High-profile Ugandan LGBT+ rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo was “violently arrested” on money laundering charges in what activists have said was “an attack on human rights defenders”.
Opiyo is well-known for representing LGBT+ people in the harshly anti-LGBT+ African country. He was arrested in a restaurant in Kampala on Tuesday (22 December), according to Chapter Four Uganda, a human rights organisation of which he is executive director.
Four other lawyers were also arrested: Anthony Odur, Herbert Dakasi, Simon Peter Esomu and Tenywa Hamid.
The organisation said it was deeply concerned about the “abduction and incommunicado detention” of Opiyo.
He was reportedly arrested by more than a dozen plain-clothed men with guns at Lamaro Restaurant in the suburb of Kamwokya. He was subsequently handcuffed and blindfolded alongside the four other lawyers.
‘Brutal abduction’ of human rights advocate Nicholas Opiyo condemned.
“Chapter Four is further concerned about the safety and well-being of Mr Opiyo, considering that he is being held outside of the protection of the law,” Chapter Four said in a statement released Tuesday.
“We condemn this brutal abduction and we call upon our colleagues and partners to condemn this arbitrary violation of his personal liberty, incommunicado detention, and call for his immediate unconditional release.”
Advocates for Nicholas Opiyo were granted access to see him at 11am on Wednesday (23 December).
“I feel OK health-wise – but my captors have not told me what I am being charged with. I have done nothing wrong, and of that I am absolutely sure,” Opiyo told activists.
They should have summoned him to the police to record a statement. Instead, he was violently arrested and detained incommunicado.
Chapter Four condemned the “high-handed and brutal” arrest, saying the country’s constitution is clear that a person charged with a criminal offence should be informed immediately of the charges levelled against them.
“Nicholas Opiyo is a fearless defender of human rights. His bold, unapologetic conviction and tireless work towards upholding and defending the constitutionally guaranteed rights for all is what the country needs,” said Angelo Izama, a board member with the organisation.
“We must fight against any efforts to crucify him on the altar of evolving political circumstances because wherever human beings exist – so will inalienable human rights.”
Opiyo appeared in court on Thursday (24 December) where he was remanded custody. His case was adjourned to 28 December.
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus has gone virtual this holiday season and has added an inclusive twist to the Christmas classic “Silent Night.”
During its annual holiday concert, which will be held on Christmas Eve, the 300-member chorus will perform “Silent Night” while using American Sign Language, so the deaf and hearing-impaired community can enjoy the performance.
The chorus released a preview video of what’s to come during its 30th annual holiday celebration.https://www.youtube.com/embed/ycYIksZ5_nU
The chorus’ annual holiday concert began in 1990 in an effort to bring cheer to those who had been impacted by the AIDS epidemic.
As for the “Silent Night” performance, artistic director Timothy Seelig said it was inspired by past inclusivity efforts by other choruses.
“I wish I could take credit for this inspiration, but it actually came from the Seattle Men’s Chorus in the mid 1980s. It was first included as a way to include the deaf community in the concert experience,” Seelig told NBC News in an email. “It quickly swept through choruses everywhere and is a cherished tradition for all.”
The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus has also been incorporating American Sign Language into its performances since the ’80s.
“They are a world-class organization, and I try my best to make sure that my interpretations are up to their level to make sure that the deaf audience is getting the same quality the hearing audience is getting,” Tom McGillis, who has been signing for the New York chorus since 1988, told NBC News in 2016.https://www.youtube.com/embed/6V_wwJZ7-4k
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus gained national recognition for its talents last year in the award-winning documentary “Gay Chorus Deep South,” which followed the group as it traveled through the South in 2017 to promote a message of acceptance and unity. The film, directed by David Charles Rodrigues, won the documentary audience award in the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and is now being shown on on Pop, Logo and Pluto TV.
LGBTQ Southerners have often faced social and political hardships across the Bible Belt. One Arkansas city last year attempted to enforce LGBTQ protections, but it was ultimately ruled it could not enforce its ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Circumstances like this are among the reasons why Seelig found it important for the chorus to embark on the journey after the 2016 election.
“We felt things were going to get much worse for the LGBTQ community, especially in states with the most egregious discriminatory laws already on the books. It was important for us to reach out to bring uplifting and unifying music to our brothers and sisters in the South,” he said.https://www.youtube.com/embed/IGN_NDfo5gw
In the wake of the pandemic and the surge of Covid-19 cases, Seelig said the San Francisco chorus will emerge resilient.
“From its courageous beginning one October night in 1978, the chorus has been at the forefront of the fight for equality for all — whatever direction that took,” Seelig said. “The chorus is now experiencing its second pandemic in its 43 years. We will come out of this one stronger and more committed to the work before us.”
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus annual holiday concert, “Home for the Holidays,” will take place on Thursday, Dec. 24, at 5 p.m. PST/8 p.m. EST.
“Club Kid Killer” Michael Alig — the famously flamboyant party promoter who ended up busted for murder — has been found dead of a suspected drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment, officials said Friday.
The 54-year-old former scene fixture and convict was discovered by a friend just before midnight Christmas Eve in his Washington Heights pad, authorities said.
Detectives recovered several zip-lock plastic bags, possibly containing heroin, from the home, as well as drug paraphernalia, officials said.
Growing up in a military family in Atlanta, Joshua Gravett said he knew he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, Eddie, and older brother, Justin, both sergeants first class in the Army. There was just one problem: He was gay.
Despite the military’s policy at the time of prohibiting gay men and lesbians from serving openly, Gravett, then just 17, enlisted in the Army in 2003 and kept his sexuality a secret for eight years.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Gravett honored at the Mets’ first Pride Night in 2016.Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
“You can’t have any type of relationships whatsoever. I wouldn’t be seen with anybody else that could be considered gay,” Gravett said, noting that just being suspected of being gay could get you kicked out.
President Barack Obama signed a bill setting in motion the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on Dec. 22, 2010, but it wasn’t until after the policy was officially repealed in 2011 that Gravett finally started to come out to his friends and family. He also recalled the relief he felt just being able to put a photo of his partner on his desk at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and bring a same-sex date to a military formal.
“I could just be myself without risking the loss of my career that I had already put almost a decade into,” Gravett, now 35 and a sergeant first class stationed in Texas, told NBC News. “It was like a huge weight lifted off me.”
Gravett recalled being “happy” the day President Barack Obama signed the repeal bill but said he “still couldn’t be out until it took effect” nine months later.
“It was almost like finding out you are getting promoted, but it isn’t real until it actually happens,” he said.
An estimated 13,000 service members were discharged in the 17 years the policy was in effect, according to data the military provided to The Associated Press.
A decade after the demise of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” much has changed for LGBTQ Americans, but several gay service members and military experts say the policy’s dark shadow still lingers.
A defunct policy’s lingering shadow
When President Bill Clinton signed “don’t ask, don’t tell” into law in 1993, it was a compromise between the White House and Congress to end the existing policy of outright banning gay service members that had dated to World War II. Under the new policy — which passed 77-22, with bipartisan support — gay men, lesbians and bisexuals were in theory permitted to serve in the military, but they would be “separated from the armed forces” if they revealed themselves to be homosexual or bisexual, tried to marry a person of the same sex, or there was evidence they had engaged in same-sex sexual activity.
Gravett said the policy has left a “hurtful” legacy, and he mentioned being a part of several Facebook groups where former service members lament losing their military careers because of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and not being able to serve again.
He also noted that many service members who were ousted under the policy are not aware that they may be able to seek remedies from the military.
“Most people that got out under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ can get their discharges upgraded from general discharge to honorable discharge,” he said, encouraging those who haven’t tried already to do so.
Jennifer Dane, an Air Force veteran, was investigated under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 2010.Courtesy Jennifer Dane
Jennifer Dane, a Texas native who joined the military at 22 and served as an intelligence analyst in the Air Force from 2010 to 2016, said that when it comes to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” there are “still unintended consequences that aren’t even explored to the fullest, even 10 years later.”
Dane, now 33, said she was stationed in Tucson, Arizona, when she was investigated under “don’t ask, don’t tell” after reporting that she has been sexually assaulted by an airman. Over the course of the investigation, Dane said her sexuality came to light, which turned the investigation toward her. The investigation stopped after Obama signed the repeal bill, according to Dane.
Now the executive director of the Modern Military Association of America, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ veterans and their families, Dane said she would like to see some of these past “wrongs” caused by the policy “written right,” like a public apology from the government or even just “making sure that we don’t do policies that are harmful” again.
Dane added that some LGBTQ veterans who were discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” still do not get access to medical care, the GI Bill and military pensions. This does not include the emotional trauma that service members endured under the policy, she added.
Aaron Belkin is the founder of the Palm Center, an independent research institute in San Francisco that focuses on LGBTQ military issues. His organization helped make the case for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“We did 10 years of research into that question of whether it’s true that gay lesbians hurt the military, and what our research found was that it’s discrimination that hurts the military, not gays and lesbians,” Belkin said.
Belkin, Dane and Gravett all drew parallels between the former ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military and the current ban on transgender service members from doing so.
“The Trump administration’s transgender ban is ‘don’t ask, don’t tell for transgender troops, and the similarities are striking,” Belkin said. His organization, using 2016 data from the Department of Defense, estimates there are currently 14,700 transgender service memberson active duty or in the reserves.
‘A new era of LGBTQ rights’
One of the thousands of currently serving transgender service members is Iowa native Samuel Payntr. Now 22, Payntr began serving openly as a transgender man in the Navy at 19 when he got to his ship stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. He began hormone treatment the day before the ban on trans troops serving openly took effect on April 11, 2019. He said that while some were accepting of his transition, others weren’t sure how to respond, because it was seen as a “gray area” at the time.
“I had to really be careful about what I said around some people regarding my personal life and my sexual orientation in my transition, because there were quite a few people that had very negative remarks,” said Paytnr, who is able to serve openly as transgender because he joined the military before the transgender ban was reinstated. “I’ve had some kind of bad things happen, but the good kind of always outweigh the bad with the people that did support me.”
Transgender individuals with no history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria are technically still allowed to join the military and serve under the policy, though they must do so as their birth sex. Payntr explained that some hormone treatments make some service members ineligible to serve, adding he knows both trans service members who were terminated after the ban went into effect and those who were not depending on their diagnosis.
“Luckily, depending on the command we were at or the branch we were in, we had the people who were very knowledgeable in our transition defend us and be like, ‘No, this does not affect your service,’ and that’s literally what happened to me and quite a few other people that I know that are in the Navy who are transitioning,” he said.
In his policy platform, President-elect Joe Biden stated that he will “reverse the transgender military ban.” And since the ban was enforced as a presidential directive, Biden would be able to reverse it unilaterally. Payntr expressed optimism that Biden will make good on this promise.
At the 2020 International LGBTQ Leaders Conference this month, Biden honored Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for her work in repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” a decade ago and appeared to hint at a future repeal of the current trans military ban.
“I can’t wait to work together with you again and to continue to fight for full equality and usher in a new era of LGBTQ rights and the entire movement,” said Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20.
The newly engaged couple Kasey Mayfield and Brianna May did not expect to ignite an online backlash when they shared on Facebook a recent email exchange that Mayfield had with an employee at a North Carolina wedding venue.
In the exchange, Mayfield mentions potential wedding dates, the estimated number of guests and the “other bride.” In response, the venue informed her that The Warehouse on Ivy in Winston-Salem does “not host same sex marriage ceremonies.”
Brianna May, left, and Kasey Mayfield shortly after their engagement.Chelsea Clayton
“If you’re wondering how wedding planning is going…thanks so much to The Warehouse on Ivy for letting us know we’re not welcome,” May captioned the photo of the exchange, which had over 1,400 shares on Tuesday.
“I was kind of speechless,” Mayfield said of reading the email. “I just had to like hand the phone over to Bri when I got it.”
“I had hoped that this wouldn’t happen in North Carolina, but I thought there was a chance it may. I didn’t expect it from a venue in Winston,” added Mayfield, 25, who has lived in the area for the past 10 years. May, 29, was born and raised in Winston-Salem.
The couple met on the dating app Bumble over two years ago and got engaged last month while listening to their favorite album, “Golden Hour” by Kacey Musgraves. They had only just started planning for their wedding, which they hope to hold in the fall of 2022. Mayfield said she and May first heard of The Warehouse on Ivy through the online wedding resource Wedding Wire.https://www.facebook.com/v2.10/plugins/post.php?app_id=&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df3dc6d7212d2b2a%26domain%3Dwww.nbcnews.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nbcnews.com%252Ff330e4902461704%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=480&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fbrianna.may.395%2Fposts%2F10220437554034235&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&show_text=true&width=auto
‘Christian values’
The venue did not tell May and Mayfield why it does not host same-sex marriage ceremonies. However, in an email exchange with NBC News, the same email account, which lists the sender’s name as Daniel Stanley, confirmed the couple’s assumptions surrounding the decision.
“We will allow anyone of any color, race, religion or belief to use our venue at any given time,” the email stated. “Although we love and respect everyone in our community, their own decision making and beliefs, we also strongly believe in our Christian values.”
Multiple attempts to confirm that the statement was sent by Stanley, whose LinkedIn account says he’s the venue’s director, were ignored, as were questions surrounding the venue’s ownership.
According to North Carolina incorporation filings, The Warehouse on Ivy is owned by STC Properties of Forsyth County and lists Thomas Collins and Scott Sechler as the company’s managers. Reporting from The Winston-Salem Monthly, which features interviews with the Sechler family about the recently opened venue, confirms Sechler’s ownership.
Multiple attempts to reach Sechler and Collins were unsuccessful, and by Monday the venue had taken down its Facebook and Instagram pages.
‘Free to discriminate’
The issue of where anti-discrimination laws begin and First Amendment and religious liberty rights end remains something of an open question legally — and much of it depends on state law.
In the high-profile 2018 case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of Christian baker Jack Phillips, who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. But instead of answering the fundamental question of whether it is legal to discriminate based on sexual orientation, the high court simply found that Phillips’ concerns weren’t fairly considered by Colorado officials.
In a similar case, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that Arlene Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers, was in violation of that state’s anti-discrimination law for refusing to provide flowers for a gay couple’s wedding ceremony. The shop has appealed, for the second time, to the Supreme Court. Its petition is pending.
With no explicit state protections and no federal legislation banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination in public accommodations, a state like North Carolina leaves little room for legal recourse, according to Paul Smith, a Georgetown Law School professor who argued the landmark 2003 LGBTQ rights case Lawrence v. Texas before the Supreme Court.
“The only shot would seem to be finding a state law that prohibits sex discrimination in the provision of goods and services and then convincing North Carolina to read ‘sex discrimination’ in its law as broadly as the majority did in Bostock [v. Clayton County, Georgia],” Smith said, referring to the landmark ruling this year that found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 offered workplace discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, was even less optimistic when it comes to the state.
“North Carolina has no state law on public accommodations not related to disabilities and no anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT identity,” Su told NBC News. “Given there is no federal law protecting LGBT [people] either, this would mean that the wedding venue is free to discriminate.”
There are, however, two things that could potentially change this in the near future: the Equality Act and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The former is proposed federal legislation that would add LGBTQ protections to existing federal civil rights law. It passed in the House last year, and President-elect Joe Biden has said he would like to sign it within his first 100 days in office.
The latter is a case before the Supreme Court that will determine whether a government-funded, religiously affiliated child welfare agency can circumvent local nondiscrimination laws and refuse to work with LGBTQ people. If the justices issue a broad ruling in the case, it could have far-reaching implications, according to legal experts.
A silver lining
Mayfield said she and May “aren’t considering legal action at this time,” but she added that they are “urging our friends to email legislators to help try and pass discrimination laws for LGBTQ people.”
In addition to advocating for legislative action, the couple also wants to get the word out to the local LGBTQ community about The Warehouse on Ivy’s policies.
“We have a lot of gay friends in our circle, so I wanted to hopefully save people the time and, kind of, hurt and energy, from getting rejected based on our sexual orientation,” May said of their decision to go public about the ordeal.
In addition to receiving “kind and encouraging words” in response to her now-viral Facebook post, May said she’s also received some helpful wedding tips and offers.
“We’ve gotten so many wonderful recommendations for other vendors and venues, and we’ve had people offering services,” she said.
Summing up the experience — from the venue’s rejection to the viral social media response to the messages of support — Mayfield said it’s all been “definitely overwhelming, but in a good way.”
Friends of Stumptown Present “Season of Lights Ride”
December 18, 19, 20 and December 25, 26, 27 from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
So you can drive around with your family and friends safe in your car. You will vote on the best place on the Friends of Stumptown Facebook Page. Post your pictures and vote for your favorite place. Don’t forget to look for Santa! He will be giving out treats somewhere on the route each night of this event!
Guerneville 14935 Old Cazadero Road 15880 Wright Drive 14611 River Road, Guerneville 17809 Beach Avenue 15460 Drake Road 5 and 10, 16252 Main Street 16386 Cutten Drive 14700 Orchard Lane 14226 Cherry Street 14291 Laurel Road Corner of Laurel Rod and Old Cazadero Road 17627 Orchard Avenue 16205 First Street (Smart Pizza, Hernandez Realty and Shakedown) 16440 4th Street
Behind the Bank on Church Street (16290 Main Street) Come see all the trees decorated by different businesses, including Boon Brand 5&10 King’s Sport and Tackle Big Bottom Market Russian River Art Gallery River Queen The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence The Guerneville Bank Club Main Street Bistro Blue Door Art Gallery Rio Rio Vintage Clothing & Art Equality Vines Visiting hours for the garden will be Wednesdays through Sundays from 4-7.
Rio Nido 14746 Rio Nido Road 14745 Rio Nido Road 15120 Rio Nido Road 16343 Rio Nido Road 14750 Eagles Nest Lane
Monte Rio 21517 Highland Terrace
Special THANK YOU to Russian River Chamber of Commerce and The County of Sonoma for helping make this event happen and keeping us safe! Thank you also to Karin Moss for all you’re doing to help our community.
If you see a house that’s not on the list take pictures and post. We want to see all the great houses!
A council in Canada has unanimously agreed to introduce a non-binary gender option on citizenship cards for its residents – at no extra cost.
Announcing the news on 18 December, Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand said: “We want our citizens to be themselves and not have to hide or be denied their identity.”
“We want this resolution to remind all our LGBTQ2+ citizens that you are embraced in our community and your Métis government, and we are proud of who you are,” Chartrand added.
The Manitoba Metis Federation cabinet, which governs the region of Manitoba in Canada, passed a unanimous resolution to introduce non-binary options and said that citizens who want to get new official documentation with the new non-binary gender option will be able to do so for free.
“The MMF has always encouraged our people to believe in themselves, and be proud to be themselves,” Chartrand said in a statement.
“The MMF has been on the leading edge of this topic for a number of years among Indigenous peoples,” Chartrand said. “All Canadians must have their basic human rights respected.”
Manitoba already introduced non-binary gender marker for birth and death certificates.
The new, inclusive policy for citizenship cards follows a Manitoba Human Rights Commission ruling that led to a non-binary gender option being introduced on birth and death certificates. In December 2019, Manitoba was ordered to pay $50,000 to a transgender person who was denied the right to have the gender marker on their birth certificate replaced with an “X” in.
The independent Manitoba Human Rights Commission ruled that the government’s position was discriminatory and there was nothing under the law that would prevent a third designation from being offered.
“Gender identity is a part of our concept of selfhood,” stated adjudicator Daniel Manning in the ruling.
“The practice to not allow non-binary designations of sex designation and only permit male or female designations was effectively the government refusing to acknowledge T.A.’s agency and personhood.”
He added: “The difficulties faced by trans and non-binary individuals in our society are many. Human rights tribunals have long recognised the disadvantages faced by trans people and non-binary individuals in society.”
Several other provinces already have the option to select a gender neutral marker on identity documents, including Ontario, Alberta, and Newfoundland Nova Scotia and Labrador.
Historian and archivist Lenn Keller died of cancer on December 16, according to an announcement posted by the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, an organization that she founded in 2014 to preserve the region’s diverse lesbian history. In a separate post, her friend Sharon Davenport noted that Lenn “was loved and cared for when she passed at home.”
Keller, who described herself as “a proud butch lesbian,” lived a life of what she would later refer to as “prefigurative politics”—creating the world one wishes to see. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, she played a leading role in the Bay Area’s thriving community of Black lesbian activists. In more recent years, she devoted herself to preserving the often-overlooked stories of these women.
Her story of rebellion began when she was growing up in the 1950s.
“Some of my earliest memories have to do with being in kindergarten, and noticing the whole gender setup,” Keller recalled in a 2017 interview. “All the boys’ toys were in one section and the girls’ toys were in another. There was the expectation that you only played with the toys in your section. Even as a five-year-old, I thought that was utterly ridiculous.”
Keller bucked the unspoken rules and played with whatever toys she wanted. Throughout the rest of her life, she challenged and broke down oppressive gender norms and racism. The Bay Area Lesbian Archives, an organization Keller co-founded, will ensure that her legacy of photography, advocacy, and rebellion will live on.
Explaining the motivation to catalogue and share her massive collection of event flyers, meeting notes, newsletters, videotapes, and photographs, Keller said “what happened back then was so important. People were driven by a vision, not just to be accepted as lesbian and gay. We were trying to literally change the world.” Keller and her friends manifested this vision by instituting standards for their own events, like providing sign language interpretation and free childcare, that are now adopted (or should be) at mainstream events far beyond collective meetings in Berkeley basements.
Their approach to social justice was intersectional long before that term was coined. The emergence of Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, and LGBTQI equality legislation all have roots in gatherings like the 1980 “Becoming Visible: First Black Lesbian Conference,” held at The Women’s Building in San Francisco, which Keller attended with her ever-present camera.
Lenn Keller was born on September 29, 1950 in Evanston, Illinois. Her father, who she described as “functionally illiterate,” came from a family of sharecroppers and worked as a gravedigger. Her family lost their house to foreclosure around the same time her mother died, when Lenn was eight years old. Following this tragedy, her father was able to secure low-income housing for the family in an affluent Chicago suburb, which gave Lenn access to a top-ranking public education. Reminiscing about her nearly all-white high school gave Lenn an opportunity to share her dagger-sharp dark humor. “I was basically exempted from having to date, because it was at a period in time when white boys didn’t date black girls. Racism saved me from compulsory heterosexuality.”
Looking for an escape from suburbia (“I never bought into that value system”), Lenn and her best friend took a bus to New York City shortly after high school graduation in 1968, with little to guide them outside of the street wisdom they’d picked up in Malcolm X’s autobiography and Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land. The girls were initially taken in by a group of “radical squatters,” but after Lenn was sexually assaulted, they found safer accommodations in Harlem with a crew of older Black artists. These poets and filmmakers looked after Lenn like a little sister and one of the men gave Lenn her first camera, which sparked a lifelong love of the lens.
“If I didn’t have my camera, people would often remark,” she told KQED in a 2019 interview.
In 1975, Lenn was drawn to the West Coast by tales of liberated lesbians in Santa Cruz. “The dykes there were into everything,” she said. “They were mechanics, they were doing construction. It was during this time when women were all about doing things we’ve been told our whole lives that we can’t do.”
However, with her daughter approaching kindergarten age, Lenn wanted to live somewhere with more racial diversity, so after a short stay in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, she found a home among a group of like-minded women in Berkeley, where the rent for their “really big” five-bedroom flat was less than $200. This arrangement gave Lenn the courage to come out as a lesbian, which made her feel “ecstatic,” even though the revelation came at the expense of some of her closest relationships back in the Midwest.
“Everybody had a story about being rejected, which is what made our communities very tight,” she said. “By living in collective households, we created surrogate families. We took a lot of care, especially around holidays, to make sure everybody had a place to go.”
As the Bay Area’s concentration of queer women reached a critical mass in the 1970s, this spirit of mutual aid extended well beyond tight-knit circles.
“We were coming out of an era when people were being electroshocked,” Lenn said, referring to pseudoscience “treatments” of LGBTQI people. “So we were very committed to supporting women in as many ways as we could.”
Lesbian activists helped launch California’s first domestic violence shelters and early rape crisis centers, as well as feminist book stores and cafes. During these fervent years, Lenn supported herself with a job at Berkeley Recycling while volunteering at Pacific Center, the Bay Area’s oldest LGBTQI+ community center, and earning a degree in visual communications from Mills College. On top of all this, whenever a major threat to LGBTQI rights emerged, such as 1978’s Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban queer people from teaching in public schools, Lenn was at the protests, documenting a nascent movement’s first footsteps into the national spotlight.
Sometimes the injustice that Lenn challenged came from within this movement itself. One of the many photos in her archive shows Lenn and her housemate at SF Pride, holding a sign that reads: “No more power to white supremacists, straight or gay.” Explaining how lesbians, especially lesbians of color, had to struggle for recognition even within liberal political spaces helps explain their inclusive praxis. She said, “It’s not that lesbians were better people or had more integrity. It’s that we had more fights. We had more layers of oppression to deal with.”
Lenn also managed to have a lot of fun. She was on a softball team, directed an award-winning short film, played tenor sax in a salsa band, and loved to dance at the Bay Area’s many lesbian bars like Ollie’s and The Jubilee, an East Oakland joint that featured a peephole in the door, a throwback to the days when police raids at gay bars were a regular occurance.
As Bay Area rents rose throughout the 1990s, lesbian bars began disappearing from the local landscape, and so did the women who caroused in them. Many of Lenn’s friends fled for more affordable accomodations and Lenn was displaced from her home “several times, when the place where I was living was sold out from underneath us.”
Despite her precarious housing, Lenn managed to hang onto her archives, which she amassed informally. “I just started collecting little things here and there. We lived in a collective household and we were all involved in things and we’d go to events. There were always flyers and posters and postcards and buttons, so I just thought… this stuff feels important. I guess I’ll just hang onto it.”
The 23-year-old joined the human resources department of Banco Nación, Argentina’s leading state bank, this year. In September, President Alberto Fernández signed a decree establishing a 1 percent employment quota for transgender people in the public sector.
Only neighboring Uruguay has a comparable quota law promoting the labor inclusion of transgender people, who face discrimination in the region. According to Argentina’s LGBTQ community, 95 percent of transgender people do not have formal employment, with many forced to work in the sex industry where they face violence.
Transgender woman Angeles Rojas poses for a photo as she walks down a corridor of the National Bank where she works in Buenos Aires on Nov. 5, 2020.Natacha Pisarenko / AP
“If all the institutions implemented the trans quota, it would change a lot for many of my colleagues. It would change the quality of their lives and they would not die at 34, or 40, which is their life expectancy today,“ said Rojas, who has long, black hair and intense dark eyes.
There are no official figures on the size of the transgender community in Argentina, since it was not included in the last 2010 census. But LGBTQ organizations estimate there are 12,000 to 13,000 transgender adults in Argentina, which has a population topping 44 million.
Argentina, a pioneer in transgender rights, in 2010 enacted a marriage equality law and in 2012 it adopted an unprecedented gender identity law allowing transgender people to choose their self-perceived identity regardless of their biological sex. The law also guarantees free access to sex-reassignment surgeries and hormonal treatments without prior legal or medical consent.
Rojas’ life story is similar to that faced by many other transgender people.
She came to Buenos Aires three years ago from a small town in northern Argentina, fleeing intolerance, but things were still tough in the capital and she was forced to prostitute herself.
One morning, a client invited her into his car to go to a hotel. But he strayed from the route to the hotel, took out a gun and told her “give me your wallet.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Rojas said. “I grabbed the steering wheel and he hit me. I woke up three days later in the hospital with a facial fracture, facial reconstruction and the loss of hearing in one ear.”
After spending three months in the hospital, Rojas left sex work and became an activist for the transgender community.
She says she “feels comfortable, happy with the treatment they give me” at the bank.
Transgender woman Guadalupe Olivares, who earns money as a sex worker, poses for a photo at the hotel where she lives in Buenos Aires on Nov. 16, 2020.Natacha Pisarenko / AP
Many transgender people live in the Gondolín, a building in the Buenos Aires’ Palermo neighborhood with a blue front and painted mural of a mermaid and colored hearts. Transgender women come and go from the shared bathrooms to their rooms.
Guadalupe Olivares dons the pants, black shirt and briefcase she chose for an earlier job interview at the Ministry of Social Development.
“I think almost 100 percent of us have never had a registered job. You don’t know what a paycheck is. It’s a totally new world,” said Olivares, 33, who comes from San Juan province.
Smoking a cigarette and drinking a soda, Olivares said she submitted a lot of resumés. “When they called, I felt there was discrimination,” she said. “They didn’t tell you: ‘we’re not going to hire you as a ‘trava’ (transvestite),’ but they had that look asking why was I there.”
A report by the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Trans People published in December said “the vast majority of trans women in the region have sex work as their sole economic and subsistence livelihood.”
Transgender man Ese Montenegro, an activist hired as an adviser to the Chamber of Deputies’ women’s and diversity commission, at his home in Buenos Aires, on Nov. 25, 2020.Natacha Pisarenko / AP
It goes on to say: In Latin America and the Caribbean transgender people have their right to work violated along with all their human rights, and this takes place “in a context of extreme violence.”
There have been advances in Argentina. This year, Diana Zurco became the first transgender presenter of Argentine television news, Mara Gómez was authorized by the Argentine Football Association to play in the professional women’s league and soprano María Castillo de Lima was the first transgender artist to go on stage at Teatro Colón.
However, the gap between the equality established by law and the real one remains large, warned Ese Montenegro, a male transgender activist hired as an adviser to the Chamber of Deputies’ women’s and diversity commission.
“We lack a lot, we lack education and political decision. We lack material and symbolic resources. There is a violence that is structural,” he said.
Lawmakers in Switzerland on Friday gave final approval to a marriage equality bill first introduced seven years ago.
The “Marriage for All” legislation passed in the National Council, which is the Federal Assembly’s lower house, by a 136-48 vote margin, even with the conservative Swiss People’s Party holding a 53-seat majority. The Council of States, the Federal Assembly’s upper house, approved the bill by a 24-11 vote margin.
“Yes!” the Swiss Rainbow Families Association tweeted following Friday’s vote, which also grants the country’s lesbian couples access to sperm donation, a sticking point for the bill’s conservative opponents.
Maria von Känel, vice president of the Swiss Rainbow Families Association, told the Washington Blade on Tuesday that a referendum challenge to the new law is expected, but should fail to gain much public support.
A survey that Pink Cross, a Swiss LGBTQ advocacy group, conducted in February found 81 percent of Swiss voters support same-sex marriage, including 67 percent of respondents who said they are members of the Swiss People’s Party.
ILGA-Europe Advocacy Director Katrin Hugendubel also told the Blade that her organization supports Switzerland’s hard-fought vote, which now aligns them with most of western Europe in terms of marriage equality, but noted “rainbow families” still face challenges.
Von Känel said the next step is to challenge barriers to same-sex parents to adopting children, particularly those born abroad.
