Activists have filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of five transgender and nonbinary migrants who say they were mistreated at an immigration detention center in Colorado.
They are currently detained at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, a prison privately owned and operated by the GEO Group, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement incarcerates people who have pending or recently concluded immigration legal matters.
The complaint, filed Wednesday, says the five suffered medical neglect, inadequate access to necessary medical and mental health care, dehumanizing treatment, and more. It calls for major changes in ICE’s handling of transgenderand nonbinary migrants. The migrants are represented by the National Immigration Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, and American Immigration Council.
“Our clients and medical experts reveal that ICE cannot safely and humanely incarcerate people who are transgender and nonbinary (‘TNB’),” the complaint states. “Immigration detention negatively impacts their mental health, impedes timely access to gender affirming care, and triggers prior trauma. … We call for an end to the practice of detaining people who are TNB in civil immigration detention. At a minimum, ICE must both implement new policies that provide more robust safeguards to TNB people in the agency’s custody as well as exert regular oversight to ensure that protective policies are followed in practice.”
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, DHS implemented policies aimed at mitigating some of the worst outcomes faced by trans people in ICE custody, “but the policies clearly failed to improve conditions of confinement,” the complaint says.
The migrants are identified by pseudonyms in the complaint to protect their privacy. One of them, Charlotte, sought transfer to the Aurora facility from an ICE detention center in Georgia and was told that she would have better access to gender-affirming care at Aurora, according to the complaint. But in Aurora, she and other trans women she is detained with are locked in their dorm for at least 23 hours a day, she says.
“I thought they’d take care of us, give us more freedom, recognize that we have suffered the most, we are the most vulnerable,” she says in the document. “We came from our countries being horribly treated and we get here and they treat us horribly.”
Another, Victoria, “who has been detained in ICE custody for more than two years, is on hormone replacement therapy but has faced months-long waits to see doctors about her hypertension,” the complaint says. “She recalls that on one occasion her ‘blood pressure was so high, [she] thought she was going to die.’”
“The traumatic experiences detailed in this complaint make clear that ICE is incapable of safely and humanely incarcerating transgender and nonbinary people,” Ann Garcia, staff attorney at the National Immigration Project, said in a press release. “As a result, we urge DHS to put an immediate and permanent end to ICE’s practice of detaining transgender and nonbinary people. Until that happens, at a minimum, ICE must immediately implement new policies to provide safeguards to transgender and nonbinary people in their custody while also implementing regular oversight practices to guarantee adherence to these protective policies. Ultimately, however, we know the abuse and mistreatment documented in this complaint are emblematic of a detention system that is inherently inhumane and flawed beyond repair, and we will continue fighting to end this cruel and harmful system.”
Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato suffer economic, medical, and labor discrimination, as well as other onerous legal impediments, because the state has no process for issuing identity documents consistent with their gender, Human Rights Watch said in a documentaryreleased today. Guanajuato’s authorities should urgently create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.
The Keys to My Freedom, produced in collaboration with Amicus DH, is released on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility. It follows the stories of two transgender women, Ivanna Tovar and Kassandra Mendoza, who have fought to have their gender and names legally recognized in Guanajuato. Eight additional trans people from the state also share brief experiences of discrimination and messages of hope.
“The documentary powerfully shows how trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to authorities’ undue delay in recognizing their gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The governor and state congress should urgently establish a legal gender recognition procedure that will contribute to reducing discrimination.”
Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the constitution. It is up to the state legislature or state governor to pass a law or issue an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty-one Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.
“It has been difficult to find a job,” says Kassandra Mendoza in the documentary regarding her lack of documents reflecting her gender identity. “[Employers] see my documents, then they see me and say, ‘This doesn’t add up.’ I’ve been made fun of, I’ve even been insulted.”
Ivanna Tovar says in the documentary: “Without a gender identity reform, we [trans people] cannot work in a dignified manner because we are violated, because we are not called by the [legal] names that appear in our documents, and [dealing with that] is the state’s responsibility.” She described gender recognition as her “keys to [her] freedom.”
In October 2021, a state lawmaker, Dessire Ángel Rocha, introduced a legal gender recognition bill, but the bill has not advanced in the current legislature. Previous gender recognition bills presented in February 2019, October 2019, and April 2021 also did not advance.Until last month, the state congress was unwilling to consider bills relating to the rights of LGBT people. In February 2024, the state passed the Law for Persons of Sexual and Gender Diversity. It aims to establish coordination mechanisms between various authorities, as well as guiding principles, “to promote, protect and progressively guarantee” the rights of LGBT people. However, this reform did not address gender recognition for trans people.
Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH, together with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, interviewed 31 trans people from Guanajuato state in April 2022 in the cities of León, Irapuato, and Guanajuato city, as well as remotely, to understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in the state. They found that the absence of a legal gender recognition procedure in Guanajuato leads to serious economic, legal, health, and other ramifications for trans people.
In states like Guanajuato without procedures for legal gender recognition, transgender people have to initiate an onerous legal proceeding to enjoin the state to recognize their gender identity on the basis of the Supreme Court rulings and international law. Federal judges generally grant the injunction, but it can be a lengthy and expensive process which requires hiring an experienced lawyer.
In a successful case, the judge orders the civil registry to permanently seal a trans person’s original birth certificate, meaning it is no longer readily accessible in its information systems, and to issue a corrected certificate. This new state birth certificate is necessary to request new nationally valid identification documents like a voter registration card, a tax number, or a passport.
In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion saying that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and pathologizing requirements. The ruling is an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Mexico has ratified.
In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity” set by the Inter-American Court.
The Supreme Court ruling binds all lower federal courts. The court said that in order to comply with the constitution, state authorities should ensure that trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process. In 2022, the court expanded the right to legal gender recognition to include adolescents and other children.
“The trans people who shared their stories in the documentary are just a few of the many trans people who are suffering under the state’s inaction on gender recognition,” González said. “Guanajuato should heed activists’ calls and Mexican law and join the majority of Mexican states that uphold the rights of their gender minorities by creating an administrative gender recognition procedure.”
Minneapolis’s LGBTQ+ community has rallied to support Minnesota’s oldest gay bar after a fire forced it to close last month.
On March 22, a garbage truck hit a utility pole near the beloved 19 Bar in the city’s Loring Park neighborhood, causing electrical wires to ignite the building’s gas supply, Minnesota Public Radio reported. While no one was hurt, damage from the blaze has caused the bar, which first opened in 1952, to close indefinitely.
The loss, which 19 Bar’s management has vowed will only be temporary, has nonetheless hit the local LGBTQ+ community hard.
“It’s just so weird not having that place to go to on the way home from work,” Bubba Thurn, the secretary of Citizens for a Loring Park Community (CLPC) and a 19 Bar regular, told CBS affiliate WCCO.
“As the years go on, we still have struggles, challenges in the community,” 19 Bar manager Craig Wilson said. “And the 19 Bar has always been a safe haven for people to come and be themselves and be okay.”
“It never changes,” Thurn told MPR of 19 Bar. “It doesn’t have the attitude of the regular clubs and gay bars. This one is more of a mix of the community — the neighborhood of Loring Park and the queer community as a whole.”
According to WCCO, the bar’s closure has left eight staff members without jobs. But the community has stepped up to help. Two GoFundMecampaigns have so far raised more than $31,000 combined to support the out-of-work staff. Another local gay bar, The Saloon, has also announced an April 7 fundraiser, with performers and bartenders donating their tips to benefit 19 Bar’s employees.
And last Thursday, the nearby Walker Arts Center hosted a free event honoring 19 Bar. One of the gallery’s current installations happens to be Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s neon-soaked reimagining of San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, the New Eagle Creek Saloon, which Barnette’s father owned from 1990 to 1993. With the artist’s blessing, Walker Arts Center welcomed the city’s LGBTQ+ community into the space to pay tribute to 19 Bar, as bartenders served drinks, a DJ played music, and photos submitted by patrons were projected on the gallery’s wall.
The Walker’s associate director of public relations, Rachel Joyce, said she hoped the evening would provide “a joyful moment to reminisce on good times at the 19 and a way to look toward the future.”
19 Bar manager Wilson is doing just that. “Yes, there’s some fire damage, water damage, but that’s cosmetic, that can be replaced,” he told WCCO, noting that a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which hung in the bar as a nod to the fact that it opened the same year she ascended the throne, had survived the fire.
“The bones of the bar is still standing and strong,” Wilson said, “and that just goes to show we will come back, rebuild, new and improved.”
Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) left Florida for Chicago when she was still a teenager, skipped college, went to work right away, had three kids in short order, and has been moving at the same lightning speed ever since.
Her first job was with the National Organization for Women, where she rose to legislative director. She joined the staff for Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office as the director of programs and development, and was appointed to the state legislature in 2011 after playing a major role in the ouster of Speaker Mike Madigan, who was later indicted after ruling for more than 30 years as the top Democrat in the Illinois House.
Cassidy, 55, won her first term representing District 14 on Chicago’s North Side in 2012. She’s running for a fourth term in 2024.
Her staff managed to clear a spot on the rep’s always busy schedule for a conversation from her district office in Chicago. It was a mild spring morning in the usually Windy City.
LGBTQ Nation: I’ve seen different numbers for how many LGBTQ+ members there are in the Illinois General Assembly. To your knowledge, how many are there, and do you have enough to start a caucus?
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy: Actually, from our high watermark of five members a few years ago, we are down to one in the House, me, and one in the Senate, Mike Simmons. We’ve had a relatively large exodus to the city council over the years, because, unlike anywhere else in the country, it’s common to move up from the Statehouse to the Chicago City Council. So no, we don’t have enough to form a caucus — just one in each chamber, and we do both sort of have the attitude that we represent the whole state.
One of your biggest legislative achievements was pushing through a bill that legalized adult-use Cannabis in Illinois, the first state to legalize through a legislature and not a ballot measure. What’s your philosophy at the heart of that effort, and do you partake?
Yes, I do partake.
And the philosophy at the heart of the measure was undoing the harms of the War on Drugs using an equity-focused model that remains a work in progress, frankly. Centering records restoration was really the driving force behind everything we did. We ended up expunging nearly three-quarters of a million records as a result of that legislation.
You were appointed to your seat in 2011 after your predecessor moved up — by Chicago standards, as you say — to the Chicago City Council. The next year you faced off against another lesbian, Paula Basta, who, like you, is an inductee to the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. Describe the dynamic between two gay women, both activists, running for the same seat. What tipped the balance in your favor?
First of all, there were 25 people, I believe, that sought the appointment after we drove Speaker Madigan from office. There was an eight-and-a-half-hour public hearing where Paula was one of the people seeking the appointment. In Chicago, the party of the person leaving an office chooses their successor. It was narrowed down to three finalists — one of them was Paula — then they interviewed us and then interviewed us again, and I was unanimously chosen as the winner.
It was not a foregone conclusion. In the election, Paula raised a whole lot of money, showing her capacity to beat me, and I spent the first several months of the race, in spite of being the incumbent, being outraised and outspent pretty dramatically. What tipped the balance was old-fashioned retail politics. I was on the doors all day, every day. And at the end of the day, incumbency helps, obviously, because I had been doing the work for over a year before I won my first term.
It did remind me, superficially, of George Santos running against Robert Zimmerman in 2022, two gay men competing against each other, but that’s a different story.
(Laughing) That’s a different story. I would definitely not put Paula in the Santos category. But it’s not super unusual to have two gay candidates competing against each other where we live because it’s so incredibly queer here.
You chair the Restorative Justice Committee in the General Assembly, where you did a lot of work on your cannabis bill. What’s the most egregious miscarriage of justice you’ve seen in your work, and how was it resolved?
I’m a mother of many, many children. I love them all equally, so it’s difficult to choose just one. In the criminal justice arena, there are so many things that are still not quite right. But last year, I was finally able to pass a comprehensive bill that allows incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence, whose abuse was not contemplated in their original trial, to be offered an opportunity to seek resentencing.
There’s a woman who just got out this year. She was convicted of murdering her husband after months and months and months of abuse and being raped, before marital rape was a punishable offense, and that was something she couldn’t bring up at the time of her trial. She had been in prison for 35 years. She’s out now, and she’s figuring it all out. I was on a Zoom call with her, and her delight at figuring out Zoom was maybe one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was awesome.
You spearheaded a ban on “conversion therapy” in Illinois, helped guarantee trans individuals could access bathrooms and change their birth certificates to reflect their correct gender, and you’ve been an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights. Illinois is surrounded by states moving backward in all those areas you’ve addressed. How important is your state as a refuge for marginalized groups under attack from those and other red states?
There isn’t a superlative big enough to describe the importance of what we’re doing here. I have had folks roll into town on fumes having spent their last dollar to get here from Florida because they were afraid of what was going to happen to them. You know, we’ve helped them find a way here, set them up with healthcare benefits, making sure they’re living somewhere safe, things like that. That happens pretty regularly all over the state. I talk to people at community centers in central and southern Illinois who are seeing it a lot, as well.
One of them I was talking to, in fact, described it as “an uncountable diaspora.” Because we start in a place of not having a good solid number of how many trans folks there are and how many queer folks, generally, there are. And then we’ve got people who are fleeing to access reproductive care or to provide reproductive care. We’ve got people fleeing to teach without being censored, so it’s a lot. The impact on folks can’t be overestimated.
When I moved here from Florida 30-some years ago, we spent a solid six months planning our move. And we had lots of help and support, and our families were supportive. One of us had most of the move paid for by an employer — a normal move, if you will.
I met a person who happened to be a constituent, it turns out, at an event at the White House. And when people were sharing, they explained that until November they had been living in Virginia with their wife. They work with an advocacy group for trans veterans, their wife was pregnant with their first child, and within the same span of a very short time, they were cut off from gender-affirming care and their wife was diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality. And within a week or two, they were living in my neighborhood. They made their home here now because they both needed care.
So it’s critically important. It’s why I’ve proposed a tax credit for folks who are coming in, fleeing these states, to be a bit of a warm hand-off. It’s certainly not much, not enough to make up for the trauma or the expense, but it’s something. It’s something more than anybody else has done for them.
In 2018, the Illinois legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, enshrining protections for women in the Illinois Constitution. How would the stars have to align to revive and pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
There are those who say they just could, there are others who say other enabling pieces of legislation need to be passed. None of that is even possible to contemplate as long as we’re dealing with the hot mess that is the House GOP caucus.
What’s the next step after the Dobbs decision to guarantee a woman’s right to choose?
We need to win back Congress. We need to retain the White House. We need to pass the Right to Bodily Autonomy law. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? But that’s the reality.
The reality of states like Illinois, like Colorado, or New York and California, we can’t maintain the pace that we are having to in regard to patients, in particular with reproductive healthcare. In fact, it’s even harder to absorb gender-affirming care patients because there are already not enough providers for in-house folks. With abortion there was more of an infrastructure to scale. There were abortion funds. There were practical support networks. None of that exists in the gender-affirming care space. So it’s even more challenging there.
What’s the single most important thing the world can do to address the climate crisis?
Each of us needs to act, individually, to do our part in solving the climate crisis.
You have a novel feature on your website that I’ve never seen before, a “Bill Ideas” page where you solicit ideas for legislation from your constituents. What’s the smartest idea that’s been submitted, and what’s the craziest?
Actually, one idea was both, a bill to legalize human composting in Illinois, or what’s also known as natural organic reduction. It’s moving through the legislature now.
You live on the North Side of Chicago with your three sons and your wife, LGBTQ+ activist Candace Gingrich, who happens to be former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s half-sister. How and when did you meet, and who proposed to whom?
My former wife introduced us, actually, while we were still together. We both love baseball, so we became great friends over that. And we said jokingly if we were ever both available in the future maybe we should get together, and that’s how it turned out.
Your wife famously officiated on the landmark lesbian wedding episode of Friends back in the 1990s. Had you seen that episode of the show before you met, and have you watched it with her since you’ve been together — or on your own as “research”?
We actually watched it together when it first aired when we were friends. Then at our wedding, we surprised Candace when the officiant quoted her from the episode.
Have you spent any holidays with your Republican half-brother-in-law, and if so, do you leave politics at the door, or does someone have to apologize in the morning?
Our families’ schedules don’t always line up, so we don’t spend that many holidays together, but he’s very smart and charming and curious, and always interested in what I’m doing.
You offer an amazing museum pass through your office for constituents in your district that grants admission to 17 museums in Chicago and is good for two days. Has anyone ever tried to hit all 17, and would that make a good scavenger hunt for your kids, or a fun fundraiser?
Ha! That’s a great idea! Now you’ve got me thinking about doing a whole pass around that.
Here are some either/or questions about museums and other Chicago institutions:
Adler Planetarium or Shedd Aquarium?
Shedd Aquarium.
Museum of Contemporary Art or Museum of Science and Industry?
Museum of Science and Industry.
Chicago Botanic Garden or Chicago History Museum?
Botanic Garden.
Cubs or White Sox?
Cubs! Yesterday, today and tomorrow and forever and six ways to Sunday.
Isaac Smith has been on the run for years. He’s tired but still determined. Right now, he’s hoping an online fundraising campaign can help him and 19 other queer people make it safely from Kenya to South Sudan. There, they hope to find acceptance, and most importantly, they hope it will be the final leg of their journey.
Ten LGBTQ+ folks Smith knows have already made it across the border after leaving the Kakuma Refugee Camp, but he and the rest remain trapped in a nightmare.
Smith’s life on the run began in Uganda in 2021, when his world was shattered before his eyes with the murder of his partner of two years, Johny Wasswa, by a mob that broke into their home.
“It is one of those memories I never wish to remember again,” Smith told LGBTQ Nation. “His only crime was being queer.”
After rumors of the couple’s well-hidden relationship leaked, locals conspired to murder them both on account of their sexual orientation. Smith was not home at the time of the incident, so by chance, his life was spared.
“I continued to receive messages warning that I would be next unless I changed my sexual orientation,” he said. “I felt suffocated with no freedom at all. The simple act of stepping outside my home became a dangerous affair as news of my sexuality spread.”
According to Susan Dicklitch-Nelson, a professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College, homophobia in Uganda was not always this prevalent, but anti-gay sentiment influenced by Christian evangelists from the US has helped fuel a cultural war on homosexuality for the past two and half decades.
Hate speech against queer individuals became a frequently employed tactic by politicians and clergy to rally support, which resulted in an escalation of discrimination, arrests, and violence against the LGBTQ+ community.
Eric Ndawula, queer activist and the executive director of local advocacy group Lifeline Empower, expressed deep concern about the upsurge of violence towards the LGBTQ+ community across several African countries.
“Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana are among the countries that have recently tightened their existing laws outlawing homosexuality. This move has broadly compromised the LGBTQ+ community, who are often targeted,” he told LGBTQ Nation.
Uganda – where an overwhelming majority of the population opposes homosexuality – passed its harshest anti-gay legislation in 2023, punishing same-sex relationships between consenting adults with life imprisonment and calling in some situations for the death penalty. In the same year, protests in Mombasa, Kenya led by religious leaders and civil society organizations pushed legislators to introduce the Family Protection bill, which seeks to outlawhomosexuality, same-sex unions, and LGBTQ+ activities and advocacy in the nation.
Inescapable Hate
On May 14, 2021, Smith decided to flee. Through a friend, he learned of Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, one of the world’s largest camps, accommodating around 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers from across sub-Saharan Africa. Smith thought he would be safer there.
At Kakuma, he met other LGBTQ+ individuals also seeking asylum, and after two months of orientation, they were relocated to the main camp.
“Being at the camp gave me much relief and a sense of belonging,” he said. “We clustered ourselves as per our sexual orientation, and for a moment this felt like the home I have since longed to have.”
But this feeling would be short-lived.
While Smith and approximately 1,500 other LGBTQ+ individuals formed a tight-knit community within Kakuma, the camp’s general population did not bid them welcome.
According to a 2023 report from Amnesty International, hate crimes are regularly committed in Kakuma against LGBTQ+ individuals, including brutal violence like rape, along with a slew of other serious human rights violations. The report said perpetrators of these crimes often act with complete impunity “enabled by inaction on the part of the authorities.”
Smith described how systemic marginalization within the camp results in homelessness and increasing vulnerability to sexual violence. Many survivors of violence, he stated, contract HIV and other STDs but lack access to life-saving treatment. Denied education and employment opportunities, most queer people are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and water, which plunges them deeper into poverty compared to the camp’s general population.
Breeze, a transgender person who chose to remain anonymous, recounted instances of physical and emotional assault at Kakuma. He recounted being aggressively asked by camp residents to reconsider his identity more than once, and often when he refused, he was beaten.
“It traumatized me,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “I needed psychological support, which wasn’t readily available to people at the camp.”
The Kakuma Queers
Driven by the horrors they face, members of the LGBTQ+ community within the camp have rallied together to form Kakuma Queers, a group comprising most of Kakuma’s queer community dedicated to advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and standing up against discrimination and violence.
With Smith serving as its spokesperson, the group utilizes social media to amplify their voices, frequently relaying scenes and stories of disparity to an audience largely unaware of their struggles.
Through Smith’s Instagram and X accounts and with the help of global allies, the group launched a crowdfunding campaign to appeal to the world’s LGBTQ+ community, soliciting donations for much-needed food, which many queer folks cannot afford within the confines of the camp.
“All this is happening because of our sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression,” Harden Martial, the Chairperson of Kakuma Queers, told LGBTQ Nation. “Such hate crimes are a criminal manifestation of the discrimination LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers face.”
Martial recounts how their pleas for help to the local Kenyan authorities – which, he explains, control the camp along with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) – were hopeless, with the camp’s authority often asking them to “change” their sexual orientation for the sake of “peace” in Kakuma.
“We have had meetings with the government of Kenya, UNHCR in Kenya and its associate agencies about the plight of our situation as the queer community, and instead of giving us solutions, they intimidate us,” he stated.
LGBTQ Nation contacted officials from the Kenyan government and UNHCR Kenya but did not hear back.
But the worsening humanitarian situation and the rising violence against Smith and others in his group are pushing members of the group to escape Kakuma altogether and flee to South Sudan. Social discrimination is also widespread against LGBTQ+ people there, but according to Smith, it is a “safer” destination, as the UNHCR, rather than the state, has full control over the refugee camps there and, therefore, could protect them.
The recurring violations against Breeze encouraged him to escape the camp. When he arrived in South Sudan, he encouraged Smith and 19 members of their group to follow in his footsteps. Half the group managed to get to South Sudan, where they say the living conditions are better than in Kakuma. Smith is choosing not to leave until the rest of his group makes it out.
But he is not at all giving up, declaring, “I will do anything possible, as long as it helps us escape this horrible place.”
This article was published in collaboration with Egab.
Calling all zine lovers: Santa Rosa Zine Fest(#SRZF2024) is back for its fourth year! Join the Sonoma County Library and the Santa Rosa Zine CollectiveApril 17-20for a celebration of zines, creativity, art, and community. From an intro to zines with Luminescent Squid and zine bingowith Jordan Sea at BREW, to live screen printing with P.O.P. (PRINT | ORGANIZE | PROTEST), Zine Fest invites all ages to explore a world of DIY and self-expression. The week tops off in an all-ages, outdoor festival at the Northwest Santa Rosa Library on Saturday, April 20, 1-5 pm, featuring hands-on workshops, tabling by local artists and organizations, and the Sonoma County Library’s BiblioBus! Find out more here.
Meraxes Medina, a 24-year-old transgender Latina, was shot to death March 21 in Los Angeles.
Police responded to a call about 4:30 a.m. that day and found her on the street on the city’s south side, having been shot in the head, the Los Angeles Timesreports. She had been dumped from a car. She was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
The Times story did not state Medina’s name, but her identity was confirmed by friends on a GoFundMe page. Another woman, apparently cisgender, was fatally shot in the same neighborhood two days earlier. The area is known for sex work, and police have said the women had been engaged in sexual encounters that led to violence. The deaths remain under investigation.
Medina, who turned 24 in February and recently begun hormone therapy, had worked as a makeup artist at Universal Studios. She was undocumented and had experienced homelessness. But friends were predicting great things for her.
“She left an impression on everybody,” her longtime friend Alejandro Fernandez told officials at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “She was someone you weren’t going to forget. She had this aura about her, and everywhere we went, people would turn around. She had so much potential. I was waiting for her to be an influencer and blow up. I would tell her, ‘Girl, I’m waiting for your moment because you’re already the bomb.’”
Another friend, Alisha Veneno, told the center, “We were just trying to make it in life. We didn’t know what we wanted to do or where we wanted to go, but we wanted to go somewhere.” Veneno said she knew something was wrong when she didn’t see any recent activity from Medina on Instagram, where she normally posted several times a day, displaying her skills with makeup.
“Meraxes was a young woman who deserved to live out a long and fulfilling life,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative,” said in a press release. “At just 24 years old, she had so much more to give. Yet again, we find ourselves honoring the life and mourning the loss of someone from our transgender community killed by gun violence, and that alarming reality should emphasize our collective need to fight against lax gun laws. We need to come together and remind everyone, especially lawmakers and politicians, that our lives are worth saving and worth living.”
“Violence against transgender and gender-expansive people is a gun violence issue,” the groups Everytown for Gun Safety and Students Demand Action posted on Instagram. “In 2023, 80% of homicides of trans people were with a gun, and 60% of victims were under 30. … Trans people deserve to live freely without fear of gun violence. They deserve to grow old. We can and must #DisarmHate by simultaneously fighting discriminatory anti-LGBTQ+ policies and attempts to weaken gun laws.”
“A predator stalking sex workers is something we must attend to with all haste,” added Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents.“It is far too easy for these women (in this case) to be overlooked because of society’s practice of dehumanizing sex workers.”
C.J.*, a volunteer with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Auxiliary Officer program, says fellow officers and supervisors subjected him to homophobic harassment, including an off-duty assault, vandalism of his departmental locker, and retaliation for complaining about how he was being treated.
Officers in the NYPD’s auxiliary program supplement the regular police force and perform limited duties like foot patrolling, traffic, and parade control. Auxiliary officers get a uniform and a modified badge and aren’t given a gun, pepper spray, or allowed to arrest anyone. Auxiliary officers can also join “special units” that patrol specific transport areas like the subways, highways, or ports.
C.J. moved from Dallas, Texas to New York City in 2012. He worked a full-time job and began volunteering for the NYPD’s auxiliary unit that same year. But because of his negative experiences in the military, he hadn’t planned on coming out in the NYPD.
However, in 2014 the coordinating officer of his auxiliary unit informed Jimenez that his fellow officers all knew he was gay. C.J. didn’t know how they found out or who began telling others, but the outing made him feel very uncomfortable. He decided he wouldn’t “broadcast” his homosexuality at the department, but he could sense that others were gossiping about it.
C.J. told LGBTQ Nation that he endured a lot of mistreatment in the military because of his perceived sexual orientation. He served in the U.S. Army from January 2000 to January 2005, joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 2007, and served in Iraq from 2008 to 2009.
At the time, he didn’t report his mistreatment to his superior officers for fear of being forcibly discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the U.S. military ban on homosexual service members. He retired from the reserves as a Sergeant First Class in June 2022.
However, his old fears about homophobic mistreatment materialized in October 2014 when fellow Auxiliary Officer David Jones* allegedly assaulted him while off-duty. C.J. already disliked Officer Jones, seeing him as a narcissist whom he never saw eye-to-eye with. While the two were being driven from a Halloween party, they got into a drunken verbal argument.
Jones began yelling and belittling C.J., to which C.J. responded, “You’re just pissed off because I’m gay and I have more balls than you, and you haven’t been in Iraq.”
When C.J. exited the vehicle to take a subway home, Jones allegedly shoved him out of the car onto the ground, began kicking and choking him, and called him a “wetb**k,” a “queer,” and a “dirty fa***t.” C.J. said he felt stunned and surprised to see Jones’ “true colors.”
The attack didn’t leave C.J. with any serious injuries, but he felt emotionally shaken. Despite this, he didn’t report the attack because it happened off-duty and because he thought things at the NYPD would be better if he didn’t.
In 2015, Jones was transferred to a special auxiliary unit. In November of that same year, C.J. asked Sergeant John Smith*, the coordinator overseeing all auxiliary special units, for a transfer to another special unit patrolling the borough of Queens. C.J. spoke with that unit’s coordinator, Sergeant Tim Jackson*, and went on rides with two unit sergeants who seemed to like him.
But by February 2016, neither Smith nor Jackson had returned C.J.’s calls asking about his transfer. “At that point, I began to realize something wasn’t right,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation.
By July 2016, C.J. spoke with Detective Robert Brown*, an officer overseeing the special unit Jones had transferred to. C.J. confided about the assault, and Brown reportedly told him that Smith and Jackson weren’t processing his transfer request because he didn’t get along with Jones.
Tired of the stonewalling and mistreatment, C.J. reported Jones’ assault to NYPD Internal Affairs in October 2016. Nine months later, in July 2017, C.J. tried filing another transfer request to the special unit where Jones no longer worked. Brown, the unit head, seemed reluctant to accept C.J.’s transfer request, C.J. said.
In November of that year, C.J. filed a complaint with the NYPD’s Equal Opportunity (EO) office about the lack of responses to his transfer requests. In response, Smith then allegedly ordered C.J. not to contact him or anyone in auxiliary special units anymore. C.J. felt that his order was a retaliation for filing a complaint.
In June 2018, C.J. filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights that he was being retaliated against for his EO complaint. However, C.J. didn’t pursue it because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
C.J. unsuccessfully filed another transfer request in October 2018. He then filed a Human Rights complaint with the City of New York in September 2019 to address the ongoing stonewalling. The COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020 delayed any handling of his complaint, and it was administratively dismissed in September 2021. Yet again, C.J. chose not to pursue the matter because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
Despite the stonewalling, C.J. continued volunteering with the auxiliary program. However, in December 2020, someone broke into his departmental locker, cutting the lock with bolt cutters. Whoever had broken in had removed his duty belt, baton, flashlight, uniform cap, road guard vest, tie, and other various uniform items that he kept in a blue IKEA bag. The vandal hadn’t touched any items belonging to his locker mate. He later found what he believes to be his broken lock on top of the lockers while deep cleaning the area in May 2023.
“I was hesitant to say anything because I was burned out,” he told LGBTQ Nation. He felt like hehad been targeted for filing complaints and that no one would really care or do anything about the locker break-in. He alerted the EO office about the vandalism, but nothing came of it, just as nothing came of his repeated transfer requests, the most recent of which he filed in late 2023. C.J. says his transfers seem to keep disappearing with no explanation.
C.J. says he has had no disciplinary actions filed against him for any misconduct on the force, meaning that his on-duty behavior doesn’t seem to be the reason for his mistreatment. He feels his experience at the NYPD shows that some in the department are acting like a “good ol’ boys” club at the taxpayers’ expense, basing their workplace decisions on who he gets along with rather than his actual qualifications.
LGBTQ Nation contacted the NYPD for comment but they did not respond by the time of publication.
“Following the locker incident, I have been reluctant to do any auxiliary police patrols because, at this point, I feel very uncomfortable because of everything that has happened,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation. Despite this, he said he has stayed in the NYPD because he refuses to be scared away.
“NYC prides itself on being a safe haven for LGBTQ [people] and NYPD says it is here to protect the LGBTQ community,” he added. “However, look at what happened to me after I felt safe to open my mouth about a problem in a place that is supposed to be a safe haven — I am getting the runaround.”
C.J. said he missed out on his longevity ceremony and because of his reluctance to do hours due to the runaround. He is telling his story now in hopes that the NYPD might finally live up to its standards and address his ongoing issues, not only for himself but for future officers who might otherwise face similar mistreatment.
“I know from military experience that all it takes is one or two people with ulterior motives … to make things difficult for [someone], especially if they have power over them such as rank or authority,” he said. “My goal isn’t a lawsuit, or another investigation — all I want is the wrong righted.”
*The officer in this story asked LGBTQ Nation to use aliases for fear of violating department policies as his official complaints move through the system.
Ella Matthes, the longtime publisher and editor of Lesbian News Magazine, died March 16 at a hospital in Norwalk, Calif. She was 81 years old, and the cause was a heart attack, according to a press release.
She ran Lesbian News Magazine, commonly known as the LN, from 1994 until 2022. The LN was North America’s longest-running lesbian publication. When it was founded in 1975 in Southern California by Jinx Beer, it was the lone voice for lesbian issues (The Ladder, published by the Daughters of Bilitis, had ceased publication three years earlier) and evolved throughout the years under Matthes’s leadership. The press release calls it “the nation’s foremost voice for lesbians of all ages.” It carried cover stories on Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Ellen DeGeneres, Marlee Matlin, Hillary Clinton, Toni Braxton, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Judith Light, Janet McTeer, and more.
Matthes, a native of Los Angeles, bought a printing company, Superior Printers, when she was in her 20s, and ran it for several decades. However, she wanted to support lesbians and iacrease their visibility, so in 1994, she bought Lesbian News Magazine from Deborah Bergman, who had acquired it from Beers.
This was her mission statement: “The editorial vision of the LN has always been to inform, entertain, and be of service to women who love women of all ages, economic class, and color. We hope women from all walks of life will not only find something of themselves in the LN, but also be accepting of those with differing opinions. Lesbian News is our small contribution to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liberation movement.”
She received several awards for her work, including the 2002 Women’s Night Gay & Lesbian Center’s Lesbian & Bisexual Women Active in Community Empowerment Award, the 2002 Business Alliance of Los Angeles Community Involvement Award, the 2003 Southern California Women for Understanding Community Service Award, and the 2012 Vox Femina Los Angeles Aria Award.
Matthes and Gladi Adams had been together for 26 years and were married July 13, 2013. Matthes’s survivors include Adams and a brother, Carl Matthes.
Memorial donations in her name may be made to the June Mazer Archives in West Hollywood.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed a law on Monday that adds crucial protections for LGBTQ+ couples using fertility treatments to build a family.
The Michigan Family Protection Act includes a series of provisions to protect families of all kinds. Most notably for the LGBTQ+ community, it changes “outdated state law to treat LGBTQ+ families equally and eliminate the need for them to go through a costly and invasive process to get documentation confirming their parental status,” as a press release from the governor’s office explains, adding that “Even if they move to a state that does not respect these basic rights, these bills help ensure they cannot be denied their relationship to their child.”
The law also repeals a law that made Michigan the only state in the country to criminalize surrogacy contracts; increases protections for surrogates, parents, and children; ensures equal legal treatment of children born through surrogacy and assisted reproduction; and streamlines the process for families to establish legal connections to their children.
“The Michigan Family Protection Act takes commonsense, long-overdue action to repeal Michigan’s ban on surrogacy, protect families formed by IVF, and ensure LGBTQ+ parents are treated equally,” Gov. Whitmer said in a statement. “Your family’s decisions should be up to you, and my legislative partners and I will keep fighting like hell to protect reproductive freedom in Michigan and make our state the best place to start, raise, and grow your family.”
Stephanie Jones, founder of the Michigan Fertility Alliance, called the legislation “an incredible victory for all Michigan families formed through assisted reproduction, including IVF and surrogacy, and for LGBTQ+ families.
The press release also acknowledged the attacks on reproductive rights taking place across the country, most notably the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court’s declaration that embryos created through IVF have the same legal rights as children.
“As other states seek to restrict IVF, ban abortion, and make it harder to start a family, Michigan is supporting women and protecting reproductive freedoms for everyone,” the release stated.
One fierce advocate, Tammy Myers, has been fighting for the decriminalization of surrogacy in the state for the past four years. She told7 Action News, “The tipping point, I think, is seeing that rights are being taken across the nation and we all need to fight for reproductive freedom.”
Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), added in a statement, “Michigan has shown us what strengthening families should look like in 2024: making it more possible for people to fulfill their dreams of building a family and more accessible for all families, including LGBTQ+ families, to obtain the safety and stability that comes with legal parentage.”
“Amid efforts to restrict Americans’ reproductive freedom and roll back protections for LGBTQ+ people and their families, the Michigan Family Protection Act is an inspiring example for other states where gaps in parentage laws leave families vulnerable.”