LGBTQI History: A Sonoma County Timeline 1947-2000.
Wednesdays 1:30-3pm. Online via Zoom. On Wednesday,
January 19 we will be talking about LGBTQI Businesses
From 1970s – 1990s. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Please contact me to enroll in this FREE class and
receive a Zoom invite: cdungan@santarosa.edu
California’s new congressional and state legislative maps include big wins for the LGBTQ+ community, after the state’s independent nonpartisan Citizens Redistricting Commission worked to unite and empower dense LGBTQ+ populations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Long Beach, the East Bay, Sacramento and the Coachella Valley. The achievement follows a months-long campaign led by Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, to advocate for fair and equitable maps that empower LGBTQ+ Californians to elect “candidates of choice” — members of the community and allies responsive to their unique challenges and priorities. [Click here to watch Equality California’s October 22 presentation to the Commission.]
“These maps represent a huge victory for diverse LGBTQ+ communities throughout California,” said Equality California Managing Director of External Affairs Samuel Garrett-Pate. “While states across the country launch unprecedented attacks against LGBTQ+ people and engage in partisan gerrymandering, California is once again leading the fight to protect our democracy and achieve full, lived LGBTQ+ equality.”
Unlike racial demographic groups, for which the Citizens Redistricting Commission receives block-level data to evaluate the concentration of Latino, Black, Asian, Indigenous and white voting age population in potential districts, LGBTQ+ people are not fully counted in the U.S. census. To fill the data gap, Equality California and Redistricting Partners used more than 500,000 georeferenced datapoints from Equality California and its partner organizations’ membership databases, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Quarters (“POSSLQ”), to create a model identifying where LGBTQ+ people live throughout the state.
Equality California worked in close partnership with the IVE Redistricting Alliance and organizations like the California Black Census & Redistricting Hub, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and MALDEF to ensure that efforts to unite LGBTQ+ communities did not inadvertently divide other communities of interest. An overwhelming majority of LGBTQ+ Californians are members of communities of color, and LGBTQ+ people are significantly more likely to live below the poverty line, so the community is best served by fair and equitable maps that empower all historically marginalized communities — including communities of color, immigrant communities and working class communities — throughout the state.
A decade ago, Equality California and Redistricting Partners successfully pushed the 2011 Citizens Redistricting Commission and local commissions in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego to consider geographically connected LGBTQ+ communities as communities of interest in the redistricting process.
California has pioneered maximizing the LGBTQ+ community’s political power through the redistricting process. Harvey Milk became the state’s first out LGBTQ+ elected official in 1977, when San Francisco switched from at-large elections to districts for the Board of Supervisors. With the power to elect candidates of choice, San Francisco’s historically LGBTQ+ neighborhoods went on to elect nine more out LGBTQ+ supervisors, including Senators Mark Leno and Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who each served on the board before being elected to the Legislature.
In 1990, San Diego LGBTQ+ community leaders advocated for the creation of City Council District 3, which includes the traditionally LGBTQ+ neighborhood Hillcrest and surrounding neighborhoods with significant LGBTQ+ populations. In 1993, District 3 elected out lesbian Christine Kehoe, who was succeeded by an unbroken line of out LGBTQ+ city councilmembers including Toni Atkins, Todd Gloria, Chris Ward and Stephen Whitburn. Kehoe, Atkins, Gloria and Ward went on to represent the historically LGBTQ+ neighborhoods in the California Legislature. Atkins made history as the first LGBTQ+ woman to serve as Assembly Speaker and the first openly LGBTQ+ Senate President Pro Tem. Gloria became the first openly LGBTQ+ person to be elected Mayor of San Diego in 2020.
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org
An Australian man has pleaded guilty to murdering an American mathematician who fell from a Sydney cliff in 1988 in a gay hate crime that was dismissed by police at the time as suicide.
Scott White was charged in 2020 with murdering 27-year-old Los Angeles-born Scott Johnson, whose naked body was found at the base of North Head cliff on Dec. 8, 1988.
White yelled repeatedly in court during a pre-trial hearing in Sydney on Monday that he was guilty, having previously denied the crime.
A New South Wales state Supreme Court judge on Thursday accepted the guilty plea, dismissing the objections of White’s lawyers. White is to be sentenced on May 2.
He faces a possible sentence of life in prison.
Police had initially concluded that Johnson, who was a doctoral student at Australian National University and lived in Canberra, had taken his own life. This was despite the discovery that his wallet was missing from his clothes, which were neatly folded near the cliff top.
A coronial inquest — a court-like proceeding held after unusual deaths — ruled in 1989 that the openly gay man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died.
Johnson’s family sought a third inquest, and State Coroner Michael Barnes ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the cliff top as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.”
Barnes found that gangs of men roamed various Sydney locations in search of gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people were also robbed.
A new police investigation offered a 1 million Australian dollar ($731,000) reward for information in 2018 and Johnson’s older brother, Boston IT entrepreneur Steve Johnson, matched that reward offer in 2020.
“I think he deserves what he has coming to him,” Steve Johnson told reporters outside the court after White pleaded guilty.
“It’s a very sad, tragic thing that he did,” Johnson said.
White was arrested at his Sydney home two months after the reward was doubled. Police said at the time that the reward helped in their breakthrough and an unnamed informant would be eligible for the reward once White was convicted.
A bill that is currently before Kenyan lawmakers would prohibit gays and lesbians from using surrogate mothers to have children.
The proposed law — dubbed the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, 2019, passed last November by the National Assembly — seeks to assist individuals, including intersex people or couples unable to bear children due to infertility to procure surrogate mothers.
To lock out gays and lesbians, the MPs amended the bill by replacing “husband and wife” to “couple” under Kenyan law, which refers to a male and a female who are in an association that may be recognized as a marriage.
“Of the many amendments that have been carried, this one is the best. This is so that we be specific that in Kenya, we do not recognize marriages between people of the same gender,” MP David Ole Sankok stated during the debate in the National Assembly.
Any gay or lesbian found guilty of using a surrogate mother to have a child risks a fine not exceeding Sh5 million ($50,000) or a jail term of not more than five years or both. The bill would also require a qualified medical doctor to certify that an individual is infertile before proceeding to find a surrogate mother.
This requirement is not only a big blow to thousands of gays and lesbians in Kenya but also hundreds of surrogate mothers like Mary and Rebecca in Nairobi who, through the Find Surrogate Mother public website, carry pregnancies for all couples including heterosexuals, gays, lesbians, single women and single men who want to have children.
The proposed law, which is the first of its kind in Kenya, also criminalizes engaging in surrogacy to make money. This means surrogate mothers will no longer carry pregnancies for any individual or couple whose infertility is not proved by a doctor.
Currently, the overall cost of surrogacy in Kenya is estimated at Sh4.5 million ($45,000).
“A person who contravenes the provisions of this section commits an offense and shall, upon conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding Sh5 million ($50,000) or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or to both,” reads Clause 23 of the bill.
A special directorate under the Health Ministry would oversee surrogacy activities in the country. The bill requires a surrogate mother to be over 21 years old with at least one child.
The new law adds to other punitive laws against LGBTQ rights in the country.
The Kenyan Penal Code under Sections 162 and 165 criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations viewed as “acts of indecency or unnatural offenses.” The Penal Code also forbids gays and lesbians from adopting children.
The passing of the bill in November occurred barely four months after U.S. Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten broke the news of welcoming their twins to the world.
Buttigieg via a tweet said, “Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.”
It remains unclear whether the couple had their babies via surrogate or if they adopted them.
Kenya, just like most African countries, has refused to recognize the rights of the LGBTQ community despite pressure from the group and Western countries.
For instance, in 2015 President Uhuru Kenyatta during a joint press conference with the then-U.S. President Obama at the State House in Nairobi flatly rejected his visitor’s demand for the protection and promotion of gay and lesbian rights in the country.
Kenyatta insisted that though Kenya “shares a lot with the U.S., gay rights were not among them.” Homosexuality is considered both ungodly and against African culture on the continent.
In July 2021, a coalition of 27 global companies like Microsoft, Google, Barclays, Standard Chartered, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, American Express and Burberry demanded Kenya to fully recognize the rights of gays and lesbians for more billions of Kenyan shillings to be injected into the economy.
The global firms in a report dubbed “The Economic Case for LGBT+ Inclusion in Kenya” warned that the country loses between $65 million and $143 million annually because its discriminative environment was keeping away some tourists. Still, Kenya remained unbowed.
Several rights groups like the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Coalition and UNAIDS has criticized the continued enactment of laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ community.
The National Assembly’s Health Committee, the sponsor of the surrogacy law, collected views from numerous key stakeholders in the health sector like the Intersex Persons Society of Kenya which has a population of 1,524 in Kenya as per the 2019 Census. However, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, (GALCK), was notably sidelined in the committee’s public hearings.
The Kenyan Senate is expected to debate the bill once it reconvenes on Feb. 8. The president would sign it if it passes.
| Historians Miriam Frank and Allyson Brantley will discuss the long and interwoven history of LGBTQ and labor activism through the lens of Brantley’s new book, Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Drawing on oral histories and archival collections, including those held by the GLBT Historical Society, Brantley details how activists across the nation, from gay liberationists to Chicano activists and union members, built supportive, vibrant coalitions. Over decades of organizing and coalition-building from the 1950s to the 1990s, they molded the boycott into a powerful means of political protest, challenging the Coors Brewing Company’s antiunion, discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ practices and conservative political ties. This talk will examine the particular success of the boycott in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and consider its impact in light of contemporary ongoing conversations about consumer power and corporate buyouts. Tickets are available online here. |
American Idol star Clay Aiken has launched a second congressional bid after being inspired to fight hate perpetuated by North Carolina’s top lawmakers.
Aiken was the runner-up on the second season of American Idol in 2003. Afterwards, he launched a music and acting career – even appearing as acontestant on Celebrity Apprentice hosted by former president Donald Trump.
In 2014 he turned his attention to politics, winning the Democratic primary in North Carolina’s second congressional district, but he was defeated in the general election by Republican incumbent Renee Ellmers.
Now he’s running for Congress again. But this time, Aiken, who has referred to himself as a “loud and proud Democrat”, is running to represent the newly drawn sixth district. He is hoping to replace representative David Price, who was first elected in 1986 and said he would not seek re-election in October.
Aiken told Variety that he wasn’t initially planning to run for congress again, but he changed his mind after hearing a homophobic speech by North Carolina’s lieutenant governor Mark Robinson.
He described how “several people” asked if he would be interested in running for Price’s seat after the long-time politician announced he would be retiring from the role in 2022.
“I told them, you know, I’m keeping an eye on it, but I’m not really necessarily thinking about running right now,” he recalled.
The openly gay singer said he was “considering” another run in November when the news broke that Robinson, North Carolina‘s second-in-command, had made several anti-LGBT+ statements at a church sermon.
“He gave a speech in which he said: ‘What is the purpose of homosexuality? What purpose do homosexuals serve?’” Aiken said.
He continued: “I watched that sort of with just dumbstruck awe that someone could be so ignorant.
After watching it, I said, you know, ‘I got your purpose, bitch. I will show you’.”
Aiken described himself as a “North Carolinian” his entire life, adding his family has “been here since the 1700s”. He said Robinson’s anti-LGBT+ hatred made him “really think about the reputation” the state has “gotten over the past several years”.
“In my entire life, I’ve never known a time when this state has had a reputation that wasn’t progressive and welcoming and friendly,” he added.
He added that some friends wouldn’t want to visit because they didn’t feel “comfortable in North Carolina”. Aiken said he was “sick” that his beloved state has such a reputation, and he isn’t “willing” to let it continue any longer.
“And that p**ses me the hell off,” he said. “Because this area is not like that, and the fact that people outside of this state have this opinion or this perception of North Carolina based on people like Mark Robinson and Madison Cawthorn.”
A group of North Carolina voters have launched a bid to keep Cawthorn, a Republican congressman, off the ballot in this year’s midterm elections, citing his alleged involvement in the 6 January Capitol riot.
Cawthorn claimed the election was stolen from Trump during the “Save America Rally” before the riot and has been accused of firing up the crowd, The Guardian reported.
A group of voters have said that Cawthorn can’t run for Congress because he fails to comply with an amendment in the Constitution.
The 1868 amendment says no one can serve in Congress if they have “previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same”.
The challenge says the events at the Capitol riot “amounted to an insurrection” and Cawthorn’s speech at the rally provided a “reasonable suspicion” that he “aided the insurrection”.
In the video announcing his congressional run, Clay Aiken condemned Cawthorn and Robinson as “white nationalists” and “hateful homophobes”.
He also acknowledged it wasn’t a “North Carolina thing” before showing images of reviled GOP representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) and Lauren Boebert (Colorado).
Nearly seven years after the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage the law of the land, New Jersey enacted a law Monday to protect this relatively new right throughout the Garden State.
Prior to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — which legalized sex-marriage nationwide in 2015 — New Jersey’s state courts had already struck down a same-sex marriage ban in 2013.
But as a majority of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices appeared open to overturning Roe v. Wade last month, new fears that the court could also make an about-face on the Obergefell ruling have prompted some lawmakers to enshrine same-sex marriage into state law.
“We’ve been fighting for marriage equality for decades, and to turn back the clock would be devastating,” New Jersey Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, who co-sponsored the newly passed bill, told NBC News. “I can’t emphasize enough the fact that we need to safeguard it in light of what’s happening on a federal level today.”
Both chambers of the New Jersey Legislature passed the bill last month, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed it into law Monday.
“Despite the progress we have made as a country, there is still much work to be done to protect the LGBTQ+ community from intolerance and injustice,” Murphy said in a statement. “New Jersey is stronger and fairer when every member of our LGBTQ+ family is valued and given equal protection under the law.”
Last month, the Supreme Court heard 90 minutes of oral arguments concerning a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A majority of the court’s conservative justices appeared prepared to uphold the law and possibly overturn Roe v. Wade — the 1973 landmark decision holding that women have a constitutional right to have an abortion before fetal viability, usually around 24 weeks.
The prospect of the 1973 ruling being overturned has prompted fears among lawmakers and LGBTQ advocates that the justices might also walk back precedent on a range of other cases, including Obergefell.
Before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, 37 states and U.S. territories had already legalized marriage equality. But of those, only 19 had legalized the nuptials through state legislation, according to an NBC News analysis. Therefore, if the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, same-sex marriage would be prohibited in the majority of the country and vulnerable in states where it was not written into law.
“The Supreme Court right now is showing us that nothing is guaranteed,” West Virginia Del. Cody Thompson said. “A lot of things that we take for granted right now, that we think are enshrined and are safe, ultimately now we’re realizing are not safe and are not necessarily always going to be there for us unless we remain vigilant.”
In response to the court’s oral arguments on reproductive rights, Thompson and fellow West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker — who are the Legislature’s only out LGBTQ lawmakers — said they will introduce a bill this month to codify same-sex marriage into law, similar to the legislation New Jersey enacted this week. West Virginia legalized same-sex marriage through litigation in 2014, but it never enshrined the right through legislation.
While the court’s seeming willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade has sparked fears among some state lawmakers, lawyers who argued in favor of gay rights in landmark LGBTQ cases shot down the notion that the high court would overturn the same-sex marriage decision even if given the opportunity to do so.
“I appreciate that you have legislatures who are trying to step in and do what they can to update their laws,” said Mary Bonauto, who argued on behalf of same-sex couples in Obergefell and now serves as the civil rights project director at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD. “We all just have to be careful to avoid giving credence to the idea that reversing Obergefell is inevitable. We are not expecting this. It would be outrageous.”
Bonauto added that Obergefell was “constitutionally correct” because the court has repeatedly made clear that “marriage is a choice for the individual to make and not the government” and is “part of equality.”
Over the last several decades, the court has struck down laws when states tried to prevent people from marrying on the basis of their race, criminal history and their ability to pay child support payments.
Paul Smith, who argued in favor of gay rights in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity in 2003, agreed with Bonauto, saying it is “unlikely” that the court would overturn Obergefell because it is “incredibly popular.”
Support for same-sex marriage among Americans reached an all-time high last year, according to a June Gallup Poll, with 70 percent of Americans — including a majority of conservatives — in favor of it.
“The court would be shooting itself in the foot if it were to do this,” Smith said.
Regardless, in 2020, following the Supreme Court’s rejection of an appeal from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples, two of the court’s conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, issued a blistering rebuke of the Obergefell ruling and signaled that they would be open to reversing it.
The justices said Davis “may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last,” adding that the high court “has created a problem that only it can fix.”
Some legal experts pointed to this statement and some of the court’s more recent rulings involving same-sex couples as evidence that marriage equality remains vulnerable.
In 2018, the court issued a narrow ruling in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. And last year, in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the court ruled in favor of a Catholic adoption agency that wanted an exemption from Philadelphia’s nondiscrimination law, which would have required the agency to allow LGBTQ couples to adopt.
“The justices have been asked to chip away at the equality and liberty of same-sex couples in a variety of different contexts, and the Supreme Court has not done an adequate job in recent years of rebuffing those efforts,” said Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation for LGBTQ civil rights organization Lambda Legal. “And so, certainly our opponents feel like they have an open invitation right now.”
| The Sonoma County Library offers programming for all ages. Join us for virtual events throughout the month of January, from bilingual storytimes to book clubs! All events are free and you don’t need a library card to attend, however registration is required. Explore a selection of January events below! Kids & Families sHelp get your child ready to read with bilingual family storytime on Wednesday, January 5, at 10:30 am! Join a children’s librarian and model the everyday practices of talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing with books, fingerplays, rhymes, and songs. For families and caregivers with children, ages 0-6.Listen to librarians read to you with Dial-a-Story! Call (707) 755-2050 to listen to a recording of children’s librarians reading storybooks. New stories available each Wednesday. Stories are available in English and Spanish and geared towards preschool age children. Tweens/Teens Are you an amateur filmmaker? All Sonoma County teens ages 12 to 19 are invited to compete in our second annual Teen Film Festival! Take some time over the winter break to shoot and edit your own 6-minute masterpiece. A jury will review all submitted entries and select films screened at the festival. Prizes will be awarded for the top films. Accepting submissions now through Tuesday, February 1. Adults Join us online for our new monthly Queer Book Club! The club offers readers the opportunity to meet virtually with librarians and discuss books centering on LGBTQ+ voices. Our first meeting is on Wednesday, January 12, at 6:00 pm and the book is Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. Discussions are held on the second Wednesday of each month. Check out through Hoopla (eBook) or through the library catalog. Find out more here. It’s winter and weather can be challenging. Join us on Saturday, January 22, from 11:00 am-12:00 pm and learn how to be ready for whatever comes your way this winter. Sonoma County Emergency Management, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, and California Highway Patrol will present on winter risks and how to stay informed.All AgesDon’t forget to join our Winter Reading Scavenger Hunt for a chance to win a Sonoma County Regional Parks Pass! Add a little fun to your winter and complete 10 out of 15 tasks to enter. You have until January 31 to complete the challenge. The raffle winner will be notified on Tuesday, February 1! Book Clubs Love book clubs? We’ve got you covered! Check out the calendar for virtual and in-person clubs, or click here for a list of all Sonoma County Library book clubs.This month’s Read BIPOC Book Club is on Tuesday, January 25, at 6:00 pm and the book is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Borrow the eBook or eAudiobook. Physical copies available (while supplies last) at Cloverdale Regional Library. Call 707-894-5271 to have a copy held for you, either at Cloverdale or sent to your local library for pickup.Looking for more? Explore the full calendar! Explore the Calendar Thank you for being a member of the Sonoma County Library community. Visit us online or in person at one of our branches. Be sure to check out open jobs at Sonoma County Library here. Questions? Please call your local library branch or click here to send us a message. Eventos virtuales de enero La Biblioteca del Condado de Sonoma brinda eventos para todas edades. ¡Únase a nosotros para eventos virtuales todo el mes de enero, desde horas de cuento bilingües hasta clubes de lectura! Todos los eventos son gratis y no necesita una tarjeta de biblioteca para asistir, pero sí es necesario registrarse. ¡Explore los eventos de enero a continuación! Niños y familias¡Ayude a prepararle a su hijo a leer con la hora de cuento bilingüe para familias el miércoles, 5 de enero a las 10:30am! Acompañe a una bibliotecaria de niños para modelar las prácticas diarias de conversación, canto, lectura, escritura, y juego con libros, rimas, canciones, y movimiento. Para familias y cuidadores con niños de 0 a 6 años.¡Escuche un cuento leído por una bibliotecaria con Telecuentos! Llame al (707) 755-2050 para escuchar un cuento. Presentamos nuevos cuentos cada miércoles. Marque 2 para el cuento en español y 1 para el cuento en inglés. Los cuentos son para niños preescolares en adelante. Adolescentes y jóvenes¿Eres un cineasta aficionado? ¡Todos los adolescentes de 12 a 19 años en el condado de Sonoma están invitados a competir en el segundo festival de cine para adolescentes! Toma tiempo durante las vacaciones de invierno para grabar y editar tu propia mini película de maravilla de 6 minutos. Un jurado revisará las entregas y seleccionará las películas que estarán estrenadas en el festival. Los premios se estarán otorgados a las mejores películas. Obras aceptadas AHORA hasta el 1 de febrero. Adultos |
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Prosecutors are considering pressing charges against a transgender woman who used the women’s public restroom in Osaka, Japan.
According to Osaka Prefectural Police, a customer complained that a transgender woman in her 40s was using the women’s room at a commercial facility last May. The customer told employees that she couldn’t use the restroom out of “fear” because “a man wearing women’s clothes was using it” and the employees called the police.
On Thursday, the case was referred to prosecutors, who could charge the transgender woman with trespassing. Police say that the woman’s ID still has a male gender marker, which means that she was not legally allowed to use the women’s room.
The Osaka Prefectural Police is not seeking indictment in the case, leaving the decision of whether to pursue charges to prosecutors.
Most transgender people in Japan “pay attention when they use toilets at public facilities so they can stay out of trouble,” Mikiya Nakatsuka, president of the Japanese Society of Gender Identity Disorder and Okayama University professor of health sciences, told the Japan Times.
“I am worried that if this single case draws attention, it might lead to more prejudice and discrimination against them.”
Chukyo University professor Takashi Kazama said that restrooms shouldn’t be separated by gender.
“Gender identity is invisible, so people cannot help but judge from a person’s appearance on the appropriateness of the use of toilets separated by genders,” they said.
Correcting the gender marker on legal documents in Japan remains difficult. A 2003 law requires a person to be over 22-years-old, be unmarried, prove they have been sterilized, and not have children under the age of 20.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of Japan upheld that law, saying that the government had an interest in limiting societal “confusion” and “abrupt changes.”
Only 7000 transgender people in the country with a population of over 125 million had their gender legally recognized between 2003 and 2019.
The World Health Organization condemns the practice of forced sterilization and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has called it a human rights violation.
The Times has been forced to issue two corrections within two days after publishing ‘anti-trans’ misinformation.
On Tuesday (4 January), the newspaper finally offered a correction to a story on inclusive language around birthing which it published almost a year ago.
In February, 2021, a Times article claimed that in new guidance, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust was telling staff in perinatal services to “say ‘chestfeeding’ instead of ‘breastfeeding’”, and to “replace the term ‘mother’”.
A quick glance through the trust’s guidance proves this claim to be categorically untrue, as it clearly states that it will be “taking a gender-additive approach”, which it says means “using gender-neutral language alongside the language of motherhood”.
However, it took a ruling by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) to convince The Times to admit the inaccuracy of its story.
In its correction, the newspaper said: “Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust’s guidance did not advocate the universal substitution of the term ‘breastfeeding’ with ‘chestfeeding’, rather that the term ‘breast/chestfeeding’ should be used instead in the trust’s literature and communications.”
Just a day later, on Wednesday (6 January), The Times was forced to print another correction relating to trans people.
This time, it clarified an opinion piece written by Alex Massie, titled: “Self-ID is a fantasy that hurts trans people.”
In the story, Massie claimed: “We pretend that women can — and do — commit rape… In England and Wales 436 male-bodied sex offenders were classified as women from 2012 to 2018.”
In the correction, The Times said: “In fact, under English law, accessories to a crime are charged as principal offenders, and therefore women can be charged with rape.
“How many female defendants were ‘male-bodied’ is not recorded. We are happy to make this clear.”
Following the correction, The Times has now re-published the piece, removing the explicit claim that all recorded female sex offenders are trans.
However, at the time this article was published, it continued to claim that “436 rape defendants were classified as women”.
Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley was among those to comment on the correction, tweeting: “Good to see [The Times] issuing a formal correction of the misinformation it published on rape statistics.
“Trans women are constantly being represented as threats and as predators in our press and public conversation. They are not.”