Brazilian governor and potential major party presidential candidate Eduardo Leite, a prominent critic of President Jair Bolsonaro, came out as gay in a TV interview.
Leite, governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, would be the first openly gay presidential candidate in Brazil. Anti-gay rhetoric has been a staple of speeches by Bolsonaro, who once declared that if he had a gay son, he would rather he died in an accident.
“I have never spoken about a subject related to my private life”, Leite told Brazilian journalist Pedro Bial in a TV interview on Thursday evening.
“But during this moment of low integrity in Brazil, I have nothing to hide, I am gay. I am a governor who is gay, not a gay governor, as former President Obama in the U.S. was a president who was Black, not a Black president. And I am proud of that.”
Leite, a member of social democratic party PSDB, supported Bolsonaro in the second round of Brazil’s 2018 elections, but became a critic of the president’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Leite, 36, will be a candidate in the PSDB primaries scheduled for November to choose the presidential candidate for the 2022 elections. Other candidates in the primary are the Sao Paulo governor Joao Doria, senator Tasso Jereissati and former senator Arthur Virgílio.
Bolsonaro on Friday told supporters Leite was trying to use his coming out as a “business card” for the presidential campaign.
“I have nothing against his private life, but he cannot impose his lifestyle on others,” he added.
A trip to Manhattan took a dark turn for Dylan Spinosa and his friend upon their return home via the Staten Island ferry. While waiting for their taxi, a drunken stranger stabbed Dylan in the back while spewing anti-gay slurs.
Spinosa, 20, and his friends had gone into the city to celebrate pride and enjoy a day out now that COVID-19 restrictions have lifted. While they waited for their ride home, Spinosa and his friends noticed a drunken man harassing women with sexual remarks.
Spinosa told the New York Daily News that the suspect was “harassing every girl that he passed by, talking to them sexually.” Spinosa and another passerby tried to pressure the man to leave and stop bothering the women. When they did, the man replied that he had a gun, ignored their request, and began harassing another female.
“He was in her ear, sexually harassing her, saying he was going to have sex with her,” Spinosa described. “Me and this other guy were like, ‘Dude, leave her alone. Go home. You’re drunk. This doesn’t have to get any further.’ ”
Then things turned violent. The drunken suspect attacked the stranger by punching him in the face. Spinosa reacted by putting the assailant in the headlock and wrestling him to the ground. When Spinosa released him, he heard his friends scream.
“I turn around and the guy’s charging us,” Spinosa said of the moment. “I didn’t realize that he had a knife. It felt like he punched me. I thought he threw a beer on me.”
“He stabbed me in the back,” Spinosa elaborated.
The suspect then began yelling anti-gay slurs as Spinosa slumped to the ground, blood pouring down his back. Police arrived shortly thereafter and arrested Eric Shields, 47, while an ambulance rushed Spinosa to the hospital. Medics there treated his wound and discovered that the knife had scraped his scapula. He will need to keep his arm in a sling for some time. He is, however, expected to make a full recovery.
Police have charged Eric Sheilds with assault, weapons possession, menacing and harassment. The District Attorney has also not ruled out hate crime charges, pending an investigation.
The attack follows a recent rash of assaults on LGBTQ people this year. Earlier this month, police in Washington, DC arrested a man for harassing gay diners at a restaurant with a machete. In May, police in New York opened a hate crime investigation following the murder of a 24-year-old transgender woman.
n case anyone forgot, California gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner is once again reminding everyone that she’s a total asshole.
Speaking to Inside California Politics, the 71-year-old reality star talked about a recent trip she took to Venice Beach, a popular tourist neighborhood in Los Angeles, where she was absolutely appalled by the number of homeless people she saw.
“They’re destroying Venice Beach!” she said. “They’re destroying all the businesses down there. They don’t need to be there. The crime rate is going up … It’s mostly homeless-on-homeless murders. We can’t have that in our streets.”
Jenner, who is worth an estimated $100 million, went on to say that it’s imperative to “clean those places up.”
Her solution? Round up all the homeless people and drop them off in “an open field out in some place” where they can presumably kill each other off without disrupting the rest of us.
This isn’t the first time Jenner has made insensitive remarks about homeless people either.
Last month, she told a local media outlet that she has this super rich friend who’s thinking about leaving California because he “can’t take” seeing people living in tents.
“He says, ‘I’m moving to Sedona, Ariz. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t walk down the streets and see the homeless’,” Jenner claimed.
“When you drive in Beverly Hills and you look at the park, and there’s tents in the park, we have to look at that issue very seriously,” she said, adding, “Before, the homeless were all downtown. I’m sure you’ve been downtown. I mean, you walk down there, and it’s just like so tough, so difficult on these people.”
In addition to being a staunch Trump supporter, even after acknowledging he’s “the worst president we’ve ever had” when when it comes to LGBTQ rights, Jenner believes that “biological boys should not be allowed to participate in girls sports” and says it was easier to come out as trans than it was to come out as a Republican.
People took to the streets of Spain’s biggest cities on Monday evening to express their anger at the death of a man in a suspected homophobic attack at the weekend.
Crowds filled a central Madrid square and activists marched down a major street in Barcelona, chanting slogans and waving placards and rainbow-colored flags.
“The response to the wave of LGBT-phobic hatred that ended the life of Samuel in A Coruna is overwhelming,” the left-wing Podemos party that governs in coalition with the ruling Socialists wrote on Twitter.
Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant, was beaten near a nightclub in the early hours of Saturday in the town of A Coruna, northern Spain, by several assailants including one who shouted a common pejorative description of a gay person, state broadcaster RTVE reported. He later died in the hospital.
Jose Minones, a local government representative in the region where A Coruna is located, tweeted that the police were working to find out what happened and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Local media quoted him as saying the investigation would show whether or not the attack was motivated by homophobia.
Interior Ministry data shows 278 hate crimes related to sexual orientation or gender identity were reported in Spain in 2019, an 8.6 percent increase on the previous year. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights warns only a fraction of hate crimes are reported to the police.
In central Barcelona, 21 year-old Sergio Cuevas said: “I think this crime happened because homophobia kills.”
The Supreme Court on Friday declined to wade into the contentious issue of whether businesses have a right to refuse service for same-sex wedding ceremonies despite state laws forbidding them from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.
The court dodged the wedding question three years ago in a case involving a Colorado baker who said baking a cake to celebrate a same-sex marriage would violate his right of free expression and religious beliefs. The issue came back in an appeal brought by Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts in Richland, Washington.
The court said Friday that it would not take up her appeal, leaving the state court rulings against her intact and again ducking the hot-button issue. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said the court should have taken the case.
Stutzman refused to provide flowers for the wedding of two longtime male customers in 2013, explaining that as a Southern Baptist, it would violate her religious beliefs and her “relationship with Jesus Christ.” Like the Colorado baker, she said her floral arrangements were works of art and that having to create them for same-sex weddings would trample on her freedom of expression.
The florist’s lawyer, Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, said other judges have ruled in favor of businesses claiming that they cannot be forced to create works that violate their religious beliefs.
“We are confident that the Supreme Court will eventually join those courts in affirming the constitutionally protected freedom of creative professionals to live and work consistently with their most deeply held beliefs,” she said.
Robert Ingersoll, who requested the flowers for his wedding ceremony, praised the Supreme Court for denying the florist’s appeal. He said he hopes the court’s action “sends a message to other LGBTQ people that no one should have to experience the hurt that we did.”
Ria Tabacco Mar, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented the gay couple, said the denial is a reminder that “no one should walk into a store and have to wonder whether they will be turned away because of who they are. Preventing that kind of humiliation and hurt is exactly why we have nondiscrimination laws. Yet 60 percent of states still don’t have express protections for LGBTQ people like the kind in Washington State. Our work isn’t over.”
State courts ruled that Stutzman broke a Washington law forbidding businesses to discriminate on the basis of several factors, including sexual orientation. The Washington Supreme Court said providing or refusing to provide flowers for a wedding “does not inherently express a message about that wedding.”
After ducking the issue in the Colorado case, the U.S. Supreme Court sent Stutzman’s case back for another round in the Washington courts, where she lost a second time and again appealed.
“Religious people should be free to live out their beliefs about marriage,” her lawyers said in urging the Supreme Court to hear the case. They said states have taken action against calligraphers, videographers and other business that refuse to serve same-sex weddings because of their religious beliefs.
“These First Amendment violations must stop,” they said.
But the ACLU, representing Washington state, said Stutzman is not required to participate in any actual same-sex wedding ceremony.
The state also told the court that the florist refuses to prepare any flower arrangement for the wedding of a gay or lesbian couple, even if the arrangement is identical to one the shop’s employees would prepare for a heterosexual couple.
“It is thus clear that their objection is not to any ‘message’ sent by the flowers themselves, but rather to the message they perceive would be sent by serving a gay couple,” lawyers for the state said.
The ACLU said courts have repeatedly ruled that there is no right to be exempt, on religious freedom grounds, from general laws that are not enacted to disfavor religious beliefs.
“All people, regardless of status, should be able to receive equal service in American commercial life,” it said.
Chantale Wong would become the first openly lesbian ambassador if confirmed as the U.S. director of the Asian Development Bank.
The White House in a July 2 press release that announced her nomination describes Wong as “a leading authority in international development policy with over 30 years of experience in the multi-disciplinary field that includes finance, technology and the environment.” The Council for Global Equality is among the organizations that have celebrated Wong’s nomination.
“We are thrilled with the nomination of Chantale Wong — our nation’s first openly lesbian ambassador to represent our country. Extraordinarily qualified and long overdue,” tweeted the Council for Global Equality.
Two U.S. senators on Tuesday reintroduced a bill that would sanction foreign nationals who are responsible for human rights abuses against LGBTQ people.
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) reintroduced the Global Respect Act. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have co-sponsored the measure.
“No one should be subjected to discrimination — ever, but sadly we see it happening every day and to utmost extreme forms,” said Murkowski in a press release. “This bill sends a strong signal that the United States prioritizes equality for all and puts human rights front and center — that we won’t stand by idly and let persecution to any group of people go unnoticed or without consequence. By creating and strengthening repercussions for those who carry out human rights violations, my hope is that we prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Shaheen added it is “unconscionable that LGBTI communities around the world face persecution, jail and murder because of who they love and how they identify.”
“The U.S. has a moral imperative to make clear to the international community that LGBTI rights are human rights,” said the New Hampshire Democrat. “I’m proud to lead this bipartisan effort to hold accountable individuals who trample on the rights of their citizens by committing clear human rights violations. This bill empowers the administration with enhanced authority to ensure violators face repercussions and expand protections for LGBTI folks around the world.”
President Biden in February signed a memorandum that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ rights abroad. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told the Washington Bladelast month that responding to human rights abuses based on a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation is one of the White House’s five global LGBTQ rights priorities.
The State Department last July banned Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov from traveling to the U.S. because of his “involvement in gross violations of human rights in the Chechen Republic” that includes a continued anti-LGBTQ crackdown. The U.S. in 2017 sanctioned Kadyrov under the Magnitsky Act, a law that freezes the assets of Russian citizens who commit human rights abuses and prevents them from obtaining U.S. visas.
The U.S. in 2017 sanctioned then-Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who carried out an anti-LGBTQ crackdown in his country, under an expanded version of the Magnitsky Act known as the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
Seeking Friendly Volunteers plus Seniors Who Want Visits!Bill Blackburn
The Spahr Center has established a new program bringing friendly visitors together with seniors who wish to connect with others. We are seeking LGBTQ+ volunteers willing to offer an hour or two each week in bringing community to a senior who longs for more connection. We also want to hear from our seniors, who would enjoy having someone to talk to on a regular basis. Everything we do that connects lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people with each other is creating community. Whether young or old, as LGBTQ+ people, we all need opportunities to be with other LGBTQ+ people and to be who we are. Community becomes even more important as we age and face the challenges of health, mobility, and loss. Our volunteers will be screened and then trained to provide companionship: what to do as well as what limits are appropriate. Then they will be carefully matched with an LGBTQ+ senior. Seniors may be living in residential facilities or assisted living facilities where they are hesitant to be out to staff or other residents due to concerns about discrimination. Or they may be living in their own homes, simply desiring more connection with others like themselves. Please look over the attached flyers at the bottom of this e-letter and consider whether you might become involved with the program. By volunteering to bring community to a senior, you may well find your own sense of connection and purpose broadening. And by asking to be matched with a friendly visitor, you may well find a connection of great value. Contact Katharine Cowan for more information: [email protected]
The US Supreme Court Stands Up for Decency
We were thrilled at the decision of the US Supreme Court on June 28 (during Pride month), handing a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding with his gender identity.
The justices left in place a lower court’s ruling that the Gloucester County School Board had acted unlawfully in preventing Gavin Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom before he graduated in 2017. In doing so, the court opted against taking up a major transgender rights case that could have set a terrible nationwide precedent on the issue. The court turned away the board’s appeal of a 2020 ruling by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Grimm is protected under the federal law known as Title IX that bars sex discrimination in education and the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that people be treated equally under the law. The current assault on transgender Americans is cruel and calculated. To have this current, conservative court stand up to this hatred, for now, represents a rare and much needed moment of civility.
Introducing Beth Brenner-Josef, our new Finance Director!
The Spahr Center is thrilled to announce the addition to our staff of Beth Brenner-Josef as Finance Director. With years of great experience managing finances for non-profit organizations, including beloved Frameline, she is helping us to strengthen systems to manage a larger and more complex agency. In the last two years, The Spahr Center has gone from managing a $1 million budget to a budget of $2.2 million in the fiscal year started July, 2021. We have attracted more grants and operate a pharmaceutical program that require intensive management. We thank Leslie Gallen enormously for managing our finances during these past two years. Her real job is to manage our HIV care program, a whole job in and of itself! And we warmly welcome Beth to help us ensure that we are even better stewards of our donors’ contributions. Beth can be reached at [email protected]. Thank you Beth!
The Spahr Center Now Has Onsite Meeting and Event Space. Everyone is Welcome to Request It!
The Spahr Center has recently added 1,250 square feet of space to our offices to accommodate our growth and, more importantly, the urgent need for flexible meeting and event space. We can now have our discussion and support groups, as well as other community events, occur onsite! Wow, are we excited!! If you have an interest in bringing a club or group together, or creating a fun community event – movie night, reading, knitting circle, book club, gardening talk, or musical performance – that we can help you advertise, we would love to host. Please email [email protected]
Save the Date for The Spahr Center’s 2021 Marin Pride Picnic – Saturday, September 25!
Our great supporters, Bob and Rick enjoying the 2019 picnic.
We here at The Spahr Center are bummed out that we have not been able to safely assemble LGBTQ+ people of Marin, and our HIV community, for a joyous celebration of pride for the past two Junes! Now that the world is opening up again, we are eager to bring people together. We have set the date of Saturday, September 25th for the Marin Pride Picnic. Hours of the event are noon (12 pm) until 2:00. Location and further details will be announced as soon as possible. In the meanwhile, we hope you will hold this date. Please stay tuned for further announcements!
Take the LGBTQ+ Vaccine Survey!
We are excited to share the California LGBTQ+ COVID-19 vaccine survey with you. This survey was built-in collaboration with CSU Sacramento, Bryn Mawr University, Equality California, the California LGBTQ+ Health and Human Services Network, and The Sacramento LGBT Community Center. The results will better direct statewide and local policy change efforts that will improve accessibility and dissolve barriers stopping LGBTQ+ people from getting vaccinated. Please take a moment to complete this survey, and feel free to share it with others! To take the survey, go to http://bit.ly/VaccineSurveyCA
Tickets Available for an Indie-Rock event Benefiting Spahr
Saturday, July 24 at Live Bait in Sausalito. Doors at 6:30. Show at 7pm. Live Bait is a new music venue at 350 Harbor Dr, Sausalito. Next to the world famous Fish Restaurant. Tickets at: https://m.bpt.me/event/5160794 Universal Ingrooves Music recording artist Alan Chapell from the Band Chapell is excited to play a concert at Live Bait and offer his share of the door proceeds to The Spahr Center – Marin County’s only non-profit community agency devoted to serving, supporting and empowering the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community and everyone in the county living with and affected by HIV. Having recorded with Jerry Harrison, Prairie Prince, and members of Susanne Vega, Avril Levigne and Jon Bon Jovi’s respective bands, indie-rocker Chapell is about to begin a nation tour supporting his sixth studio album TWO FISHES. Listen to Chapell on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple Music, or at www.ChapellMusic.com. Pre-save Chapell’s first single from Two Fishes here.
Two Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are jointly calling on the Biden administration to increase protections and treatment consistent with his campaign promise to protect LGBTQ elders.
“At this time, there are well over one million LGBT persons 65 and older in the United States,” the letter says. “With a growing aging population, there is greater urgency to address the palliative and end-of-life care needs among this population. LGBT persons have unique health needs and have experienced disparate health care due to discrimination based on their sexual minority status and associated fear of disclosure of their sexual orientation or gender identity to health care providers.”
The letter, addressed to Secretary of Health & Human Services Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare & Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, urges them to support LGBTQ older Americans receiving palliative and hospice care, reduce abuse of LGBT patients, and encourage respectful and competent treatment by improving data collection and issuing guidance for providers.
Baldwin, the first out lesbian elected to the U.S. Senate, and Bennett also specifically cite the need for “guidance for hospitals, long-term-care facilities, and agencies in the provision of palliative and hospice care for LGBT older adults.”
As the letter points out, the Trump administration sought to eliminate data collection for LGBTQ people in federal surveys, including questions enabling responders to identify their sexual orientation and gender identity in the National Survey of Older American Act Participants, or NSOAPP.
Biden, citing the generation that broke barriers by coming out and fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic now becoming LGBTQ seniors, campaigned in 2020 on taking steps to protect LGBTQ elders. His LGBTQ plan states he would support LGBTQ seniors, acknowledging they “often face discrimination in all aspects of their lives, from employment to housing to health care.”
The Washington Blade has placed a request in with HHS and CMS seeking comment on the letter.
A young gay man was tortured, burned and killed in Mexico after he revealed at a party that he was living with HIV, activists say.
The victim, who has not been named, was allegedly slain in a blacksmith shop in Cancún, a southeastern beach town in the state of Quintana Roo, in early June.
t was a night of revelry that slipped into mayhem when the victim informed party-goers that he was living with HIV, advocacy group Resilientxs told Presentes, a local queer news outlet.
He died from a “blow to the head with a blunt, short object”, the Attorney General’s Office said in a report.
“This case has caused us a lot of anger because we are in the month that commemorates the pride of our community in which rights are requested and claimed,” Resilientxs member Edwin Reyes told the press.
The authorities have since tracked down and arrested the alleged killer in Tabasco, some 900 kilometres from Cancún, who was a man believed to be the neighbour and tenant of the victim.
To Reyes, the tragedy touches off how Quintana Roo, with its sprawling beaches and blue skies, is thought of as a “paradise” to so many when the reality – for LGBT+ people especially – is anything but.
“This cruel case should not have happened,” Reyes said. “And it only tells us that the state has failed to legislate and create the necessary public policies to prevent, address and punish violence due to prejudice that exists in the state.
“That is why we raise our voices because Quintana Roo is not paradise, it is non-gay friendly.”
Seemingly compounding this, Vallarta Daily News reported that the State Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation into the incident – but officials are treating it as a homicide, but not a hate crime. Hate crimes are not part of the state’s criminal code.