Apple CEO Tim Cook and retired NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade joined Utah leaders Wednesday to announce the completion of a local advocacy group’s campaign to build new homes that provide services for LGBTQ youth in the U.S. West.
Encircle, a non-profit providing mental health services for LGBTQ youth, has surpassed its goal of raising $8 million to build eight new homes with locations in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada and Utah aimed at providing safe spaces and preventing teen suicide.
“Encircle’s mission is very personal to me because I see myself in so many of these young people,” Cook told reporters at a press briefing Wednesday. “It’s not easy when you’re made to feel different or less than because of who you are or who you love. It’s a feeling that so many LGBTQ people know far too well.”
The group kicked off the initial campaign in February with donations from Apple and Utah Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith.
Wade, who joined the Utah Jazz ownership group in April, shared his experience as the parent of a transgender child and voiced his support for Encircle’s mission.
“I stand here as a proud parent of a beautiful daughter that’s a part of the LGBT-plus community,” Wade said. “I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know everything, but I’m willing to listen.”
Encircle has locations in Salt Lake City, Provo and St. George, Utah. Construction has begun on locations in Heber, Logan and Ogden, as well as in Las Vegas.
The group is based in Provo, Utah, which is also home to Brigham Young University. Jeffrey Holland, a top leader for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently called on the church-owned university to uphold its commitment to the faith’s fundamental teachings, including its stance against same-sex marriage.
The ensuing controversy showed that tensions remain between the LGBTQ community and the state’s predominant faith.
Church scholars say the Salt Lake City-based faith taught that homosexuality could be “cured” in the 1970s. The church has since said homosexuality is not a sin, though it remains opposed to same-sex marriage and intimacy.
The number of homophobic hate crime reports in the UK has tripled and the number of transphobic hate crime reports has quadrupled over the last six years, shocking new figures reveal.
Data obtained by Vice World Newsshows there were 6,363 reports of hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2014-15, the year same-sex weddings became legal in the UK, compared to 19,679 in 2020-21 – a total increase of 210 per cent.
For reports of transphobic hate crimes, there were 598 in 2014-15 and 2,588 in 2020-21, representing a rise of 332 per cent.
Only ten out of the 45 UK police forces recorded a decrease in hate crime, and the vast majority of those who provided data had seen a year-on-year rise in hate crime reports since 2014.
Among them were Liverpool’s Merseyside Police, which has been battling a wave of homophobic attacks in the city this year. Back in 2014-2015 the hate crime reports numbered just 64; in 2020-21 this figure soared to 834.
Leni Morris, chief executive of Galop, the UK’s LGBT+ anti-abuse charity, said she wasn’t surprised that hate crime reports went up during the lockdown period.
“Right from the beginning of the pandemic, we saw the impact that lockdown was having on the escalation in violence and abuse against our community,” she told Vice.
“We saw LGBT+ people targeted as a direct result of the pandemic – either because the pandemic was seen as a punishment for our existence, or because of our community’s association with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a notion that LGBT+ people were somehow at the root of this pandemic.”
“What we do know for sure, from the UK government’s own figures, is that 90 per cent of hate crimes against LGBT+ people go unreported, so these figures only represent a tiny part of the overall amount of abuse and violence faced by the LGBT+ community in the UK today.”
This rise in hate crimes has been accompanied by a sharp uptick in the demand for the services of Victim Support, an independent charity which provides specialist, confidential help for victims of crime in England and Wales.
Victim Support says overall requests for help have jumped by almost 11 per cent in the past 12 months, with calls relating to transphobic attacks surging by a shocking 45 per cent.
This is significantly higher than the 22 per cent increase in the number of people seeking help for disability hate crimes, and a 20 per cent increase in sexual orientation-related crimes.
An “overwhelming majority” of hate crimes recorded by the charity were race and nationality-related (71 per cent), with Victim Support noting a spike in referrals to its services following the Euro 2020 final in July.
“It is both concerning and disheartening that our figures reflect this significant increase in hate crimes across the country,” said Diana Fawcett, Victim Support’s chief executive, as reported by the Independent.
“We are alarmed to see that the number of victims seeking support for race and nationality-related hate remains high, and we strongly condemn all types of racist abuse.
“It’s also worrying that there has been a huge jump in the number of people seeking support for disability, homophobic and transgender-identity related hate crimes, which we’ve seen have a damaging effect on the victim’s sense of safety, well-being and self-worth.”
The rising hate crime rates were confirmed earlier this month by the investigative journalism unit Liberty Investigates, which also found that forces across England and Wales had resolved fewer cases in 2020 than five years ago.
In 2020 only 14 per cent of cases resulted in a conclusive outcome such as a caution, charge, summons, penalty notice or community resolution – half the rate of 28 per cent seen five years earlier.
“These findings are extremely concerning,” said Nadia Whittome MP, who previously worked as a hate crime project officer at the non-profit social enterprise Communities Inc.
“I am not surprised that people withdraw from the police and criminal system, given how negative an experience many people from marginalised groups have had. However, the scale of withdrawals and lack of justice represents an institutional failure of hate crime victims.”
Dame Vera Baird QC, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, said police had failed victims.
“It is shocking that police are clearly so unresponsive to this. If people are gaining the confidence to go to the police, only to be left lying by the wayside, there can’t be a clearer failure.”
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, used the visit by the pope to Budapest last month to advance his populist agenda. He said he had been encouraged by his meeting with Frances to advance ‘family values’. Indeed, Orbán claimed to have the pontiff’s imprimatur: ‘Moreover, he said: go ahead, go for it. And go for it we will.’
But what is Orbán ‘going for’, beyond the rhetoric?
With elections looming next year and a poor record in government so far, the increasingly autocratic Orbán has found a new target in attacking LGBT rights, in which ‘family values’ is a proxy for a whole other agenda. It started with refugees and now it is sexual and gender minorities. It is best understood as a cynical move to distract attention from Orbán’s bungling of the state response to the pandemic, as well as corruption scandals involving business oligarchs and dodgy dealings with China.
Under the banner of ‘family values’, in 2020 Hungary banned adoption by same-sex couples, barred transgender people from changing their legal gender and refused to ratify the Istanbul convention, which aims to protect women from violence. This year Hungary passed a law which equates homosexuality with paedophilia and bans ‘promotion and portrayal of homosexuality’ and gender diversity to under-18s, in sexuality education, films or advertisements.
Putin’s playbook
Orbán is taking a leaf out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook. The Russian president has used the spectre of LGBT rights as a wedge to consolidate a conservative support base at home, delineate regional zones of influence and forge global alliances. It started in earnest with the passage in 2013 of the ‘gay propaganda law’, an administrative regulation which forbids the positive portrayal of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ where minors are present.
In effect, the law inhibits any such presentation of LGBT identities in the public domain. It has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, being vague enough to make Russians afraid to fall foul of the law. Hungary’s law has strong echoes although it goes even further, banning any depiction of LGBT people to children.
Russia’s law has had a stifling effect on teachers and counsellors and has been used to shut down an online support network for LGBT kids. It has been associated with an upturn in homophobic violence. There is no reason to think the impact of Hungary’s law will be any different.
The ‘gay propaganda law’ has proved a very effective tool for Putin—if very harmful for many Russians. On a domestic level, the negative connnotations of ‘propaganda’, with its Stalinist associations, and the positive affirmation of purported national ‘tradition’, pitted against the forces of globalisation, have proved an effective shorthand. They have mobilise Putin’s small-town and rural supporters in the face of public protests in the big urban centres (in as much as these have been allowed).
Regionally, the rhetoric has been used to contest spheres of influence between the Russian-backed Eurasian customs union and the European Union. On a global level, at the United Nations Russia has been at least partially successful in assuming the mantle of protector of ‘traditional values’—counterposed to universal norms such as human rights—and in the process forging geopolitical alliances with like-minded states.
Sustained attack
Poland under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has become another outlier in Europe, where the independence of the judiciary, civil society and the media have been under sustained assault. The government has cast LGBT rights as a dangerous and subversive ideology, while local authorities have declared ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’.
Warsaw has systematically attacked reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education and threatened to withdraw from the Istanbul convention—the convention includes a reference to sexual orientation and a broad definition of gender. This was an election rallying point in 2019, designed to help the PiS secure a second term in office.
Leaders such as Orbán, or the key PiS figure Jarosław Kaczyński, and the parties they represent project an unalloyed vision of their societies. They present themselves as the authentic voice of ‘the people’, against ‘liberal elites’ accused of defying ‘common sense’.
This dangerous world of nationalist rhetoric produces ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, shoring up support by concocting imagined threats to the nation. In Hungary, migrants have been vilified as a perceived external demon, while LGBT people have been cast as both an internal threat and a foreign influence.
‘Gender ideology’
Why do advances in women’s or LGBT rights elicit such apocalyptic fantasies of destruction of the social order? Connecting developments in Poland and Hungary is the concept of ‘gender ideology’. This is closely linked to the idea of traditional values but more amorphous and, it seems, better able to rally disparate groups against a common perceived enemy. First coined decades ago by the Holy See, ‘gender ideology’ has become a ubiquitous term, strategically deployed to curtail sexual and reproductive rights.
As an ‘empty signifier’ (in semiotic terms), gender ideology simultaneously means nothing and everything. This has allowed it to become the symbolic ‘glue’, uniting disparate groups in opposition—to feminism, transgender equality, the existence of intersex bodies, elimination of sex stereotyping, family-law reform, same-sex marriage, access to abortion and contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education.
The anti-gender movement is increasingly well resourced and co-ordinated, and more strategic and sophisticated than in the past. It has mobilised against gender- and sexuality-based human-rights advances at the national level, as well vis-à-vis regional and global mechanisms relating to rights, development and public health.
The anti-gender movement has even co-opted the language of human rights—positioning itself domestically as protecting free speech and religious freedom against ideological conformity and internationally as protecting national cultural integrity against imperialism. In this way, LGBT identities have come to stand in for something much bigger, being construed as a threat to the fabric of society itself.
Proceedings initiated
Last month, LGBT activist groups submitted a legal complaint to the European Commission, asserting that Poland’s ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’ and other discriminatory measures ran counter to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the directive on equal treatment in employment and occupation. In mid-July, the commission initiated infringement proceedings against Poland, because of local authorities having adopted ‘LGBT-ideology free zone’ resolutions (three have since reneged), and against aspects of Hungary’s disingenuous paedophilia law falling foul of its human-rights obligations.
Aside from violations relating to trade and the free flow of information, the commission asserted, the Hungarian provisions infringed rights to non-discrimination, human dignity, freedom of expression and information and respect for private life. The Polish authorities meanwhile had failed to respond adequately to its inquiry as to the meaning and impact of municipalities becoming ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’.
These are serious allegations, with far-reaching implications, and the commission is right to identify depredations of basic human rights and core European values. Both states enjoy the economic benefits attached to EU membership, yet under their current governments eschew the associated obligations.
Supporting the rights of, and equality for, LGBT people in these settings is thus more than defending members of a minority group, vital though that is. It is defending democracy and human rights for everyone.
Dining Out For Life, on December 2, is Food For Thought’s biggest and most delicious fundraiser of the year! This year we celebrate our 20th annual Dining Out For Life and the event lands the day after World AIDS day. See below for all the ways you can participate in the event and support our organization!
Want to help out?
Volunteering during Dining Out For Life is FUN! Our volunteer ambassadors help spread the word about Food For Thought and Dining Out For Life and encourage their network of family and friends to attend. They help Food For Thought to stay in contact with their assigned restaurant, including dropping off and picking up event materials.
On the day of the event, Ambassadors will volunteer at their assigned restaurant to approach tables, hand out event materials and information, answer questions, accept raffle and donation envelopes and thank guests. VOLUNTEER
Participating Restaurants
Plan to dine at or order takeout from the Sonoma County restaurants below and make a donation online to support Food For Thought. These spectacular restaurants will donate a percentage of their sales to Food For Thought on Thursday, December 2.
Texas officials removed two webpages in late August that provided resources for LGBTQ youths — including a link to a suicide prevention hotline — a few hours after criticism from one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Republican primary challengers.
The candidate, Don Huffines, who owns a real estate development company in the Dallas area, wrote Aug. 31 on Twitter: “It’s offensive to see @GregAbbott_TX use our tax dollars to advocate for transgender ideology. This must end.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/gi7itgd?app=1
He described a webpage on the Department of Family and Protective Services’ website titled “gender identity and sexual orientation.”
“They’re talking about helping ‘empower and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, allied,’ nonheterosexual behavior, and it goes on and on,” Huffines said in a video. “I mean, really? This is Texas. These are not Texas values. These are not Republican Party values. But these are obviously Greg Abbott’s values.”
In a separate tweet the same afternoon, Huffines linkedto a webpage for Texas Youth Connection, a program run by the Department of Family and Protective Services, which included a link to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention group, and other LGBTQ rights groups. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/C3LZcyj?app=1
“This is the webpage where @GregAbbott_TX’s political appointees are promoting transgender ideology,” Huffines wrote.
A few hours later, both pages had been removed.
“The Texas Youth Connection website has been temporarily disabled for a comprehensive review of its content,” a message on the website says. “This is being done to ensure that its information, resources, and referrals are current.”
Patrick Crimmins, the director of communications for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said in an email Tuesday that the review of the webpages “is still ongoing” and would not provide further comment about why the pages were removed.
Abbott’s office has not returned a request for comment.
The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that emails obtained through a public records request show that agency officials discussed removing the gender identity and sexual orientation webpage in response to Huffines’ tweet.
Just 13 minutes after Huffines’ video went up, Marissa Gonzales, the department’s media relations director, emailed a link to Crimmins with the subject line “Don Huffines video accusing Gov/DFPS of pushing liberal transgender agenda,” the Chronicle reported. She wrote in the body of the email: “FYI. This is starting to blow up on Twitter.”
Crimmins emailed Darrell Azar, the department’s web and creative services director. He asked who runs the page and wrote, “Darrell — please note we may need to take that page down, or somehow revise content,” according to the Chronicle.
Azar responded that the webpage came from the department’s Preparation for Adult Living program, which supports older teens placed in foster care by the state. He wrote that the content Huffines criticized is “only a few years old” but that the adult living program has posted “content related to LGBTQ for as long as I can remember,” according to the Chronicle.
Huffines took credit for the pages’ removal in a tweet Tuesday.
“Greg Abbott was using taxpayer dollars to advocate for transgender ideology and the Human Rights Campaign,” he wrote. “Our campaign made him stop.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/2Dukul1?app=1
Many advocates spoke outagainst the pages’ removal in August, but even more people, including elected officials, condemned the decision in response to the Chronicle’s article.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/Maxrkow?app=1https://iframe.nbcnews.com/BIGR3m4?app=1
Former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who was secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration, said the decision to remove the webpages was “disgusting.”
“Greg Abbott is so scared of losing his primary, he’s sabotaging an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention hotline to kowtow his extremist base,” he wrote Tuesday. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/BTMcnyY?app=1
Ricardo Martinez, the CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said in an emailed statement that LGBTQ children are overrepresented in foster care and “face truly staggering discrimination and abuse.”
“The state is responsible for these kids’ lives, yet it actively took away a resource for them when they are in crisis,” he said. “What’s worse, this was done at the start of Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month. LGBTQ youth who have been in foster care report three times greater likelihood of attempting suicide in the past year (according to a Trevor Project research brief). Again and again this year, we are simply asking that these kids’ lives not be politicized.”
Texas has considered more than 50 bills this year that target LGBTQ youths, particularly transgender youths, according to Equality Texas.
While advocates have defeated all of the bills so far, the Legislature recently began a third special legislative session — the fourth legislative session overall this year — and it is considering a number of anti-transgender bills again.
Advocates have said the rhetoric in the bills has a negative effect on the mental health of LGBTQ youths statewide.
From Jan. 1 to Aug. 30, crisis calls from LGBTQ young people in Texas increased by 150 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data shared last week by the Trevor Project.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach a trained counselor at the Crisis Text Line. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional support networks.
The LA LGBT Center has completed construction of a new senior housing complex next-door to its Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood.
Los Angeles-based Killefer Flammang Architects (KFA) and New York-based Leong Leong have completed the Ariadne Getty Foundation Senior Housing Complex.
Replacing a surface parking lot at 1127 N. Las Palmas, the five-story senior housing complex features 98 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments reserved for low-income seniors.
The building, in addition to housing, includes a fitness center, and a courtyard. The apartments are accompanied by inset balconies, and are designed to be wheelchair accessible.
The project includes a mix of traditional affordable housing, leased through a lottery system, and permanent supportive housing where rents will be covered through public funds.
The apartments, which are reserved for residents aged 62 and older, will offer rents up to $1,175 per month, as well as access to specialized services catering to LGBT adults, meals, case management, and employment training. Twenty-six of the 98 units are earmarked for individuals who have experienced chronic homelessness. The rents of those units will be fully covered by city- and county-provided grants.
“The lack of affordable housing in this country is at an all-time high and presents even greater hardships for the LGBTQ community given the many biases which continue to exist. It’s an even greater problem amongst LGBTQ seniors,” said Ariadne Getty, president and executive director of the foundation, in a statement.
In early 2020, construction commenced on the housing-focused second phase of the project, one made possible thanks to a $2.5 million gift from the Ariadne Getty Foundation (AGF). Also recently completed on the campus is a 26-unit Youth Housing complex located across the street from the Ariadne Getty Foundation Senior Housing building.
Ariadne Getty Foundation Senior Housing was developed by Thomas Safran & Associates, an L.A.-based affordable housing developer and property management company.
A “regressive” bill is could roll back trans rights in Quebec, Canada, threatening trans folks’ “equality, dignity and personal integrity”.
Bill 2 was brought forward by Quebec justice minister Simon Jolin-Barrette on Thursday (21 October), according to CBC.
It aims to change Quebec’s civil code to require trans people to undergo surgery before being able to legally change their gender, and could even bring in separate sex and gender markers on government ID.
Trans Canadians in Quebec have been able to change their legal gender without surgery since 2015, and there are currently no other Canadian provinces that require surgery for legal recognition.
Some trans people do not see surgery as a necessary part of their transition, and others may be unable to access surgery.
Florence Ashley Paré, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law who specialises in cases relating to trans youth, told Global News: “This would absolutely make Quebec the most regressive in Canada for trans rights.”
“All other bills were about progress,” they added.
“This is an exceptional case where we would go back on rights… [It would also create] situations where people might get surgery they otherwise didn’t want just to meet the prerequisite from the government.”
The possibility of having separate markers for sex and gender on government-issued ID could also put trans folk at risk.
Executive director of the LGBTIQ+ Family Coalition Mona Greenbaum told CBC: “A trans woman who hasn’t had surgery will still have an M for her sex and an F for her gender on her legal documents.
“What that does is it puts that person in danger. You have a document that says you were born an M, but you became an F and you have to show that document to other people.
“It obliges you to make do with coming out, whether you want to or not.”
The bill cannot become law until it has gone through a parliamentary committee and public hearings, in which Quebec citizens will have their say on the changes to the civil code.
In the country that first legalized gay marriage, the Dutch crown princess has the right to marry a person of any gender without giving up her right to the throne, the prime minister said Tuesday.
Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia, 17, has not made any comments on the matter, and little is known of her personal life. The question arose after recently published books argued that the country’s rules exclude the possibility of a same-sex royal couple.
But Prime Minister Mark Rutte said times have changed since one of his predecessors last addressed the issue in 2000.
“The government believes that the heir can also marry a person of the same sex,” Rutte wrote in a letter to parliament.
“The cabinet therefore does not see that an heir to the throne or the King should abdicate if he/she would like to marry a partner of the same sex.”
Gay marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001.
Rutte said that one issue remains unresolved: how a gay marriage would affect later succession of the royal couple’s children. And it doesn’t make sense to try to decide that now, he said.
“It’s just very dependent on the facts and circumstances of the specific case, as you can see by looking back at how family law can change over time,” he wrote.
Unlike regular marriages, royal marriages need the approval of parliament. Members of the Dutch royal house have on occasion given up their place in the line of succession to marry someone without permission.
An LGBTQ nonprofit on Monday released its annual Worst Listnaming 180 colleges and universities as “the absolute worst, most unsafe campuses for LGBTQ youth.”
Campus Pride, which advocates for LGBTQ inclusivity and safety at U.S. colleges and universities, added 50 universities to the list since last year — the most extensive update since the list started in 2015, according to the organization.
The list includes colleges and universities that have either received or applied for a religious exemption to Title IX, a federal law that protects students from discrimination in federally funded schools, or have a “demonstrated history of anti-LGBTQ policies, programs and practices,” according to a news release.
At 180 schools, the list is the longest it has been in its six-year history.
“These aren’t just bad campuses or the worst campuses — these campuses fundamentally are unsafe for LGBTQ students, and, as a result, they’re fundamentally unsafe for all students to go to,” Shane Windmeyer, founder and executive director of Campus Pride, said. “They promote an environment of hostility, of discrimination, harassment, toward a group of people, and who wants — when you’re trying to be educated — to have that type of negative learning environment?”
Seattle Pacific University made the list of worst colleges for gay students for the first time.Mat Hayward / Getty Images file
Windmeyer said that part of the reason this year’s update to the list was significant is because of changes the Trump administration made to the Title IX religious exemption process. Under President Barack Obama, religious schools had to submit a letter outlining why they needed an exemption to Title IX. The Trump administration changed that rule so that religious schools were automatically exempt from Title IX, which allowed them to continue receiving federal funds while, for example, enforcing a rule that prohibits students from engaging in gay sex or same-sex relationships.
The Trump administration also stopped publishing an online list of schools that have requested an exemption from Title IX. Campus Pride referred to that list while creating its Worst List.
Windmeyer said the Biden administration has republished previous lists of schools that applied for title IX religious exemptions, but it hasn’t clarified or changed the Trump administration policy undoing the application requirement.
Before Biden took office, Campus Pride relied on student reports and news articles, Windmeyer said. This year, the group used the list of schools that requested exemptions to Title IX and court documents.
In 2019, 41 campuses filed an amicus brief in Bostock v. Clayton County in support of employers who argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t protect LGBTQ employees from discrimination. The Supreme Court sided with the employees.
Windmeyer said Campus Pride also included the 29 religious colleges and universities named in a class action lawsuit against the Department of Education alleging that the religious exemption is unconstitutional and that it allows religious schools that receive federal funds to discriminate against LGBTQ students.
“Religious organizations and colleges were emboldened during the Trump administration,” Windmeyer, who noted that all 180 schools on the list this year are religiously affiliated, said. “Biden has still yet to clarify if Title IX exemptions are mandatory or if he has an executive order that is going to make them mandatory, which I feel that if a campus is going to openly discriminate, then it should be mandated that they tell students and that they have a Title IX exemption on file with the federal government.”
The Worst List is in alphabetical order rather than rank, but some schools have appeared on it more often than others.
David Shill, a 22-year-old junior at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said he isn’t surprised that his school is on the list again because “things haven’t changed.”
BYU, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, forbids same-sex dating. Though it doesn’t specifically mention transgender students in the student handbook, the church counsels against medical transition for trans people; otherwise they face restricted participation in the church or even excommunication.
Shill, the president of BYU Pride, which is not officially supported by or recognized by the university, said that homophobia is “usually assumed” on campus. He mentioned a video taken in August in which a student defaces pro-LGBTQ chalk art on BYU’s campus anduses an anti-gay slur. In March, when about 40 students lit up the iconic 380-foot-tall “Y” on the mountain east of campus with rainbow lights, Shill said LGBTQ students faced cyberbullying.
“My first week back on campus I really felt like, wow I will never belong here,” Shill said. “And just seeing straight couples being couples on campus and like holding hands or hugging … that coupled with the attitudes of some of my professors and classmates, just the whole day, it was hard to be here.”
A representative for BYU did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A number of schools are on the list for the first time, including Seattle Pacific University, a private Christian university named in the class action lawsuit against the Department of Education. Affirm, a group of SPU students, alumni, faculty and staff dedicated to ending anti-LGBTQ policies and culture at the university, began organizing in the spring in response to the university’s involvement in two lawsuits — the class action and a suit brought by a teacher in April who says he was denied a full-time job because he is gay.
In a statement emailed to NBC News, Affirm’s members said they are “saddened but not surprised” by SPU’s addition to the 2021 Worst List.
“For an institution that advertises our community as a place promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the name of Christ’s love, this sobering call from Campus Pride tells us in no uncertain terms how we have failed,” Affirm’s members said. “We must rebuild our existing campus structures, remove discriminatory university policies, and foster novel spaces where LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and AAPI folk are welcomed and celebrated for the priceless gifts they bring our community.”
A representative for SPU declined to comment.
Malone University, in Canton, Ohio, is also on the list for the first time.
This month, Karyn Collie, an associate biology professor at Malone, announced that she would be leaving the university because she’s marrying a woman next summer. She told The Canton Repository that she was hoping she and the school could find a way for her to stay employed, but that she was instead asked to resign. When she was hired, she signed a set of principles called the Community Responsibilities, which prohibit homosexual activity, according to the Repository.
Collie was a popular professor, and the news led to backlash from students, including a sit-in during a weekly worship service, the Repository reported.
A representative for Malone has not returned a request for comment, but Malone President David King told the Repository that Collie isn’t the first professor to leave due to a conflict with the university’s Community Responsibilities. He also said that only employees are expected to adhere to them, and that students are not.
“All students are welcome here, no matter what their story is, whether they have a faith journey or not,” King said.
But Campus Pride points out on its Worst List that the school’sCommunity Agreement for Sexual Conduct, which all members of the Malone community commit themselves to, states that “Sex should be exclusively reserved for the marriage relationship, understood as a legal, lifelong commitment between a husband and wife.”
Windmeyer said that he hopes the Biden administration will mandate that all campuses have to apply for the Title IX religious exemption. “I think that’s the bare minimum our federal government can do to protect these LGBTQ young people,” Windmeyer said. “The President says, ‘trans people, queer people,LGBTQ people, we’ve got your back.’ Well, you need to start here with our LGBTQ young people.”
Many students, like Shill at BYU, don’t want to leave and think their schools can become better. He said BYU Pride is working with the university to change the Honor Code so that queer students can date, and the group is encouraging the university to develop a discrimination office that students and faculty can go to when they experience discrimination.
The group would also like to be able to have queer activities on campus, or put rainbow lights on the “Y” without approval. “Those kind of things like where BYU no longer is silencing us, and pushing us off campus,” he said. “Let us come on campus and be as gay as we want to be without having to hide it all.”
We have three months to raise $11,000 for the students at Guerneville, Monte Rio, and Forestville Elementary Schools and Stars Preschool! Every dollar helps!!!! The money raised will be turned into gift cards to Guerneville 5 & 10. Go to www.rrsisters.org for more information
