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Facts Are the Resistance: Combating LGBTQ Disinformation

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What are the effects of a ceaseless barrage of political attacks on the LGBTQ community?

Something like a scene from a horror movie animated into real life.   

This article is in response to a press event attended by GLAAD Media Institute (GMI) organized by Human Rights Watch – a global organization that defends the rights of people worldwide – for the release of a new report titled “They’re Ruining People’s Lives”: Bans on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Youth in the US. 

As new GLAAD research was released simultaneously, it is clear that there is an abundant overlap in findings: There are catastrophic effects from the lethal assault on the LGBTQ community with a flagrant focus on transgender people. 

“We lead with facts first,” Tristan Marra, GLAAD’s Vice President of Research and Reports said.

Marra is responsible for making sure GLAAD’s emerging data gets out to the public in a way that helps shape accurate conversations about the at-large LGBTQ community. 

“Facts are thought-provoking, facts build empathy, and facts are a bridge to greater understanding. Thoughtful research that shines a light on our lived experiences and the realities we face creates opportunities for cultural change,” Marra continued. 

Today, the basic rights of trans people, about 1% of the population, continue to get eviscerated year-by-year, state-by-state, and now, under a federal administration dedicated to stripping trans people of their dignity. 

Twenty-five states have bans in place for best practice healthcare for trans youth, and with at least 17 lawsuits challenging different states’ bans, according to the Movement Advancement Project (MAPS). 

“They’re Ruining People’s Lives” documents the harm caused by bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth in the U.S. It highlights the severe toll this takes on the mental and physical well-being of transgender youth,” the lead researcher and writer of the report Yasemin Smallens said at the press conference. Smallens is an officer in the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.

The report is based on the interviews of 51 people including transgender youth, parents, healthcare providers, and advocates across 19 states, and illuminates the barbaric effects of transgender healthcare bans on transgender people in the U.S. 

Of those interviewed, 11 families told Human Rights Watch they were compelled to travel out of state for care, often making regular trips to consult physicians, or obtain prescriptions. Four youth were unable to begin care due to legal barriers combined with geographic and financial obstacles. One family relocated to another state to secure reliable access to care and escape an environment hostile to trans people. Seven other youth attempted suicide in relation to the bans; three attempts led to hospitalizations.

Likewise, GLAAD’s latest research affirms these experiences, and further predicts expectations of violence in the future. 

The 2025 ALERT Desk report released late last month shows that ​​over the past year, 52% of all anti-LGBTQ incidents were targeting transgender and gender non-conforming people (485 out of 932 incidents). GLAAD’s 2025 Accelerating Acceptance also reported that two in three LGBTQ adults (68%) expect the violence or threats against LGBTQ Americans to increase within the next year.

For many, this data saves lives, even when it reveals the effects of maleficence. 

“Research like this, reports like this, are used in court. They’re used to build policy in the legislature. They’re used to advocate for so much in a real, tangible way because there are reports out that are filled with misinformation and disinformation,” Executive Director of PFLAG NYC Clark Wolff Hamel said at the press conference.

PFLAG NYC has services directly targeting the disinformation that prompts the bans that encourage such violence against a single community.

A large part of those services are educating families, the education system, state and federal legislature, and community.

That’s why producing research, Hamel continued, that backs correct information along with actual experiences from real people of the community sets an “incredibly important” precedent. 

Hamel and Smallens were joined by Meredithe McNamara MD MSc, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine. NcNamara says that treatment described as gender-affirming care has been used for years. 

She says that people lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of gender-affirming care for cisgender (or non-transgender) people is surgery. McNamara is trained in adolescent medicine and started learning about gender-affirming care in college. Now, with 15 years of experience, she advocates for trans truth through science and facts.

“Amongst youth, 97% of surgeries that could be described as for gender-affirming reasons were in cisgender teen boys who had an excess of breast tissue, and felt that did not align with their gender identity and wanted surgery,” McNamara said to the audience. 

The Yale professor said bans are contradictory, and focus on a minority of people who receive gender-affirming care, while purposely mystifying the majority of people (non-transgender) who receive this care without any issues. The internal inconsistencies and conflicts of a broad ban for trans healthcare will create confusion, and codify dangerous procedures on intersex infants. 

In fact, GLAAD’s Alert Desk found that the increasing attacks on trans communities directly coincides with at least four executive orders from the Trump administration that specifically demean and discriminate against trans Americans, and following $215M in political ads during the 2024 campaign targeting trans people. 

What those ads don’t state is that nearly all trans youth continue their care into adulthood, most studies show, and satisfaction rates are high. Despite its proven efficacy, legislative bans have disrupted or denied access to this health care, replacing nuanced medical decisions with blunt, all-encompassing restrictions.

For now, as a need for change bellows out of the hearts and minds of LGBTQ people everywhere, verifiable truth in the face of disinformation can act as a basis for successful resistance efforts for trans equality. “The integrity of data and the power of research as a center of truth and a catalyst for change are critically important. Measuring is the first step in moving the needle on acceptance,” Marra said.

More about the GLAAD Media Institute:
The GLAAD Media Institute provides training, consultation, and actionable research to develop an army of social justice ambassadors for all marginalized communities to champion acceptance and amplify media impact. Using the best practices, tools, and techniques we’ve perfected over the past 30 years, the GLAAD Media Institute turns education into armor for today’s culture war—transforming individuals into compelling storytellers, media-savvy navigators, and mighty ambassadors whose voices break through the noise and incite real change. Activate with the GLAAD Media Institute now at glaad.org/institute.

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QTBIPOC Monthly Hang Out Happens Monday Night at Positive Images

Monday, July 7·6:00 – 7:30pm

Positive Images, 200 Montgomery Dr c, Santa Rosa, CA 95404, USA

notes

Join us for art activities at our first hang out of 2023! Materials and snacks provided! This group is BIPOC only and will be happening the 1st Monday of every month. It is meant to be a social hangout space for Black, Indigenous, Queer, and Trans people of color (18+). Se habla español! For questions please reach out to marian@posimages.org

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Police Scotland announces trans women will be searched by male police officers

Police Scotland has announced that trans women held in custody by police in the country will now be strip-searched by male officers, not female. 

The decision comes over two months after the UK Supreme Court ruling. The landmark case brought by gender-critical group For Women Scotland against the Scottish government found that the legal definition of a woman excludes trans women and the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ under the 2010 Equality Act refers to biology.

The ruling has had wide-ranging implications for the trans and non-binary community, particularly in policies detailing single-sex spaces, inclusion and discrimination. Weeks after the ruling, the Football Association, the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Scottish parliament announced bans on trans women in female spaces and women’s activities. 

In new interim guidance around searching members of the trans community, Police Scotland, which is the UK’s second-largest police force after the Met, issued a five-page document, which states that searches will be conducted “on the basis of biological sex”. 

However, if someone requests an officer of their affirmed gender to perform the search, “efforts will be made to ensure an appropriate officer conducts the search, where this is operationally viable to do so”.

In these scenarios, written consent from the authorising officer, the person being searched and the officer/s conducting the search will be required. 

The National Police Chiefs’ Council and the British Transport Police have also announced that trans women will be strip-searched by male officers, with LGBTQ+ campaigners warning that the decision “opens the door to abuse”.

Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton said via the press release: “This is a complex and important area of policing and searching members of the public is a significant intrusion of their personal liberty and privacy.

“It is critical that as an organisation, Police Scotland continues to fulfil its legal duties as well as ensuring officers and staff feel confident that they are conducting searches lawfully.

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“While the guidance will bring clarity to both our colleagues and members of the public, we are acutely aware of the impact and depth of feeling around this issue, both among the transgender community and those who hold gender critical views.

“Our priority continues to be ensuring that in all our interactions we police and make decisions in line with our service values of integrity, fairness, respect and upholding human rights.”

The interim guidance remains under review “with ongoing legal advice and engagement with key stakeholders”, amid the pending publication of revised national guidance. Police Scotland added that its wider review into sex and gender is ongoing, and further updates would “be issued in due course”. 

A spokesperson of the Scottish government told the BBC: “It is for Police Scotland to decide their operational processes, including their guidance for officers, and ensure they are in line with legal obligations.

“The Scottish government has made clear we accept the Supreme Court ruling and that public bodies have a duty to comply with the law.”

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Starmer says bodies must ban trans people from single-sex spaces ‘as soon as possible’

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Keir Starmer has urged public bodies currently not enforcing the Supreme Court’s gender ruling to bar trans people from single-sex spaces “as soon as possible”.

The court verdict, handed down in April, deemed that the legal definition of the protected characteristic of “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act referred to “biological sex” only, so excluding trans people.

In response, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the UK’s equality watchdog, issued interim guidance which called for transgender men and women to be banned from single-sex facilities which matched their gender and, in some cases, from using those which matched their “biological sex”.

When asked at the NATO summit in The Hague if hospitals, universities and government departments should implement the findings of the Supreme Court into internal policies, the prime minister said: “We’ve accepted the ruling, welcomed the ruling, and everything else flows from that, as far as I’m concerned.

“Therefore, all guidance needs to be consistent with the ruling and we need to get to that position as soon as possible.”

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters, said Starmer’s comment was an “important intervention from the prime minister” given the “huge number of public bodies failing to implement the Supreme Court judgement and therefore operating outside the law”.

She went on to say: “Political leadership is essential if women, whose rights are being stolen, are not to be forced to turn to the courts, where public bodies will end up losing – at great expense to taxpayers.”

The Supreme Court’s verdict was expected to have wide-ranging implications for the trans community, and the Scottish and UK parliament buildings, the Football Association, Financial Conduct Authority and England and Wales Cricket Boardhave already moved to ban trans people from single-sex spaces and services.

The EHRC’s public consultation period into changes to its Code of Conduct, which aims to “support service providers, public bodies and associations to understand their duties under the Equality Act and put them into practice” closes today. A mass lobby took place at Westminster last week, where trans people hoped to voice concerns to their MPs.

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The situation has left many trans people feeling fear for their rights, and Green co-leader Carla Denyer warned that the EHRC’s interim guidance would “act as a bigot’s charter”, with the potential to unleash “vigilante harassment, intimidation and violence against trans people when they try to use facilities in public spaces”.

Starmer has been criticised for flip-flopping on trans rights before, having changed his mind to say that he no longer believed trans women are women, and trans men are men.

Following the Supreme Court judgement, he told the BBC: “I welcome the decision, which has given us much-needed clarity, and I think for those now drawing up guidance, it’s a much clearer position. I’m really pleased the court has clarified the position. We can move on from there and that’s very helpful. I welcome that.”

Starmer went on to say that “a woman is an adult female”, and when asked by ITV West Country if he believed trans women are women, he replied: “I think the Supreme Court has answered that question. A woman is an adult female. It’s important that we see the judgement for what it is: a welcome step forward. We need to move [on] and ensure all guidance is in the right place according to that judgement.”

In 2020, Labour committed to introducing self-ID for trans people but by 2023, the party had shifted to a version of Gender Recognition Act reform that kept a “medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria”.

The Supreme Court case was brought against the Scottish government by gender-critical For Women Scotland, supported by author JK Rowling, following a lower court’s finding that sex was not limited to biology.

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MAGA gov candidate threatened city’s funding over its conversion therapy ban. The city caved.

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For months, the city of Columbia, South Carolina, has been steeped in a battle over conversion therapy in the state capital.

The Republican candidate for governor is for conversion therapy and threatened the city with withdrawing state funds over the issue. The Democratic candidate running for mayor of Columbia is against it; she called efforts to reinstate the debunked practice “a betrayal.”

On Tuesday, the conversion therapy advocates won when the city council voted to overturn its ban, which has been in place since 2021.

The 4-3 council vote reaffirmed another vote with the same result a week earlier. That vote followed months of delayed city council action as activists flooded City Hall chambers urging officials not to repeal the ban, according to the Post & Courier.

The council’s reconsideration began in April with a letter sent by state Attorney General Alan Wilson (R), who’s running for governor in 2026.

Wilson argued the city’s conversion therapy ordinance violated state and federal law, and he enlisted the South Carolina Legislature to introduce a provision that would strip Columbia of $3.7 million in state funding if the council didn’t overturn the ordinance.

Since then, every city council meeting has been packed with LGBTQ+ advocates, licensed mental health workers, and ACLU members urging the council to resist Wilson’s raw power play aimed at riling his MAGA base at the expense of the LGBTQ+ community.

Wilson formally announced his run for governor on Monday.

In the end, current Mayor Daniel Rickenmann (R) and three other council members voted to lift the ban, citing the threat of massive funding cuts.

The loss in state money would be too significant, they argued, over an ordinance some claim was largely symbolic: over the life of the ban, no licensed counselors had been fined or reported in violation of the ordinance. Infractions could have earned counselors a $500 fine.

“For y’all to give in and capitulate without a battle of any kind is strange to me. Where is the outrage?” asked Dr. Isabelle Mandell at Tuesday’s meeting, reported by the South Carolina Daily Gazette. “You haven’t tried. You haven’t fought it.”

“The job now is just to get boots on the ground, spread the message that, ‘Hey, we need new leadership in these positions,’” said Justice Hills, who has shown up to every meeting since April to urge council members to keep the ban.

In a statement following the vote, Columbia’s LGBTQ+ Harriet Hancock Centerurged the community to persevere.

“Our work doesn’t stop with this vote,” the center’s director wrote. “For those who are asking, ‘What now?’ ‘What’s next?’ I encourage you to turn our anger into action.”

Four of the city council’s members are up for reelection in November.

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Names of Sam Nordquist, Jiggly Caliente, Lady Chablis, and more added to Stonewall Wall of Honor

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Names of seven transgender trailblazers were added to the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall Inn Thursday night.

The Wall of Honor posthumously celebrates LGBTQ+ activists, artists, and others who played crucial roles in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. This year’s inductees are all transgender at a time when trans Americans are under attack from the federal government and elsewhere. They were inducted by the National LGBTQ Task Force and the International Imperial Court Council.

“This year’s focus on transgender trailblazers and changemakers underscores the importance of recognizing our history and the current climate for our trans siblings,” Cathy Renna, communications director for the Task Force, said in apress release. “As we continue to fiercely battle against attacks on our trans and nonbinary communities, we are honored to uplift their legacies. Their courage inspires our ongoing fight for liberation, both within the Task Force family and across every queer advocacy organization.”

“In these times, when there are radical and extreme campaigns trying to erase our transgender community, the Imperial Courts and Task Force are reminding us all that transgender people have not only always been here, but have also been some of our community’s most dedicated activists and leaders,” added Nicole Murray-Ramirez, founder of the Wall of Honor, a San Diego city commissioner, and titular head of the Imperial Court System. This year’s honorees are Ruddy Martinez, Chilli Pepper, Lynn Conway, Alan L. Hart, Jiggly Caliente, the Lady Chablis, and Sam Nordquist.

Martinez, a.k.a. “Mami Ruddys,” was the matriarch of Puerto Rico’s LGBTQ+ community and a pioneering drag artist, activist, and trans woman who, since the 1980s, opened her home to young queer people rejected by their families.

Chilli Pepper appeared on talk shows, including Phil Donahue’s and Oprah Winfrey’s, in the 1980s to discuss life as a trans woman and debunk harmful stereotypes about trans and queer people. She also was an activist for AIDS awareness. 

Conway was an electrical engineer, computer scientist, and trans activist. While facing discrimination as a trans woman in her field, she created a simplified method of microchip design and helped develop the Very Large-Scale Integration design. 

Hart, a physicist and writer, was among the first people to receive gender-affirming surgery and identify and live as a man. He attended medical school after the typhoid epidemic in 1912 and contributed to tuberculosis research. 

Jiggly Caliente, a.k.a. Bianca Castro-Arabejo, died at age 44 on April 27 of this year. The Filipino-American drag queen rose to fame in season 4 of RuPaul’s Drag Race and also starred in the sixth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars. She was a resident judge of Drag Race Philippines and appeared in Pose as Veronica Ferocity. 

The Lady Chablis, a performer in Savannah, Georgia, was portrayed in John Berendt’s nonfiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which highlighted the city’s underground nightlife scene and a scandalous murder. She played herself in the film based on the book. While publicizing the film, she charmed journalists and audiences with her charismatic presence.

Nordquist, a Black trans man from Minnesota, died in February in upstate New York after being tortured for more than a month. Seven people have been charged with first-degree murder in connection with his death. All have pleaded not guilty.

Nordquist’s family attended the ceremony. “We just wanted to thank everybody for acknowledging Sam and having Sam being honored on the wall,” his mother, Linda Nordquist, said at the event, according to TV station WHEC. “There’s no words to express how we’re feeling.”

The Wall of Honor was inaugurated in 2019 with 50 names to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Each year, additional honorees are added, joining a living memorial of LGBTQ+ legends such as Leslie Jordan, Gloria Allen, Terrence McNally, Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, Keith Haring, José Sarria, Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, and Matthew Shepard.

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Last week’s Supreme Court rulings show just how fragile marriage equality may be

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The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week, and true to form, the right-wing majority went out of its way to prove that they think their job is to give Donald Trump and Christian nationalists as much power as possible. That the Court’s radical decisions coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Obergefell ruling, which legalized marriage equality, should give one pause as to where the future of marriage may be headed.

In perhaps the most shocking ruling, the six conservative justices did away with the national injunctions prohibiting Trump from ignoring birthright citizenship.The fact that birthright citizenship is as solid a constitutional construct as can be imagined – it has more than 100 years of rulings to support it – didn’t figure into the justices’ reasoning. They looked at a technical issue, which is whether district courts can make a decision that applies nationwide, and decided the courts cannot.

Birthright citizenship is such a basic issue that the ruling blessed Trump‘s lawlessness. If Trump decided that slavery wasn’t, in fact, illegal, courts couldn’t issue a nationwide injunction saying otherwise. Instead, cases would have to wend their way through the system before they would end up at the Supreme Court. The conservatives also may be hinting that they’re okay with doing away with birthright citizenship, which would be an extreme act.

What makes the ruling all the more reprehensible is that when Joe Biden was president, he was subjected to multiple nationwide injunctions from Trump-appointed judges. The Supreme Court didn’t have any issue with those injunctions. It was only when Trump resumed office that the justices suddenly found the problem to be a burden.

In another ruling, the majority decided that parents can pull their children from school rather than let them learn that LGBTQ+ people exist by reading some sweet storybooks. “The storybooks unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.

This is just the most recent example of the right-wing justices favoring the rights of religious conservatives above anyone else’s. The fact that Alito wrote the decision is not surprising. The decision is laced with thinly disguised homophobia. Alito frets about “young impressionable children,” as if they might be recruited to be LGBTQ+. He talks about people who are “apparently” transgender, dismissing their reality. He shudders at the idea that the books present same-sex weddings as “cause for celebration.”

As a reminder, Alito has made it abundantly clear that he would like nothing more than to overturn Obergefell. Justice Clarence Thomas would like to as well.

There’s a lot of anxiety about the stability of marriage equality. Jim Obergefell, whose effort to have his marriage recognized after his husband John Arthur died from ALS led to the case and ruling, has said “the Supreme Court could very well overturn” marriage equality.

For many experts, that seems unlikely. GLAD Law’s Mary Bonauto, who represented Obergefell before the Supreme Court, says the Court doesn’t have the appetite for such a drastic move.

“The Court understands this issue is about the foundational importance of family,” she told The New York Times. “That’s why it has described marriage as ‘the most important relation in life,’ a ‘basic liberty,’ essential to ‘the pursuit of happiness.’” A lot of others agree.

However, these are not normal times. And this is definitely not a normal Court. It has already demonstrated its disdain for precedent and public opinion in overturning a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. Moreover, this term, the conservative majority has gone out of its way to pave the way for the kind of changes that Project 2025 has put in writing. That includes enshrining marriage as only being between a man and a woman – the very thing that the majority in last week’s ruling was letting parents ensure their children would experience.

Perhaps overturning Obergefell outright would be too much (although that’s a gamble). But the justices could erode it. They could let the Kim Davises of the country opt out of providing marriage licenses on religious freedom grounds, thus creating marriage deserts. Davis is appealing her case up to the Supreme Court, and her attorney, Mat Staver of the anti-LGBTQ+ legal group Liberty Counsel, would like nothing more than to land a blow against marriage equality.

The current majority on the Court has made it clear that it’s folly to try to argue with them about accepted legal precepts. They pretty much figure out what their ideological interests are and then justify them with legal word salad. Logically, there is no reason for the Court to revisit Obergefell. But in the Trump era, logic is in short supply, while raw power is all the rage.

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Supreme Court backs parents seeking to opt their kids out of LGBTQ books in elementary schools

The Supreme Court on Friday bolstered religious rights as it ruled in favor of parents who objected to LGBTQ-themed books that a Maryland county approved for use in elementary school classrooms.

In a 6-3 vote, the court backed the parents’ claim that the Montgomery County Board of Education’s decision not to allow an opt-out option for their children violated their religious rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects religious expression.

“The board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+ inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that is often receptive to religious claims. The liberal justices dissented.

“The result will be chaos for this nation’s public schools,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion. 

“Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parents’ beliefs,” she added.

Supreme Court Public Schools LGBTQ Books
A selection of books featuring LGBTQ characters that are part of a Supreme Court, on April, 15, 2025, in Washington. Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP file

The dispute arose in 2022 when the school board in the diverse county just outside Washington revised its English language arts curriculum. 

The board determined that it wanted more storybooks to feature LGBTQ elements to better reflect some of the families who live in the area.

Approved books include “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” which features a gay character who is getting married, and “Born Ready,” about a transgender child who wants to identify as a boy.

The school board said that although the books are in classrooms and available for children to pick up, teachers are not required to use them in class.

Initially the school board indicated that parents would be able to opt their children out of exposure to the books, but it quickly changed course, suggesting that would be too difficult to implement.

Plaintiffs include Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, a Muslim couple who have a son in elementary school. Members of the Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches also sued, as did a parent group called Kids First that has members of various faiths. 

They said they had a right to protect their children from being taught content that conflicts with their religious beliefs by expressing support for same-sex relationships and transgender rights.

The Trump administration backed the challengers.

A federal judge and the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of the school board.

The Supreme Court has in the past backed religious rights in cases involving conflicting arguments made by LGBTQ rights advocates. In one recent ruling, the court in 2023 ruled in favor of a Christian web designer who refused to work on same-sex weddings.

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Supreme Court clears the way for increased age verification for porn sites

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that age verification “porn ID” laws are an appropriate way to regulate content for minors without infringing on the First Amendment rights of adults. 

The ruling, in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, has major implications for the accessibility of any online speech the government could decide is harmful to children. 

Laws that potentially curb civil liberties are subject to rigorous legal standards. Two lower courts had applied different standards to the Texas law, and the Supreme Court decided that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ lower standard was correct in this case. Strict scrutiny, the standard applied by the Texas district court, requires that a law must be narrowly tailored, further a compelling government interest and be the least restrictive option. The 5th Circuit used a lower standard, known as rational basis, to evaluate the law, essentially saying it has no potential to jeopardize freedom of speech.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas held that the law should be evaluated based on intermediate scrutiny, the standard in between, because it only “incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.” Laws must further an important government interest and do so by “means substantially related to that interest.” Texas’ law survives this test, Thomas wrote. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

By saying the law does not have to meet strict scrutiny, the opinion paves the legal way for increased site-based age verification on the web. The privacy concerns accompanying the uploading of verifiable identification to sensitive websites are not seen as overly burdensome to adults.

Consequently, the court ruled restrictions on protected free speech for adults can be applied in the name of protecting children.

In 2023, Texas passed a law requiring websites with at least one-third sexual content — characterized as “material harmful to minors” — to verify the age of users using government identification or other reliable techniques. The law was initially blocked by a district judge, but then the preliminary injunction was overruled by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The law has been in effect while the Supreme Court considered the case. 

Many digital civil rights groups have raised the alarm over privacy risks of web-based age verification. Texas, like the majority of states, does not have a state-recognized digital identification system. Websites would need to contract with a third- party company that handles photos of physical IDs or runs face-scans to determine the age of users. The risk is compounded as a user typically must verify their age every time they try to view a page. Device-based age verification, where pieces of technology like phones or computers are age-locked, generally only requires identification once.

Critics of age verification laws worry how state governments will determine what kinds of content qualify as “harmful to minors,” especially as right-wing extremists increasingly characterise any type of LGBTQ+ media as inappropriate for children — or outright consider the existence of queer people to be pornographic. The ability to easily access information about reproductive health or dissenting political opinions could be targeted by laws championing children down the line.

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A bipartisan effort looks to rectify tax inequities for same-sex married couples

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation helping bring financial equality to same-sex married couples. 

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine reintroduced the Refund Equality Act on Thursday, the 10-year anniversary of the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling, which legalized marriage equality as a constitutional right. 

The act would allow married same-sex couples to amend tax returns dating back to when they were married, which would help them secure about $55 million in refunds, according a 2021 report by the Joint Committee on Taxation and cited by the senators. 

The reintroduced bill would:

  • Allow same-sex couples who were married in jurisdictions that recognized same-sex marriage before 2013 – including Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C – to file for income tax adjustments for those years, back to the date of their marriage.
  • Create exceptions for two tax code limitations: One that gives married couples three years to begin filing jointly after their most recent separate returns, and another, which requires a claim for tax credits or refunds to be filed within three years of the initial return.
  • Create exemptions that include adjustments to capital loss carryback and adjustments for retired service members who receive an award of disability compensation.

The bill is being reintroduced alongside Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s Equal Dignity for Married Taxpayers Act, which Senator Warren co-sponsors. That legislation would protect LGBTQ+ Americans from inequality and discrimination by removing gender-specific references to marriage in the tax code.

Warren’s office said that the legislation will be packaged together and reintroduced in the House of Representatives by U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, a Democrat from California, as part of the PRIDE Act. 

Warren’s office also notes that the Democrat had originally introduced the act back in 2017 with more than 70 colleagues in Congress.

“No one should ever have to pay more in taxes because of who they love,” Warren said in a statement. “I’m fighting to reverse this discrimination and get couples the refunds they are owed.”

Collins echoed the sentiment in a statement.

“For years, legally married same-sex couples were not allowed to file joint tax returns and missed out on refunds they otherwise would have received,” Collins said. She added that the bipartisan bill would be a “practical step of giving those couples the opportunity to file amended returns and receive the full refunds they are entitled to.”

Chu brought up the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, which forced the federal government to recognize marriage equality in the states where it was legal at the time. At the center of the case was widow Edie Windsor’s challenge that she and her late wife should have had the same financial benefits as opposite-sex couples. 

“For years, same-sex married couples were denied the ability to file taxes jointly and claim tax refunds they had rightfully earned because of the Defense of Marriage Act. Twelve years ago, the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision corrected this injustice, but IRS rules about amending tax returns have prevented these couples from claiming all of the refunds they should have earned,” Chu said. “The PRIDE Act would finally address this by enabling same-sex couples to rightfully claim the tax refunds they deserve as well as update the tax code to promote dignity and equality by erasing gendered language of husband and wife that leaves out same-sex couples. This Pride Month, I am proud to join with my House and Senate colleagues in introducing this pro-equality legislation.”

Wyden said the legislation is needed as attempts to erode marriage equality increase by some conservative lawmakers. 

“The right to marry whoever you love may be recognized as the law of the land, but the work toward true equality is far from over,” Senator Wyden said. “The opponents of marriage equality are working to roll back the clock on the progress we’ve made in recent years and decades. That’s all the more reason to root out the remnants of discrimination from the laws on the books, including in our tax code.”

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