President Joe Biden on Monday recognized the 10-year anniversary of the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy that forced gay, lesbian and bisexual military service members to hide their sexuality.
Then-President Bill Clinton signed the policy into law in 1993 as a compromise to end the existing ban on gay people serving. In total, over the 17 years the policy was in effect, an estimated 13,000 service members were discharged, according to data the military provided to The Associated Press.
In December 2010, then-President Barack Obama signed a repeal bill, but it didn’t take effect until Sept. 20, 2011.
“Ten years ago today, a great injustice was remedied and a tremendous weight was finally lifted off the shoulders of tens of thousands of dedicated American servicemembers,” Biden said in a statement issued by the White House. “It was the right thing to do. And, it showed once again that America is at its best when we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
Though an estimated 13,000 service members were discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the total number of service members discharged due to their sexual orientation or gender identity is estimated to be much higher: More than 100,000 are thought to have been forced out between World War II, when the U.S. first explicitly banned gay service members, and 2011, when “don’t ask, don’t tell” officially ended.
“As a U.S. Senator, I supported allowing servicemembers to serve openly, and as Vice President, I was proud to champion the repeal of this policy and to stand beside President Obama as he signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act into law,” the president said in Monday’s statement.
Biden said that many of those veterans received what are known as “other than honorable” discharges, which excluded “them and their families from the vitally important services and benefits they had sacrificed so much to earn.”
In fact, the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a policy clarification on Monday stating that veterans who were given other than honorable discharges based on homosexual conduct, gender identity or HIV status may be eligible for VA benefits, such as home loan guaranty, compensation and pension, health care, homeless program and/or burial benefits, among others. The department said the clarification offers guidance to VA adjudicators and to veterans “who were affected by previous homophobic and transphobic policies” who “have not applied for a discharge upgrade due to the perception that the process could be onerous.”
Biden added that he is honored to be commander in chief of the “most inclusive military in our nation’s history,” which he said welcomes LGBTQ service members. He noted that, during his first week in office, he repealed the Trump administration’s ban on transgender service members enlisting and serving openly in the military.
He also said that under his administration, the military is led by LGBTQ veterans. For example, in July, the Senate confirmed Gina Ortiz Jones as under secretary of the Air Force, making her the first out lesbian to serve as undersecretary of a military branch.
It also confirmed Shawn Skelly as assistant secretary of defense for readiness, making her the first transgender person to hold the post and the highest-ranking out trans defense official in U.S. history.
Biden appointed Pete Buttigieg — who served as a Navy Reserve lieutenant in Afghanistan under “don’t ask, don’t tell” — as transportation secretary, making him the first openly gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate.
“On this day and every day, I am thankful for all of the LGBTQ+ servicemembers and veterans who strengthen our military and our nation,” Biden said in the statement.
He added that the country must “honor their sacrifice” and continue to fight for full equality for LGBTQ people, including by passing the Equality Act, which would provide the first federal protections from discrimination for LGBTQ people in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, credit and jury service, among other areas of life. The bill passed the House in April but has since stalled in the Senate.
During a news conference on Monday, Shalanda Baker, a former Air Force officer who was discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” 20 years ago, said the policy prevented her from seeking help while she was in an abusive relationship.
“I’ll never forget my time at the academy or the early years thereafter when I struggled to find my footing in a military that did not accept the whole of me,” said Baker, who is now a secretarial adviser on equity and deputy director for energy justice at the Department of Energy. “We cannot forget the lives of so many who walked the path just like mine. Those who risked and lost their lives for this country and who served in silence. I want to thank them for their service, so that it may never be forgotten.”
The Madrid prosecutor’s office opened an investigation on Monday after a crowd of about 200 people sporting Nazi paraphernalia marched in the Spanish capital’s gay-friendly neighbourhood of Chueca on Saturday shouting offensive anti-LGBT slogans.
The protesters shouted “Out of our neighbourhood” and “Get out of Madrid” prefaced by derogatory words for gay people, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Homophobic hate crimes have been in the headlines in Spain since a man was beaten to death in July over his sexual orientation. The government said this month it would create specialised groups within the Interior Ministry and the police force to prevent hate crimes and support victims.
Around 200 people gathered on Saturday in the gay-friendly neighborhood of Chueca, known as the center of Spain’s annual Pride celebrations, where they shouted insults such as “get fags out of our neighborhood” and “get those sidosos [AIDS-ridden people] out of Madrid,” as they marched toward the city’s landmark Puerta del Sol square.
During the two-hour demonstration, the group set off flares, carried signs with far-right symbols and expressed their contempt for unaccompanied migrant minors and migrants more broadly. As well as the homophobic chants, demonstrators yelled “Here are the nationalists,” a reference to those who supported dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
The participants – who were escorted by riot police and several National Police vans – also waved Spanish flags and symbols of Juventud Nacional (National Youth), an organization linked to the far-right party España 2000 (Spain 2000).
The Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to go into effect this month that bans abortions after six weeks of gestation.
In the recent legislative session, Texas lawmakers introduced a slew of bills that sought to limit transgender people’s bathroom access and prohibit changes to birth certificates. Many of the bills take aim at young trans people’s access to health care and participation in high school sports. Similar bills have been introduced in at least 19 other states.
Though seemingly unrelated, some LGBTQ rights advocates and abortion rights advocates see parallels.
“The barrage of policy attacks on transgender youth flows from the same hateful, coercive ideology spurring on attacks against abortion rights and voting rights. These attacks on personal liberties are not — and have never been — happening in a vacuum, but rather each as part of a conservative campaign of control,” Ruth Dawson, principal policy associate for the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group, told NBC News in an email. “LGBTQ justice and sexual and reproductive health care are inextricably linked, because they both involve individuals’ autonomy in their most intimate decisions.”
‘A coordinated attack’
Abortion rights advocates and LGBTQ advocates pointed out similarities among recently introduced bills.
“The bills themselves share the same kind of idea. They are really restrictive infringements on bodily autonomy, on individual rights and the state taking an aggressive, moralizing police role,” Jules Gill-Peterson, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, said.
The bills misinterpret or misrepresent medical data, she added, and “claim to do things they don’t, like protect women and children.”
For example, Arkansas passed a law in March that bans access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors, including reversible puberty blockers and hormones. However, puberty blockers have been used for a variety of medical purposes in cisgender young people for decades, said Kara Mailman, senior research analyst at abortion-rights organization Reproaction.
Proponents of the law argued that transition care for minors is “experimental” and that trans minors often change their minds about their genders and detransition later in life. Medical experts say neither of those claims are backed by scientific evidence.
Major medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the American Psychological Association — support gender-affirming care for trans minors and oppose efforts to restrict access. And research has found that access to gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers reduces the risk of suicide among trans youths.
“So much of what they claim is dangerous is heavily tested and extremely safe,” Mailman said.
The same groups pushing for limitations on abortion are also advocating for new laws that limit transgender people’s access to health care, Sasha Buchert, senior attorney at the LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal, said. “It’s a coordinated attack.”
Gill-Peterson agreed. “Anti-trans and anti-abortion legislation are often very similar in terms of the literal bills that come to state legislative floors. They are part of the same political strategy, and they are being funded and ghost-written by the same kinds of groups.”
This year, the conservative organizations Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Policy Alliance partnered in an initiative, Promise to America’s Children, that opposes the Equality Act and provides lawmakers with socially conservative model legislation.
One piece of legislation listed on the site as exemplary is California’s “Protecting Children From Experimentation Act of 2021,” a bill that would criminalize providers of “gender reassignment medical interventions on minors” with up to five years in prison.
The site invites visitors to sign a “promise” that includes “protecting” children’s minds, bodies and relationships to parents: “We believe that America’s children are the nation’s greatest resource. While a culture — and sadly, a government — around us seek to sexualize children for the sake of a political agenda, we seek to protect children and nurture their minds, bodies, and relationships,” the website states.
Among signatories to the promise are Republican lawmakers from over a dozen states.
The Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Policy Alliance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
‘Political grammar’
Proponents of laws restricting abortion and transgender rights present them to the public in a similar manner, according to Gill-Peterson. She said anti-trans bills employ the same “political grammar” tried and tested in anti-abortion politics, which is defense of “an imaginary child in danger.”
“We have seen this since the Reagan revolution,” she continued, “that the unborn child becomes the rallying cry to restrict rights.”
Texas’ new law, for example, refers to “protecting the health of the woman and the life of the unborn child” in its justification.
Gill-Peterson said the groups and politicians advocating for the bills find them to be politically expedient. “Is this a good bill for fundraising? Is it good for the base? Does it turn out the vote? Does it distract people from other issues?”
She described the manipulation of the image of the child in the anti-trans laws as “particularly cruel.”
“This rhetoric of child protection is being used to support politics that target children for severe harm,” she said.
For example, a bill in Texas would classify any gender-affirming care as child abuse, and a Tennessee bill would prohibit several kinds of gender-affirming care for minors, including simply talk therapy.
Nine states — eight this year — have banned trans athletes from participating on the sports teams that align with their gender identity.
The final version of Florida’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed in June, omitted requirements that transgender athletes in high schools and colleges undergo testosterone or genetic testing and submit to having their genitalia examined.
While such legislation purports to be about child protection, Gill-Peterson said, those who are most affected by the law are the most marginalized, with already precarious access to resources.
“It’s no question that a lot of these clinics, especially Planned Parenthood, are also offering gender-affirming care services,” said D. Ojeda, a policy advocate at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “I think that is why the opposition have targeted these two issues.”
Gill-Peterson also sees the spate of anti-trans bills as part of a more widespread political scapegoating of transgender people.
“There is a lot more social stigma and violence directed at trans people right now,” she said.
“Anti-trans politics is a major plank of ethnonational, authoritarian political movements around the world,” she said, citing examples from Brazil, Poland and Hungary.
In June, for instance, Hungary’s Parliament passed legislationbanning content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and transgender issues.
‘War of attrition’
Alex Petrovnia, director of the TransFormations Project, said his trans rights organization is tracking at least 77 anti-trans bills, including over two dozen bills in Texas.
“We expect to see a lot more bills in 2022,” he said.
“They are playing a war of attrition; they are unrelenting. The goal of this is to outlast people. Unless we continue to fight these, the bills will slip through, and we won’t notice,” Petrovnia said. “It’s not about one fight; it’s about 77 this year.”
In the face of an overwhelming number of bills, some advocates and progressive academics are calling for LGBTQ rights and abortion rights groups to work together.
“We cannot address these injustices as if they are siloed; it is crucial that we see and fight these attacks for what they are — part of a broader pattern of coercive, conservative ideology,” Guttmacher’s Dawson said.
One way to do this is to ensure the language used to describe issues is as inclusive as possible, according to Reproaction’s Mailman.
“We’ve used women-centered language for so long,” Mailman said. “Trans people are also part of the community that has abortions. It has kept a lot of trans people from feeling at home in these abortion spaces.”
Ojeda said passage of the Equality Act would help both the trans rights and abortion rights movements.
The Equality Act is a piece of federal legislation that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in numerous arenas, including employment, housing, education, public accommodations, credit and jury service.
Ojeda said it would be “vital in combating these terrible bills at the state level,” adding that the Equality Act “would be an ultimate line of defense.”
In fact, on Wednesday, a coalition of 47 women’s rights and abortion rights groups — including NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Women’s Law Center and Time’s Up Now — announced “unequivocal support for the federal Equality Act” with a statement of solidarity. The groups also pushed back on “false claims that women’s rights groups are divided” over the legislation.
“As women and girls continue to face discrimination and harassment that interferes with their ability to live safely and securely, and as states mount unprecedented attacks on women’s rights and the rights of transgender students, federal legislation protecting people of all genders could not be more important than it is right now. That is why we, the undersigned, express our unequivocal support for the Equality Act,” a statement issued by the groups said in part.
Gill-Peterson said that the impending legal fight over Texas’ abortion bill is an opportunity to rethink strategy around abortion and trans rights and to think more expansively about how to ensure everyone has access to the health care they need.
“Even if we restore the previous norm around abortion access, it will not have solved the prior problems of income inequality and racial discrimination in health care” that prevent many people from accessing abortion services, Gill-Peterson said. “What would it look like for people in favor of abortion rights and in favor of trans rights to combine their visions for reproductive freedom, health care justice and racial justice?”
Sonoma County Art Trails Open Studios are happening today and tomorrow (Sept. 18-19) and next weekend (Sept. 25-26). All around the county, 121 artists – painters, sculptors, ceramicists, glass artists, jewelry makers and more – are awaiting your visit.
Plan your Art Trails itinerary today with our Collectors Guide or get a sense of which studios you’d like to visit by checking out the Sonoma County Art Trails Online Gallery. You can also visit the Art Trails Preview Exhibit at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 High St., where you can see one piece from every Art Trails artist all in one place. So grab a friend and hit the road for Sonoma County Art Trails! So much art, so much fun!
Here’s just a taste of what you’ll see at Sonoma County Art Trails. Works from artists (in rows from top left) Susan Proehl, T Barny, Gen Zorich, Linda Barretta, Terry Sauve, Suzanne Edminster, James Reynolds, Serena Hazard, Teri Sloat, Robert Weiss, Peter Krohn, Michael Constantini, Vicki Folkerts-Coots, Mylette Welch.
German authorities have compensated nearly 250 people who were prosecuted or investigated under a Nazi-era law criminalizing homosexuality that continued to be enforced enthusiastically after World War II.
The Federal Office of Justice said Monday that, up to the end of August, 317 people had applied for compensation and it had been paid out in 249 cases. So far, it has paid out nearly 860,000 euros (just over $1 million).
Fourteen applications are still being processed, 18 were rejected and 36 were withdrawn, the office said. The deadline for applications is July 21 next year.
German lawmakers in 2017 approved the annulment of thousands of convictions under the Paragraph 175 law, which remained in force in West Germany in its Nazi-era form until homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969. They cleared the way for payments of 3,000 euros per conviction, plus 1,500 euros for every year of jail time those convicted started.
In 2019, the government extended compensation to people who were put under investigation or taken into investigative custody but not convicted. It offered payments of 500 euros per investigation opened, 1,500 euros for each year of time in pre-trial custody started, and 1,500 euros for other professional, financial or health disadvantages related to the law.
The law criminalizing male homosexuality was introduced in the 19th century, toughened under Nazi rule and retained in that form by democratic West Germany, which convicted some 50,000 men between 1949 and 1969.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969 but the legislation wasn’t taken off the books entirely until 1994.
In 2000, the German parliament approved a resolution regretting the fact that Paragraph 175 was retained after the war. Two years later, it annulled the convictions of gay men under Nazi rule but not the post-war convictions.
The compensation also applies to men convicted in communist East Germany, which had a milder version of Paragraph 175 and decriminalized homosexuality in 1968.
In all, some 68,300 people were convicted under various forms of Paragraph 175 in both German states.
In the early hours of Friday, June 11, three men were assaulted and subjected to homophobic abuse near a pub in Liverpool, England, by a group of teenagers, one of whom had a knife, according to police.
“Due to the abhorrent verbal abuse the victims were subjected to, we’re treating this as a hate crime,” Detective Inspector Chris Hawitt said in a statement at the time, calling the attack “despicable” and saying the Merseyside Police would not “tolerate people being targeted in this manner because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
A few weeks after the incident, the Merseyside Police released a report saying that the “increase in incidents involving LGBT+ victims has, sadly, mirrored an increase in crime experienced as lockdown restrictions were eased.”
The LGBTQ community organized a rally with the help of people who work in nearby bars and several organizations after three men were assaulted and subjected to homophobic abuse near a pub in in Liverpool, England, in June 2021.Stefan Price / LCR Pride Foundation
In response, the local LGBTQ community organized a protest rally. People who work in nearby bars and several organizations helped put it together, according to the Liverpool-based LGBTQ organization LCR Pride Foundation.
“Hate crime is still a shock,” said Andi Herring, the foundation’s CEO and co-founder. “For me it’s determination that these people won’t win, and we’ll carry on doing what we said and tackle it.”
The Liverpool assault is one in a string of anti-gay hate crimes that happened over the summer in the United Kingdom.
West Midlands Police arrested three men last month after a same-sex couple was attacked in the Gay Village of Birmingham, England. Police said two men, both in their 30s, were attacked Aug. 15 with bottles after being subjected to homophobic abuse. One was left unconscious and the other suffered “nasty cuts,” according to a police report.
Crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity have increased almost every year since at least 2015, according to government data from England, Wales and Scotland. In England and Wales, sexual orientation hate crimes rose by 19 percent and anti-transgender crimes by 16 percent from March 2019 to March 2020. In Scotland, the number of hate crimes related to sexual orientation rose by 5 percent from April 1, 2020, to March 31.
The U.K. government, in a statement last year, attributed the uptick to better crime recording by law enforcement and improved identification of what is considered a hate crime. The police also report spikes in hate crimes after major political or terrorist events.
While some British LGBTQ activists agreed that queer people are more comfortable reporting hate crimes to police than they were in the past, they said the isolation from the pandemic and the increase in political hate speech and violence are energizing people with anti-gay feelings.
“If there are people in power who are bigoted … that legitimizes people to be hateful in their everyday life,” said Rebecca Crowther, policy coordinator at the Equality Network in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Crowther said that in addition to the mental health toll the pandemic-related lockdown had taken on people, she has witnessed a rise in hate crimes in Scotland, adding that mistrust between the community and the police still exists.
After an attack involving two men in Edinburgh in July, three men were arrested and charged in connection with the alleged assaults and homophobic crime, according to Police Scotland.
“It’s become the ‘Twilight Zone’ up here,” Crowther said.
Herring said he also attributes the increased hate-crime numbers to more survivors understanding what a hate crime is and a growing confidence that they will get the support they need after reporting.
In the same month, the U.K. government scrapped plans to allow transgender people to self-identify and announced that a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria was required to legally transition. The government also said it planned to open three gender clinics in 2020.
Eighty-five percent of British people surveyed said they would be supportive if their child, sibling or close relative came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual, and 71 percent said they would feel the same about a family member coming out as transgender or nonbinary, accordingto an August YouGov survey. Seven percent of people in Britain identify as LGBTQ, the survey reported.
Crowther said visibility and allyship affects a community’s friendliness toward LGBTQ people. When Edinburgh bars and public spaces shut down because of the pandemic, residents saw less LGBTQ markers like rainbow flags, according to Crowther.
“It sends a message to the wider public that you are a welcoming space and won’t tolerate hate,” Crowther said of LGBTQ equality symbols.
As the countries reopen, Herring said combating anti-gay sentiments should happen all year around. He said everyone has a responsibility to report hate crimes they witness.
“I can see everything moving in the right direction,” Herring said about ongoing education efforts and Liverpool venues that want to become official safe spaces for the LGBTQ community. “It’s not just a reaction to one crime; it’s about the bigger picture.”
Like the state at large, an overwhelming majority of California’s LGBTQ voters voted “no” to a Republican-led effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and remove him from office, according to an NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters.
The poll found that 7 percent of California recall voters identify as LGBTQ. Of those voters, 83 percent voted “no” to the recall and 17 percent voted “yes.”
With about 70 percent of the projected vote counted, 63.9 percent of all Californians voted against recalling Newsom, and 36.1 percent voted in favor.
Newsom has long been seen as an LGBTQ ally. In February 2004, Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco, defied federal law — and the Democratic party platform at the time — when he and other city officials issued a marriage license to lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. Over the next month, the city wed 4,000 LGBTQ couples, The Los Angeles Times reported in 2018.
Had Newsom been removed as governor, 77 percent of LGBTQ recall voters said they would be concerned or scared, compared to 57 percent of all recall voters. Twenty-one percent of LGBTQ voters said they would be excited or optimistic if he were removed, compared to 38 percent of all recall voters, according to NBC News’ Exit Poll.
Voters, had they ousted Newsom, would’ve chosen a replacement on Tuesday. The leading Republican candidate was conservative radio host Larry Elder, who said he would’ve reversed many of Newsom’s efforts to combat the pandemic. Elder argued that receiving the coronavirus vaccine and wearing a mask were personal decisions that shouldn’t be mandated, and he criticized Newsom’s pandemic restrictions on businesses.
Elder also has made anti-transgender statements on Twitter, and he continued to use the wrong name and pronouns for Caitlyn Jenner after she came out as trans in 2015, The Sacramento Bee reported. Jenner was also on the ballot Tuesday as a Republican replacement for Newsom.
Elder did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his victory speech Tuesday night in Sacramento, Newsom said California voters rejected those arguments and reaffirmed their support for coronavirus precautions.
“’No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” he said. “We said yes to science. We said to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic.”
LGBTQ voters, especially, appear to support Newsom’s approach to the pandemic. NBC News’ Exit Poll found that a higher percentage of LGBTQ recall voters think getting the coronavirus vaccine is a public health responsibility, at 82 percent, compared to 65 percent of all recall voters. Of LGBTQ voters, 17 percent believe getting the vaccine is a personal choice, compared to 32 percent of all recall voters.
Nearly half, or 48 percent of LGBTQ voters, think the policies Newsom put in place to deal with the pandemic have been about right, 35 percent don’t think they’ve been strict enough, and 17 percent think they’ve been too strict.
An overwhelming majority, 86 percent, support Newsom’s statewide mandate requiring that students wear masks while in school, while 13 percent oppose it.
When it comes to the state of the pandemic in California, 40 percent of LGBTQ recall voters think the state’s coronavirus situation is staying the same, 31 percent think it’s better and 28 percent think it’s worse.
A majority, 70 percent, said they think Newsom is in touch with the needs and concerns of people like them, and 30 percent said they don’t think he’s in touch.
Summer polls showed that Newsom was in danger of being recalleduntil major Democratic Party leaders, including President Joe Biden, helped rouse Democratic voters.
Of LGBTQ recall voters, 79 percent voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, 9 percent voted for Trump, 7 percent did not vote and 5 percent voted for someone else. Sixty-four percent of LGBTQ voters said they approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, and 29 percent disapprove.
The majority of LGBTQ recall voters are under 50 years old: Seventy-four percent are 18 to 44 years old, and 26 percent are 45 or older.
One of Democrats’ central messages to voters was that a Republican governor would reverse the state’s pandemic precautions, as well as other Democratic policies.
That message may have resonated with LGBTQ recall voters, 34 percent of whom said the coronavirus is the most important issue facing California right now, according to NBC News’ Exit Poll.
But the state’s housing and homelessness crisis — an issue Newsom has received criticism for — is also front of mind for voters: One-quarter of LGBTQ voters said homelessness was the most important issue, followed by wildfires (17 percent), the economy (15 percent) and crime (7 percent).
A higher percentage of LGBTQ voters, 74 percent, think the overall cost of living in their part of California is not manageable, compared to 58 percent of all recall voters who think so.
Nearly all LGBTQ voters, 93 percent, think that climate change is a serious problem, compared to 7 percent who don’t think so. But voters are more split on the state’s economy: Fifty percent said the condition of California’s economy is excellent or good, and 48 percent think it’s not good or is poor.
The Ugandan government has made the absurd, offensive claim that some LGBT+ asylum seekers fleeing the country are merely faking their sexuality to live in Western nations.
Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by life imprisonment in Uganda, which has some of the strictest anti-LGBT+ laws in the world. Most queer Ugandans survive by staying under the radar, and many who manage to escape fear death if they return.
Yet foreign minister general Jeje Odongo cast doubt on the legitimacy of queer asylum claims by pointing out that many male gay asylum seekers have wives and children.
“These Ugandans who went out on the pretext of being homosexuals. Now their lie is catching up with them because when they settle, they ask to bring their wives and children,” he said, according to Daily Sabah.
“It is unfortunate that some people who are not gays pretend to be gays so that they get citizenship in countries which sympathise with them. Such people will make developed countries lose trust in all Africans.”
The fact that many gay asylum seekers have wives is hardly surprising in a country where so many gay men are closeted, and societal pressure to marry and have children is strong.
None of this precludes a person from identifying on the LGBT+ spectrum, but Ugandan reverend Solomon Male saw it as undeniable proof that queer refugees’ sexuality is “fake”.
“All those are economic gays. Homosexuality is a business to most Ugandans who claim to be gays,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA). “It is all about getting money. Some people earn by calling themselves gays or working with organisations that deal with them.”
He alleged that some prominent lawyers were making lots of money by preparing fake documents, and claimed that pretending to be gay was now the “easiest” way to get a European visa.
This characterisation was countered by Frank Mugisha, director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, the country’s most prominent LGBT+ rights group.
He said there was nothing surprising about gay men marrying and having children as sexuality can be flexible; it’s also the case that many returning Ugandans may lie about their sexuality to avoid persecution.
“Someone might be sexually straight today and then the next day he might be gay and vice versa,” he said. “Because they leave Uganda as gays after being persecuted by [the] state and Ugandans, so they want to come back as different people who are no longer gays.
“The fact that the laws against gays still exist makes them come back with wives and children to live freely.”
The exact number of LGBT+ Ugandan refugees worldwide is hard to determine. In 2016 the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a report saying 500 Ugandans had applied for asylum in Kenya based on their sexuality.
But LGBT+ activists say those estimates were too low because most refugees were categorised as having fled or claimed asylum for different reasons.
MS-13, a vicious street gang, continues its stronghold on MacArthur Park making it unsafe for many who visit but specifically transgender individuals.
After a transgender woman was brutally attacked in MacArthur Park on October 2020, which marked the second time in weeks that a transgender woman had been stabbed nearly to death in the Los Angeles park by members of MS-13, a street gang that considers the park the heart of its territory.
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area.
Over the years several indictments have been made against alleged members of the MS-13 gang including the Fulton clique of MS-13 which is a subset of the gang that claims parts of North Hollywood, Panorama City and Van Nuys as its territory.
Members of MS-13, who have a tight hold on MacArthur Park, have made it clear that they are motivated by a hateful, bigoted desire to rid their turf of transgender people.
What has been unmentioned is the financial agreements that occur between these transgender woman and the gang members which put them in contact in the first place.
The women had been paying members of MS-13 a weekly fee — “taxes” in the gang’s words — simply for permission to be in the park, according to police reports and interviews with victims and the police. They were among the street vendors, drug dealers, sex workers, shopkeepers and others who every day must pay for a commodity those in more affluent neighborhoods do not even know exists — the right to be left alone by a gang.
It has been made clear that MS-13 has been a bullying force in the MacArthur Park area for quite some time based on search warrant affidavits, police reports and other records filed in court and interviewed police officers and victims of MS-13.
MacArthur Park is not just a territory but a source of revenue to MS-13. The gang tries its best, police say, to collect a percentage of everything sold inside it: drugs, food, gambling, sex. According to one homeless services provider in the area, the gang has even begun demanding rent from people living in the park.
One Saturday evening last April, a young man and a woman approached Daniela Hernandez in MacArthur Park. The man introduced himself as “Golden,” the woman, as “La Inquieta.” The Restless.
As members of MS-13, they “ruled the park,” Hernandez recalled one of them saying.
A native of El Salvador, Hernandez knew MS-13’s reputation for violence and bigotry directed at transgender people like herself. But in Los Angeles, in a city of such “security and opportunity,” she never thought the gang could threaten her.
The members demanded that if she wanted to spend any time in MacArthur Park, she would have to pay an $80 “fee” each week.
She protested, saying she couldn’t pay more than $20. Golden and La Inquieta agreed to the sum, she said, but told her she would have to pay it every week, regardless of whether she went to the park or not.
Hernandez said she believes the pair singled her out for extortion in the belief that all transgender women in the park worked as prostitutes. She said she is not a sex worker and simply wanted to enjoy the park.
This agreement went on for the next six months where Hernandez would pay $20 a week until losing a janitorial job early in the pandemic.
After losing her job Hernandez struggled to make the weekly fee, sometimes asking friends for money to pay it. She thought about going to the police, but living in the country illegally, she feared that contact with law enforcement could lead to her being deported, she said.
Four weeks after another transgender woman was attacked, a white Honda Accord pulled to the curb of Wilshire Boulevard, which cuts through the park. Two men and a woman got out. The driver stayed in the car according to witness reports.
The men walked up to Hernandez, who was sitting on a bench, a police report says. One of them, Hernandez recalled, announced that they were from MS-13 and said they didn’t want Hernandez at the park, calling her a Spanish homophobic slur.
The woman, meanwhile, crept up behind Hernandez, wrapped an arm around her throat and slashed at it with a knife, Hernandez recounted. The woman held her down as the two men stabbed her in the chest, abdomen and arms, she said.
Police found Hernandez kneeling in the grass, covered in blood, a report says. She had been stabbed 13 times and had a 5-inch slash across her neck, near the carotid, an officer wrote in the report.
Golden, identified by prosecutors in a criminal complaint as Javier Trimin-Rodriguez, 22, has pleaded not guilty to extorting and attempting to murder Hernandez. His attorney declined to comment.
Donoban Fonseca, 24, whose nickname is “El Stinky,” is charged with extorting and attempting to murder Hernandez and the woman attacked weeks earlier. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Frank Bazadier, said the attacks were “a very unfortunate event to a very marginalized group of individuals.” He declined to discuss the facts of the case.
La Inquieta, identified by prosecutors in a criminal complaint as Margarita Valencia, 23, has pleaded not guilty to extorting the first woman who was attacked. Her attorney didn’t return a call seeking comment.
