speharsays being in the room where it happens reveals the true colors of elected officials and how their personal and political agendas may impact our country’s future.
Spehar, 40, spent the early part of their career in the hospitality industry in New York City, Tampa, and eventually as an event planner with one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent caterers.
“People speak so honestly in front of you when they don’t think you’re ‘that’ kind of smart — when they think you’re just a waiter, a bartender, or whatever,” Spehar told LGBTQ Nation. “And so I got to see these people, not just for the policies that they wrote, but for the people that they are, and understanding that who they ate dinner with changed how the world was going to be.”
Motivated by a rapidly shifting global landscape, it would take an insurrection and worldwide pandemic for Spehar to consider sharing their observations in a public forum. Rather than looking for a seat at the table, they went under it.
Spehar launched Under the Desk News on TikTok in April 2020 and rapidly amassed 2.8 million followers. The one-minute segments (literally delivered from under a desk) have attracted a bipartisan audience. In 2022, Spehar launched V Interesting, a GLAAD-nominated long-form podcast with original reporting that tackles various topics from Gen Z voter engagement to gender-affirming surgery.
“I got to see these people, not just for the policies that they wrote, but for the people that they are, and understanding that who they ate dinner with changed how the world was going to be.”V Spehar
Originally from Shelton, Connecticut, Spehar now lives in Rochester, New York, with their wife Natalie, a cellist and creative educator. With an increasing amount of time in the public eye, they consider themselves a homebody and appreciate Rochester’s vibrant artistic community from the world-renowned Eastman School of Music, where the couple attends the annual voice competition and local film screenings. Spehar’s on-air persona is an intentional extension of how they move through the world. “I show up in the world the same way: for my friends, my show, my wife,” they said. “Maybe that’s why it works.”
“I didn’t want to be another talking authority figure,” Spehar said. “Being under your desk creates a universe where you can feel safe in this very calm, gentle place, where a queer-identifying 25-year-old TikToker will find something I said as interesting as a 50-year-old white straight man who voted for Trump in 2016. The news is geared towards curious people sick of the partisanship.”
V Spehar of Under the Desk News and the podcast V Interesting. Photo provided by V Spehar.
But America’s future hardly feels calm.
Despite greater representation with newly elected LGBTQ+ House members, governors, and other officials at the state and local level and the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, questions loom about the future implications of Roe v Wade’s reversal, escalating “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, and the anti-queer propaganda allowed to flourish on social media platforms like Twitter.
Such polarization coincides with increased violence. According to ACLED, a data collection and crisis mapping project, more than 200 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents (such as anti-queer demonstrations and offline propaganda) were reported last year — an increase of 12 times compared to 2020. Politically motivated violence is also on the rise, fueled partly by Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill signed into law in March 2022 and dozens of proposed anti-trans bills.
Still, the mid-term elections saw a historic number of LGBTQ+ candidates on the ballot and more than 340 wins. While that figure still doesn’t reach equitable representation, the dial seems to be moving in the right direction despite an increasingly vocal far Right contingency. And much of that noise continues to come from social media, particularly Twitter.
Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media platform last October, anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech has escalated. According to the New York Times, slurs against gay men alone have risen from 2,506 to 3,964 times per day, in addition to a spike in accounts associated with QAnon.
But what about the queer community, particularly those in small towns and rural areas, who often turn to social media for support and access to information and resources? Twitter’s credibility isn’t the only platform on the chopping block. President Biden recentlypassed expanded legislation to ban TikTok from all government devices while a national security review is underway.
Despite the online rhetoric, some progress is being made, including the codification of same-sex marriage. On December 12, 2022, in front of nearly 5,500 attendees on the White House lawn, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring the federal and state governments to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed by other states. While the occasion was a high point in Biden’s administration, it wasn’t the constitutional home run that the queer community eventually hopes to hit out of the park.
“Our work isn’t done and won’t rest until the Equality Act is passed into law,” said then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), referencing a House-passed bill that would enshrine sexual orientation and gender identity into federal civil rights legislation.
The Washington Post via Getty Im House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, holds a bill enrollment ceremony for the Respect for Marriage Act at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2022. Photo by Elizabeth Frantz for The Washington Post via Getty Images.
As the nation’s relationship with healthcare access continues to spiral, the need for the Equality Act couldn’t come at a more critical time. According to a recent report by theKaiser Family Foundation, 40 percent of adults in the U.S. have medical- or dental-related debt. For the LGBTQ+ community — particularly transgender folks — the numbers are even more alarming.
LGBTQ Nation spoke with Spehar about queer politics, the remainder of Biden’s first presidential term, and our collective capacity to truly become the United States of America.
LGBTQ NATION: How do we make sense of the polarization of queer America?
V SPEHAR:People like gay people. Even the far right likes gay people. We like people for their personality, if we learn something from them, or if they make us laugh. So it’s no surprise to me that more queer people are running for office and winning. And that’s all on purpose, right? It’s almost like we’ve curated a personality that’s acceptable to mainstream America for our own safety and speaks to the diversity of queer experiences.
When I first heard Black women talk about code-switching, I thought, “Oh, that’s a version of what I do to protect myself” — changing yourself to survive. When you’re socialized in a certain way, and you value being accepted or protecting yourself from criticism, sometimes these are the things that we do.
But politics used to be about passing budgets and laws, and now it is about owning one side or the other. It is more defense than offense. And the offense isn’t putting forward good legislation that helps people; it’s just making someone else lose.
LGBTQ NATION: As the President prepares to address the nation, what are some of the most vexing problems facing the queer equality movement?
VS:Fear has been very effective in getting people to vote. Some people agree with the anti-drag queen story-hour bills or have been told that it’s unfair for trans athletes to compete. And no matter the science, we can never change their minds. And that is because their protective instinct has been triggered. It’s not because they’re dealing in truth. They’re dealing in fear. If you tell somebody who’s deeply religious (as some of the far right has), “This is going to hurt people. These people are dangerous. If we can pass this legislation, we can stop children from being hurt,” nothing is going to stop somebody from believing that because their protective instinct has been triggered.
But having a protective instinct does not mean thinking rationally. Politicians are using people’s protective instincts to push very hateful things because it makes it look like they’re winning, but they’re helping someone else lose. We need to watch out for not trying to prove that drag queens aren’t a danger to children because they’re obviously not. We need to prove that your protective instinct is being triggered by somebody trying to manipulate you.
You’re not going to get somebody to stop believing their sole mission is to be a protector, but you can get them to understand who actually needs protection.
Little Miss Hot Mess reads to children at a Drag Queen Story Hour event. Photo: Joseph Tekippe.
LGBTQ NATION: A few notable queer celebrities, including Elton John and Jameela Jamil, have bailed on Twitter, citing Musk’s takeover. How is the future of social media tied to the future of our country? And is it time to say ta-ta to Twitter?
VS:I think we have to get out of it. Musk is unhinged. But that’s his platform. It’s his toy. Don’t play with it. Who gave him the funding to buy Twitter? The circumstances and lack of antitrust and mergers — all that kind of stuff that was removed so that the shareholders of Twitter could profit. And now look where we are.
Musk is one of the richest men in the world but is very cash poor and had to borrow a lot of money to get this thing. There was a lot of money from many places, which buys a lot of silence. But it’s not just a billionaire buying Twitter. There’s a billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times,Patrick Soon-Shiong. Many of the local news channels are owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. [Whose executive chairman, David D. Smith, is a longtime Trump cohort.]
We also have the legacy media and mainstream journalists who have built their platform on Twitter. And they don’t want to give it up. So we’ve got a double-edged sword here where an unhinged megalomaniac has purchased this thing and it’s no longer useful. We should absolutely be critical of what led to him even being able to buy it. But I think we have to accept that it is over and work towards building what the next thing is.
LGBTQ NATION: The Equality Act is still in the distance. Do you see a path forward for constitutional LGBTQ+ protections?
VS:I am grateful that the Respect for Marriage Act passed. It falls short of where I would feel fully comfortable and safe. I am ready for LGBTQ+ existence to no longer be a ballot measure. I’m ready for us not to be a talking point when it comes to political rhetoric and campaigning.
It would be as if we were still trying to discuss women being allowed to vote. No, they won the right to vote. We all agree that women have the right to vote; that’s settled law. Why isn’t it the same for LGBTQ+ equality?
I want to see the Equality Act signed and actually create a constitutional amendment, which people think we have now, but we don’t have that hard a language for it. Where there’s softness, people try to punch a hole right through it. And that would solve a lot of things for both women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
With queer representation growing in Congress, that certainly makes a big difference. We’re not just talking about some random hypothetical person that may or may not live in your district. You’re saying it to the face of queer legislators. When the states ofMassachusetts, Colorado, and Oregon want to talk about gay rights, they have to say it to their governors’ faces. The more we can put a face to it, the less you can write us off.
(clockwise from top) Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Colorado Governor Jared Polis. Gov. Healey photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images.
LGBTQ NATION: A recent report from the Williams Institute found that of the approximately 276,000 transgender folks enrolled in Medicaid, more than 40 percent live in states with vague coverage parameters or, even worse, actively ban coverage of gender-affirming care for beneficiaries. Trans youth and their parents also face an uphill battle.
The Williams Institute, in a separate brief, indicated that more than 58,000 trans youth are at risk of losing access to care because of state bans and policies. Lack of healthcare, political attacks packed with abusive language, and social pressures collectively impact the trans community’s well-being. How can we better educate the opposition about gender-affirming care and dispel the fear factor distorting thescientific evidence that proves the value of such treatment?
VS: I have a friend who got boobs at 18 when we graduated high school, and she just had them removed because she didn’t want them anymore. Cis women also get gender-affirming care — whether breast augmentation, a nose job, or a facelift — people get all kinds of things done to feel their best and like their most authentic selves. And sometimes you get something you don’t want it. But that’s rare. The fact that more women cis women who get breast implants will have them removed and regret them later doesn’t mean that nobody should get breast implants if they want them, right?
It’s the same thing with trans care. There are going to be people who are unhappy with themselves, and they aren’t going to achieve happiness through top surgery, testosterone, or whatever things other people do to achieve gender, acceptance, and joy. Listening to this year’s discourse, I’ve learned that people don’t understand puberty blockers are sometimes the difference for a young person living to decide if they want to go further. Because the alternative is they die by suicide. That is the actual alternative. And if we want to protect children, we have to protect all children.
“You’re not going to get somebody to stop believing their sole mission is to be a protector, but you can get them to understand who actually needs protection.”V Spehar
I am a person who struggled with my gender identity until I had top surgery. The amount of time I spent looking at myself, wishing things would be different, and not attending events because I didn’t like how my body looked — that is exhausting. And then I got top surgery just last year. And I woke up, and I felt finished, I felt done. I felt like myself. It changed everything for me. And I wish that people knew others who had gone through the experience so that they could tell them that. I feel happy. And it really didn’t affect anybody else’s life.
Having been a kid who struggled with just trying to feel comfortable in my body, if I could have delayed puberty and not had double-D boobs in eighth grade, that would have been great. That would have saved me a lot of problems for a lot of reasons. So I think it’s letting people know that it’s not a big deal. It’s something that a lot of people do. And most gender-affirming surgery is done on cis bodies. And that’s for men and women who were born male or female. And it’s okay. It’s not hurting anyone. So the perspective I hope people take is to stop making it such a big deal.
LGBTQ NATION: What’s your message to those who might feel overwhelmed by our country’s divide or want to tune out the news cycle?
VS: Like many gay people, I didn’t think I would be as old as I am. When I was young, I didn’t know any gay people who were adults. And now I’m 40 and didn’t plan for much after 23. So once I lived, I just thought — you never know. And I’ve had so many cool things happen: I got married and have this career. And I wake up every day and say, “Oh my God, how cool is it that I just breathe without thinking?” So having that perspective helps me when something is really sad and feels extremely hopeless.If you remember that things have been bad before, they do get better. You can get through it. And when I need to take breaks, I do. We’ve been in worse economic situations.
And we can continue to move towards less hate and more happiness, but there will always be hard stuff.
Ben LaBolt will become the first openly gay White House communications director, succeeding Kate Bedingfield, who is expected to leave at the end of February, advisors to President Joe Biden announced on Friday.
Bedingfield is expected to work on Biden’s reelection campaign. LaBolt has worked for the president since the Obama administration, most recently leading communications around matters like the nomination and confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
The move comes shortly after Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain and top economic advisor Brian Deese announced their departures from the White House.
LaBolt was previously senior national spokesperson for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and White House national press secretary in 2012.
Karine Jean-Pierre made history in May 2022 with her appointment as the first Black and the first openly LGBTQ White House press secretary.
The body of a missing gay 19-year-old was found in Brooklyn last week with a gunshot wound to the head and “significant burn wounds.”
DeAndre Matthews, a student at SUNY Broome Community College studying criminal justice, reportedly went missing on February 6. According to his sister, Dajanae Gillespie, Matthews left his job at Buggy Service Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at around 5 p.m. that evening, returning home to borrow his mother’s Jeep. Danielle Mathews, the teen’s mother, was reportedly one of the last people to speak to him on the phone that night.
On Tuesday, Danielle Matthews was able to track the location of her Jeep using GPS. It was found burned out just minutes away from her Flatbush home. The family reported DeAndre missing that same day, and police later discovered his body on some train tracks in Midwood, Brooklyn.
In addition to the gunshot wound and burns, DeAndre also suffered from smoke inhalation, according to a medical examiner.
DeAndre’s family are left baffled by the crime. “I want to know why [the killer] did it. What was the reason? DeAndre wasn’t a violent person. This wasn’t for retaliation. He wasn’t in the streets,” Gillespie told WNBC New York, adding that she thought her brother’s murder could have been a hate crime.
Police said on Friday that no arrests had been made and the investigation is ongoing.
“We don’t know anything and my sister, she don’t deserve this at all, at all,” DeAndre’s aunt, Tamika Matthews, told WCBS.
“I’m a hurt mother. I have my daughter but that was my son, that was my best friend. He made me a mother,” Danielle Matthews said. “Now, as a mother, I’m suffering. My daughter don’t have a big brother. My sister don’t have a nephew, my mother don’t have a grandson.”
Laws banning drag performances have been introduced in legislative sessions in at least 14 states this year, and their potential effects are much more far-reaching than entertaining shows.
An alarming number of anti-LGBTQ+ (particularly anti-transgender) bills continue to be introduced; the ACLU is tracking 278 of them across 33 states. While many target bathrooms, IDs, books, healthcare, education, and sports, a newer trend this year is attempting to ban drag.
Republican state legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia have all introduced various bills on this theme.
Sybastian Smith, Director of Organizing for the National Center for Transgender Equality, says there are about 32 bills that seek to ban drag shows currently in state legislatures.
“Five of these bills have specified that exposure to the LGBTQ+ community is child abuse, most of these bills ban minors and ban drag performers from public spaces,” Smith told LGBTQ Nation. “In fact, about six of these bills have defined drag performers as people who dressed and expressed differently from their ‘biological sex’ or ‘gender identity,’ and we have concerns that this also applies to everyday transgender people.”
Like other anti-transgender bills that seek to ban gender-affirming health care or access to public accommodations, these bills are part of a nationwide effort to legislate trans people out of existence, transgender rights advocates say.
“These bills are framed as an attack against drag performers, but it actually seeks to criminalize the very existence of transgender people by labeling gender expression and gender-affirming clothing as ‘drag,’” Smith says.
Zooey Zephyr, who took office last month as the first and only transgender woman in the Montana House of Representatives, agrees.
“These bills are designed both to ostracize and shun LGBTQ people and trans people specifically from the public and also to embolden the people who harbor anger and hatred towards trans people,” she told LGBTQ Nation. “It is clear based on the similar bills we’re seeing across the country, based on the comments of Republican presidential hopefuls for 2024 that anti-trans rhetoric is becoming a core part of the far right.”
House Bill 359 in Montana would ban minors from attending drag shows, ban drag performances from public libraries and schools, and ban minors from entering any business that provides a drag show (labeling any such business a “sexually oriented business”). A drag performance is defined in the bill as “a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs for entertainment to appeal to a prurient interest.”
Zephyr is concerned that this wording could apply broadly not only to drag performers but to any transgender person in certain situations, such as a transgender parent singing to their child, a transgender actor in a local theater troupe, or even a transgender child dancing. The broad potential interpretations leave many hypotheticals to the imagination, such as if high school productions of Hairspray or As You Like It would ever be allowed again.
The Montana bill targets minors’ access to drag specifically, as do many other states’ bills that classify drag as an adult-only activity.
Drag queen story hours have become a popular way to share children’s books with LGBTQ+ content outside a school setting, where such books have become increasingly banned. After books with life-saving representation have been pulled from library and school shelves, it has been dangerous to even attend drag storytimes to access them. GLAAD reported at least 141 anti-drag protests, attacks, or significant threats in 2022, including drag story hours, brunches, and bingo events. The attacks included multiple incidents of armed Neo-Nazis disrupting or protesting drag events, including those with children present.
Now several states want to criminalize those events altogether, but this isn’t the first time in U.S. history this has happened.
“These attacks are not new,” Smith says. “Historically, we have seen extremists use harmful rhetoric like this for decades.” He points to anti-crossdressing laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that were one element of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution that protestors at the Stonewall Inn fought back against. Police routinely used these laws as excuses to harass and arrest LGBTQ+ people when they had no other charges they could use, such as catching someone in the act of sodomy.
Today, Smith, Zephyr, and others are concerned that anti-drag laws will be used to target transgender people who are not drag performers, just like the laws repealed decades ago.
The most broadly written bills, like Tennessee’s House Bill 9 and North Dakota’s House Bill 1333, ban drag from being performed on any public property, which would mean drag would not be permitted at Pride events. It could also theoretically mean that a transgender person dressing in clothing matching their gender identity but not their sex assigned at birth could be arrested if they did anything constituting a performance, such as lip-syncing to a song they were listening to.
In Tennessee and North Dakota, a first offense carries a penalty of up to nearly one year in prison, a fine of $2,500 to $3,000, or both. A second offense would be a felony and could carry a penalty of up to five to six years in prison and additional fines.
Drag performers, transgender people, loved ones of transgender people, activists, and others have been speaking out in opposition to these bills at hearings across the country. Zephyr urges others to raise their voices against these bills, a task that falls to the grassroots since there are no federal protections.
“These attacks are going to continue to escalate until we as a community—as trans people, as legislators, our friends, families, and neighbors who love and care about us—stand up and say that these policies need to stop, that trans people belong.”
Pauli Murray, nonbinary Black activist, lawyer, priest, and poet, will be featured on a quarter in the next round of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program, making Murray the first Black queer person to appear on U.S. currency.
Murray’s quarter will be issued in 2024. Others in the 2024 group are Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to serve in Congress; Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War–era surgeon, women’s rights advocate, and abolitionist; Zitkala-Ša, a writer, composer, educator, and activist for Native Americans’ rights; and Celia Cruz, the Cuban-American singer known as the Queen of Salsa.
“All of the women being honored have lived remarkable and multi-faceted lives, and have made a significant impact on our Nation in their own unique way,” Mint Director Ventris C. Gibson said in a press release. “The women pioneered change during their lifetimes, not yielding to the status quo imparted during their lives. By honoring these pioneering women, the Mint continues to connect America through coins which are like small works of art in your pocket.”
Murray, born in 1910 in Baltimore, was assigned female at birth but questioned their gender and is now understood as nonbinary. They grew up in Durham, N.C., and became a lawyer and activist against sexism and racism. They graduated at the top of their class from Howard University School of Law.
Murray’s book States’ Laws on Race and Color, published in 1951, was described by civil rights lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as the Bible for civil rights litigators. In the 1950s, Murray joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison, where they met their longtime partner, Irene Barlow, who was office manager there.
In the 1960s, Murray served on the Committee on Civil and Political Rights as part of President John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and continued to be active in the Black civil rights movement but objected to the fact that movement organizations were largely led by men while women did much of the work. In 1966, they helped found the National Organization for Women, “but later moved away from a leading role because s/he did not believe that NOW appropriately addressed the issues of Black and working-class women,” according to the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice.
Murray taught an American studies program at Brandeis University from 1968 to 1973. In 1973, following Barlow’s death, Murray entered General Theological Seminary, and in 1977 they were the first Black person perceived as a woman to become an Episcopal priest in the U.S.
Murray wrote several other books, including a poetry collection, an autobiography, and a volume on the government of Ghana. Their best-known book, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, chronicles the difficulties faced by her grandparents in Durham due to racism. It has remained in print since its initial publication in 1956.
Murray died of cancer in 1985. Their life and significance were chronicled in the documentary film My Name Is Pauli Murray, released in 2021.
David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, issued a statementpraising the Mint’s honoring of Murray.
“The announcement by the U.S. Mint that it will include civil rights activist Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, the first Black queer person to be featured on U.S. currency, deserves celebration,” he said. “This moment is a reminder that wherever there is history there is Black history and that Black history has always included the contributions of Black queer, trans, and nonbinary/nonconforming members of our beautifully diverse community.
“Commemorating the life and legacy of Murray, who was a groundbreaking leader of racial and gender equality and progenitor of effective civil rights tactics, and was also one of the first women, first gender nonbinary person, and the first Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest, is an important step toward recognizing the contributions that Black LGBTQ+/same-gender loving people have made to American history. Especially at a time when the evangelical right is using religion to separate, segregate, and inspire hate.
“We commend the U.S. Mint for honoring Pauli Murray, amongst a number of influential and groundbreaking women. The lives, contributions, and stories of Black trans, queer, and nonbinary/nonconforming people are fundamental to Black history and should continue to be told and celebrated.”
