Two members of Guatemalan civil society who work with the LGBTQ community and people with HIV/AIDS participated in a roundtable with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday.
Visibles Executive Director Daniel Villatoro and Ingrid Gamboa of the Association of Garifuna Women Living with HIV/AIDS are among the 18 members of Guatemalan civil society who participated in the roundtable that took place at a Guatemala City university. Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is among those who also took part.
Villatoro is among those who attended a virtual roundtable with Harris on April 27.
“When we met last time, I was so moved to hear about the work that you have been doing, the work that has been about helping women and children, indigenous, LGBTQ, Afro-descendants, people who have long been overlooked or neglected,” said Harris before Monday’s meeting began.
Visibles in a tweet acknowledged it participated in the roundtable.
“Today we participated in a meeting with the vice president of the United States to talk about development opportunities for Guatemala and the search for inclusive justice,” tweeted Visibles. “We, as an organization, spoke about the importance of addressing discrimination and acts of violence towards LGBTIQ+ people.”
Chosen families” are an important and central concept in the LGBTQ+ community.
Our families often don’t look like the typical nuclear family. Many of our closest relationships might not be with our biological relatives, but with the friends and loved ones we’ve connected with since coming out.
These are our chosen families who help us co-parent, care for us when we’re sick and on whom we rely.
This year, as COVID-19 ravaged our communities, too many of us couldn’t afford to take time off work to care for the people in our lives who mean the most to us.
That’s why we support AB 1041, which would modernize job protected sick leave and family leave laws to include OUR families and reflect the reality of today’s family structures.
The sad truth is that far too many LGBTQ+ people still struggle with family acceptance and don’t have the support of their biological or legally-related families.
When nearly 40% of all homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+, it’s no surprise we go the extra mile to rebuild our families with the people who show up to support us each and every day — whether they’re related to us or not.
But our current leave laws make it impossible to be there for our chosen loved ones in times of crisis:
A 2020 study found that one-third of LGBTQ+ people would rely on friends or chosen family members as caretakers during a health crisis, which doesn’t fit within the outdated definition of family under current leave law.
Gary, LGBTQ+ families may not look like a “traditional” family, but they are ourfamilies nonetheless.
And this month, as we celebrate being Proud Together, it’s important we continue to advocate for laws that recognize the ways we live and allow us to support and care for our loved ones.
Will you take a minute to sign on as a citizen co-sponsor of AB 1041 and help us modernize leave laws leave to include our chosen families?
Food For Thought’s 2nd Annual Our Virtual Table This Sunday, June 13 at 7:00 p.m. (PST) Our Virtual Table is three days away and our online auction is going strong! We look forward to virtually celebrating our Food For Thought community! During the event, you’ll hear from Executive Director Ron Karp, a client and our client services team. We’ll also have breakout rooms to allow guests to mingle and socialize with each other and some exciting guest presenters. We look forward to seeing you (virtually) on Sunday at 7 p.m.! Register nowand bid on the amazing auction items below to help us raise funds to support our clients living with serious illnesses.
Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, a high school math teacher and graduate student who has lived in San Antonio since 2013, beat his former boss and incumbent in the runoff race for the San Antonio City Council. With his victory, McKee-Rodriguez became the first out gay Black man ever elected in the state of Texas.
McKee-Rodriguez once worked for his opponent, incumbent City Councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivan, but left her office in 2019 after facing retaliation for reporting anti-gay discrimination and harassment. Just last week, poll watchers heard two pastors who endorsed Andrews-Sullivan tell congregants voting for McKee-Rodriguez would be a “sin.”
“Jalen shattered a lavender ceiling in Texas, and it came as right-wing state legislators target LGBTQ people and people of color with bigoted policies aimed at rallying their extremist political base,” said former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, President & CEO of LGBTQ Victory Fund. “We need more people of color, young people and LGBTQ people in state and local government who will ensure politicians look to improve the lives of Texans, not further marginalize them. Jalen’s victory is a rejection of the homophobic and racist politicking so fashionable in Austin and it will inspire more LGBTQ Black leaders to run and win.”
McKee-Rodriguez graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio, (UTSA) with a BA in Communication in 2017 and will graduate with a Masters of Education in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies this year. McKee-Rodriguez married his husband Nathan, a pharmacy technician, in 2018, and the couple owns a home in the suburban San Antonio Northeast Crossing neighborhood.
New polling released by Gallup Tuesday showed that 70% of those Americans surveyed approved of same-sex marriage, a new milestone in the trend of approval since 1996 when Gallup first polled Americans on recognition of same-sex marriages, which then only registered a 27% approval.
According to the data kept by the firm, the upward trend steadily increased with a majority approval in 2011, followed by a 60% rating at the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015.
Gallup noted; “Since then, the issue has been less prominent in U.S. politics, and public support for same-sex marriage has continued to increase. Gallup has recorded other shifts in Americans’ ideas on marriage over time, historically, including expanded support for interracial marriage, which had 87% approval as of Gallup’s 2013 update.”
Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans’ views, Gallup reported.
Democrats have consistently been among the biggest supporters of legal same-sex marriage. The current 83% among Democrats is on par with the level of support Gallup has recorded over the past few years.
When Stephanie Ocasio-Gonzalez heard that the Connecticut Parentage Act passed the state Senate in a late-night session on May 20 and was headed to the governor’s desk, she congratulated her wife.
“I told Denise, ‘You’re now the owner of a 14-year-old boy,’” she said.
It was a joke shared between two people who have long struggled to have their family recognized. Despite being there for their teenage son, Jayvin, for over a decade, Denise Gonzalez is still not officially recognized as Jayvin’s parent under Connecticut law.
“She bought his first bike. She was there for the first day of kindergarten and every first day of school since,” Ocasio-Gonzalez said of her wife. “She was there for his surgery, taught him math, and so much more. She’s his mom.”
Soon the state of Connecticut will recognize her as such. On Tuesday, the first day of LGBTQ Pride Month, Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, signed a ceremonial copy of the Connecticut Parentage Act into law. The measure, which was officially signed last week and takes effect Jan. 1, will make it easier for those who don’t share a biological connection with their child, like Gonzalez, to establish parentage.
“This is such an important day — what it says for our kids, what it says for Connecticut, what it says for respecting everybody and who they are,” Lamont said at the signing ceremony.
Ocasio-Gonzalez and Gonzalez have been married since 2014, and they share a 2-year-old daughter, Destiny, in addition to their teenage son. Both women are on Destiny’s birth certificate, but even though they were married at the time of her birth, Gonzalez is still not considered Destiny’s legal parent outside of Connecticut.
Denise’s parental rights are limited because she did not go through what is often referred to as a second-parent-adoption process. As a result, routine activities like taking her children to the doctor or picking Jayvin up from school have been anxiety-provoking events that require extra paperwork and preparation.
“It just took a lot more work,” Ocasio-Gonzalez said.
But the adoption process seemed daunting, she said. In addition to the costs involved, the couple worried about interacting with Jayvin’s birth father, according to Ocasio-Gonzalez.
“I read that in some cases, even though I have full custody, I would have to get the other parent to give permission, and just thinking about having to go through that was emotionally draining,” she said. “I know he would not agree to it.”
Once in effect, the Connecticut Parentage Act will allow the family, and others like them, to avoid a potentially lengthy and costly second-parent adoption.
This means starting Jan. 1, Gonzalez can declare her de facto parentage in court and be legally recognized as Jayvin’s parent. The process to become Destiny’s legal parent outside of Connecticut is even easier.
“The really great thing this bill does for those families is that it allows them to establish parentage through a simple administrative form,” Douglas NeJaime, a professor at Yale Law School and the principal drafter of the bill, told NBC News. The new law changes the existing acknowledgement of paternity form to an acknowledgement of parentage form, making it gender-neutral. The form “has the effect of having a judgment from a court, and all other states have to treat it as valid,” NeJaime said.
So if Ocasio-Gonzalez and her family move to another state — any other state, regardless of its parentage laws — they will both be recognized as the legal parents of their two children.
The newly enacted law makes it easier to establish parentage at birth regardless of the sexual orientation, gender or marital status of the parents and adds protections for children born using assisted reproductive technologies. The new measure also removes gender-specific language from the state’s parentage law to make every path to parentage available on a gender-neutral basis. To be inclusive of transgender parents, for example, the new law makes references to the “person” who gives birth, rather than the woman who gives birth.
State Sen. Alex Kasser, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, called its passage a “historic and long overdue moment for Connecticut.”
“Finally all children will be given equal protection under the law, and all parents will be recognized when their child is born,” Kasser, a Democrat, said in a statement. “This bill confirms that there is no place for discrimination in Connecticut.”
Variation in state parentage laws
With Lamont’s signature, Connecticut will join Maine, Washington, Vermont, California and Rhode Island in passing bills that update parentage laws to recognize the realities of LGBTQ families. However, many states continue to have gaps in their legislation that make the children of same-sex couples vulnerable.
For example, many states do not recognize the parental rights of nongestational parents who are not married. Only 14 states afford rights to these parents, according to the LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project. The other states, according to the group, explicitly recognize the nongestational parent only if the couple is married and lack clear guidelines for unmarried couples, leaving them in a legal gray zone.
“We have a lot of states that do not treat LGBT families as full members of the community, and that is the problem,” NeJaime said.
Connecticut’s new law is a version of the Uniform Parentage Act of 2017. The model legislation is intended to help lawmakers update laws to include LGBTQ families and those who have used assisted reproductive technology. The act, originally promulgated in 1973, was drafted by members of the Uniform Law Commission, a group of experts, academics, practicing lawyers and judges, who work on model legislation for states.
What’s next?
Advocates already have their eyes on upcoming legislation in other states, including Massachusetts. Like Connecticut’s legislation, Massachusetts’ bill is also based on the Uniform Parentage Act.
“People are not aware that some of these core protections are still not in place,” said Polly Crozier, a senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD.
The bill, currently in committee, would provide protection for children born through assisted reproductive technologies and through surrogacy.
Ocasio-Gonzalez said she hopes Massachusetts follows Connecticut’s lead so more families like hers can enjoy equal rights.
“We already know we are a family, and now with this bill passing, no one can tell us differently,” she said.
Gay, lesbian and transgender candidates are competing for votes in Mexico’s midterm election, aiming to upset politics as usual in the largely Roman Catholic, socially conservative Latin American country.
A total of 117 candidates, or nearly 2 percent of more than 6,000 hopefuls running for office on Sunday who responded to a survey by national electoral institute INE, identified as part of the LGBTQ community.
About 21,000 local and national races are being contested in the vote, including 15 governorships and all 500 seats in the lower house of Congress, in a pivotal election for the agenda of leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during the second half of his six-year term.
Mexico’s political parties were already required to nominate equal numbers of men and women, and new INE rules adopted last January added the obligation to also nominate candidates from vulnerable groups, including the LGBTQ community.
Candidate for deputy for the Citizens’ Movement party, Aurelien Guilabert, speaks during an interview with Reuters, ahead of the mid-term elections on June 6, in Mexico City on May 30, 2021.Carlos Jasso / Reuters
Like others aiming for jobs in politics, LGBTQ candidates are emphasizing public safety and the economy, but also specific obstacles for those who are often marginalized.
“That’s exactly why I want to serve in Congress, to fight discrimination everywhere and shake things up with a representative voice,” said Maria Garcia, a transgender candidate for Congress in Mexico City.
Garcia is running under the banner of the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena) of Lopez Obrador, who has seldom championed LGBTQ causes and has sided with conservatives on same-sex marriage.
Gay activist-turned-candidate Aurelien Guilabert said the need to tackle a growing number of hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people helped motivate him to run for the capital’s local congress.
“We’re suffering through one of the worst crises,” he said.
Guilabert is with the Citizen Movement (MC) party. According to the INE survey, nearly 32 percent of the LGBTQ candidates running on Sunday are from the party, the highest percentage of any party.
The San Francisco Giants will support Pride Month on the field and on their uniforms and caps.
On Saturday against the Cubs, the Giants will feature Pride colors in the SF logo on their game caps along with a Pride patch on the right sleeves of their home uniforms — making them the first major league team to do so.
“Very proud that the San Francisco Giants are taking this step. Very proud to be part of it,” manager Gabe Kapler said Tuesday before San Francisco hosted the Los Angeles Angels. “Looking forward to the impact and the support that we can provide for the LGBTQ+ community.”
The 11 colors represented in the new Pride logo are: red (life); orange (healing); yellow (sunlight); green (nature); blue (serenity); purple (spirit); and black and brown for LGBTQ+ people of color. Light blue, pink and white represent those who are transgender.
“We are extremely proud to stand with the LGBTQ+ community as we kick off one of the best annual celebrations in San Francisco by paying honor to the countless achievements and contributions of all those who identify as LGBTQ+ and are allies of the LGBTQ+ community,” Giants President and CEO Larry Baer said in a statement.
Additionally, the Giants will host Pride Movie Night at Oracle Park on June 11-12.
A court in India ordered state and federal officials on Monday to draw up plans for sweeping reforms to respect LGBTQ rights, in a ruling that went far beyond the narrow terms of a case brought by a lesbian couple who said they had been harassed by police.
Judge Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court ruled in favor of the couple, who had complained that police had subjected them to harassing questioning after their parents filed a missing persons report.
But the judge also used the opportunity to issue a broad ruling that called for the elimination of what he described as illegal discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. He ordered state and federal government departments to report back with steps they intend to take to comply.
Among his recommendations: police and government officials should be given awareness training to ensure they respect LGBTQ rights. Medical practitioners who claim to be able to “cure” homosexuality should have their licenses revoked.
Schools and colleges should make gender neutral restrooms available, and gender-nonconforming or trans prisoners should be housed separately if needed to protect them from sexual assault.
“Ignorance is no justification for normalizing any form of discrimination,” Venkatesh wrote in his order. Educators should reach out to parents, to help “sensitize parents on issues of LGBTQIA+ community and gender nonconforming students, to ensure supportive families,” his order read.
Activists hailed the order as a major step toward equality for marginalized groups. Although the court could not by itself impose such widespread change with a single ruling, government departments could not ignore the order to report back on the steps they plan to take to comply, and the arguments raised by the judge could serve as precedent for future cases.
“This is the first major order that addresses most challenges concerning the whole LGBTQIA+ community and issues specific directions,” said L Ramakrishnan, vice-president at SAATHII, a Chennai-based public health advocacy group.
“I am hopeful of change given the judge has indicated he would follow up on the directions on a regular basis,” he said.
In reaching his ruling, the judge said he had sought information on same-sex relationships from a psychologist. The judge described himself as not “fully woke” and said he belonged to the majority in India, who are “yet to comprehend homosexuality completely”.
Holly Duchmann, who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, plans to attend a Pride celebration for the first time this year.
“In the years before the pandemic, while I was out to my friends, I was still really scared to go to Pride,” Duchmann, 27, said. “Because I’m bisexual, I kind of pass as straight a lot, and so that kind of created anxiety with me for years, making me feel like I didn’t really belong in the LGBT community.”
She felt more accepted after finding queer community through her roller derby team, and in 2020, she was looking forward to going to her first Pride event. She even picked up pieces of “extravagant” clothing here and there to wear. But then everything was canceled because of the pandemic, and, during quarantine, she turned to TikTok to feel connected to other LGBTQ people.
“The pandemic helped me realize I need to celebrate life when I can,” she said. “It’s like being cooped up made me want to burst out. So I’m fully vaccinated and making plans with friends to go all out this year.”
Duchmann plans to go to New Orleans to celebrate, though New Orleans Pride, which has organized the city’s main Pride events in the past, disbanded in 2020. There’s no central Pride event planned this year, but Duchmann isn’t worried.
“I really see Pride as being larger than just an event held by one organization,” she said. “NOLA is great about gathering and celebrating. It’s kind of like Mardi Gras. It’s a whole season.”
In the last few decades, Pride has been celebrated in cities around the globe with bigger and bigger events such as parades, marches and protests. In June 2019, an estimated 5 million people attended NYC’s annual Pride march, which coincided with WorldPride, which moves to a different major city each year. The celebrations were expected to be just as big in June 2020, the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march — then called Christopher Street Liberation Day — which began a year after the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, a dayslong protest that began after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in downtown Manhattan.
But in April 2020, the pandemic brought plans for the 50th anniversary of Pride to a halt, forcing event organizers across the U.S. to pivot to all-virtual programming. Now, Pride — in New York and beyond — will return with a mix of in-person and virtual events. Organizers are balancing concerns about safety with increasing vaccination rates and the LGBTQ community’s excitement to return to Pride after a year of social distancing.
‘More strategic’ virtual programming
Last spring, the group behind NYC Pride, the country’s biggest annual Pride celebration, canceled its in-person march for the first time in a half-century because of the Covid-19 crisis, and then had two months to create a virtual event in June.
“That was a shock that we had to think about very quickly on our feet to adapt to,” Dan Dimant, media director for Heritage of Pride, the group behind NYC Pride, said. “We did our best, but what we had this time around was the luxury of time and foresight.”
This year, Heritage of Pride will host some face-to-face events — like its annual street fair — but its well-known march, which has attracted millions in previous years, won’t be coming back in the same way just yet.
NYC Pride organizers will hold virtual events like a family movie night, a human rights conference and a rally, among others. It will also hold its usual Pride march on June 27, though it will be mostly virtual with “in-person elements that are to be determined,” Dimant said, adding that any in-person element would take place in a supervised area with perimeters to limit attendance.
“We put together a much more strategic virtual program for most of our events, and we’ve also kind of left the door open for most of this year to kind of wait and see what we could do in person,” Dimant said. “We believe that we certainly can’t have millions of spectators in one massive crowd just yet. It’s just too soon for that. But there are some events that we can do safely in person.”
‘Playing the safe card’
Other groups in large cities are organizing their events similarly.
Los Angeles Pride will host a free streaming concert June 10 on TikTok featuring Charlie XCX, a virtual “Thrive With Pride Celebration” on ABC7. LA Pride will also debut its “LA Pride Makes a Difference” volunteer calendar, which will enable people to volunteer — both in-person and virtually — for local nonprofits that support LGBTQ people.
People march in the 50th annual Pride parade on June 9, 2019 in West Hollywood, Calif.Chelsea Guglielmino / Getty Images file
Noah Gonzalez, the vice president of the board of directors for the Christopher Street West Association, the nonprofit behind LA Pride, said its signature parade and festival, which in 2018 drew more than 100,000 attendees and participants, can take six months to a year to plan, so the board had to make a decision about how to host the events in December.
“We had no idea where we were going to be, so we had to plan for what we knew at the time, and keeping the responsibility and safety in mind, we knew we could do something virtual,” he said. He said the group’s in-person events — the volunteer opportunities — allow people to decide what level of exposure they’re comfortable with, and don’t involve large crowds.
“From a celebratory perspective, we’re sort of pulling back a little bit and playing the safe card, but when it came to giving back to the community or being involved in community, our perspective was … we will create these opportunities and bring them to the community, and you can decide what you would like to do,” he said.
A crowd cheers on those participating in the 50th annual Pride parade in Washington on June 8, 2019.Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images file
Some Pride organizers in big cities have committed to larger in-person celebrations, but they are limiting capacity, adhering to strict health requirements or not holding their events until the fall.
LA Pride will host a Pride night at Dodgers Stadium on June 11, with a special package available to fully vaccinated attendees, and an in-person outdoor LGBTQ movie night on June 26. Similarly, San Francisco Pride is having two Pride movie nights on June 11 and 12 at Oracle Park and a Black Liberation Event at the African American Art & Culture Complex on June 18.
Chicago Pride plans to bring back its Pride in the Park concert in person, with Chaka Khan and Tiesto as headliners, but the event is ticketed, and attendees have to verify that they’ve been vaccinatedor provide other health information through an app no more than 12 hours before arriving to the two-day event, which takes place June 26 and 27.
“We worked with [the app] Health Pass by CLEAR so that we could create a very safe environment where people [who] are either tested or have been vaccinated are the only people that can come into the event right now,” Dustin Carpenter, president and lead organizer for Pride in the Park, said.
People march in the 50th annual Pride parade in Chicago on June 30, 2019.Kamil Krzaczynski / Reuters file
Atlanta Pride also plans to host a festival, though the group traditionally doesn’t celebrate until mid-October. The events will take place in Piedmont Park, which is outdoors, unfenced and allows for social distancing, Jamie Fergerson, executive director of Atlanta Pride, said.
“There’s a lot of concern about health and safety, obviously,” Fergerson said. “People have a lot of questions, and we — as a nonprofit organization that works for a community that’s been historically marginalized in a number of ways, including access to health care and access to good health care — we take health and safety very seriously.”
Some events are still on standby. In Philadelphia, Philly Pride Presents planned to host a festival on Sept. 4, but shared on its Facebook page Friday that the event is “a work in progress” and “not yet ‘fully open’” after the city issued guidance on reopening. Pride Houston has a few smaller events listed on its website, including Rock the Runway, a Pride fashion show, and said a “big announcement” is coming this month.
Other groups, like Boston Pride, have postponed their usual June festivities until the fall.
Some LGBTQ people said, regardless of the number of precautions taken, they don’t feel safe attending in-person Pride events just yet.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable attending a Pride event as a fully vaccinated person, because I don’t know who is vaccinated and who is not,” Justice Dominguez, who is 24 and lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, said in an email. “Even with social distancing and mask requirements, it still feels like a risk. We know that less than half of all U.S. adults are fully vaccinated (per CDC). I thought these numbers would discourage Pride organizers but I was wrong.”
Other LGBTQ people said they won’t be attending large Pride celebrations and will instead attend community-run events, such as New York’s Queer Liberation March, which is organized by the activist group Reclaim Pride, started by community activists in 2019 as an alternative to NYC Pride.
“Being a transgender woman of color, Pride celebrations at large have not included the trans community,” Houston resident Eden Torres, 36, said. “I am moving back to NYC this summer after 13 years in Texas. I will attend any grassroots, no corporation, trans-centered Pride celebrations, but will not participate in corporate Prides any longer.”
But Duchmann isn’t alone in her excitement for Pride festivities — some people are also looking forward to finally being face-to-face.
Patrick Murphy, 71, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, said he and his partner of 49 years will be attending an in-person event.
“We believe that we must continue to show the world that we are still here and will always be strong,” Murphy said. “We survived AIDS and Covid! Just by being there shows the younger generation of LGBT people that they do have a future.”
