We never thought that a landscaper booking website would publish a study about the horniest cities in the United States, but 2021 apparently had more surprises in store for us.
LawnStarter says it ranked the libido levels of 200 U.S. cities by “nine key indicators of sexual arousal,” including proportion of single residents, Google search interest in adult content, and sales of sex toys.
To measure the thirst of each metropolis, the researchers culled data from All Swingers Clubs, Eventbrite, Google Trends, Innerbody Research, Lovehoney, U.S. Census Bureau, and Yelp.
The results? The horniest cities in America, according to the survey, are:
Paradise, Nevada
Orange, California
Hollywood, Florida
Providence, Rhode Island
Atlanta, Georgia
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Newark, New Jersey
Dayton, Ohio
Tempe, Arizona
Baltimore, Maryland
Paradise, Nevada, has more sex shops and adult entertainment venues than any other city, according to LawnStarter, while Providence, Rhode Island, sells the most sex toys out of the cities surveyed. LawnStarter also notes that California and Florida cities dominate the top 10 in all nine metrics, crediting those states’ standout sex drives to “sand, sweat, skin, and sangria.”
During last month’s European championship soccer match between Germany and Hungary, the rainbow was everywhere on the German side. The German goalie wore a rainbow armband; the team’s fans donned rainbow wigs and waved rainbow flags.
All of this was directed at the opposing side: The Germans were protesting a new Hungarian law banning LGBTQ sex education and media directed at minors — a measure that has sparked outrage in Europe and elsewhere against Hungary.
While this may look like a PR mess for Hungary’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party, it’s in keeping with the right-wing populist playbook that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has turned to over and over again to shore up his authoritarian rule. In the past few years, demonizing queer and trans identities has become a central part of Orbán’s campaign for maintaining his grip on power.
The criticism from Europe, if anything, bolsters the strategy. It allows the Hungarian government to tout its core ideological argument: that it is the Hungarian Christian family’s champion against a godless, globalist European Union.
“Hungary asserts its role as ‘defender of traditional values’ while mostly West European states get to claim moral superiority with no one paying any price for it,” says Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia who studies far-right politics.
The new anti-LGBTQ rules — which were tacked on at the last minute to a bill increasing penalties for sex crimes against children — are part of a broader slate of legal attacks on the queer community that strengthen Orbán’s regime, the only non-democratic government in the European Union.
Demagoguery is at the heart of the Fidesz political strategy. A series of boogeymen — Muslim migrants, Jewish billionaire George Soros, and now LGBTQ activists — have been used to rally Orbán’s base to the ballot box and justify the expansion of authoritarian state powers.
In this, Orbán is not alone. The demonization of out-groups is a key ingredient in the right-wing authoritarian recipe, one used by factions the world over to win power and undermine democracy once they’ve acquired it. It’s a pattern Americans should pay attention to, especially during the current moment of right-wing panic about the purported corruption of our youth.
Hungary’s persecution of LGBTQ communities, explained
The new Hungarian regulations on LGBTQ expression are broad. Among other things, they prohibit sex educators from instructing students about LGBTQ sexuality and ban television stations from airing content “popularizing” LGBTQ identity outside the hours of 10 pm to 5 am. The regulations also prohibit films or advertisements from representing same-sex physical acts or gender-affirmation surgery in materials targeted at individuals under 18.
But what counts as “popularizing” LGBTQ identity, and what sorts of art count as being targeted at kids? According to local media and human rights groups, the bill isn’t especially clear on these points — raising fears about censorship. RTL Klub, the country’s largest television channel, warned that “series like Modern Family would be banned, as would some episodes of Friends.”
No less troubling: By declaring LGBTQ programming harmful for children, the law dehumanizes queer couples and individuals, legally codifying the notion that their very existence threatens Hungarian society.
Defenders of the law are open about its hierarchical aims. An article in the Hungarian Conservative, a magazine supportive of the Orbán regime, denies that Friends specifically would be blocked by the new rules — but touts the bill’s efforts to “protect children’s natural and healthy sexual development” from the allegedly nefarious influence of gay propaganda.
“Protecting children does not end with stopping sex offenders, but should also include the protection from potentially harmful influences well until children are old enough to make the best decisions for themselves,” the article claims.
A protester against the new anti-LGBTQ bill in Budapest holds a photoshopped sign showing Orbán holding a rainbow flag.
In recent years, the anti-LGBTQ campaign has intensified. In 2018, the government banned the teaching of gender studies in Hungarian universities. A government spokesperson told CNN at the time that they did it because “we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders, rather than biological sexes.” In May 2020, the government prohibited trans Hungarians from changing their gender on official government forms.
In December 2020, the government approved a constitutional reform package that strengthened the anti-LGBTQ constitutional provisions: It stated that the family is defined as being “based on marriage and the parent-child relation. The mother is a woman, the father a man.” The December legislative package also banned adoption by same-sex couples and abolished the Equal Treatment Authority, Hungary’s most important nondiscrimination agency covering LGBTQ rights.
The anti-LGBTQ policies of the past few years are not incidental to Fidesz’s ideology. A paper by Andrea Pető and Weronika Grzebalska, two scholars of gender and politics in Central Europe, identify the Hungarian government’s commitment to traditional gender norms as the “symbolic glue” that holds its overall ideology together, positioning social liberalism “as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the current state of politics.”
In the government’s narrative, the traditional Christian Hungarian family is under attack by nefarious globalist liberals who want to replace Hungarian mothers and fathers with immigrants. Defending the Hungarian nation means defending the family, defined exclusively as male-female pairings that produce more Hungarian children. The Orbán government is notoriously obsessed with the birthrate, passing tax and welfare policies specifically framed as incentives for native Hungarian women to have more kids.
The government attacks on LGBTQ identities flow directly from this conservative preoccupation with family and fertility, casting queer families as illegitimate, non-procreative entities.
“In a moral sense, there is no difference between pedophiles and those who demand [gay adoption],” László Kövér, the speaker of Hungary’s parliament, said in 2019. “Both objectify the child as a consumer good, and consider it a means of self-fulfillment.”
How social conservatism fuels Hungarian authoritarianism
Hungarians have long been more conservative than most other EU states. A 2019 Eurobarometer poll found that 61 percent opposed same-sex marriage and 72 percent opposed allowing trans individuals to alter government documents to match their gender identity. This fits a general European pattern, in which former communist states are on average more culturally right-wing than their Western European peers.
At the same time, there’s some evidence of recent movement in a more progressive direction. A 2021 Ipsos poll found that 59 percent of Hungarians today support same-sex couples’ adoption rights, compared to 42 percent in 2013. A plurality had even come to favor same-sex marriage (46 percent in favor versus 38 percent opposed).
These numbers suggest the recent anti-LGBTQ moves are less of a response to a public groundswell than a political play by the ruling party to elevate the issue — to wage a culture war against progressive ideas and activists as a means of activating the Fidesz base and solidifying Orban’s hold on power.
By definition, “populism” as a political style relies on a contrast between a virtuous people and a corrupt elite. In modern right-wing populism, both in Hungary and elsewhere, that corrupt elite is typically identified with minorities and socially liberal activists — groups positioned as subverting national traditions, attacking traditional morality, and destroying national character.
“Minority rights are rejected as threatening the majority’s rights to do what they please, and dignity and solidarity is only granted to those belonging to the restricted community of real patriots,” Pető and Grzebalska write in their article on the gender politics of right-wing populism. “The illiberal right is not so much trying to eliminate the progressive civil society but rather turn it into a bogeyman that governing elites can activate whenever they need to mobilize their supporters.”
“We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world,” Orbán said in a 2018 speech.
Now, it’s important not to equate social conservatism with authoritarianism. Opposing equal rights for LGBTQ individuals, while certainly illiberal, could well be supported by an electoral majority in Hungary.
But far-right governments like Orbán’s typically use populism in service of their authoritarianism: Attacks on minority groups are not merely electoral appeals but also justifications for power grabs that weaken democracy’s foundations.
Many of the anti-LGBTQ laws passed expand the state’s power to enforce ideological hegemony. In the name of fighting a phantom scourge, it has given itself new abilities to regulate education, media, and advertising — sometimes through vaguely worded provisions that could be enforced capriciously. In this sense, the anti-LGBTQ provisions aren’t merely cultural warfare but direct expansions of Orbán’s authoritarian reach.
This is not a uniquely Hungarian phenomenon: Authoritarian populists of both the right- and left-wing variety, in countries as diverse as Poland and Venezuela and Turkey, have used demonization of minorities and/or an allegedly corrupt elite to enact laws aimed at weakening their political opponents and revving up their base.
Closer to home, we’re seeing something similar afoot. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed a bill that would require professors at state-funded universities to fill out surveys describing the campus ideological climate, threatening budget funds if schools are deemed insufficiently open to right-wing ideas. Dozens of state legislatures have passed or proposed bills that regulate what can be taught in the classroom on similar grounds — a response to the allegedly corrosive threat of “critical race theory” on the US educational system.
These American bills are not directly inspired by Hungarian policies. But the affinities between right-wing populists in these countries are real, with many leading thinkers on the American right openly admiring Orbán’s willingness to wage culture wars, to the point where they’re willing to downplay his authoritarian abuses.
“What I see in Orbán is one of the few major politicians in the West who seems to understand the importance of Christianity, and the importance of culture, and who is willing to defend these things against a very rich and powerful international establishment,” Rod Dreher, a senior writer at the American Conservative who recently accepted a writing fellowship at the government-funded Danube Institute in Budapest, told me last year. “I find myself saying of Orbán what I hear conservatives say when they explain why they instinctively love Trump: because he fights. The thing about Orbán is that unlike Trump, he fights, and he wins, and his victories are substantive.”
This cultural affinity is effectively an intellectual shield for Orbán, with criticism of his anti-democratic tendencies portrayed by conservatives as a liberal smear.
“One suspects [allegations of authoritarianism are] just simple hatred of Christian conservatism, a fanatical projection of culture war antipathies to the near abroad,” Michael Brendan Dougherty writes in National Review, without a hint of irony.
The Hungarian government has assiduously courted the global intellectual right, setting up meetings between Orbán and prominent socially conservative thinkers from countries ranging from Canada to Israel. The goal is to construct an international traditionalist alliance, centering on Budapest, that aligns right-wing populist movements in Europe and beyond. The culture war is a useful tool for normalizing Hungarian authoritarianism globally, and for enlisting allies who are willing to overlook anti-democratic abuses when the right side of the culture war is perpetrating them.
It’s a strategy that, in many ways, has worked for Orbán — and shows just how vulnerable democracy is to far-right cultural demagoguery.
More than half of LGBTQ adults in America say they have experienced violent threats, according to a study from The William Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The study examined the similarities and differences across key subgroups of the LGBTQ community.
Fifty-two percent of respondents said that someone had threatened them with violence since they were age 18.
Among this group, 61 percent of transgender women said someone threatened them, compared to 49 percent of cisgender women and 52 percent of cisgender men.
In addition, 75 percent of respondents said someone verbally insulted or abused them. Thirty-nine percent said someone had thrown an object at them.
Forty-two percent of LGBTQ respondents said they were hit, beaten, physically attacked or sexually assaulted as adults, while 41 percent said they were robbed, had properly stolen or vandalized.
The survey also found high rates of bullying during childhood among the LGBTQ community. Sixty-seven percent of LBQ cisgender women, 75 percent of GBQ cis men and 70 percent of transgender people said they had been bullied often or sometimes before age 18.
The survey also examined some health outcomes of the LGBTQ community. For example, 26 percent of transgender people said their health was fair or poor, compared to 24 percent of cisgender women and 14 percent of cisgender men.
Meanwhile, 42 percent of transgender people reported lifetime suicide attempts, compared to 32 percent of cisgender women and 22 percent of cisgender men.
The data for the study was pulled from a combination of two studies, one of which was a national probability sample of sexual minority (LGBQ) individuals who were not transgender and another of transgender adults. The study does not list a margin of sampling error.
As the GLBT Historical Society’s archives reopen, we’re looking back on the things that kept us going through a lonely year. One of them was the National Archives’ monthly Twitter collaboration, #ArchivesHashtagParty.
Each month, archivists all over the country post historical items with the same theme—ranging from insects (#ArchivesBugs) to cakes (#ArchivesBakeOff), elections (#ArchivesGetsTheVote) to educators of color (#ArchivesBlackEducation). The National Archives selects each theme two weeks in advance, setting off a scavenger hunt for just the right item in each archivist’s collection.
Digging Deep
The beauty of #ArchivesHashtagParty is that it encourages us to dig deep. You might not think of the society as a repository of signatures, maps or vehicles, but we’ve found items for each theme, including a map of an early Pride parade route; a handmade knit rug depicting a leatherman; and a photo of two participants in the Mint tricycle race, with their biplane-themed bike, the “Lavender Baron.” The party lets us go beyond the obvious, showing off corners of LGBTQ life that are accidentally illuminated by the need to show Twitter a picture of a bug (in this case, the fist-and-butterfly logo of the 1972 Pride booklet).
It also brings us together. Archiving is isolating work at the best of times; many archivists work completely alone. The Hashtag Party turns archiving from a monologue to a dialogue, connecting us with strangers around the world who are curious to see unexpected fragments of the past.
You can join in the party by following our Twitter account, where we post these and other archival finds throughout the month. And if you’re not on that platform, fear not: we adapt each hashtag entry for Facebook and Instagram.
Major aid donors have said they will investigate and take action against anti-LGBT ‘conversion therapy’ practices at clinics run by groups they fund, in response to findings from an openDemocracy investigation
A new undercover investigation by the global news outlet openDemocracy reveals how health facilities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have provided, or provided referrals for, controversial anti-gay ‘conversion therapy’ to “quit” same-sex attraction
Undercover reporters were told by some staff at these facilities that being gay is “evil”, “for whites”,caused by peer pressure, and a mental health problem, and told to give a gay teenager a sleeping pill to prevent him from masturbating
Major aid donors mentioned in our investigation include USAID,The Global Fund and the US government programme PEPFAR. Another implicated clinic in Tanzania is run by MSI Reproductive Choices, a UK-based NGO
During a six-month investigation, our undercover reporters found staff at health centres across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who offered help to “quit” same-sex attraction – including at clinics run by aid-funded groups that specifically reach out to LGBT patients.
‘Conversion therapy’ describes a range of practices – from talk therapy to physical ‘treatments – that attempt to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It is “ineffective” and “harmful,” according to human rights groups, and has been condemned by more than 60 associations of doctors, psychologists and counsellors worldwide.
In almost all cases, the ‘treatments’ identified by our undercover reporters consisted of ‘talk therapy’ counselling sessions. In Uganda, one counsellor also recommended “exposure therapy” with “a housemaid [he] can get attracted [to]’’, and told our undercover reporter to give a gay teenager a sleeping pill to prevent him from masturbating.
‘Conversion therapy’ is banned in some countries, including Brazil, Ecuador and Malta. President Biden has pledged to end these practices within the US; a proposed ban in the UK was included in the Queen’s speech this year; and Canada’s lower house has just passed a bill banning it, which is now waiting for approval in the senate.
Facilities where our investigation found support for these practices include:
Uganda:
An HIV clinic at Kampala’s Mulago Hospital – Uganda’s largest public hospital – run by the Most At Risk Populations Initiative (MARPI), which received a $420,000 USAID grant in 2019, ending in September. (It is unclear if any money went to this specific clinic). The Swiss-based Global Fund, which combats AIDS, TB and malaria, funds both Uganda’s health ministry and a local NGO, which in turn fund the Mulago clinic
Three hospitals in the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau (UCMB) network. This network received more than $1m from USAID between 2019 and this April (it is unclear whether the specific hospitals identified in our investigation received any of this money)
Tanzania:
A clinic in Mwenge, Dar es Salaam that is run by MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International), a UK-based NGO that provides sexual and reproductive healthcare services around the world. In its latest annual report (2019) the organisation reported more than £1.4m in income from UK aid for projects in Tanzania.
Kenya:
A clinic inside the main office in Nairobi of LVCT Health, an HIV and AIDS care organisation, which currently has an $8m grant (which began in 2016 and ends in September) from the US government programme PEPFAR, for work with marginalised communities of sex workers, gay men and trans people in Kenya
In response to this investigation:
Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, Africa director at the International Commission of Jurists human rights organisation said that such efforts to ‘cure’ homosexuality are “inherently degrading and discriminatory”
Yvee Oduor of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya said that aid donors should “redirect funding […] We already have clinics and health centres run by LGBTQI+ people all over the country. Why not fund these community initiatives?”
A spokesperson for MSI Reproductive Choices said: “We have launched an investigation and will take immediate action against anyone found to be involved in this abhorrent practice”
A US embassy spokesperson in Uganda, Anthony Kujawa, said: “USAID does not fund or promote anti-LGBTQI ‘conversion therapy’ and will investigate any report that a USAID funded partner is doing so”
A spokesperson for the Global Fund said that the organisation “takes seriously the matters raised” by our investigation’s findings and that it “will look into them”
An LVCT Health spokesperson said “we are investigating the matter and will address it conclusively”, including “urgent retraining and sensitisation of our staff”
PEPFAR, MARPI and UCMB did not respond to openDemocracy requests for comment
Notes to editors:
openDemocracy is a global news outlet based in London, UK, with reporters and editors internationally including in East Africa
Representatives from Northern Ireland’s six biggest political parties have committed to outlawing conversion therapy and improving access to trans healthcare.
Political figures convened virtually on Thursday evening (1 July) for the PinkNewsVirtual Summer Reception in Belfast, which was hosted in partnership with Citi and The Rainbow Project.
Leaders from across the political spectrum were questioned on their commitment to LGBT+ rights at the event by John O’Doherty, director of The Rainbow Project.
Kicking off the discussion, O’Doherty asked political leaders how much longer trans people in Northern Ireland will have to wait to access healthcare at home, referencing ongoing issues with the Brackenburn Clinic in Belfast.
Naomi Long, leader of the Alliance Party, said the trans community needs a service “that actually meets their needs, and that currently isn’t the case”.
Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), drew attention to the high rates of depression and suicidal ideation experienced by trans people – but he pointed out that much of these issues are caused by lack of access to vital healthcare.
He also acknowledged that an ongoing review of trans healthcare in the region is taking too long.
“The trans community need to see light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, adding that he will encourage health minister Robin Swann to accelerate work on introducing a “fit for service” healthcare system.
Cllr Malachai O’Hara, deputy leader of the Green Party Northern Ireland, said trans youth are spending so long on waiting lists that they often become adults in the interim, meaning they then have to join a new waiting list.
He said the provision of trans healthcare in Northern Ireland has “gotten worse” in recent years and said the current service is “not fit for purpose”. O’Hara went on to criticise the parties in Northern Ireland’s Executive, saying they have given “years of platitudes” on trans healthcare but there has been “very little action”.
O’Hara went on to note that there are trans and non-binary people who are no longer alive because of a “failure to act” on healthcare.
Paula Bradley, deputy leader of the DUP, said the issue of trans healthcare comes up “time and time again”, but admitted that the problem has only “steadily gotten worse”.
A gay man who came out aged 90 has offered powerful words of advice to LGBT+ people who are still in the closet.
Kenneth Felts captured the hearts of queer people across the world in 2020 when he shared his story, proving that it’s never too late to come out.
Felts, who is from Colorado, knew he was gay when he was just 12 years old – but he pushed his feelings down and married a woman, not believing that living his truth was an option.
His coming out last year was ultimately a positive experience that allowed him to live his life openly and authentically.
Speaking directly to queer people who are still in the closet, Kenneth Felts told CBS New York: “You’ll be very surprised about the response.”
He continued: “The world is full of love, and you’re entitled to some of it, and people are going to give it to you if you take the chance, if you come out and say ‘here I am.’”
Kenneth Felts went on to reflect on his marriage to a woman, which he admitted “was not a good one”. He spent the entire marriage trying to appear as straight as he possibly could.
“It was just constant alertness,” Felt said. “I was being very careful and dressing very conservatively all the time because I never wanted people to know that I was gay. I didn’t want to be outed because I could lose custody of my daughter.”
It was ultimately a cancer diagnosis that spurred Felts on to start writing his memoirs, which helped Phillip swim back into focus.
He was Felts’ first love, and the pair had a vibrant, loving relationship before he left to marry a woman.
Tragically, he learned upon his coming out last year that Phillip had since died, meaning the men never got to reunite.
Despite the pain that came with that revelation, Kenneth Felts is still glad he came out when he did. Doing so has allowed him a greater freedom in his personal life.
“It was a huge experience of freedom. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder worried about who’s wondering if I’m gay or not,” he said.
Sadly, Felts decision to come out as gay during the coronavirus pandemic has meant that he can’t attend Pride marches and take a more active role in the LGBT+ community – however, he hasn’t let that stop him from celebrating his identity.
His Facebook page shows numerous images of him wearing a rainbow coloured hoodie, and he has raised funds for LGBT+ causes in the year since he came out.
Mumsnet users are encouraging teachers to out trans pupils to their parents, saying that children are being “harmed” by school staff who protect their privacy.
The Mumsnet discussion began with a 3 July post by “Libby55”, who says they work in a school: “Advice: schools socially transitioning children without parental knowledge or consent.” It’s had more than 400 responses.
In the post, Libby55 says pupils at the school they work in have changed their names and pronouns without telling their parents. Libby55 claims that teachers not telling parents this information is a “safeguarding issue” that is “harming children”.
“I’m looking for an organisation that specifically campaigns against schools harming children in this way,” Libby55 says. “I have to do something: I can see children being harmed.”
They then ask: “If any of you know of a teacher’s group that is lobbying against the practice of socially transitioning children without parents’ knowledge or consent, please let me know. I would like to get involved.”
In the hundreds of responses that follow, Mumsnet users says it is “outrageous” and “sinister” that schools would protect pupil’s privacy, and suggest “leaking” the information about trans pupils on social media.
Several suggested that Libby55 contact anti-trans groups Safe Schools Alliance (SSA) or Transgender Trend, while others commended them for “protecting children from the falsehood that they are the opposite sex”.
Confirming they would contact SSA, Libby55 thanked Mumsnet users for their help and claimed that “for the majority of children” using their chosen name and pronouns “brings about a steep downhill decline in their mental health”.
One study of young trans people found that a trans person who is regularly called their chosen name has “a 29 per cent decrease in suicidal ideation, and a 56 per cent decrease in suicidal behaviour”.
Some Mumsnet users disagreed with Libby55, and pointed out that outing trans pupils to their parents would be harmful and could put them at risk.
“Um, what does the child have to say about you doing this?” one Mumsnet user wrote. “You can’t just be giving this kind of information to their parents without their knowledge. That is the whole point of safe-guarding. You are putting this child in danger right now.”
Sabah Choudrey, joint head of youth work at national trans charity Gendered Intelligence, told PinkNews that sometimes “school is the safest place for a young person to explore who they are”.
“‘Outing’ trans youth to their parents against their will may put them at risk of harm and isolation from a supported environment and trusted people,” Choudrey said.
“There are many reasons why families wouldn’t understand in the first instance, but there is support available for families too. But not all families are supportive or understanding of young people having space to explore their identity, and a small minority will unfortunately never come to be supportive or understanding of their child’s identity or exploration.
“Schools have a duty to safeguard all youth, because every young person deserves the right to choose who they are and the right to safely express themselves.”
What is outing?
Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT+ person’s gender identity or sexual orientation without their consent, which can breach their privacy and put them at risk of violence or abuse.
Young trans people in the UK are particularly at risk, with research from LGBT+ charity Stonewall finding that more than four in five young trans people have been called names or verbally abused, while three in five have experienced threats or intimidation and more than a third have been physically assaulted.
A person’s trans status is private, regardless of their age. According toStonewall, schools should not share information that could reveal a pupil’s trans status to others, including their parents, except when there is a safeguarding risk or when the young person has given their permission for information to be shared.
Trans students’ right to privacy
In the US, it’s illegal for a teacher to share a student’s LGBT+ identity with their parents or other school staff, because it’s a violation of the student’s privacy and “can open an LGBT+ child to hostility, rejection, and even violence from their parents”, according to civil rights group ACLU.
Trans adults with legal recognition of their gender have similar protection in the UK, where officials who disclose someone’s trans status without consent would be breaking the law in most circumstances.
While trans under 18’s do not have access to legal gender recognition, they are still protected from discrimination based on their social transition under the Equality Act 2010. This means teachers and school staff should use a pupils chosen name and pronouns – not to do so because they have changed gender could constitute direct gender reassignment discrimination, according to guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
And young trans people have a right to privacy under the Human Rights Act, just like all young people.
Justine Roberts, Mumsnet founder, told PinkNewst: “We’ve had a careful look at the discussion. It’s clear that the person who started it is mindful of their confidentiality obligations and does not intend to ‘out’ any children. They clearly state, ‘I wouldn’t recommend telling the parents. Even if we believe that the school isn’t following safeguarding procedures, we still need to go through the proper channels.’
“This is a discussion in which a teacher is asking for signposts to further information, and does not in any way advocate breaching the confidence of children under their care.”
Gendered Intelligence runs support groups for young trans people and their families. You can find more information here.
Homicides in California jumped 31% last year, making it the deadliest year since 2007, and Black people accounted for nearly one-third of all victims, according to reports released Thursday.
The 2,202 homicides last year were 523 more than in 2019, while the rate increased by a similar margin — from 4.2 to 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people.
That’s the most slayings since 2,258 people were killed in 2007, and the rate is the highest since 2008. Black people make up 6.5% of California’s population but accounted for 31% of all victims last year. Hispanic people accounted for 45%, while 16% were white.
Last year saw such a stark increase in homicides in part because the number and rate of homicides the year before were so low.
California’s 2019 homicide rate was the lowest since 1966, and violent and property crime rates in 2019 generally were among the lowest since the 1960s, four experts from the University of California, Berkeley’s California Policy Lab said in a related review focusing on cities with more than 100,000 people.
California cities generally did better than those in other states that saw bigger per capita increases in homicides and aggravated assaults, experts said.
Yet last year, California had nearly 300 more homicides than the next most deadly year in the last decade — 2016, which had 1,930 slayings, according to annual reports from the state attorney general’s office.
The jump in California homicides comes amid an erratic year for crime, with a less than 1% increase in overall violent crime and a 7.7% drop in property crime during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the state reports.
The pandemic and its accompanying stay-at-home orders and other restrictions led to erratic changes in crime patterns last year, the experts said in a report to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code.
“Social dislocations, stresses, and alterations to our collective daily routines due to the pandemic have impacted crime rates in California and across the country,” they said.
Property crime also fell more in California cities compared with others nationwide that reported their rates to the FBI. However, the vehicle theft rate was higher in California cities for reasons the experts could not explain.
They cited reduced social interactions from the stay-at-home orders as the likely reason for drops in robbery, rape and larceny.
From the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to address homosexuality to the first bisexual “Bachelorette,” here are 10 historic LGBTQ milestones from around the world.
Kathy Kozachenko
First out gay person elected to office in the U.S.
Kathy Kozachenko holds a photo of her son and her partner at her home in Pittsburgh in 2015.Chris Goodney / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Three years before Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, out lesbian Kathy Kozachenko was voted onto the Ann Arbor City Council in Michigan on April 2, 1974.
Kozachenko was just 21 and a student at the University of Michigan, a hotbed of anti-war protests and activism supporting racial justice, women’s rights and other causes.
Her sexual orientation didn’t seem to be an issue with voters, and “gay liberation was not a major issue in the campaign,” Kozachenko said in her victory speech, Bloomberg reported.
“This year we talked about rent control. We talked about the city’s budget. We talked about police priorities, and we had a record of action to run on,” she said at the time.
Kozachenko only served one two-year term and eventually moved to Pittsburgh, where she remained involved in gay activism and met her longtime partner, MaryAnn Geiger.
“I am so proud of all the activists that came after me,” Kozachenko told NBC News last year. “The people that pushed and pushed and pushed for gay marriage, the transgender people that have pushed for their rights … I’m grateful for the chance that I was able to play a small part in this.”
‘Wings’ (1927)
First male-male kiss in a Hollywood movie
Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen during the filming of “Wings” in 1927.Hulton Archive / Getty Images
William A. Wellman’s silent film “Wings,” the first movie to win the Academy Award for best picture, follows Jack (Charles Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen) as they enlist in the Army Air Service during World War I and bond during basic training before being shipped off to France.
While they’re ostensibly romantic rivals for “it girl” Clara Bow, neither “shows as much love for her … as they do for each other,” queer writer Kevin Sessums wrote, according to the LGBT History Project blog.
In the pre-Hays Code film’s climax, Jack accidentally shoots down David, who has commandeered a German biplane. Running to his dying friend’s side, Jack takes David in his arms and begs forgiveness. As the camera zooms in, the two stroke each other’s hair tenderly and Jack declares, “You know there is nothing in the world that means so much to me as your friendship.”
The men share a lingering closed-lip kiss before Jack takes his final breath.
“While the relationship is referred to repeatedly as a friendship, the acting and directing of the film make it obvious that the men’s feelings were romantic,” wrote culture critic and curator Francesca Seravalle. “A swell of romantic string instruments plays in the background as Jack mourns over Dave’s still body. The directing choices made by Wellman humanized both characters and allowed the audience to experience the tragedy without exploiting the perceived exoticness of a relationship between two men.”
One, Inc. v. Olesen
First U.S. Supreme Court ruling to address homosexuality
Founded in 1952, ONE, Inc. was one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States and the first to have its own offices.
An accompanying magazine, One Magazine, started publication in 1953 — selling through subscriptions and at Los Angeles newsstands — and is considered the first mass-produced gay publication in America.
In October 1954, L.A. Postmaster Otto K. Olesen refused to deliver the magazine, declaring it “obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy.” ONE sued but lost the case and a subsequent appeal — a panel of federal judges declared “Sappho Remembered,” a lesbian love story that ran in one issue, “nothing more than cheap pornography calculated to promote lesbianism.”
Founding editors Dale Jennings and Don Slater appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which, surprisingly, agreed to hear their case.
On Jan. 13, 1958, without even hearing oral arguments, the justices issued a terse, one-line ruling reversing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision and affirming that the mere subject of homosexuality was not obscene.
In a Washington Post op-ed in 2014, Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch called One, Inc. v Olesen “the seminal gay rights case in America — the one that extended First Amendment protection to gay-related speech.”
Marcia Kadish & Tanya McCloskey
First same-sex couple legally married in the United States
Marcia Kadish, left, and Tanya McCloskey after being pronounced wife and wife at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004.Dina Rudick / Boston Globe via Getty Images
On Nov. 18, 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriage when, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the state Supreme Court ruled it could not “deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.”
“Recognizing the right of an individual to marry a person of the same sex will not diminish the validity or dignity of opposite-sex marriage,” wrote Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, “any more than recognizing the right of an individual to marry a person of a different race devalues the marriage of a person who marries someone of her own race.”
The first licenses were issued on May 17, 2004, and McCloskey and Kadish, who had already been together nearly 20 years at that point, picked theirs up a few minutes after midnight. With a waiver that allowed them to skip the traditional three-day waiting period, the women exchanged vows later that morning at Cambridge City Hall.
“We felt we were married already,” Kadish told NPR’s “Morning Edition” in 2019. “This was just making it legal.”
At least 78 same-sex couples married in Massachusetts that day — the same day President George W. Bush called for a congressional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
“The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges,” Bush said in a statement. “All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate.”
It wasn’t until 2015 that McCloskey and Kadish’s union was recognized federally, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively made same-sex marriage the law of the land in Obergefell v. Hodges.
By that time, McCloskey had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The disease spread quickly, and she died on Jan. 6, 2016.
“We wanted to lead by example, not that we were leaders of anything,” Kadish told NPR. “We just wanted to make sure that the world saw the most positive side of being a gay couple.”
One day before the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York, the Windy City hosted the world’s first Pride march on June 27, 1970 — albeit a much smaller one than the Big Apple’s. The half-mile procession officially went from Washington Square Park to the Water Tower at the bustling intersection of Chicago and Michigan avenues, but many participants continued down to the Civic Center plaza (now Daley Plaza).
Once there, about 150 people listened to speeches at the plaza before doing a “chain dance around the Picasso statue as the marchers shouted, ‘Gay power to gay people,’” the Chicago Tribune reported.
Chicago Gay Liberation, which organized the event, chose the date because the Stonewall uprising had started on the last Saturday in June the year prior. The members also wanted to reach the biggest crowd of shoppers on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.
Today, the Chicago Pride Parade takes place on the last Sunday of June, drawing more than 800,000 people to North Halsted Street, long known as “Boystown.”
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir
First out LGBTQ prime minister
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir speaks with the media after winning the elections on April 25, 2009 in Reykjavik. Olivier Morin / AFP via Getty Images
While gay finance minister Per-Kristian Foss was briefly in charge of Norway in 2002 when both the prime minister and foreign minister were traveling abroad, Iceland’s Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is the world’s first openly LGBTQ elected head of state.
A former flight attendant, Jóhanna was first elected to the Althingi (Iceland’s parliament) in 1978 as part of the Social Democratic Party. Throughout her career, she has also served as deputy speaker of the Althingi, vice chair of the SDP and minister of social affairs.
On Feb. 1, 2009, Jóhanna was formally sworn in as Iceland’s first female prime minister and the first out LGBTQ world leader in modern history. She served from 2009 to 2013, steering the country’s economy “back on solid footing” after the massive financial crisis, according to Britannica, with the country’s GDP growing 3 percent in both 2011 and 2012.
She and girlfriend Jónína Leósdóttir entered into a civil union in 2002. In 2010, when Iceland recognized same-sex marriage midway through Jóhanna’s tenure, the pair became one the first same-sex married couples in the country.
Society for Human Rights
First officially recognized gay rights group in the U.S.
German immigrant Henry Gerber launched the Society for Human Rights out of his Chicago home in 1924 and received an official charter from the state of Illinois, making it the first incorporated group devoted to gay rights in the U.S.
Stationed in his former homeland during World War I, Gerber witnessed Berlin’s thriving gay subculture and was influenced by the work of pioneering sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld.
Returning to the States, he took a job with the post office and founded the society out of his apartment at 1710 N. Crilly Court in Chicago’s Old Town Triangle neighborhood.
But the organization lasted less than a year, disbanding in 1925 after police raids on both a member’s home and Gerber’s apartment. Gerber was fired from the post office and eventually moved to New York, where he continued advocating for gay rights until his death in 1972.
In 2015, Gerber’s Chicago home was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.
Renée Richards
First transgender tennis player to compete in the U.S. Open
Dr. Renée Richards reaches for a backhanded return during a match with Australia’s Lesley Hunt in the $100,000 Women’s Professional Tennis Tournament at Walter Brown Arena.Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
Renée Richards was set to play in the 1976 U.S. Open until officials learned she was assigned male at birth and attempted to ban her from competing.
Richards had been a tennis prodigy from a young age, playing in the men’s Open several times and even making the semifinals in 1972. A successful ophthalmologist, she medically transitioned in 1975 and began living as Renée Richards (the name Renée meaning “reborn”).
She kept a fairly low profile — entering a 1976 competition as Renée Clark — but her transition was “outed” in a local news report by San Diego reporter Dick Carlson, father of Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson. Fans rooted against her, with shirts reading “Go away, Renee,” and late-night talk show hosts made crude jokes.
When Richards entered the Tennis Week Open in 1976, 25 of the 32 women in the competition withdrew.
To keep Richards off the court, the United States Tennis Association started demanding a chromosome test for all female players. She challenged that policy in a case that went before the New York Supreme Court.
Mirroring arguments made by groups seeking to ban transgender athletes today, the USTA argued it was trying to maintain “fairness” in the face of “as many as 10,000 transsexuals in the United States and many more female impersonators or imposters” who would be eager to snatch “millions of dollars of prize money.”
Billie Jean King, who had played doubles with Richards, testified that she “does not enjoy physical superiority or strength so as to have an advantage over women competitors in the sport of tennis.”
In a landmark victory, the court ruled in Richards’ favor.
“When an individual such as plaintiff, a successful physician, a husband and father, finds it necessary for [her] own mental sanity to undergo a sex reassignment, the unfounded fears and misconceptions of defendants must give way to the overwhelming medical evidence that this person is now female,” Judge Alfred Ascione wrote in the majority opinion.
Two weeks later, Richards played in the 1977 U.S. Open, where she lost to Wimbledon champ Virginia Wade in the first round. She did reach the doubles finals with Betty Ann Stuart, but the pair lost to Betty Stöve and a fiery new upstart named Martina Navratilova.
Four years later, Renée Richards retired from professional tennis at age 47. She continued her thriving ophthalmology practice and even coached Navratilova to two wins at Wimbledon.
Karl M. Baer
First person to surgically transition
Born in 1885 to a Jewish family in Arolsen, Germany, Baer was assigned female at birth, though the midwife told his father the baby’s body had “such strange” characteristics it was impossible to determine the gender.
In his 1907 autobiography, “Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years,” published under the pseudonym N.O. Body, Baer wrote about being ostracized at school and feeling ill at ease in his assigned sex.
While he is often referred to as transgender, today Baer would more accurately be considered intersex.
“I was born as a boy and raised as a girl,” he wrote. “One may raise a healthy boy in as womanish manner as one wishes and a female creature in as mannish; never will this cause their senses to remain forever reversed.”
In 1904, Baer moved to Hamburg to work as a social worker with the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. It was there that he began living as a man.
“I introduced myself as a man, never as a woman,” Baer wrote. “What am I really? Am I a man? Oh God, no. It would be an indescribable delight if I were. But miracles don’t happen anymore these days.”
Two years later, Baer was in a trolley accident in Berlin. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors realized his ID listed him as female despite his presenting as male. They connected him with Magnus Hirschfeld, who diagnosed him as “a man who was mistakenly identified as a woman.”
With a permit from the Prussian Interior Ministry, Baer underwent a multistage gender confirmation procedure, Haaretz reported, though the exact details of the surgery are unknown. He was released from the hospital in December 1906 with a medical certificate identifying him as male. The following year, court clerks in Arolsen issued him a new birth certificate.
Others had transitioned socially before, but Baer “was unusual in that he used medical technology and surgical means to change his gender,” transgender historian Iris Rachamimov told Haaretz.
Brooke Blurton
First bisexual “Bachelorette”
Brooke Blurton on June 19, 2019 in Perth, Australia.Faith Moran / GC Images
Since “The Bachelor” debuted on ABC in 2002, the marital-minded franchise has spawned multiple spinoff series and over 30 international editions. But it wasn’t until the upcoming season seven of “The Bachelorette Australia” that producers tapped an out member of the LGBTQ community to headline the show: 26-year-old Brooke Blurton, who is bisexual.
For the first time in the franchise’s history, the star will choose among both men and women during the rose ceremony.
“I am not too sure if Australia is ready for it,” Blurton, who previously appeared on the Down Under versions of “The Bachelor” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” told The Daily Telegraph. “I certainly am. If it makes people feel uncomfortable in any way, I really challenge them to think about why it does.”
Blurton, a Noongar Yamatji woman from Western Australia, will also be the first Indigenous woman on the show.
“We are a nation of people from so many different backgrounds, so many different cultures and so many different experiences, yet we all have one thing in common — we all want to be loved in a way that is meaningful to us,” “Bachelorette” host Osher Günsberg said in a statement. “I can’t wait to get started on helping our Bachelorette Brooke find that kind of love.”
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