he Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has called for Venezuela to do more to protect LGBTQ people from violence and discrimination.
The report the commission released on Sept. 8 specifically notes six men on May 31, 2020, attacked Jorge Granado in Ciudad Guayana, a city in Bolívar state, because of his sexual orientation. The report also notes Marcy Ávila, an LGBTQ rights activist, has suffered “harassment.”
Violence against transgender Venezuelans remains commonplace in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and throughout the country.
Yonatan Matheus and Wendell Oviedo, co-founders of Venezuela Diversa, a Venezuelan LGBTQ rights group, received death threats after they publicly urged authorities to investigate the murders of two trans women. Matheus and Oviedo in 2016 fled to New York,and have asked for asylum in the U.S.
Members of Venezuela’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence on Jan. 12, 2021, raided the offices of Azul Positivo, an HIV/AIDS service organization in Maracaibo, a city in Zulia state, and arrested President Johan León Reyes and five other staff members. Venezuelan police on Feb. 15, 2019, raided the offices of Fundación Mavid, another HIV/AIDS service organization in Valencia, a city in Carabobo state, and arrested three staffers after they confiscated donated infant formula and medications for people with HIV/AIDS.
“The IACHR reminds the state of Venezuela of its obligation to guarantee the protection of LGBTI persons; address the underlying causes of violence and discrimination against them; as well as act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, adjudicate, sanction and remedy the human rights violations against LGBTI people,” reads the report.
The report also notes the lack of legal protections — including in the country’s hate crimes law — for LGBTQ Venezuelans and adds the country uses Article 565 of the Organic Code of Military Justice and other statutes “to criminalize people based on their real or perceived sexual orientation.”
“For the above, the commission reminds the state of Venezuela of its duty to repeal legal provisions that criminalize, directly or indirectly, the conduct of people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression,” reads the report.
The report notes trans Venezuelans cannot legally change their gender without medical interventions. Venezuela’s constitution also defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
“The IACHR reiterates to the state its recommendation to legally recognize the unions or the marriage of people of the same gender, affording the same rights conferred to partners of different genders, including economic rights, and all of the rest that derive from that relationship, without distinction by motives of sexual orientation, gender identity,” reads the report.
LGBTQ migrants also targeted
The Organization of American States, which is based in D.C., created the commission in 1959 as a way to promote human rights throughout the Western Hemisphere. It works closely with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to enforce the American Convention on Human Rights.
Venezuela in 2012 officially withdrew from the convention, but the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2019 once again ratified it.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is based in Costa Rica, in 2018 issued a landmark ruling that recognizes same-sex marriage and trans rights in the Western Hemisphere. The previous White House that same year called for the OAS to suspend Venezuela.
The U.S. is among the countries that continues to recognize Juan Guaidó, a former member of Assemblywoman Tamara Adrián’s party, as Venezuela’s president. The report notes Adrián, who in 2015 became the first openly trans person elected to the National Assembly, but it also highlights the country’s political and economic crisis the pandemic has made even worse.
The report cites statistics from the Coordination Platform for Migrants and Refugees from Venezuela that note upwards of 5.4 million Venezuelans had left their country as of November 2020. The report notes the majority of them have sought refuge in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Chile.
“In relation to the situation of LGTB people who are Venezuelan migrants; this community would face various acts of discrimination; such as barriers to access to the labor market, insults and physical attacks,” it reads.
Matheus welcomed the report.
“The communique the IACHR released in relation to the situation of the rights of LGBTQ people in Venezuela is totally pertinent,” he told the Washington Blade on Friday. “It gives visibility to the more than a dozen murders of LGBTIQ people that have occurred in the country during 2021 that we as organizations have been denouncing.”
Matheus said the report will also “allow us to be able to continue taking actions to get international support over the impact of the complex humanitarian crisis that makes it difficult to access health care, food and other social rights that continue to generate forced migration of LGBTIQ people and activists.” Matheus also cited “the enormous levels of impunity and actions from (Venezuelan) police agencies towards hate crimes and the silence of the Supreme Judicial Court and the National Assembly on issues related to gender identity of trans people, marriage equality and the right to form a family that LGBTIQ people have.”
Matheus told the Blade he also thinks the report will “also motivate” Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the independent U.N. expert on LGBTQ issues, to “speak out about the situation of LGBTIQ people in Venezuela.”
A group of six advocacy groups on Thursday urged the Biden administration to develop a 10-point plan to protect LGBTQ Afghans after the Taliban regained control of their country.
The Council for Global Equality; the Human Rights Campaign; Immigration Equality; the International Refugee Assistance Project; the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration and Rainbow Railroad in a letter they sent to President Biden called for his administration to “prioritize the evacuation and resettlement of vulnerable refugee populations, including LGBTQI people, and ensure that any transitory stay in a third country is indeed temporary by expediting refugee processing.”
The nine other suggestions are below:
– Provide and effectively implement explicit “Priority 2” (P-2) access to the U.S. refugee program for the highly vulnerable population of LGBTQI individuals fleeing Afghanistan. Waive the application fee for any LGBTQI Afghan applying to relocate to the United States on an expedited basis via humanitarian parole and look favorably upon those emergency requests. Initiate a new program of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans in the United States, including those paroled into the United States on an emergency basis.”
– Ensure that existing lists that have been collected by various governments of at-risk Afghans, including those who wish to flee because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, are carefully safeguarded so that they do not fall into Taliban or third-country hands and are not used to target individuals or family members. Use the lists as a basis for expedited P1 or P2 refugee processing or humanitarian parole for those who seek protection abroad.”
– Lift or expand the FY (fiscal year) 2022 refugee cap of 125,000 refugees accepted into the United States.
– Provide funding to support the temporary housing, livelihoods and security of LGBTQI refugees in third countries while they are being processed for refugee resettlement in the United States or elsewhere.
– Recognize NGOs that have been reliable partners in identifying and recommending LGBTQI Afghans to the State Department for protection and instruct U.S. embassies to process LGBTQI refugee applications on site when referred by these designated partners.
– Recognize for the purposes of refugee relocation, humanitarian parole or any other entry into the United States any same-sex Afghan partner as a spouse. Take an equally expansive view of the definition of family for LGBTQI relocation given the lack of legal recognition for LGBTQI partnerships in the region.
– Expand LGBTQI-sensitive resettlement programs in the United States and engage with NGOs and local communities to expand the U.S. capacity to absorb larger numbers of LGBTQI Afghan refugees in supportive and inclusive environments, including through new refugee sponsorship programs.
– Speak out forcefully against human rights abuses by the new Taliban regime and any increased targeting of vulnerable communities, including LGBTQI people, and use existing mechanisms to sanction and hold accountable perpetrators of human rights abuse. Negotiate explicit human rights monitoring access, with a particular focus on vulnerable communities including LGBTQI Afghans, when the mandate of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan is renewed by the Security Council later this month.
The Taliban entered Kabul on Aug. 15 and toppled then-President Ashraf Ghani’s government.
“I’m scared,” they said. “I can’t go outside … everything has totally changed.”
The groups in their letter to Biden said the Taliban “takeover of Afghanistan has focused international attention on the safety and livelihood of many vulnerable populations, including women and girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) Afghans.”
“As the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan will be part of your legacy, so too will be the actions your Administration takes to ensure the well-being of these populations,” reads the letter.
The letter also notes the groups “are deeply disappointed that your administration did not press to extend the Aug. 31 deadline to evacuate more at-risk refugees from Kabul, but we are heartened by your pledge to continue to support refugee evacuation and resettlement in the coming weeks.”
“The United States bears a special responsibility not to abandon those we have encouraged along the path to democracy and human rights, and to act expeditiously to ensure their safety,” it says.
Canada is thus far the only country that has specifically said it would offer refuge to LGBTQ Afghans. Immigration Equality earlier this week said it spoke “directly” with 50 LGBTQ Afghans before the U.S. completed its withdrawal from the country on Aug. 30. “
The international community must act in concert to protect vulnerable populations now placed at risk,” reads the letter to Biden. “We urge the United States to increase and prioritize its immediate, medium-term and long-term efforts on behalf of the LGBTQI community in Afghanistan using these 10 protection priorities.”
California could soon become the first state to outlaw “stealthing”, the vile practice of removing a condom during sex without verbal consent.
State lawmakers sent a bill to governor Gavin Newsom’s desk on Tuesday (7 September) that would add the act to California’s civil definition of sexual battery, the Associated Press reported.
The proposed bill, AB 453, would allow victims to sue perpetrators who removed a condom without verbal consent for damages, including punitive damages. However, according to the Washington Post, the California bill stops short of classifying nonconsensual condom removal as a crime that could result in jail time.
Similar bills on stealthing have previously been introduced in New York and Wisconsin, but neither passed, the New York Times reported.
She said in a statement that stealthing is a disgusting act that can cause long-term physical and emotional harm to its victims. Garcia urged Newsom to sign the bill into law to “make it clear that stealthing is not just immoral but illegal”.
“It’s disgusting that there are online communities that defend and encourage stealthing and give advice on how to get away with removing the condom without the consent of their partner, but there is nothing in law that makes it clear that this is a crime,” Garcia said.
Alexandra Brodsky, who wrote the 2017 Yale study and who is now a civil rights lawyer, told the New York Times that the bill could bring “political and personal power” to victims of stealthing.
She added that “civil remedies” are “really underutilised” and could prove more useful to victims.
“There are many survivors who do not want to see the person who hurt them in prison and could really use help covering medical debt or could use help having the resources to see a therapist,” Brodsky said.
Less than 24 hours after an LGBTQIA+ sexual freedom solidarity delegation I was honored to be part of finished in Kampala this spring, the homophobic heat intensified. The “Sexual Offenses Bill” that criminalizes consensual same sex acts, was approved by the Ugandan Parliament on May 3, 2021.
Now the dust has settled, what can the international community do?
Decolonize
Uganda’s homophobic laws are near duplicates of British colonial legislation; one of the British empire’s most notorious exports. The “Public Nuisance Act”, the “Rogue and Vagabond Act”, the “Anti Pornography Act” and the “Anti Miniskirt Act” are all inspired by Thatcher’s deadly Section 28 law that prohibited “the promotion of homosexuality in public institutions” in the U.K. and still digs its claws in tightly throughout life in Uganda today.
Whilst the “Sexual Offenses Bill” criminalizes “LGBTQIA propaganda,” it cannot stop LGBT+ movements safeguarding communities on the ground. For the last five years Shawn has been training as a community caregiver and pioneered a unique nature-based self-help project in Uganda called ‘FAMACE’ to support queer individuals to heal from trauma. Using Farming, Art, Mindset change, Advocacy, Collaboration and Ethical human-centered design to improve well-being and promote sustainable livelihoods.
Contrary to the 2012 BBC documentary “Uganda — the worst place in the world to be gay,” for Shawn, Uganda is“the best place in the world to be queer, I tell you, the story here in Uganda is beautiful.”
“What would solidarity from the UK activists look like, Shawn?” I ask. “An honest call on your government to end and ban the use of colonial laws in former colonial states is the only way.”
Create a roadmap to freedom
Five years ago Shawn was part of the Pride Kampala organizing team. In the months running up to Pride, brutal police raids on LGBTQI+ spaces resulted in the arrests of 16 human rights defenders, followed by mass assaults on 200 people attending the Pride show. One member of the LGBT community nearly lost his life when he jumped from a four-story building to escape from police.
After that night it would be easy to assume everyone would go underground, but it only made them fight harder. Shawn continues,“When movements started receiving international aid funding, entrenched cycles of dependency spiralled. Ultimately, we have forgotten that the land beneath us connects us all, the signposts that catalyse community transformation. We need to begin here, right now, in beginning our own queer village.”
Choose visibility: Mobilize the Kuchus!
Morgan was there too that night. In 2010 he started Youth on Rock Foundation “so we can be rocks with unshakable perseverance, because as a society we have to ‘Mobilise the Kuchus!’”The organization grew like wildfire and gained international attention. Their house doors are regularly knocked on by people seeking sanctuary.
Cultivate creativity
After the “Anti Homosexuality Act” and the savagery provoked through mass media outings, Edgar and his friends started Kuchu Times, an online platform providing a voice for Africa’s LGBTQIA+ community.
Kasia, another founding member, thought“let’s give it back!’ We made the magazine glossy and incorporated local languages and included referral pathways of local support groups. We opened gates for people to emerge themselves. It’s everywhere now, they cannot burn it just like they cannot burn us. You have to do it all with a lot of PASSION POLITICS.”
Rebel
Hajjara Ssanyu Batte is Director of “Lady Mermaids Empowerment Center,” the largest sex workers and feminist network in Uganda. Hajjara recently infamously walked the streets naked carrying the coffin of one of her murdered friends. Now she sits in front of me beaming in the most incredible rainbow diamante sparkling heels.
What’s your most memorable protest I ask?
“I have many. Recently, alongside our male allies in high heels, we protested outside the Uganda Human Rights Commission everyday for two weeks. I proudly wore my miniskirt because it’s our bodies, we can do what we want with our bodies, it not only affects us but our mothers, grandmothers, sons and daughters.”
Since then, Lady Mermaid’s protests have helped overturned the “Pornography Act.” The tide is turning.
Become a love generator
By digesting the bitter tinctures of life, they have metabolized poisons into medicines to establish sacred connections between each and every one of us.
As I was leaving, Shawn reached for my hand. “Please come back and see us at ‘Lavender Acres,’ the name of our trans-led permaculture community. By then I will have finished training a new generation of bee-keepers and will have plenty of queer sweet honey for you.”
Now back home, the real work begins. Lady Phyll, executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust, a U.K.-based charity working to uphold the human rights of LGBT+ people across the world, and co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride, Europe’s largest Pride celebration for LGBTQI+ people of color, reminds us “the activists in Uganda and around the world, who are fighting tooth and nail against homophobia and violence, deserve our unreserved and unequivocal support — and right now.”
Twenty years ago, on one of America’s darkest days, two planes flew into the twin towers, another into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania.
But even during the tragic early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2001, there were heroes. People like Mark Bingham, who was aboard United Airlines Flight 93 when it went down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. And the Rev. Mychal Judge, who was tending to victims in the World Trade Center’s north tower when debris from the collapsing south tower killed him and many others.
On the face of it, the two men couldn’t have been more different: Bingham was 31 when he was killed; Judge was 68. Bingham, a former college rugby player with a 6-foot-5, 220-pound build, was a gay public relations executive with an active dating life. Judge was a kindly Franciscan friar who was “selectively out,” according to longtime friend and LGBTQ activist Brendan Fay.
But both men showed courage beyond comprehension that day, saving lives and perhaps even souls.
Along with Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick, Bingham confronted the four hijackers aboard United 93. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, their actions ultimately led to the plane crashing in an empty field instead of slamming into its intended target, likely the White House or the U.S. Capitol.
Bingham had enough time to call his mother, Alice Hoagland, to explain what was happening and tell her he loved her.
The chaplain for the New York City Fire Department, Judge rushed downtown when he heard the World Trade Center had been hit and provided aid to the injured in the area and prayers for the dead.
He then entered the north tower, where a command post had been established, and continued to minister to rescue workers and those trapped in the building. Judge was administering last rites when he was killed, The Irish Times reported in 2018, and praying, “God, please end this.”
But there were other threads that connected Bingham and Judge besides their bravery, including their zest for life.
Judge “had a bursting-at-the-sides sense of humor,” said Fay, who co-produced the 2006 documentary “Saint of 9/11.” “He loved to sing and was a real jokester, with a laugh that would fill a room.”
Bingham, once the president of the Chi Psi fraternity at University of California, Berkeley, “was the life of the party,” said Amanda Mark, his roommate in New York and longtime friend. A 2001 Advocate profile recalled Bingham drunkenly running on the field at a college football game to tackle the opposing team’s mascot.
And, according to those who knew them, they both went through a journey of accepting their sexualities.
Like a lot of young gay men of his generation, Bingham struggled to some degree with his sexual orientation. He had come out to his fraternity brothers and his mom, but he wasn’t entirely out at work. Even when he first started playing in a gay rugby league in San Francisco, he had his face blurred in photos in the local press.
“San Francisco didn’t serve as a beacon for him as it had to so many others,” Jon Barrett wrote in the preface to his 2002 biography “Hero of Flight 93.”“He lived there by default, for the most part. His family had moved to the Bay Area in the early 1980s, and most of them were still there.”
Mark recalled how one night, after Bingham relocated to New York and moved in with her, he confessed he wanted “to write the Great American Novel — but gay.”
“So that you’d have to read it in high school, and people would understand that gay people were always among us and were totally normal and a part of our lives,” she said.
Judge’s sexual orientation was not made public until after his death, but he did actively minister to New York’s LGBTQ community in the 1980s and ‘90s and form one of the first Catholic AIDS ministries.
Fay met Judge in the 1980s through the LGBTQ Catholic organization DignityUSA. He said the FDNY chaplain “was out to friars and friends and people he could trust — or people he thought coming out to would help, like parents wanting to support their gay children.”
Judge was one of the few priests who would conduct Mass and provide sacraments to Dignity members.
Immediately recognizable in his brown robe and sandals, Judge visited people who were sick and dying at St. Vincent’s Hospital’s AIDS ward and lead funerals for the young men when their local parishes refused.
“He’d go to Connecticut, to New Jersey; he’d get on an airplane and fly out to do a funeral in Ohio,” Fay said.
Judge was supportive of groups like PFLAG, a nonprofit group serving LGBTQ people and their families, and wrote one of the first checks for the St. Pat’s for All parade, the inclusive celebration Fay founded in 2000.
“Mychal Judge took risks. He pushed boundaries,” Fay said. “He wasn’t a flag-waver, but he definitely pushed boundaries. He figured out how to weave around and do what he felt needed to be done without suffering the wrath of the church.”
He never missed a Pride parade if he could help it, though he walked with Franciscan brothers. According to Fay, he also regularly attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for LGBTQ people.
“It was in these rooms where Mychal felt he could be himself,” Fay said.
“In his journals, [Judge] talks about being at peace with his sexuality and grateful that God had made him gay,” said Francis DeBernardo, author of the upcoming biography “Mychal Judge: Take Me Where You Want Me to Go.”
Friends of both Bingham and Judge also recalled their great sense of compassion and tendency to form long-lasting bonds.
When TWA Flight 800 exploded over the ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, Judge showed up for several days and forged close relationships with many grieving families.
“When he connected with you in a moment of struggle, very often he stayed with you for life,” Fay said.
Mark had met Bingham in 1988 when she was in high school in Australia and he was part of a group of American teens who came to play rugby in an exhibition. Over the years and across two continents, their bond grew closer.
“Rugby taught Mark to be a team player,” she said. “When you joined the team, you were part of the family. When another player was advancing to the goal line, he’d shout, ‘I’m with you! I’m with you!’ That’s what you say in rugby, but it really embodied everything Mark was about. He couldn’t tolerate unfairness or injustice, and he wasn’t afraid to stand up for the people he loved.”
She called Bingham “the great connector” for his ability to bring disparate groups together. He was always making new friends while still reaffirming bonds with old ones — through phone calls, emails and surprise visits.
Once, when she and her friends returned home to one of their houses in Sydney, they found Bingham waiting for them in the living room. He had flown in unannounced from the U.S.
“He’d say, ‘Let’s keep in touch,’ and he would. And he’d arrange to see you when he was in town,” she said. “He would have just loved Facebook.”
A rugby player at UC Berkeley, Bingham continued to play the sport after moving to San Francisco. He even became a key figure in the creation of the International Gay Rugby league in 2000.
Just months before he died, Bingham was at the league’s first invitational in May 2001, helping the San Francisco Fog defeat the hometown team, the Washington, D.C., Renegades, in a 19-0 shutout.
At the time of the crash, Bingham was working to bring a gay rugby team to New York, which led to the formation of the Gotham Knights.
“Mark’s two worlds were rugby and being gay, and when those worlds collided, he was ecstatic,” Mark said.
After the terrorist attacks, when it became public that Judge was gay “there was a big debate in Catholic circles,” said DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for inclusion for LGBTQ Catholics.
“People couldn’t resolve the fact that a gay person could be holy and selfless,” he said. “It was like cognitive dissonance. I wasn’t even totally convinced he was a gay man until I started doing the research [for the book].”
But, he added, Judge’s whole sense of ministry, of being of service to others, came from his coming to terms with being gay.
“He had empathy and sensitivity to being on the margins,” DeBernardo said. “And he understood the great love God had for him just as he was.”
DeBernardo, like other biographers and friends, said he believes Judge honored his vow of celibacy.
“But speaking to others about how accepting he was of his sexuality — and almost not caring if you knew — I can’t believe he’d want to be closeted now,” he said.
Bingham’s closest friends and family were also ambivalent about his being heralded as a gay hero.
“At first I really felt like his being gay didn’t matter,” Mark said. “Don’t put out ‘gay hero’; he was just a hero.”
But in the weeks after the attacks, she, Hoagland and Bingham’s other friends spoke more about it.
“We decided at that time we should encourage that perspective,” Mark said, “because the truth was there weren’t any gay heroes.”
The gay rugby community wasted little time deciding how to honor their fallen brother: In June 2002, less than a year after the attacks, the inaugural Mark Kendall Bingham Memorial Tournament —commonly known as the Bingham Cup — was held in San Francisco with eight teams.
In 2018, the last year the biannual event was held, the competition welcomed 74 teams from 20 different countries. The 2022 Bingham Cup in Ottawa, Ontario, rescheduled from 2020 because of the pandemic, will include 148 teams.
Bingham never got to write his novel, but the tournament that bears his name imparts the lesson he wanted to share, according to Mark.
“Part of the Bingham Cup journey for so many players, they’ll tell you, is that they wanted to play sport but gave it up because they didn’t think they’d fit in,” she said. “Even though they’d never met Mark, they’d say he changed their life.”
Hoagland was integral in keeping her son’s legacy alive: Before her death in 2020, she regularly attended the Bingham Cup tournaments, where players would chant her name and flock to have their photos taken with her.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/UEJc9X6?app=1
One of the tournament’s prizes is called the Hoagland Cup in her honor.
“She was a mother to us all,” Bingham Cup President Jean-François Laberge said. “A lot of members of the IGR movement were abandoned or disowned by their families. She became a mother figure to players across the globe.”
Laberge said he had several discussions with Hoagland and Mark “about the importance of ensuring the tournament not just go on but continue to thrive.”
“All that IGR is, and all that the Bingham Cup has become, carries on Mark’s legacy,” Laberge said. Next year’s tournament will spotlight “our shared values of inclusion, respect and athletic competition,” he added, including a summit on transgender athletes and a wheelchair rugby exhibition game.
At a special dedication ceremony, a Canadian maple will be planted in Ottawa’s Ken Steele Park, where a plaque will officially designate a newly upgraded rugby pitch the Mark Bingham Field.
Judge’s legacy, meanwhile, is both more audacious and more complicated, as supporters redouble their efforts to have him canonized as a Catholic saint.
DeBernardo said a big push for the sainthood movement actually came from the Vatican itself: In 2017, DeBernardo received a call from the Rev. Luis Escalante, an official from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, suggesting the idea.
“There are many avenues to sainthood,” DeBernardo said. “One is if you are a martyr — someone who dies for the faith. But that year, Pope Francis opened another avenue, ‘the offerer of life.’ Someone who knowingly gives their life as an act of service to others.”
Escalante thought Judge fit into that category, DeBernardo said, “because he went into that building knowing it was very likely he wouldn’t make it out, but he wanted to minister.”
Fay said he understands the desire to have Judge recognized by the church, but he’s not sure Judge would want the honor.
“I think he’d rather there be a shelter in his name for LGBT youth,” he said.
Achieving sainthood is a protracted process involving much research and a lengthy formal investigation. According to DeBernardo, Escalante knew Judge was involved in the gay community and wanted New Ways Ministry to help find people who knew him to provide firsthand accounts or documents “that will give a clearer, more detailed picture of his life, spirituality, and ministry,”DeBernardo wrote in a 2017 post on the ministry’s website, especially “any information regarding a possible miracle attributed to Fr. Judge’s intercession.”
Soon Escalante began receiving testimonies supporting canonization from the many communities Judge touched: firefighters, LGBTQ people, homeless people, AA members and others.
Four years later, on Sept. 2, Escalante called DeBernardo again: The testimonies were helpful, but the process had stalled.
Typically, candidates for sainthood have a sponsor who provides advocacy and fundraising.
“That’s why so many saints belong to holy orders,” DeBernardo said.
But Judge’s order, the Franciscans, declined to sponsor him.
“We are very proud of our brother’s legacy and we have shared his story with many people,” the Rev. Kevin Mullen, leader of the Franciscans’ New York-based Holy Name Province, told The Associated Press. “We leave it to our brothers in the generations to come to inquire about sainthood.”
Escalante implored DeBernardo to encourage a grassroots movement to take up the cause.
On Sept. 11, 2021 — two decades after Judge’s death — New Ways Ministry put out the call for individuals and organizations to form an association to sponsor Judge’s canonization.
In a statement, New Ways Ministry co-founder Sister Jeannine Gramick said she was hopeful people will come forward “so that this priest who symbolized God’s love to so many different communities will be recognized for the way he himself responded to God’s love.”
CORRECTION (Sept. 11, 2021, 12:52 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the publication year of an article in The Irish Times about the Rev. Mychal Judge. It was published in 2018, not 2011.
LGBTQI History: A Sonoma County Timeline 1947-2000.Wednesdays 1:30-3pm. Online via Zoom. Wed. 9/15 we’ll be talking about the historical significance of Sonoma County LGBT bars. Look forward to seeing you there! Please contact me to enroll and get a Zoom invite: [email protected]
Philosopher and feminist icon Judith Butler has explained why “rethinking the category of ‘woman’” to include trans women is vital in “securing greater freedoms for women”.
Butler’s 1990 book Gender Trouble is a text that proved foundational to the development of queer theory.
In an interview with The Guardian, Butler reflected on the book 31 years later, and explained that “it was meant to be a critique of heterosexual assumptions within feminism, but it turned out to be more about gender categories”.
Before the book’s publication, and since, “what it means to be a woman does not remain the same from decade to decade”, they said.
They continued: “The category of woman can and does change, and we need it to be that way.
“Politically, securing greater freedoms for women requires that we rethink the category of ‘women’ to include those new possibilities.
“The historical meaning of gender can change as its norms are re-enacted, refused or recreated. So we should not be surprised or opposed when the category of women expands to include trans women.”
Judith Butler also insisted that they believe the ever-changing nature of the term “women” is also a concept that should be applied to the term “men”.
“Since we are also in the business of imagining alternate futures of masculinity,” they said, “we should be prepared and even joyous to see what trans men are doing with the category of ‘men’.”
Judith Butler slams TERFs as ‘allied’ with right-wing fascism
Links between the “gender critical” feminist movement and the far-right have been well-documented, and Judith Butler said: “It is very appalling and sometimes quite frightening to see how trans-exclusionary feminists have allied with right-wing attacks on gender.”
The “anti-gender ideology” is not seeking to dispute the definition of gender, but to eradicate it “as a concept or discourse, a field of study, an approach to social power” altogether, they said.
Butler added: “The TERFs [trans exclusionary radical feminists] and the so-called gender critical writers have also rejected the important work in feminist philosophy of science showing how culture and nature interact… in favour of a regressive and spurious form of biological essentialism.”
They described that the “anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times”, and so TERFs “will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism”.
Are you ready if disaster strikes? Learn how to prepare yourself and your loved ones in case of an emergency with virtual events through the Emergency Preparedness: Sonoma Ready Series!
Advanced registration is required. See a selection of events below. Some events offered with simultaneous Spanish interpretation.
Listen to experts review different brands/types of products for your Go Bag at the Go Bag Product Review event on Saturday, September 18, at 11:00 am. Register here.
How to Home Harden on Saturday, September 25, at 11:00 am, will teach you how to “harden” buildings and create good defensible space so your home can better resist the heat and embers of wildfire. Register here.
In this special storytime on Wednesday, September 29, at 10:30 am, local author Emma Bland Smith will read her book Odin: Dog Hero of the Fires and share behind the scenes photos. Register here for Family Storytime “Odin: Dog Hero of the Fires.”
Join us on Wednesday, September 29, at 6 :00 for a film screening of the award-winning documentary film Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future, then ask questions to our panel of firewise Sonoma County professionals and film directors Kevin White and Stephen Most in a Q&A discussion. Register here.Get Prepared
Thank you for being a member of the Sonoma County Library community. Visit us online or in person at one of our branches. Be sure to check out open jobs at Sonoma County Library here.
Es necesario registrarse con anticipación. Vea una selección de eventos a continuación. Algunos eventos tendrán interpretación simultánea al español.
Escuche a los expertos revisar diferentes marcas/tipos de productos para su bolsa de emergencia en el evento Go Bag Product Review el sábado 18 de septiembre a las 11:00 am. Regístrese aquí. Este evento virtual se estará presentada en inglés con interpretación simultánea al español.
Cómo endurecer su hogarel sábado 25 de septiembre, a las 11:00 am, le enseñará cómo “endurecer” los edificios y crear un buen espacio defensible para que su hogar pueda resistir mejor el calor y las brasas de los incendios forestales. Regístrese aquí.
En este especial hora de cuentos el miércoles 29 de septiembre, a las 10:30 am, la autora local Emma Bland Smith leerá su libro Odin: Dog Hero of the Fires y compartirá fotos detrás de escena. Regístrese aquípara Family Storytime “Odin: Dog Hero of the Fires”. Este evento se ofrecerá solamente en inglés.
Acompáñenos el miércoles, 29 de septiembre, a las 6:00 para una proyección del premiado documental Wilder Than Wild: Fire, Forests and the Future y una conversación con nuestro panel de profesionales del fuego del Condado de Sonoma y los directores de cine Kevin White y Stephen Most. Regístrese aquí. Este evento se ofrecerá solamente en inglés.Prepárese
Gracias por ser miembro de la comunidad de Bibliotecas del Condado de Sonoma. Visítenos en línea o en persona en una de nuestras sucursales. Asegúrese de consultar los trabajos disponible en la Biblioteca del Condado de Sonoma aquí.
¿Preguntas? Por favor llame a su biblioteca local o haga clic para mandar un mensaje.
The lawyer who fought for – and won – equal marriage for gay, lesbian and bisexual people says she is “optimistic” about the future of trans rights in the US.
Mary L. Bonauto, an LGBT+ civil rights lawyer, represented the gay plaintiffs in the momentous Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which paved the way for same-sex marriage in the US in 2015.
She had been fighting for marriage equality since the 1990s – and led on the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case which saw Massachusetts become the first state where same-sex couples could legally marry in 2004.
In an op-ed for USA Today, Bonauto compared her experiences fighting for equal marriage to the fight for trans rights.
“Throughout my decades as an LGBTQ civil rights lawyer, I’ve seen each step forward for inclusion met with someone repackaging old tropes about our communities,” she wrote.
American people ‘are in fact on the side of’ trans rights, lawyer argues
In her essay about “why I’m optimistic about transgender rights”, Bonauto continued: “But soon the personal stories of gay couples – people who fell in love and committed to a life together against all odds – broke through into our national understanding, and more Americans came to realise that LGBTQ people simply wanted to marry for their love and commitment to another person.”
It’s Bonauto’s view that the same is now happening for trans people in the US.
US states are introducing “dozens of bills” to “restrict transgender people’s access to opportunities and freedoms the rest of us take for granted”, she wrote, adding that these conversations “are often based on misinformation”.
“[Rather it’s] disinformation promoted by politicians trying to stoke fear and advance harmful policies,” Bonauto said.
“But when harmful stereotypes are replaced by real conversations with transgender people and accurate education, we see that the American people are in fact strongly on the side of inclusion for transgender and LGBQ people, and we have unfinished business in making that full inclusion real.”
Detailing the long journey to marriage equality in the US, and the tactical legal and social battles that paved the way for the ultimate demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, Bonauto concludes: “Among the lessons of marriage equality is that when we all get to know each other, familiarity replaces fear and inclusion seems obvious.
“As people heard from loving and committed couples, they could see that we simply wanted to live our lives. That’s just as true for transgender young people today.
“The legislative efforts and lawsuits underway are showing young transgender people making a simple point – this is just who I am – and their families and classmates are standing next to them and for their common humanity.
“As time has proved again and again, we all benefit when we are open to walking in another’s shoes, when our laws require fairness, and when we further equality, inclusion and opportunity for everyone.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday will preside over a meeting of his country’s anti-hate crimes commission after an anti-gay attack in Madrid.
El País, a Spanish newspaper, reported eight hooded men attacked a 20-year-old man on Sunday in Madrid’s Malaseña neighborhood. A police spokesperson told El País the assailants also verbally abused the man and cut his lip.
“There is no place for hate in our society,” tweeted Sánchez on Monday. “I profoundly condemn this homophobic attack. We will not allow it. We will continue working towards an open and diverse country in which nobody is afraid to be who they are, in which everyone can live free and secure.”
Isabel Rodríguez, a spokesperson for the Spanish government, announced Sánchez will chair the meeting on Friday.
“Hate crimes must receive the highest social and political condemnation,” said Rodríguez, according to Reuters.
The murder of Samuel Luis Muñiz, a 24-year-old gay man, in northwestern Spain’s Galicia region in July sparked outrage across the country and around the world.
Rubén López of the Madrid Observatory against LGTBphobia, told El País there have been 103 reported anti-gay assaults in Madrid so far in 2021.