News

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Talk of racism, sexuality in schools deeply divides Americans, poll finds

Americans are deeply divided over how much children in K-12 schools should be taught about racism and sexuality, according to a new poll released as Republicans across the country aim to make parental involvement in education a central campaign theme this election year. Overall, Americans lean slightly toward expanding — not cutting back — discussions of racism and sexuality, but roughly 4 in 10 say the current approach is about right, including similar percentages across party lines. Still, the poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows stark differences between Republicans and Democrats who […]

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Florida’s not alone — 19 other states eye LGBTQ school bills

Florida’s newly enacted Parental Rights in Education bill — dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has catapulted LGBTQ rights to the center of political discourse in recent months. Leaders of global corporations, editorial boards of major newspapers and the White House have all weighed in on the new law, with some calling it “deeply disturbing” and others “noncontroversial.” The cast of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has repeatedly ripped into the bill in several of its most recent episodes. At last month’s Oscars, co-host Wanda Sykes took a jab at the measure in the Academy Awards’ opening monologue. And last week, […]

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How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida’s LGBTQ culture war

At a public hearing in Dade County, Florida, parents were enraged. The nation, they said, was in peril and children were at risk. A recent ordinance had granted gay people housing and employment protections, and that meant teachers couldn’t be fired because of their sexuality. Florida classrooms quickly became a battleground, and opponents of the ordinance said the state’s support of civil rights for homosexuals was infringing on their rights as parents.  Action had to be taken, and a campaign to limit the legal rights of LGBTQ people — all in the name of protecting children — was enacted. A […]

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Tough Territory for Transgender People in the Middle East and North Africa

Transgender people, whose assigned gender at birth does not match their gender identity, face a grim reality in much of the Middle East and North Africa region, including daunting obstacles to legal gender recognition. To get a better sense of these obstacles, I reviewed existing legal frameworks and case law, and conducted interviews in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, talking to activists and experts as well as transgender people about their experiences. Building on existing research on violence and discrimination against transgender people in the region, this analysis summarizes what I found. Legal gender recognition for transgender people refers to the official recognition of their gender […]

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Professor points out the double standard Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law misses

Uju Anya, Ph.D., is a professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Modern Languages. She researches applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies through the lenses of race, gender, sexual, and social class identities, according to her website. And in just 45 words, she exposed the hypocrisy of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and other legislation of its ilk. Here’s Anya’s tweet from last summer, a tweet that recently got heat on Reddit’s r/lgbt forum after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law last month. Anya tweeted that argument in June, before Florida’s […]

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Half of LGBT+ sexual assaults based on identity – a quarter are ‘conversion’ attempts, report finds

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Half of LGBT+ sexual violence survivors believe they were assaulted because of their identity, a  survey has found. In the largest report of its kind, British anti-abuse charity Galop asked nearly 1,000 LGBT+ people about their experiences of sexual violence. Those surveyed described instances of rape, penetrative sexual assault, ‘revenge porn’ and groping. Such experiences haunted them for months, with 85 per cent saying the trauma impacted their mental health and 77 per cent their relationships. In a damning indictment against the government’s sluggish approach to banning conversion therapy, nearly a quarter of survey-takers believe their attackers were trying to “convert” […]

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‘Groomer,’ ‘pro-pedophile’: Old tropes find new life in anti-LGBTQ movement

The national war of words over whether students should learn about LGBTQ issues in school — ignited by a recently enacted Florida law that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has taken a charged, and some say dangerous, turn over the last several weeks.  In early March, the press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposes the bill “is probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Several days later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked her millions of viewers, “When did our public schools, any schools, become […]

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It is illegal to be LGBTQ in these countries

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In 71 countries, being queer makes you a criminal. In 11 of them, the punishment is death. Some countries differentiate between having gay sex and actually being gay, but the result is discrimination no matter the reasoning. America’s religious right is clamoring for crackdowns on gender expression and LGBTQ rights similar to the laws enforced in less advanced countries. Some prominent Republicans and pastors have gone so far as to suggest America should be a theocracy like some countries on the list. Iran, parts of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates proscribe the death penalty for […]

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Man arrested for threatening to ‘bomb’ Merriam-Webster over trans-inclusive definitions

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A Californian man is facing charges for threatening to “bomb” and kill Merriam-Webster employees over the publisher’s pro-trans definitions. Jeremy David Hanson, of Rossmoor, threatened to “hunt down and shoot” workers of the oldest dictionary publishers in the US, procecutors claimed. he 34-year-old sent online threats to the company based in Springfield, Massachusetts, over entries such as “girl” and “woman“, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement Friday (22 April). He faces up to five years in jail or a thumping fine of $250,000 after he was charged with one count of interstate communication of threats […]

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Conversion therapy is costing the United States billions of dollars every year

When an LGBTQ person is subjected to so-called “conversion therapy,” society pays a steep price. All told, the impacts of the widely discredited practice are estimated to cost the United States $9.23 billion annually. According to a first-of-its-kind study published in JAMA Pediatrics, efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity create direct costs and, as well, indirect costs associated with anxiety, severe psychological distress, depression, alcohol or substance abuse, suicide attempts, and fatalities. Related link: Conversion therapy practice forced to pay $3.5 million after losing appeal in historic lawsuit “Conversion therapy causes the kind of lingering lifelong harm that we […]

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