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Republican Pa. governor nominee opposes LGBTQ rights

Republican leadership in the Keystone State are expressing quiet alarm over the emergence of radical-right state senator who secured his place as the party’s nominee in the race against Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, who is himself currently serving as the commonwealth’s attorney general.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who represents Cumberland, Adams, Franklin and York Counties in the South Central Pennsylvania area bordering Maryland, was not seen as a truly viable candidate in the primary race to be the party standard-bearer until he was endorsed by former President Trump. 

Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race has serious implications for the outcome of the 2024 presidential election cycle as well. The commonwealth is a strategic swing state and the occupant of the governor’s chair in Harrisburg will lend considerable influence to a final vote count.

Mastriano is a polarizing figure within the state’s Republican Party. 

The retired U.S. Army colonel has campaigned at political events that included QAnon adherents, he espoused a political agenda that embraced Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, rejected measures taken to protect Pennsylvanians including masks in the coronavirus pandemic, holding an anti-vaccine “Medical Freedom Rally” rally on the state Capitol steps days after declaring his candidacy for the GOP governor’s primary race, and also mixing in messaging of Christian nationalism.

He also supports expanding gun rights in Pennsylvania and in the state Senate sponsored a bill to ban abortion once a heartbeat is detected.

NBC News noted that Mastriano pledged in his election night address that on the first day of his administration he would crack down on “critical race theory,” a catchall term Republicans have used to target school equity programs and new ways of teaching about race, transgender rights and any remaining COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

“CRT is over,” Mastriano declared. “Only biological females can play on biological females’ teams,” he added, and “you can only use the bathroom that your biology and anatomy says.”

His anti-LGBTQ views have long been part of his personal portfolio. The Washington Post reported that 21 years ago while attending the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College in 2001, then-Maj. Mastriano wrote his master’s thesis on a hypothetical “left-wing ‘Hitlerian putsch’” that was caused by “the depredations of the country’s morally debauched civilian leaders.” Among those “depredations,” in his words, was the “insertion of homosexuality into the military.” 

As the Post reported, his paper shows “disgust for anyone who doesn’t hold his view that homosexuality is a form of ‘aberrant sexual conduct.’”

The paper is posted on an official Defense Department website and lists Mastriano as the author at a time when he said he received a master’s degree from the school.

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Face to Face Hosts ‘Beerfest – The Good One’ Benefit June 11

BEERFEST-THE GOOD ONE RETURNS TO THE LUTHER BURBANK CENTER FOR THE ARTS IN SANTA ROSA. SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2022 1pm-4:30pm

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Enjoy over 40+ breweries & cideries pouring their best mouth-puckering sour beers, hop bombs, barrel-aged brews, and a wide range of other cool libations that make Northern California one of the best beer-producing regions in the world.Raffle Prizes, DJ, Games & More
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Positive Images & LGBTQ Connection to Host Prom for Queer Folks of High School Age

West County High School GSA, Positive Images, LGBTQ Connection, and the Sonoma County Library are proud to present Sonoma County Queer Prom 2022! WHO: Sonoma County High School Students, 14-18 years old (Attendees must bring a form of ID for entry, no exceptions to age range)WHEN: June 11, 2022, 6:30-10:30PMWHERE: The Barlow, Sebastopol, CATHEME: Fairytale ATTIRE: Dress up, dress down, costumes, cosplay – all attire is welcomeWest County High School GSA, Positive Images, LGBTQ Connection y la biblioteca del condado de Sonoma se enorgullecen de presentar Sonoma County Queer Prom 2022.

QUIÉN: Estudiantes de secundaria del condado de Sonoma, de 14 a 18 años (los asistentes deben traer una forma de identificación para ingresar, sin excepciones al rango de edad)

CUÁNDO: 11 de junio de 2022, 6:30-10:30 p. m.

DÓNDE: The Barlow, Sebastopol, California

TEMA: Cuento de hadas

VESTIMENTA: disfrazarse, vestirse informalmente, disfraces, cosplay: toda vestimenta es bienvenida
LINKS TO TICKETS, DONTATIONSAND 

VOLUNTEERING
Interested in purchasing tickets, donating or volunteering? Click on the pictures below to direct you to the appropriate link.¿Interesado en comprar boletos, donar o ser voluntario? Haga clic en las imágenes a continuación para dirigirlo al enlace apropiado.
Hope To See You There!

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LGBTQ authors of banned books speak out on why their stories matter

When George M. Johnson wrote their memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue about growing up Black and queer in America, they knew the calls to ban it would come.

“We live in a country where any story that is not centering some white, cis, heterosexual young boy or young girl…are not books they deem as acceptable and worthy,” Johnson told LGBTQ Nation. “I already knew from the beginning it would be banned in some places.”

But Johnson never expected it would go this far. All Boys Aren’t Blue, along with a myriad of other books that celebrate LGBTQ voices, has become the center of a national conservative movement to ban LGBTQ books – as well as books about race – from school libraries.

Across the country, parents and politicians alike are petitioning school boards and proposing laws to severely limit the type of content kids can access at school. In some states, laws have been proposed that would criminalize librarians and other school staff if they don’t remove certain books from the shelves.

Conservatives have claimed these books are inappropriate or even pornographic and that parents deserve more control over what their children can access. In many cases, their fights have been successful.

In at least eight states, for example, All Boys Aren’t Blue has been removed from schools, no doubt cutting off access to kids in dire need of stories like Johnson’s.

“I wanted [Black queer youth] to have the book that I wish I could have had growing up,” Johnson said. “A book that would help them be able to process things that they were going through.”

L.C. Rosen, author of Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) – the story of a queer high school junior who is stalked and harassed for writing a sex advice column – wrote his book for the same reason.

“Even at the most progressive schools, sex-ed still tends to be focused almost entirely on heterosexual procreation,” Rosen told LGBTQ Nation. “I wanted to make sure there was a sex-ed option for queer teenagers because a lot of us don’t get that early on.”

Rosen’s book has also faced repeated challenges across the country. He feels it is especially ironic, considering the book is about others trying to push the main character back into the closet for failing to meet their standards of a “well-behaved gay boy” as Rosen puts it.

“It feels like life imitating art in that people feel this is a bad example of a queer person and therefore should not be for teenagers,” he said.

But Rosen emphasized that it isn’t him these bans are hurting.

“I care about the teenagers who are actively seeing adults say that books about queer teens who have sex are inappropriate,” he said, “who are actually hearing adults in their communities say that queer teenagers shouldn’t exist and if they do exist they shouldn’t have sex. That is what they’re living with now, and that must be horrifying.”

Maia Kobabe, whose graphic memoir Gender Queer explores Kobabe’s identity as nonbinary and asexual, agrees.

“What it hurts is the community where the bans and challenges take place…Readers in communities who are already the most marginalized or have the least resources and are unable to purchase the book if it is removed from the library or might not feel safe bringing the book into their home…It’s those readers who might need it most whose access is being most limited,” Kobabe told LGBTQ Nation.

Johnson, Rosen, and Kobabe all mentioned that most people challenging their books have not even read them, or else have read one or two lines taken out of context.

But even more, they all disputed the basic notion that it’s problematic to write about sex for a teenage audience, and especially the homophobic notion that queer sex specifically is inherently inappropriate or pornographic.

The reality, Johnson said, is that teenagers are out having these experiences, and they deserve to be educated about them.

“There’s this whole notion that the youth this book is geared towards, which is 14-18, is too young to read it, even though some of the experiences that I had clearly happened prior to the age of 14,” Johnson said. “Saying this topic is too heavy for my 14, 15, or even 13 year old, when they could already be experiencing these things, is really just a denial of what the actual young adult experience is in this country.”

In a statement on the banning of his book, Rosen also pointed out that while his book has plenty of discussions about sex, it also has no actual sex scenes.

The authors also encouraged anyone against the banning of their books – as well as the many other books being challenged – to stand up and speak out about why the books matter to them.

“That can send a lot of encouragement and make sure librarians know there are also people who want the books to stay,” Kobabe said.

And students are indeed fighting back. They are organizing protests, suing their schools, establishing banned book clubs, and speaking out to make sure their perspectives are heard.

Rosen said he’s willing to have conversations with parents who want to discuss the nuances of just how far and how graphic a book for teens should go. He acknowledged that not everyone with reservations is necessarily homophobic, and he is happy to speak with those parents about why he feels his book is a crucial source of sex education. But he also said there is no reasoning with those who merely think queer sex is evil or that any depiction of queer teenagers is a bad thing.

“Essentially, it’ll help kids come out of the closet, and that’s exactly what they don’t want,” he said. “It has been proven that reading fiction increases your empathy…[Parents] don’t like the idea of their kids being more empathetic and understanding to other points of view because then they’ll realize how their parents have been complicit.”

Johnson emphasized that what parents really need to do is listen to their kids.

“If your child is interested in my Black queer sex, that’s a deeper conversation you might need to be having with your child. Denying them my book is not the issue. What you’re really denying them is the open communication and dialogue.”

As Rosen put it, “If reading queer books made you queer, then we would all be straight.”

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Talk of racism, sexuality in schools deeply divides Americans, poll finds

Americans are deeply divided over how much children in K-12 schools should be taught about racism and sexuality, according to a new poll released as Republicans across the country aim to make parental involvement in education a central campaign theme this election year.

Overall, Americans lean slightly toward expanding — not cutting back — discussions of racism and sexuality, but roughly 4 in 10 say the current approach is about right, including similar percentages across party lines. Still, the poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows stark differences between Republicans and Democrats who want to see schools make adjustments.

About 4 in 10 Republicans say teachers in local public schools discuss issues related to sexuality too much, while only about 1 in 10 say too little. Among Democrats, those numbers are reversed.

The findings reflect a sharply politicized national debate that has consumed local school boards and, increasingly, state capitols. Republicans see the fight over school curriculum as a winning culture war issue that will motivate their voters in the midterm elections.

In the meantime, a flurry of new state laws has been introduced, meant to curtail teaching about racism and sexuality and to establish a “parents’ bill of rights” that would champion curriculum transparency and allow parents to file complaints against teachers.

The push for legislation grew out of an elevated focus on K-12 schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, when angry parents crowded school board meetings to voice opposition to school closures, mask mandates and other restrictive measures intended to prevent the spread of illness.

“All that that’s happening these days kind of goes against the longer history of school boards being relatively low salience government institutions and, in a lot of cases, they are nonpartisan offices,” said Adam Zelizer, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School researching school board legislation.

What distinguishes this moment, Zelizer said, is the “grassroots anger” in response to school policies and the national, coordinated effort to recruit partisan candidates for school boards and local offices.

What started as parents’ concern about virtual learning and mask wearing has morphed into something larger, said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard, describing parents as thinking: “OK, now that we have the schools open, what are these kids learning in school?”

The poll shows 50 percent of Americans say parents have too little influence on curriculum, while 20 percent say they have too much and 27 percent say it’s about right. About half also say teachers have too little influence.

Kendra Schultz said she and her husband have decided their 1-year-old daughter will be homeschooled, at least initially, because of what friends have told them about their experiences with schools in Columbia, Missouri.

Most recently, she said, one 4-year-old’s pre-K class talked about gender pronouns. Schultz offered that and mask requirements as examples of how the public school system “doesn’t align with what we believe or how we would like to see our children educated.”

“I’m just like, you’re a little kid, you should be learning your ABCs and your numbers and things like that,” said Schultz, a 30-year-old conservative. “That’s just not something that me and my husband would be interested in having teachers share with our children.”

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In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March signed into law a bill barring instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Opponents, including the White House, have dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

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The poll shows Americans are slightly more likely to say the focus on sex and sexuality in local schools is too little rather than too much, 31 percent to 23 percent, but 40 percent say it’s about right. The poll didn’t ask about specific grade levels.

Blizzard, who has been working with a group called N2 America to help GOP candidates in suburbs, said the schools issue resonates with the Republican base and can motivate voters.

In the Virginia governor’s race last year, Republican Glenn Youngkin won after campaigning on boosting parental involvement in schools and banning critical race theory, an academic framework about systemic racism that has become a catch-all phrase for teaching about race in U.S. history. His Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, had said in a debate that parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach.

The poll also shows Americans have mixed views about schools’ focus on racism in the U.S.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said parents and teachers alike are frustrated after pandemic disruptions and should partner to help kids recover. The efforts to predetermine curriculum and restrict teaching are getting in the way, she said.

“The people who are proposing them, they’ve been pretty clear … they just want to sow doubt and distrust because they want to end public education as we know it,” Weingarten said.

Parents of school-age children aren’t more likely than other adults to say parents have too little influence in schools. But there is a wide partisan gap, with 65 percent of Republicans saying that, compared with 38 percent of Democrats.

Michael Henry, a father of three in Dacula, Georgia, says he’s wrestled over what the right level of involvement is. It didn’t sit right with him, for example, that his 6-year-old was taught about Christopher Columbus in an entirely positive light. He says he’s reflected on “some of the lies” and “glorifications of history” in his own public school education and thinks race needs to be talked about more.

But ultimately, school curriculum is “outside my area of expertise,” said Henry, 31, an actuary who is also the acting president of the Gwinnett County Young Democrats.

“I have to do a lot of studying and work to be able to make informed decisions, and I don’t feel like parents generally have that kind of skill set” for curriculum, he said. “I think professionals should mostly be determining what the curriculum should be.”

Henry worries that new restrictions are “adding extra hassle for teachers, who already have a lot on their plate, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”

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Florida’s not alone — 19 other states eye LGBTQ school bills

Florida’s newly enacted Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has catapulted LGBTQ rights to the center of political discourse in recent months.

Leaders of global corporations, editorial boards of major newspapers and the White House have all weighed in on the new law, with some calling it “deeply disturbing” and others “noncontroversial.” The cast of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has repeatedly ripped into the bill in several of its most recent episodes. At last month’s Oscars, co-host Wanda Sykes took a jab at the measure in the Academy Awards’ opening monologue. And last week, officials in New York City and Chicago launched ad campaigns in Florida to persuade LGBTQ Floridians to pack their bags and move north.

While Florida has been ground zero for this nationwide debate, 19 other states have introduced similar legislation that would prohibit how educators can talk about or teach LGBTQ issues in school this year, according to the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an LGBTQ think tank that has been tracking the bills.

“The truth is, this has never been about Florida,” said Brandon Wolf, the press secretary for the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida, which sued DeSantis over the law last month. “It’s never been about one state but rather a policy objective from the furthest right wing of the Republican Party to try to roll back civil liberties and progress through fear and manipulation of their base.”

He added, “You can, I think, imagine that we’re staring down a national ‘Don’t Say Gay’ debate if we’re not successful in pushing back against it here in Florida.”

Lawmakers in Indiana are weighing legislation that would require any student under the age of 18 to “obtain written consent” from a parent before participating “in any instruction on human sexuality.” In Arizona, House lawmakers introduced legislation in January that would prohibit schools from allowing students to participate in school clubs or student groups “involving sexuality, gender or gender identity unless the student’s parent provides written permission for the student to participate.”

And legislators in Tennessee proposed a measure in February that reads: “The promotion of LGBT issues and lifestyles in public schools offends a significant portion of students, parents, and Tennessee residents with Christian values.” The bill, HB 800, seeks to ban textbooks or classroom materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address” LGBTQ “lifestyles,” and subject LGBTQ issues to the same limitations religious teachings face in the state’s public schools.

“They vary quite a bit, but the thing that they have in common is that they restrict the ability of teachers and schools to provide students with an honest and accurate education that they deserve, that helps them to learn from our past and reflect the diversity of the world around them and prepare them for the future,” Logan Casey, a senior policy researcher and adviser at MAP, said.

Proponents of the measures disagree and contend that they would give parents more discretion over what their children learn in school and say LGBTQ issues are “not age appropriate” for young students.

At the Florida bill’s signing ceremony, DeSantis, who is widely believed to be considering a run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, said that the law would ensure “that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination.”

Tiffany Justice, a mother of four school-age children and the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a national network of about 80,000 parents that says its mission is to defend parental rights in schools, previously told NBC News that Florida’s Parental Rights in Education and similar measures amount to “parents pushing back.” 

“They’ve had enough. We’ve seen enough nonsense,” she said. “The kids are not learning to read in schools, and what I have said before is ‘Before you activate our children into social justice warriors, could you just teach them how to read?’”

Since DeSantis signed the Florida legislation into law on March 28, other conservative lawmakers have signaled that they would step up efforts to advance similar versions of the law in their states. 

In a campaign email last Monday, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick vowed to make a rendering of the law a “top priority” in his state’s next legislative session. That same day, Ohio state Reps. Jean Schmidt and Mike Loychik introduced their own version of the legislation.

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Loychik and Schmidt did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment. On Tuesday, Schmidt refused to answer reporters’ questions about the bill while walking through the state capitol building in Columbus.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/YY8G0Ez?_showcaption=true&app=1

At the federal level — absent majorities in Congress or at the White House — Republican lawmakers have largely stayed out of the fray concerning a nationwide version of the legislation. But last month, while speaking with Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist and AM radio personality Alex Jones, Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene vowed to introduce a federal version of the law.

“I will meet with my team right after this interview, and we will work on it,” Greene told the radio host, “because I will do anything I can to protect kids.”

LGBTQ advocates note that the new crop of LGBTQ curriculum bills are not totally new. They say the measures resemble legislation from the 1980s and ‘90s that activists dubbed “no promo homo” laws, which explicitly prohibited the positive portrayal of homosexuality in schools. The majority of those laws have since been struck down, but they remain in place in four states in the South, according to national LGBTQ youth advocacy group GLSEN. 

Casey said that unlike today’s bills, the “no promo homo” laws were more “narrowly” focused on restricting what educators could or could not say in health classes.

“They at least had this pretense of limiting the censorship to classes about sex-ed specifically,” Casey said. “The bills today have removed all pretense. They are just saying flat out: ‘You cannot talk about these issues in any classroom, in any instructional materials full stop.’”

Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, said another differentiator is that these present-day measures — despite being dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” bills — are aimed at preventing gender identity and transgender issues from being taught, and in some cases even discussed, at school. 

“What we’re seeing now is that because it’s no longer politically feasible to discredit someone because of their sexuality, the most isolated, the most marginalized, the most impacted part of the LGBTQ+ community, which are trans and nonbinary people, are being hit with the same political playbook,” Willingham-Jaggers, who is nonbinary, said. “It’s absurd, this idea that trans folks are a threat.”

Supporters of these education bills have also suggested that they are meant to target trans Americans. Justice previously told NBC Newsthat the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws are needed to fight a “transgender contagion” sweeping the country. 

The share of anti-LGBTQ state bills that specifically target transgender people have noticeably ticked upward over the past several years, an NBC News analysis of data from the American Civil Liberties Union and the LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans found.

For example, 22 of the 60 anti-LGBTQ proposed bills in 2019, or 37 percent, were anti-trans bills, compared with 153, or 80 percent, of 191 anti-LGBTQ bills in 2021. This year, about 65 percent of the anti-LGBTQ bills filed as of March 15 — 154 — targeted transgender people.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/j2EQSqk?_showcaption=true&app=1

While most, if not all, of these measures have been introduced by Republicans, not all GOP lawmakers are on board. At least five Republican governors have vetoed anti-trans bills in their states since last year (although some of those vetoes were overridden), and on Sunday, Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, dismissed the Florida LGBTQ curriculum law, calling it “absurd.”

“I didn’t really actually see the details of the legislation, but the whole thing seems like just a crazy fight,” Hogan told CNN.

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How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida’s LGBTQ culture war

At a public hearing in Dade County, Florida, parents were enraged. The nation, they said, was in peril and children were at risk. A recent ordinance had granted gay people housing and employment protections, and that meant teachers couldn’t be fired because of their sexuality. Florida classrooms quickly became a battleground, and opponents of the ordinance said the state’s support of civil rights for homosexuals was infringing on their rights as parents. 

Action had to be taken, and a campaign to limit the legal rights of LGBTQ people — all in the name of protecting children — was enacted. A woman who spoke at this hearing said it was her right to control “the moral atmosphere in which my children grow up.” That woman was Anita Bryant, formerly Miss Oklahoma and a white, telegenic, Top 40 singer who was well known for her Florida orange juice commercials (“A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine!” she’d say). Bryant spearheaded an anti-LGBTQ campaign of such impact that its echoes can be heard in today’s rhetoric. The year was 1977.

Last month, nearly half a century after Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its opponents. The measure, which takes effect July 1, prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in “kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” Similar bills are being considered in 19 other states, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank that has been tracking the bills.

Gov. Ron DeSantis shows an image from the children's book
Gov. Ron DeSantis shows an image from the children’s book “Call Me Max” by transgender author Kyle Lukoff before signing the Parental Rights in Education bill in Shady Hills, Fla. on March 28.Douglas R. Clifford / Tampa Bay Times via AP file

Advocates of Florida’s bill say its purpose is to allow parents to decide how and when LGBTQ topics are introduced to their children. Opponents say it hurts the very children advocates are trying to protect. Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, a queer youth advocacy group, said in a statement that the bill will “erase young LGBTQ students across Florida, forcing many back into the closet by policing their identity and silencing important discussions about the issues they face.” 

Historians say they’ve seen this before. 

“It’s a contemporary version on these older attempts to annul homosexuality,” said Lillian Faderman, author of “The Gay Revolution,” among other queer history titles.

“In the present environment, you can’t go after homosexual teachers anymore,” Faderman said. “We have too many allies. And so Florida has found another way to do it by this ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, which doesn’t go after homosexual teachers precisely. But the idea is the same. That is, that homosexuality is a pariah status, and it shouldn’t be discussed in the public schools.” 

Anita Bryant
Singer-turned-political activist Anita Bryant speaks at a news conference in Miami Beach, Fla. on June 7, 1977.Bettmann via Getty Images file

When Bryant began her campaign in 1977, she had four children, and often said she was speaking as a mother and a Christian. And while the villainization of LGBTQ people was not new, Bryant took the idea of protecting children and made it mainstream. Her campaign and the subsequent “Save Our Children” political coalition used the argument that “homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America.” 

Bryant’s focus on the idea that LGBTQ people were threatening to children created a talking point that social conservatives were able to rally around and promote to their friends and neighbors. Bryant paired this with her Christian faith, telling Playboy magazine in 1978 that her position “was not taken out of homophobia, but out of love” for gay people. When a gay activist threw a pie in her face during a news conference, she immediately prayed for the man to be “delivered from his deviant lifestyle.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/ku4UXns?_showcaption=true

“Deviance” was part of Bryant’s core argument that homosexuality was evil and that LGBTQ people didn’t deserve rights. To award them nondiscrimination protection was to offer them a kind of special privilege. If we label homosexuality a civil rights issue, what is to stop “the murderer from shouting ‘murderer rights’”? Bryant wrote in her 1977 book, “The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality.”

Bryant’s work resulted in the repeal of the Dade County nondiscrimination ordinance, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, in a voter referendum. Its repeal caused a backlash in other states that had passed similar ordinances, and Bryant’s fame grew. She took her message across the country, and for the next three years was named “The Most Admired Woman in America” in Good Housekeeping’s annual poll.

While Bryant fueled the idea that gays were harmful to children, the blueprint for this type of rhetoric had been laid nearly 20 years before, also in the state of Florida.

1977: Anita Bryant votes to repeal Dade County’s gay rights law

JUNE 7, 197701:17

The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (commonly referred to as the Johns Committee, after Charley Johns, its first chairman) was established in 1956, and was born out of opposition to the desegregation of schools and the pursuit of “communists.” The committee first targeted the NAACP but was stopped by the Supreme Court. The committee then turned to investigating alleged communists in Florida schools, but was stopped by the American Association of University Professors. They needed a new target, and in the fall of 1958, the committee began to investigate — and eliminate — LGBTQ people from Florida schools. There was no court and no association to protect them. The committee was well-funded by taxpayer dollars. School principals and university presidents cooperated. 

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“Charley Johns’s argument was that of, these homosexuals are perverting our youth because they’re teaching our youth in college, and high school, and elementary school, and we have to get rid of them so they won’t turn young people into homosexuals,” Faderman said. From 1958 to 1965, hundreds — if not thousands — of students and teachers were targeted, with many losing their livelihoods. 

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Though the committee was deterred from its investigation into the NAACP, its roots in opposition to desegregation and its evolution from racist opposition to homophobic oppression is clear, historians say. 

“The Christian right really comes together on enforcing segregation in the 1960s. It’s about anti-Black racism; that’s largely where it starts. And they’ve hit on this idea that they’re protecting children and education,” said Hugh Ryan, a historian and author of “When Brooklyn Was Queer.” “They realize that this works, that this is the issue that will create a ‘political moral majority.’” 

By the time we get to Anita Bryant in 1977, Ryan said, “they’ve already realized that they can harness this political conservatism and attach it to religion by talking about the family.” 

Bryant ‘won the battle’ but lost ‘the war’

Though the Dade County ordinance was repealed, opposition to the bill led to a kind of LGBTQ activism that had not been previously seen in South Florida. 

“The thing to remember is that Anita Bryant won that battle initially, but she did not win that war,” said the historian Julio Capó Jr., a native Floridian, who wrote “Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940.”  

He said Bryant inadvertently spurred a mobilization and a movement. 

“It was transformative,” Capó said. “It got people to see themselves as a voting bloc. It got them to see that their very existence and their rights were very much under attack in a different way than we had seen in the decade prior.” 

1977: After victory at polls, Anita Bryant discusses taking anti-gay campaign on the road

JUNE 8, 197701:18

The activism spread from Dade County and across the country, pushing against Bryant’s own “Christian crusade,” as she called it. In 1977, the co-executive directors of the National Gay Task Force wrote a thank you in The New York Times to Bryant and her Save Our Children organization, saying they were “doing the 20 million lesbians and gay men in America an enormous favor: They are focusing for the public the nature of the prejudice and discrimination we face.” 

Though Bryant did enjoy some additional years of fame, her anti-gay rhetoric ultimately caused her career prospects to plummet. Her booking agent dropped her, the Florida Citrus Commission stopped running her orange juice ads and she filed for bankruptcy — twice. The anti-discrimination ordinance she helped repeal in 1977 was restored in 1998.

And today, even though state legislators continue to chip away at LGBTQ rights, same-sex marriage is legal across the country and federal law prohibits anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace.

Image: People celebrate in front of the Supreme Court after the ruling in favor of same-sex marriage June 26, 2015.
People celebrate in front of the Supreme Court after the ruling in favor of same-sex marriage on June 26, 2015.Mark Wilson / Getty Images file

Though the times have changed significantly since Bryant’s heyday in the late ‘70s, it appears her views have not. In 2021, Bryant’s granddaughter Sarah Green told Slate that she came out to her grandmother on her 21st birthday. Bryant reportedly responded by saying homosexuality isn’t real. 

“It’s very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion,” Green said. Green, who clarified to them.us that she is bisexual, told Slate about her upcoming wedding to her fiancée, a woman, and said she wasn’t sure if her grandmother would be attending.  

“I just kind of feel bad for her,” Green added. “And I think as much as she hopes that I will figure things out and come back to God, I kind of hope that she’ll figure things out.”

Bryant, now 82, no longer lives in Florida. She returned to her home state of Oklahoma and runs Anita Bryant Ministries International. Neither Bryant nor Green responded to requests for comment. 

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Tough Territory for Transgender People in the Middle East and North Africa

Transgender people, whose assigned gender at birth does not match their gender identity, face a grim reality in much of the Middle East and North Africa region, including daunting obstacles to legal gender recognition.

To get a better sense of these obstacles, I reviewed existing legal frameworks and case law, and conducted interviews in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, talking to activists and experts as well as transgender people about their experiences. Building on existing research on violence and discrimination against transgender people in the region, this analysis summarizes what I found.

Legal gender recognition for transgender people refers to the official recognition of their gender identity—the gender that they are most comfortable with expressing when given a choice—including their ability to change their name and gender marker on identification documents to reflect their gender identity. When denied legal recognition of their gender identity, transgender people are systemically marginalized, and their existence based on their gender identity is undermined.

Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia lack clear avenues for transgender people to obtain legal gender recognition, increasing their vulnerability to abuses by security forces such as arbitrary arrests, and to systemic discrimination in healthcare, housing, and employment. Medical and judicial authorities in these countries arbitrarily restrict access to legal gender recognition based on misinformed perspectives that see transgender identities as pathological.

In the absence of the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks to grant such recognition, judicial authorities in the three countries are tasked with reviewing individual gender recognition applications submitted by transgender people. Laden with obstacles, this process is protracted (it can take from three to ten years), expensive, and inaccessible to most transgender people. Due to the absence of legislative frameworks for granting legal gender recognition, it is up to individual judges in each country to make decisions based on their interpretation of the law. Judicial authorities often require transgender applicants to have completed all surgical and hormonal interventions before reviewing their cases. The judicial forensic medical authorities are often tasked with examining transgender applicants to ensure they meet this requirement. Transgender people face significant obstacles to receiving gender-affirming healthcare in the three countries.

Although none of the three countries criminalize transgender identity, security forces often conflate it with sexual orientation, perceiving transgender women as gay men and transgender men as lesbian women, who are prosecuted under various laws. The discrepancy between transgender people’s official documents and gender expression makes them vulnerable to police abuse, including harassment and arbitrary arrests. Transgender detainees in Egypt and Lebanon are often placed in cells that do not reflect their gender identity, or in solitary confinement for lack of alternatives. Transgender people in such facilities endure ill-treatment that can amount to torture, such as forced anal examinations, a discredited practice to “prove” same-sex activity.

The separate sections below on Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia summarize obstacles to legal gender recognition in each country, drawing on review of laws and legal cases, three fatwas (religious rulings) on legal gender recognition, and interviews conducted in 2021 with transgender people, activists, and legal experts.

I interviewed 16 transgender people: five from Egypt, six from Lebanon, and five from Tunisia–four of whom are activists. I also interviewed two legal experts from Egypt, a lawyer from Lebanon, and a lawyer from Tunisia. I analyzed four judicial cases from Egypt, two from Tunisia, and two from Lebanon, as well as three fatwas (religious rulings) on legal gender recognition. I refer to some of those interviewed by pseudonyms for their protection.

All the quotes included below are from my interviews. The individual accounts and comments do not purport to be representative of all transgender people in the three countries, but are offered as illustrations of common issues transgender people face, and are consistent with what has been reported elsewhere.

EGYPT

Transgender people in Egypt face a lack of legislative or procedural frameworks allowing them to obtain gender-affirming healthcare and legal gender recognition. In 2003, Egypt’s Health Ministry established a review committee within the Medical Syndicate for people wanting “sex reassignment surgery.” However, the volunteer committee met irregularly, had no legal authority, and was required to include a representative from Egypt’s Islamic oversight body, Dar Al Ifta.

In 2020, the head of the committee indicated that “between 2014 and 2017, 87 cases had been approved for ‘physical’ reasons but none based on ‘gender identity disorder’.” This medical position is influenced by the Islamic Shari’a, as according to some interpretations, there is a distinction between “sex change,” referring to gender-affirming surgery for transgender people, and “sex reassignment,” referring to surgery on people with intersex characteristics, with only the latter permitted under such interpretations.

In the absence of government-sponsored gender-affirming healthcare, a dangerous and expensive underground medical industry has emerged resulting in unsupervised treatment in unlicensed centers, without avenues for accountability. Many transgender people in Egypt who seek surgery are left with no choice but to take this risk. On August 26, 2021, Ezz Eldin, a 26-year-old Egyptian transgender man, bled to death after he was prematurely discharged following a surgery in an underground clinic to affirm his gender.

Salma, a 27-year-old Egyptian transgender activist, said, “The Medical Syndicate’s sex reassignment committee stopped giving approvals, and transgender people who want to undergo surgeries had no choice but to do it in an underground hospital. Even before, Al-Azhar [Egypt’s religious authority] stood in the way of transgender people getting approval even if they had all the needed medical papers, as in their view only intersex people should undergo [sex reassignment surgery].”

Nada, a 28-year-old Egyptian transgender woman, spoke about her experience undergoing surgery in an underground clinic: “For these private doctors, it is nothing but a trade. They charged me around 7000 EGP [$445] for the first operation and the experience was very hard and painful for me. The doctors were not friendly, and I had to leave before I even recovered.” 

The legislative vacuum when it comes to legal gender recognition in Egypt has led some judges to rely on principles of Islamic Shari’a to guide their judgments. An Egyptian administrative court stated in a 2016 case: “According to the principles of Islamic Shari’a, sex reassignment surgeries are allowed for intersex people. Sex change, on the other hand, for individuals who suffer from gender identity disorder (GID), is best treated through psychiatric measures, not surgeries or hormonal intervention.” In that same ruling, which rejected a transgender man’s request to change his papers, the court stated: “Personal freedoms are not absolute and are subjected to principles of Islamic Shari’a and Egyptian traditional social values. The plaintiff broke those values and Shari’a by undergoing a sex change operation to treat their psychiatric illness.” 

While no laws in Egypt criminalize being transgender, security agencies often resort to laws criminalizing “public indecency” and “sodomy” to arrest and harass transgender people. In detention, transgender people are often placed in cells that do not correspond to their gender identity, and are subjected to ill-treatment that can amount to torture, including sexual violence by security forces and other detainees, being confined in solitary cells for extended periods, and forced anal examinations.

Masha, a 34-year-old transgender woman who was arrested in Egypt and sentenced in 2020 to three years for “inciting and practicing debauchery,” spoke of being confined in a makeshift solitary cell inside a police station in Cairo for almost a year: “I had to endure endless abuse by the police. I was raped multiple times. For the police, we deserved to be raped as part of the punishment.”

LEBANON

Lebanon has no official programs that provide gender-affirming healthcare to transgender people, and lacks a clear legal pathway for gender recognition, leaving the decision to the discretion of individual judges.

A Lebanese civil court stated in a 1992 judgment: “To allow the applicant legal gender recognition would lead to a disturbance in the fabric of the society. For the greater good of the society, we cannot allow sex change for a psychiatric reason, as we do not consider it as a necessity.”

In January 2016, an appeals court in Lebanon delivered a ruling allowing a transgender man to change his name and gender marker on his identity documents, overruling a lower court and compelling the government to change the papers. The court found that gender-affirming surgery should not be a prerequisite to gender identity recognition. Despite this positive precedent, procedural obstacles—including high fees, reluctance to engage in protracted court proceedings, and lack of legal assistance—deters transgender people from seeking court rulings to change their gender markers.

Gender-affirming medical care is largely inaccessible in Lebanon. Nasser, a 36-year-old Lebanese transgender man, told me about the challenges he faced when seeking gender-affirming care and legal gender recognition. At 24, he consulted with a psychiatrist at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), who diagnosed him with gender dysphoria after six months of treatment. The following year, he was referred to another doctor to start receiving hormone replacement therapy. During this period, Nasser said, he was refused jobs due to the discrepancy between his official documents and gender expression, which forced him to spend all his savings and borrow money from friends to pay for his treatment.

Nasser started the legal gender recognition process in 2016 in Lebanon. He said judicial authorities required gender-affirming surgery as a precondition to legal gender recognition, and he ended up traveling to Thailand, where he paid $13,000 to undergo three operations at Yanhee Hospital in Bangkok. In addition, Nasser has paid $7,000 in legal fees since he started the legal recognition process.

Nasser also spoke about the impact of the current economic crisis in Lebanon on the cost of hormonal treatment: “Medication shortages diminished the hormones supply in pharmacies, and the price rose from 3000 Lebanese pounds ($1.96) for one shot to $100 for three shots.” Nasser said he faced harassment from the judicial forensic doctor appointed by the court to examine him. “The forensic doctor was very rude, transphobic, and had no understanding of my identity. He asked me inappropriate questions like, ‘Did you sleep with a man before?’ and ‘How do you think you will be able to give your future wife sexual pleasure?’”

Despite the court ruling in his favor in 2021, allowing him to change his documents, Nasser said he still awaits the decision’s implementation by the Lebanese authorities.

Mona, a 37-year-old Lebanese transgender woman, also emphasized the high costs of surgery necessary for legal gender recognition: “I paid $3,500 for my top surgery [breast augmentation] with a plastic surgeon in Lebanon. The sex-change operation is at least $16,000. I cannot afford that.”

Access to hormone treatment therapy is also limited in Lebanon and, even if transgender people can get the therapy, it remains difficult to find proper medical supervision for the necessary aftercare. This has led some transgender people to access hormone therapy informally, which in some cases results in medical complications.

Souad, a 27-year-old Lebanese transgender woman, said, “I took hormones on my own and my leg got infected because it wasn’t under [medical supervision], so I had to go to the hospital for months and I was really humiliated. They wouldn’t admit me to the hospital at first because of the mismatch between my ID and gender expression, they didn’t even let me enter the building, until I called my uncle, who gave them money to let me enter.” 

Transgender people spoke repeatedly about the limitations in accessing basic services that they faced due to the discrepancy between their official documents and their gender expression. Mona described her experience with housing in 2019: “When [the landlords] found out that I’m transgender, they refused [to lease me the house]. One landlord told me I can rent on someone else’s ID if I have a brother, but not mine.” 

Transgender women also face violence by security forces in Lebanon due to these discrepancies. Diana, a 27-year-old Lebanese transgender woman, said that the Internal Security Forces (ISF) arbitrarily detained her in 2018 because of her gender expression and then ill-treated her in detention and forced her to sign a confession:

“I was on my way home, and an [ISF] officer stopped me and asked where I was going. I told him I lived here, he said that was a lie because he hadn’t seen me before. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you’re also a faggot.’ I cursed him out and said it was none of his business and that I was indeed a ‘faggot.’ So, he reported that I was ‘coming onto him [to get] him to sleep with me.’ They summoned me for an investigation and tried to coerce me into signing a paper that says I seduced the officer. They kept scaring me with the taser and threatened to electro-shock me if I didn’t sign. They interrogated me from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and I was forced to sign the paper so they would let me leave. After three months, I was referred to military court, where I was convicted and charged with ‘assaulting an officer,’ and I had to pay a fine of 300,000 Lebanese pounds. [$200].”

TUNISIA

In Tunisia, transgender people who wish to receive gender-affirming healthcare often travel abroad, as both governmental and private medical sectors do not provide them with the healthcare they need. Moreover, there is no clear process to obtain legal gender recognition.

According to a 2018 study by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, the Tunisian judiciary systematically refuses requests to change gender markers in cases in which people have undergone sex reassignment surgery because of gender identity disorder, citing various sources from the Qur’an as well as Tunisia’s cultural positioning in the Arab-Muslim world as grounds for their decisions. The same study indicates that the judiciary is more inclined to allow legal gender recognition for intersex people than for transgender people.

Judicial authorities’ reliance on the misconceived pathologization of transgender identities forces transgender people who seek legal recognition of their gender to endure humiliating medical examinations by judicial forensic authorities. Judicial authorities also require transgender people to undergo all surgical and hormonal treatments before reviewing their applications.

In 2018, a Tunisian court granted legal gender recognition to a transgender man who received gender-affirming care in Germany, overruling a lower court’s verdict. The court cited the man’s gender identity disorder diagnosis as a reason for its decision, after consulting psychiatrists and forensic doctors to determine whether the plaintiff underwent the gender-affirming care out of medical necessity.

Surgery options are more limited in Tunisia. Interviewed transgender people told me they had to travel abroad to receive the medical care they needed. Ahmed El-Tounsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian transgender activist from the Tunis-based transgender group Outcasts said, “There are no doctors who can do the surgeries for us here, maybe some plastic surgeons would do the top surgery [breast augmentation or removal], but it is very costly. I traveled to Egypt in 2015 after some friends there connected me with doctors who did the operation for me in their private clinic.” 

Abusive practices also limit transgender people’s access to other forms of healthcare. Several interviewees spoke about being denied general medical care or being harassed by medical professionals because of their identity. Nader, a 34-year-old transgender man from Tunisia, said: “When I get sick, I would rather sleep it away than go to a hospital. Every time I go I either get mocked or cursed at and often do not even receive the treatment I need.”

Discrimination arising from a lack of consistency between the identification documents and gender identity of transgender individuals impacts every aspect of their lives, including in accessing housing and employment. Nader said, “For me, the biggest problem is the mismatch between my papers and my gender identity. I cannot get a job, and this impacts all the other aspects of my life.” He added, “The basis of our problems is the lack of economic empowerment. If we get jobs, we can make money and then undergo the operations or travel abroad.”

Conclusion and Recommendations 

The policies and practices outlined above discriminate against transgender people in the three examined countries. This discrimination violates their fundamental rights, including their right to healthcare, education, employment, enjoyment of life, bodily integrity, protection against inhumane and degrading treatment and torture, as well as their right to nondiscrimination and protection under the law.

Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia are state parties to international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which emphasize the protection of human rights regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. The UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the ICCPR, and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have made clear that countries are prohibited from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity in upholding the rights set forth in the respective treaties. CESCR General Comment No 14 states that the right to healthcare is fundamental and calls on member states to ensure access to healthcare without discrimination. CESCR General Comment No 4 emphasizes the right to adequate and safe housing.

Egypt and Tunisia are also obligated under the African Charter of Human Rights to protect sexual and gender minorities as stipulated in the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights’ resolution 275 in 2014, which condemns systematic attacks and human rights violations based on gender identity and sexual orientation and states that governments should pass new laws to address the violations.

The authorities in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia should address the needs of their transgender citizens as equal with those of other citizens before the law. Transgender people have the right to access medical care and legal gender recognition without fear of violence, discrimination, or loss of livelihood.

The findings highlight the need for the parliaments in Egypt, Lebanon, and in the case of Tunisia, when the suspended parliament returns to session, to introduce legislation that allows for name and gender marker change through a simple administrative procedure based on self-declaration. The countries should pass comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, including on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

The ministries of health and forensic medical authorities should ensure that gender-affirming healthcare is provided by the public healthcare system or, if not provided, ensure that the costs are covered or reimbursable under private and public health insurance systems.

In view of the documented violence transgender people face by security forces, the authorities in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia should ensure that transgender people have equal access to legal protections and complaint mechanisms to report violations against them.

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Professor points out the double standard Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law misses

Uju Anya, Ph.D., is a professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Modern Languages. She researches applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies through the lenses of race, gender, sexual, and social class identities, according to her website. And in just 45 words, she exposed the hypocrisy of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and other legislation of its ilk.

Here’s Anya’s tweet from last summer, a tweet that recently got heat on Reddit’s r/lgbt forum after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law last month.

Anya tweeted that argument in June, before Florida’s bill was filed but after lawmakers other states pushed for similar measures. (We’ve been covering Don’t Say Gay bills here on Queerty for more than a decade now, sadly.)

Related: Johnny Sibilly keeps it very real explaining why ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill is so dangerous

As our new favorite college professor points out, though, efforts to mute discussions of sexuality in the classroom are really just efforts to mute discussions of non-straight sexualities.

“When you say sexual orientation is too mature a topic for children, what you really mean is homosexuality,” Anya explained in follow-up tweets. “Cuz you talk to kids about heterosexuality from birth. You put ‘heartbreaker’ and ‘ladies’ man’ onesies on baby boys and ask about their ‘little girlfriend’ in preschool … So don’t say sexual orientation is private or an adult topic. You publicly announce daily you’re in heterosexual relationships with the assumption of your heterosexual orientation saying ‘my’ boyfriend, wife, husband, posting pics, etc. And you do it around children.”

Related: May the force be with Mark Hamill’s response to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill

Then comes Anya’s kicker: “The minute we mention any sexual orientation that isn’t the heterosexuality shoved in our faces every day, the talk immediately becomes inappropriate. Or ‘Nobody cares you’re gay!’ Well, nobody cares you’re f—king Bob either, Susan, but we still liked his picture on your desk.”

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Half of LGBT+ sexual assaults based on identity – a quarter are ‘conversion’ attempts, report finds

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Half of LGBT+ sexual violence survivors believe they were assaulted because of their identity, a  survey has found.

In the largest report of its kind, British anti-abuse charity Galop asked nearly 1,000 LGBT+ people about their experiences of sexual violence.

Those surveyed described instances of rape, penetrative sexual assault, ‘revenge porn’ and groping. Such experiences haunted them for months, with 85 per cent saying the trauma impacted their mental health and 77 per cent their relationships.

In a damning indictment against the government’s sluggish approach to banning conversion therapy, nearly a quarter of survey-takers believe their attackers were trying to “convert” them.

Galop CEO Leni Morris told PinkNews that some LGBT+ people had experienced so-called “corrective” rape. Others said their assailants “fetishised” their sexuality or gender identity – 53 per cent believed they were attacked because of their identity.

Galop also found that “corrective” sexual assault was more common among trans and non-binary people, who are being excluded from the government’s conversion therapy ban altogether.

“I feel like being raped robbed me of years,” said one participant, “it meant I didn’t transition until now and I cannot put into words how angry that makes me.”

Morris said: “These findings provide further evidence for the need for a full and complete ban on so-called conversion therapy in all its forms.

“This is abuse, and LGBT+ people in this country are being put through it simply because of who they are. We need this ban. We need it for the whole community.”

One in five people surveyed by Galop have never told anyone about the sexual violence they faced. (Getty Images)

One in five respondents said they had never told anyone about their ordeal, according to the report released Wednesday afternoon (20 April).

Of the 82 per cent who did open up about the violence they experienced, just one third had done so within six months of the incident taking place.

Two-thirds of respondents reported an increase in suicidal thoughts after the violence, while six in 10 engaged in self-harm.

The NHS offers support for people who have experienced sexual violence through specialised sexual assault referral centres, or SARCs. But LGBT+ respondents said they were hesitant to seek out support, which includes being connected to police offers to report the incident. Many were wary of being “outed” or fearful of the discrimination and disbelief they would be met with for being LGBT+.

“This is an important reflection of the way LGBT+ people in this country are still othered, and how anti-LGBT+ prejudice is still an active part of the life experience of many LGBT+ people in the UK,” said Morris.

“Services set up to support sexual violence survivors often don’t feel inclusive of our community, and there is a real lack of services, like ours, which are run by and for LGBT+ people to provide that safe space in the wake of sexual violence.”

Rape Crisis England and Wales works towards the elimination of sexual violence. If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this story, you can access more information on their website or by calling the National Rape Crisis Helpline on 0808 802 9999. Rape Crisis Scotland’s helpline number is 08088 01 03 02.

Readers in the US are encouraged to contact RAINN, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800-656-4673.

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