Video taken at night caught footage of a “person of interest” allegedly vandalizing the Little Queer Library, a rainbow-colored roadside book box maintained by a female couple in Waltham, Massachusetts. The incident marks the fourth time that the library has been vandalized in the last three months.
The May 11 footage showed a person removing all of the library’s books and placing them into bags. After doing this for about 10 minutes, the person then walked away with the books, removing nearly $1,000 worth of materials, library curators Krysta Petrie and Katie Cohen told WCVB.
Cohen and her wife, Petrie, established the Little Queer Library during the pandemic. It offers informative LGBTQ books for children and young adult readers. The couple said they wanted the library to be a community resource for people who might feel fearful about checking out queer content from schools or local public libraries.
“We want to be a place where people are accepted and seen and celebrate who they are,” Cohen said. “[The recent vandalism] really feels a lot like censorship.”
Petrie added, “There’s really only a couple of reasons why [such vandalism] could happen: One is straight-up hate, LGBT hate. They just don’t want to see the community or something.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday that she would not march in the city’s annual Pride parade in June unless its organizers reverse a ban on uniformed police officers from marching.
The group that hosts the city’s march, San Francisco Pride, initially enacted restrictions on uniformed police officers in 2020, following the nationwide protests for racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Last year’s parade was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For this year’s event, Pride organizers reinstated the uniform ban citing safety concerns for marginalized groups within the LGBTQ community. Officers are encouraged to participate, but wearing department T-shirts instead of uniforms.
Breed, a Democrat, condemned the move.
“One of the central planks of the movement for better policing is a demand that the people who serve in uniform better represent the communities they are policing,” Breed said. “We can’t say, ‘We want more Black officers,’ or ‘We want more LGBTQ officers,’ and then treat those officers with disrespect when they actually step up and serve.”
Conflicts between U.S. law enforcement and the LGBTQ communityare nothing new. In fact, the country’s first LGBTQ Pride marches — held in June 1970 — were organized to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a police raid at New York City gay bar Stonewall Inn, or what became known as the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.
But in recent years, tensions between police and the queer community have grown in the wake of a global racial reckoning.
In 2017, Toronto Pride banned uniformed officers from participating in its annual march due to concerns of racial injustice raised by the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter. Vancouver’s Pride parade followed suit in 2020.
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On Monday, the San Francisco Police Officer’s Pride Alliance also denounced San Francisco Pride’s uniform ban, pleading with the group’s board of advisers to reverse its decision.
“The board decided to punish LGBTQ+ peace officers for the failings of others,” the group said in a statement. “This is its own form of prejudice and further erodes the tenuous relationship between peace officers and the communities we keep safe.”
“For LGBTQ+ officers, this brings us back to a time when we had to hide at work that we were LGBTQ+,” the group added. “Now they ask us to hide the fact of where we work.”
San Francisco Pride’s interim president, Suzanne Ford, and its board of directors said in a statement on Monday that while they have been working with the city’s law enforcement to come to an agreement on uniforms at the parade, they have “not come to a solution that is mutually beneficial.”
“SF Pride remains committed to practicing radical inclusion, practicing harm reduction in our space, and supporting those who are marginalized within our community,” the group said. “We acknowledge and appreciate the steps that have been taken to heal decades of distrust between law enforcement agencies and the LGBTQ+ communities.”
The group added, “We look forward to working with Pride organizations and law enforcement agencies from around the world in finding a solution that is satisfactory to all.”
San Francisco’s annual Pride parade will take place on Sunday, June 26.
Several major anti-LGBTQ politicians – including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) – won their primary elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia yesterday and Texas’s run-off elections.
Greene – who tried to shut down the House of Representatives twice because it was debating a ban on anti-LGBTQ discrimination and who has a transphobic sign in front of her office – won her primary yesterday with 69% of the vote in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. 73% of her district voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 elections, so she has an advantage going into the general election.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) won his primary after being challenged by Trump-endorsed former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). Kemp signed three anti-LGBTQ bills in April, which banned trans athletes from participating in school sports, allowed parents to challenge any material taught in school, and banned “offensive” books from school libraries, which has been understood to include books with LGBTQ content.
Also in Georgia, former NFL player Herschel Walker won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and will face Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in the general election.
“Don’t call- Don’t put that ghetto g-word on me,” he said in a Twitch stream in January. “I just like masculine men. I’m not a— I don’t wanna be lumped in with the rainbow people.”
In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) won her primary yesterday with 54% of the votes counted so far. Ivey signed a law earlier this month that would throw doctors in jail for providing gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth and young adults, but a federal court stopped the state from implementing it.
“I thank you with all my soul,” Ivey said on Tuesday night. “I am so proud to be your governor.”
In Texas, the incumbent Paxton won his run-off election for state attorney general against George P. Bush. While Paxton got the most votes in Texas’s primary in March, he didn’t get a majority of the vote and had to face Bush in a run-off yesterday.
Bush said that he challenged Paxton because he wanted to advance “good government.”
“This campaign is about good government – making sure we don’t have indicted felons serving at the top of the chain of command of our law enforcement officials here in Texas,” he said on Texas Public Radio.
Earlier this year, Paxton published a non-binding opinion that allowing transgender youth to transition violates their constitutional right to reproduce, a right that is not mentioned in the Constitution. His opinion was so full of medical errors related to transgender people that Yale medical and legal researchers published a report about it and said it was “not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion.”
“These errors, taken together, thoroughly discredit the AG opinion’s claim that standard medical care for transgender children and adolescents constitutes child abuse,” the Yale researchers wrote.
Trump-era White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders won the Republican primary for Arkansas governor, winning a campaign where she avoided talking about state issues and instead focused on national Republican talking points.
Sanders attacked LGBTQ equality repeatedly when she was at the White House, including saying that “religious liberty” requires allowing “a baker to put a sign in his window saying we don’t bake cakes for gay weddings” and saying that allowing transgender people to serve openly in the military is “a very expensive and disruptive policy,” even though experts did not agree with that statement.
Britain’s Royal Mint unveiled a special new commemorative rainbow-colored 50 pence coin on Wednesday as a tribute to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pride UK movement.
The coin, designed by east London artist and LGBTQ activist Dominique Holmes, uses state-of-the-art printing technology to emboss it with the colors of the Pride progress flag.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/zUt216w?_showcaption=true&app=1
“It humbles me greatly that the words that I coined for the brand — protest, visibility, unity and equality — will be on an actual coin, opposite the queen,” Asad Shaykh, director of marketing and communications at Pride in London said.
“This queer brown immigrant has come a long way, powered by hope, love and this city. Nowhere in the world had this been possible, except the UK. Pride in London feels very proud today.”
The coin honors the anniversary of the first official Pride UK event in 1972 and is the first to be dedicated to Britain’s LGBTQ+ community.
Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, announced endorsements of 18 pro-equality candidates Thursday, including candidates for the California Board of Equalization and Legislature and 13 openly LGBTQ+ candidates for local offices throughout the state.
The full list of new endorsements can be found below:
California Board of Equalization:
BOE District 1: Braden Murphy
California Senate:
Senate District 34: Tom Umberg
Senate District 38: Catherine Blakespear
California Assembly:
Assembly District 17: Matt Haney
Assembly District 64: Elizabeth Alcantar
Local Offices:
San Leandro Unified School District Board of Trustees, TA 2: James Aguilar
Covina City Clerk: Drew Aleman
Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, District 4: Ken Carlson
Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools: Dr. Amie Carter
Palm Springs City Council, District 3: Ron deHarte
Orange County Assessor: Rick Foster
Vallejo City Unified School District Board of Education: John Fox
Sunnyvale City Council, District 5: Richard Mehlinger
San Dimas City Council, District 2: Eric Nakano
San Leandro City Council, District 1: Celina Reynes
Hart Union High School District Board of Trustees, TA 2: Andrew Taban
Anaheim Union High School District Board of Trustees, TA 1: Billie Joe Wright
El Cerrito City Council: Carolyn Wysinger
Note: Bold names indicate an openly LGBTQ+ candidate.
For a complete list of Equality California’s 2022 endorsements, please visit eqca.org/elections.
Chris DeSett said the first time he started to feel comfortable with his sexuality was the first night he moved into a dorm at American University in Washington, D.C.
DeSett, 28, moved there ahead of his freshman year in August 2012, from his childhood home near Kansas City, Missouri. He chose the school for its international studies program but also because he wanted to get out of the Midwest to figure out who he was away from his family.
Chris DeSett.Chris Desett
After he moved into his dorm, and everyone’s parents had left, he said other students started banging on doors to gather people to hang out together.
“So we’re all rushing down to this meeting area, and we’re talking and we’re playing ‘Never Have I Ever’ and stuff like that,” he said. “It felt very welcoming and felt very affirming, and I kind of dipped my toe in the water and just said, ‘Oh, I think I might be bisexual.’ I didn’t feel that way, but I was just testing the waters for a reaction. And everyone’s like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s so great.’”
After the first semester of his freshman year, he came out as gay. He said that moment on the first night in the dorms had a lasting impact on him.
“The reason why that’s so important to me was I wasn’t met with rejection,” said DeSett, who now works for the federal government. “That affirming environment did give me the confidence to really explore my identity and then land on the conclusion that, ‘No, I am a gay man, and I’m confident that I know that for a fact. I know that I’ll be loved for who I am.’”
New research from the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law, revealed that LGBTQ people who attended college or graduate school were four times more likely, at 21.5 percent, to report having chosen a university in a different city or state to seek a more welcoming climate than non-LGBTQ people, at 4.8 percent. Nearly one-third, or 32.6 percent, of LGBTQ people reported picking a college elsewhere to get away from their family, compared to 14.1 percent of non-LGBTQ people.
DeSett said he chose a school in Washington, D.C., because he “wanted an experience where I had room to grow and be myself without having to worry about someone calling my parents” and outing him before he was ready.
The Williams Institute found the majority of LGBTQ people surveyed, at 71.9 percent, said they experienced a sense of belonging at their college. That number is slightly lower than non-LGBTQ people, at 83.5 percent.
But, researchers noted, despite some LGBTQ people’s efforts to find more welcoming environments, more of them reported facing bullying, harassment, assault and mental health issues than their non-LGBTQ counterparts. Nearly one-third (32.6 percent) of LGBTQ people who attended a four-year college or graduate school said they experienced bullying, harassment or assault, compared to 18.9 percent of non-LGBTQ people. More than one-third (35.3 percent) reported that their mental health was not good for all or most of the time they were in college, compared to 10.8 percent of non-LGBTQ people.
Majorities of LGBTQ people in four-year colleges (60.4 percent) and graduate school (56.3 percent) also said they were not out as LGBTQ to any faculty or staff.
Adon Cooper said he thought he would feel comfortable being out when he started undergrad in 2004 at the State University of New York at Purchase, a public liberal arts college about a half-hour north of his home in the Bronx borough of New York City.
“Literally, the first time walking on campus, I was greeted by a bunch of drag queens, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be really cool,’ but I realized that I wasn’t really ready to have those kinds of conversations,” Cooper, 35, said.
Adon Cooper.Adon Cooper
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Even though he wasn’t ready to be out, he said he faced peer pressure and verbal abuse from people who tried to force him to come out.
But he said college was still where he found his “footing,” and he started to feel more comfortable with the idea of coming out. One day, his first roommate in college, who was a dancer, went into the bathroom “as his normal self and came out fully in drag,” Cooper recalled.
The two talked about drag and watched “Paris Is Burning,” a 1990 documentary about New York City’s ball scene, a subculture created by LGBTQ people of color where members of different “houses” dress up and compete in elaborate balls. He said they are still friends.
“He started to really educate me on what a queer lifestyle can look like, and it made me feel like maybe if and when I’m ready, I’ll at least have someone I feel comfortable enough to have this conversation with,” he said.
The report found that transgender and gender-nonconforming students face additional issues, including their colleges or universities lacking policies to support them. Resources for transgender students were less commonly reported by participants than general LGBTQ resources. One in four LGBTQ respondents reported that their school had a policy of allowing transgender students to change their gender markers on their school records, and more than half (59.8 percent) were unaware of such policies.
Less than half (44 percent) of LGBTQ respondents reported the presence of at least one gender-neutral bathroom, and less than one-third (29.3 percent) reported that their college had gender-inclusive housing, defined as housing that isn’t segregated into men’s and women’s spaces and welcomes students who identify outside of the gender binary.
JJ Nichols, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, attended Samford University, a private Christian school outside of Birmingham, Alabama, starting in 2013. They said they didn’t come out until two years after they graduated, but, looking back, they said if they had asked to use gender-neutral pronouns at school, it “would be met with a lot of pushback.”
JJ Nichols.JJ Nichols
“It’s still inside Birmingham, which is the major city, so the homophobia was low-lying,” they said. “It was like more of that, ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin.’”
The Williams Institute researchers concluded that their findings show “the need to improve conditions for LGBTQ students, a sizable and heterogeneous minority population.” They recommended that colleges include sexual orientation and gender identity in nondiscrimination policies that protect LGBTQ students, faculty and staff; include LGBTQ content in diversity training for staff; and start a campus climate survey to identify emerging issues, among other suggestions to make campuses safer for LGBTQ students.
Nichols said that, despite the climate at their school, they remember meeting a professor in the school of music who helped them feel a little more comfortable with their identity. The teacher was pregnant, and she made a comment that if she had a son who was gay, it wouldn’t be a problem.
“It was just the note — the knowledge that somebody was OK,” they said.
Because of the disciplinary infractions he received for leading the protests at Flagler Palm Coast High School in March, school administrators are preventing him for running for the elected student body office, Jack Petocz said in a letter posted on Twitter on Tuesday. The school is located about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Daytona Beach.
“I am continuing to be punished for standing up for my identity and against widespread hatred,” Petocz wrote. “We shouldn’t be subject to abuse both in Tallahassee and at-home.”
In an email, school district spokesman Jason Wheeler said Flagler Schools was not permitted to speak about individual students’ disciplinary records. Requirements for individual on-campus clubs or organizations are set by the schools or clubs themselves, he said.
“The district has no say in setting those requirements or in how those requirements are enforced,” Wheeler said.
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Petocz is being honored next week with an award at the 2022 PEN America Literary Gala for organizing students to protest the Florida legislation and fighting book bans. PEN America is a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for free speech and is made up of novelists, journalists and other writers.
“Jack Petocz is leading his generation in fighting back against book bans and legislative efforts to police how individual identities can be discussed in schools,” PEN America said in a news release announcing that the Florida student would be receiving an award.
The Florida legislation, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
More than 500 Flagler Palm Coast High School students walked out in protest of the legislation in early March, as well as thousands of other students around Florida. Petocz says he defied school officials’ orders not to distribute 300 rainbow pride flags he had purchased for the protest. He was suspended for four days afterward, he said.
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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