A lesbian firefighter has alleged she was fired after enduring years of sexual harassment from a male colleague.
In a lawsuit filed in the Middlesex County Superior Court, Kira Castellon said she was sacked from her role as a fire inspector in Piscataway, New Jersey, because she made an allegation of sexual harassment, according to My Central Jersey.
In the lawsuit, filed against the township, Arbor Hose Company 1 and Fire District 3, Castellon said she joined the fire service in 2015, where she was the only female firefighter on staff.
Her sexuality was “generally known” by her co-workers and did not pose a problem until she was promoted in September 2016.
Following her promotion, a male colleague allegedly began an “almost daily” campaign of sexual harassment against her, beginning in late 2016 and continuing until January 2019.
During this time, the male colleague allegedly kissed and groped her repeatedly. According to the lawsuit, he “thrust his pelvis into (her) from all directions as his way of saying hello and goodbye”.
He also allegedly told Castellon on a number of occasions: “I’ll make you straight again.”
The campaign of harassment reportedly occurred in the presence of other staff members.
“The sexual harassment was open and notorious which became widely known throughout the firehouse,” the lawsuit said.
The sexual harassment continued after Castellon returned to work following surgery. At one point, while on crutches, she struggled “to stay upright as he groped her and thrust his pelvis into her rear-end”.
In her lawsuit, Castellon said she reported the abuse but that the company made no effort to enforce an anti-harassment policy.
Her employment was eventually terminated on 30 October, 2019, after the company accused her of using its tax-exempt status to buy personal goods at a local store. The company alleged that she used the tax exempt code for personal goods, but Castellon said in her lawsuit that the items she bought were used at the the firehouse.
“It is clear that (Castellon’s) prior reports of sexual harassment and her continued efforts to combat the workplace harassment which tortured her experience at the firehouse since she arrived, were a motivating, if not sole factor in (the) decision to terminate her employment,” the lawsuit said.
When she heard a knock on the door, Colin Monahan figured it had to be about the new garage.
Monahan and her wife, Shannon Lastowski Monahan, had just finished dinner. Their guests had all departed, leaving the couple alone at their log home well off the main road in the rural community of Wapiti, a village of a few hundred in northwest Wyoming. Colin had just finished installing a new, prefabricated garage on their property, painted in a shade of brown to complement the waving grasses of the surrounding valley.
Donning their masks and opening the door, the couple were greeted by five people standing on their porch, there to discuss a “neighborhood issue” — presumably, Colin thought, the garage.
It would have been a strange complaint. The couple had received permission to install it from the subdivision’s management, and the area’s lack of a homeowners’ association made concerns over aesthetics questionable at best. The iconic Smith Mansion — a twisting structure looming on a bluff overlooking Highway 14 — is visible from the couple’s porch, while the subdivisions surrounding them feature a broad mix of architectural styles that had sprouted amid a flood of new residents discovering the Wyoming countryside.
The garage, as it turned out, wasn’t the problem, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
Shannon Lastowski Monahan and Colin Monahan sit on the front porch of their home in Wapiti, Wyo. Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.Cayla Nimmo / AP
Looking over the group, the Monahans — a same-sex couple originally from the Chicago area — recognized a familiar face, a man who the couple said had previously harassed them on social media. Both Colin and Shannon, residents of the subdivision four years now, quickly came to realize that the conversation was never about a garage, and was never intended to be.
It was about Colin, who dresses masculine but, in her own words, could be seen as either male or female. She goes by “Colleen” as often as she does “Colin.”
“One of the women said to us, ‘Your kind is not welcome here. You are not welcome in Cody Country and you need to leave,’” Shannon recalled in an interview shortly after the October incident. “She told Colin, ‘You pretend to be a man, and you need to leave.’”
The incident sparked a conversation that reverberated through Wapiti and into the greater Park County community, including Cody, a popular tourist town of 10,000.
Some businesses made clear their support for the LGBTQ community. Sunlight Sports, a sporting goods store on Cody’s main strip, declared on its social media pages that bigots were not welcome inside.
The owners, Wes and Melissa Allen, stressed that they believed that 99 percent of county residents are good people. But they had an unblinking message for the rest.
“If you hate your neighbors so much for who they are — who they love, the color of their skin, where they were born, where they worship, or any of the other things that make up that person — that you need to treat them differently or harass them or make them feel unsafe in their own home, don’t come into our business,” they wrote.
Other businesses began stocking merchandise in solidarity with the couple, producing stickers and buttons with rainbow flags and slogans supportive of the LGBTQ community. But that, in turn, touched off a wave of bigotry on social media, directed at the couple as well as others who publicly supported them. On one local Facebook group, a man described the couple as “liberal socialist democratic homosexual transvestites from Chicago” who “hate this country.” Suggestions of the need for a hate crime bill were described in a letter to the local newspaper as “dangerous” and “Orwellian,” while others cast doubt that the incident happened at all.
“It leads to social justice warriors proclaiming far and wide that Wapiti and all of Wyoming is a racist and homophobic state and needs hate crime laws enacted because all allegations must be immediately and totally believed,” one woman wrote on another Facebook group.
Isolated among a few individuals or not, that response was seen by some as a symptom of a rage brewing among a vocal minority of Park County during a time of dramatic change. But that bigotry also prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”
The question is, will it be?
“We have employees and friends and neighbors who don’t fit the ‘white Caucasian’ profile who have been made to feel uncomfortable in our town in recent months,” Wes Allen said in an interview. “Our perception was that it was getting worse. And we’ve already been having conversations in our community when this happened. But this was the time we knew we had to come out and say something. Because if we weren’t going to say something publicly when something bad happened, we have no right to say anything at all.”
A community in flux
Nestled in the foothills at the end of a winding maze of dirt and gravel, the cabin shared by Colin, Shannon and their two dogs doesn’t stand out much from the rest of the homes in the Cody Country subdivision, which sits between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.
From the small porch of the couple’s slice of land, a herd of elk could be seen resting in the distant prairie. Around them, snow-capped peaks stretch around the periphery of the Shoshone River Valley and the North Fork Highway below.
It’s an easy place to disappear in, and plenty have over the years, drawn by the promise of seclusion and the region’s beautiful surroundings.
Manda Siebert’s family has owned a gas station in Wapiti for decades. In that time she has watched the area grow from a minuscule farming community into a tapestry of subdivided ranchland and new construction, with each new subdivision constructed over the past two decades as controversial as the next. “Cultural issues,” as they were called at the time, were of concern even in 2004, when residents raised an uproar over the development of the Copperleaf subdivision, with one man saying at the time that it was not the subdivision itself that was controversial but “the product anticipated which makes it so contentious.”
“There’s been a little bit of an uproar from people upset that more and more people are moving here,” said Siebert, whose business sits across the street from a former hayfield. “But when I was a kid, this was all open. None of this was subdivided. If somebody hadn’t sold their land, those people would not be living here, either. You have to put the shoe on the other foot: If you were living in these big cities and wanted something different, wouldn’t you want to move out here?”
That change has been accelerating in the region. When a Star-Tribune reporter called the Park County planning office last month, an official there said that inquiries concerning building permits and subdivisions have roughly tripled this year, while the rate of home sales among COVID-19 refugees — like similarly attractive corners of the Mountain West — continues to outpace annual averages. According to reporting by the Enterprise, 2020 presented one of the office’s busiest years on record, with the office processing more applications for building permits and subdivisions through the month of July than it did all of last year.
That, in turn, has created tension among some who fear the new arrivals are spoiling the promise of Wyoming.
“There’s a really strong sentiment of resentment when people are buying property here,” Shannon said. “When you’re used to having the view a certain way and then people move in… There’s even been someone — we don’t know who — who has been tearing up the ‘for sale’ signs by the gate.”
Cody Mayor Matt Hall said the first tinges of such a change were felt with the arrival of rapper Kanye West last year. That feeling, the Cody native says, has been amplified by conservative-leaning newcomers in the last few years who believed they would find a city of like-minded people waiting for them upon their arrival. New businesses in town are attracting new residents as well, changing the fabric of the community.
“I talk to the police chief a lot about making sure that we’re managing people’s reactions to things in a way that is going to be fair for everyone, that we’re not going to pull somebody over just because they don’t look like you or anything like that,” Hall said. “It’s interesting to have to grapple with those kind of issues.”
That feeling has bled into the local politics as well. The area’s Republican primary between Rep. Sandy Newsome and former Hot Springs County Clerk Nina Webber featured some of the most vicious politics seen anywhere in Wyoming this election cycle. Meanwhile, members of the community marching in solidarity with the national Black Lives Matter movement earlier this summer were met with armed residents wary of perceived threats from outside agitators that never coalesced. Community Facebook pages with names such as the “Wapiti Whisper” or “Cody Chit Chat” have been increasingly dominated by political discussions fueled by rage and contempt, with dissenting voices being shouted down.
“They’re just really hard to read,” said Sarah Growney, a local business owner and a Cody resident of nearly two decades who has been an active supporter of the Monahans. “It just creates a culture of acceptance for that kind of language or hate. My honest-to-God opinion is that we are not talking about a lot of people, but they’re just very loud. Most people who live in Wapiti or Cody aren’t bad. I think most are good. It’s just the ones who express this kind of hatred are really loud.”
It’s contributed to a shift in sensibilities local leaders say are as much a byproduct of the current pandemic as it is a symptom of a greater demographic shift in the Equality State. Longtime Wyoming residents such as Hall say his community has grown increasingly conservative in the Trump era, and in particular since the tail end of Gov. Matt Mead’s administration, a trend residents say has been exacerbated by outsiders attracted to the area’s natural beauty as much as the state’s deep red politics.
But some people haven’t realized just how diverse their community has become. When counterprotests emerged in the wake of June’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Hall found himself playing intermediary between marchers and armed residents unconvinced that a fellow Wyomingite could have different politics than they did.
“I was talking to some friends of mine who estimated at least 70% of that crowd was from outside of the area,” said Hall, a lifelong Cody resident. “Almost every one of them was from the Bighorn Basin. I said, ‘Instead of sitting there with your gun waiting for them to give you a reason to try and shoot them, why don’t you try talking to them?’ We all like to live here, we all like to fish and hunt here. I mean … the commonalities probably exist way more than probably the disparities.”
Small towns, long streets
Wyoming is often characterized as a “small town with long streets,” both for its small population and the neighborly disposition of its residents. Given that reality, how can some people be so blind to their neighbors or unwilling to accept people who might be different?
It’s a paradox that some, like Allen, the shop owner whose social media post provoked a considerable response, have come to understand.
“Wyoming’s always been so lightly populated that you don’t get to really choose your neighbors,” he said. “If you’re going to survive here, you need to develop this thing where you can get along with everybody. If you are mad because your neighbor was one thing or another and you only had like three neighbors, and when things got bad if you would antagonize them … there would be nobody for you to fall back on. And so the culture has become one of tolerance in general.”
Park County already has a small but vibrant LGBTQ community, and one that existed prior to the migration that’s brought many new faces to the area of late.
One of the members of that community is Nikki Flowers, a Cody resident who moved to the area as a high school sophomore nearly two decades ago. In 2014, Flowers became one of the first women to be granted a same-sex marriage license in Park County with her spouse, Desiree, whom she first met in the halls of Cody High School. Even with same-sex marriage controversial in Wyoming at the time, Flowers said she received little pushback in the community save for her mother and the county clerk at the time, who refused to perform the ceremony.
Then the incident in Wapiti happened.
“It hurt my heart,” she said. “What happened to that couple was just terrifying. I mean, I don’t know what I would do. If something like that happened to me… It’s scary. And I’ve never felt scared in this town.”
Newcomers still find themselves wary of the state’s legacy, still tainted by memories of the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. Growney, who has two fathers, dealt with it the first time her dad came to visit, fearful of the way he was dressed and of those who weren’t accepting of people like him. Over time, however, her fear subsided with the growing understanding of her neighbors, who had regularly begun to interact with her fathers and over time began to understand that the men were just like them in a plethora of ways.
“I’m a believer in the idea that ignorance breeds fear,” Growney said. “These folks are anti-whatever they are because they don’t know someone gay, they’ve never lived with black people, or they’ve never been away to school. Their whole existence has been here, in Wyoming.”
Changing the conversation
But sheer exposure is not a sufficient antidote for bigotry.
In a converted greenhouse in the atrium of Cody High School, Amy Gerber — a science teacher of 32 years — had just finished a consultation with a student who had run into issues at home when a reporter arrived to talk with Gerber.
For the past several years, she has served as faculty adviser for the school’s Gay Straight Alliance, a role she developed as a way to provide a safe space for students who felt they did not have one either in the classroom or at home.
A mother to a gay son, Gerber herself saw bigotry on its face when a group of her 14-year-old son’s classmates threw a slur at him as they drove through the parking lot.
“It just broke my heart,” she said. “That’s the last thing you want as a mom. You don’t want people to be mean to your kid. You want people to care about you and care about your kid, and not judge them for being gay.”
Her son asked her not to respond, fearing it would put an even bigger target on his back. But she wanted to do something.
Ten years later — long after her son had graduated — she decided to hang a rainbow flag in her room, a sign of solidarity for a group of students she knew existed but had no means of connecting with. That small show of solidarity, she said, eventually grew into the school’s GSA, which today counts several dozen students among its ranks.
It was an unthinkable prospect during the time her son was in school. She knew several members of the local school board would fight her on it, while the effort itself encouraged opponents to come out of the woodwork. One caller into a morning talk show at the time, she recalled, asked why the school needed a club where “boys were liking boys and girls were liking girls.”
“It was ridiculous. But that was the perception,” Gerber said. “For me, I wasn’t sure whether that was the perception of the whole community, or if it was just a handful of people who have this type of worldview and are just really vocal about it? You really just don’t know.”
The incident in Wapiti drew similar feelings. After being quoted in a local news article about what happened, Gerber was barraged with hate mail and comments on Facebook disparaging her, prompting a former student of hers — the one who helped her start the GSA — to tell community members that the hatred he saw emerging was precisely the Cody he knew.
“I would love to say collectively as a community, there’s way more of us who support the live-and-let-live mentality, that you’re welcome here,” Gerber said. “Gay, straight, black, white doesn’t matter. Like, you’re welcome. But the truth is, even if it’s not the majority, there is a fraction of our community that is just loud, and makes the community seem like it stands for something that it doesn’t.”
The aftermath
Several weeks after the incident, Colin and Shannon are both in good spirits, but still on edge.
Colin, a hunter and an owner of several guns, was just days removed from getting fingerprinted for a concealed carry permit, a little extra security should the worst happen. What worries her most, she said, is the prospect of what won’t happen.
In the years since Shepard’s murder set off a national movement for hate crime legislation, Wyoming lawmakers have failed to enact a similar law despite the pleas of various nonpartisan commissions, small businesses and even the LGBTQ community itself. Critics of hate crime legislation say the state’s constitution is sufficient to protect the rights of everyone.
But Colin, who has faced hate up close, doesn’t feel that protection.
“The bigger story is this culture here, and ultimately, why Wyoming needs hate crime legislation,” she said. “They don’t think that they have an issue, and yet they repeatedly have issues here.”
Still, there are growing signs of tolerance and support. People in Cody and Wapiti banded together in their own way to reject what had happened in their communities. A conservative family near the couple brought them fresh vegetables. Newsome, the Republican lawmaker, announced efforts to co-sponsor hate crime legislation in the coming session. Businesses and community members have been vocal in their support. Across from the town hall, a rainbow flag could be seen hanging from a porch. Down the street, Growney’s gift shop, The Thistle, had already sold out of one batch of pro-LGBTQ stickers.
So what happens now? Will the incident that provoked so much debate and consternation lead to real change?
Colin Monahan and Shannon Lastowski Monahan shared their story, and the community stood up to respond. They just hope that the risk they took was not made in vain, and that their experience — a couple singled out for who they love — underscores the need for a greater level of protection for people like them.
“We can’t be protected by weapons,” Shannon said. “We have an alarm system, surveillance cameras, all of that, but that can only help so much. It gives you a small sense of reducing the risks. But the courts aren’t going to protect us. … It’s just a simple trespass. I guess I just never realized before how vulnerable we are.”
The Dutch government has apologized to transgender people for previously mandating surgeries, including sterilization, as a prerequisite for legal gender recognition. During a Cabinet meeting this week, government officials also announced plans to compensate people who underwent the operations.
This outcome is good news following years of activism demanding the government acknowledge the harm the country’s sterilization law caused trans people in The Netherlands. In 2013, the Council of Europe called for an end to mandatory sterilization for trans people in member states. A 2014 revision to the Dutch law rolled back the sterilization requirement that had been in place since 1985. This provision had mandated that trans people desiring to change their gender on identification documents had to submit to surgery. The revision allowed for legal gender change through administrative processes.
In 2011, Human Rights Watch documented what it was like for trans people in the Netherlands to live under the mandatory sterilization law. “My wish is to live as a woman, and to be treated and accepted as a woman by others,” said one trans woman. “I am lucky with my body, for me it’s possible to live as a woman without surgery and without hormones. Why then should I subject myself to a surgeon’s scalpel?”
Accessible and transparent legal gender recognition procedures, based on an individual’s self-declaration, are increasingly common around the world. The Netherlands is now taking the next step of apologizing for and compensating those who endured medical harms.
During the cabinet’s formal apology, Ingrid van Engelshoven, the country’s Minister of Education, Culture and Science, said, “the law turned out to be a symbol of social rejection for many, and dreams have been lost as a result of the irreversible sterilization,” and law minister Sander Dekker said “[t]he old law could give transgender people a hard, almost impossible choice.”
The Netherlands’ apology should demonstrate to other countries that acknowledging past harms is part and parcel of providing redress to individuals harmed by coercive and discriminatory laws.
President-elect Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed to make LGBTQ rights a priority in his administration. But he won’t be working alone: The former vice president has already tapped LGBTQ appointees for several key roles and gay rights advocates are hopeful that more will be named, including the first out Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate. There’s also a push, should an opening become available, for him to nominate the first openly LGBTQ justice to the Supreme Court.
The Biden-Harris transition team has promoted the president-elect’s “commitment to building an administration that looks like America.”
On Sunday, Karine Jean-Pierre, an out lesbian and chief of staff for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, was announced as deputy press secretary, and Pili Tobar, an immigration rights advocate and former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was named deputy White House communications director. Tobar, a lesbian, also worked as a communications director for the Biden campaign.
In November, Carlos Elizondo, who is gay and was Biden’s social secretary when Biden was vice president, was named White House social secretary.
‘Smart choices’ and ‘intersectionality’
Ruben Gonzales, vice president of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, which trains and advocates for queer candidates at all levels of government, noted that the LGBTQ people named to the incoming administration so far are all people of color.
“I think it speaks to the president-elect’s understanding of intersectionality,” he said.
Karine Jean-Pierre.Gary Gershoff / Getty Images
Gonzales said it’s important to have LGBTQ people in the administration because “we know our lives better — we know what protections mean in health care, in housing, in the workplace.”
“Look at how Trump changed guidance about bathrooms, for example,” he added. “A trans person understands what that means in really stark terms.”
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan became the first openly transgender person to work in the White House when President Barack Obama appointed her to the Presidential Personnel Office in 2015.
She praised the Biden team’s “smart choices,” saying it selected talented candidates with impressive resumes.
“Just because they’re coming in doesn’t mean they’ll be working on LGBTQ issues,” she told NBC News. “When I was in the White House, the vast majority of us weren’t. We were working for the EPA, the Small Business Administration, on security issues. Having LGBTQ people at every table, at every level, is still crucial, though, because we are everywhere and are impacted by everything. You don’t want an initiative to land flat or miss an important segment of the population.”
Beyond an out Cabinet member, Freedman-Gurspan predicts a nonbinary person will be appointed at some level. “I know there are some interviewing,” she said.
Biden has also named LGBTQ personnel to his transition team, including the agency review teams, responsible for scrutinizing federal agencies before he takes office. According to a release from the Biden-Harris team, roughly 40 percent of agency review members members represent “communities historically underrepresented in the federal government, including people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities.”
Chai Feldblum, a former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member who was instrumental in drafting the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Pamela Karlan, co-counsel in United States v. Windsor, which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, are reviewing the Department of Justice and related agencies for the Biden transition team, the Advocate reported, including the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Civil Rights.
Dave Noble, former deputy director of the Presidential Personnel Office for Obama, is part of the teams advising NASA and the Office of National Drug Control Policy for the transition. Shawn Skelly, a transgender Navy veteran and executive secretary for the Department of Transportation under Obama, has been named to the Department of Defense review board.
“Allies are invaluable, but the impact of policies on LGBTQ lives is not always fully understood by someone outside our community.”
ANNISE PARKER, LGBTQ VICTORY FUND
Throughout the campaign, Biden promised to move swiftly to repeal President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members.
He’s also vowed to restore nondiscrimination requirements for federal contractors, advocate for LGBTQ rights on the global stage and sign the Equality Act within his first 100 days in office. The Equality Act, which passed the House last year but was never given a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, education, public accommodation and other sectors.
These are big commitments, which advocates say require input from the community.
“Members of Joe Biden’s Cabinet will have tremendous influence over the policies and direction of the next administration, so it is essential an LGBTQ voice is at the table,” Annise Parker, president of the LGBTQ Victory Institute and LGBTQ Victory Fund, said in a statement. “Allies are invaluable, but the impact of policies on LGBTQ lives is not always fully understood by someone outside our community.”
‘Biden’s legacy on equality’
Part of Ruben Gonzales’ role at the Victory Institute is to oversee its Presidential Appointments Initiative, a nonpartisan endeavor to get LGBTQ staffers into administration roles.
“It began during the Clinton administration with David Mixner leveraging his influence to advocate for LGBTQ appointees, but it was really informal then,” Gonzales told NBC News.
The program became more standardized during the Obama administration, which welcomed a record 330 out staffers, many assisted by the Presidential Appointments Initiative.
The hope is to make Biden’s administration even more inclusive: So far Gonzales’ office has fielded more than 750 resumes, from those applying for Cabinet-level posts to those seeking their first job in government.
He said the ultimate goal is for the Biden White House to have the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet member approved by the Senate.
“An LGBTQ Cabinet appointment will ensure our community is part of decision-making at the highest levels,” Gonzales said, “and would also be a lasting piece of Joe Biden’s legacy on equality.”
In February, Trump appointed a gay man, Richard Grenell, as acting director of national intelligence, making him the first out member of a presidential Cabinet. But Grenell’s appointment, which lasted only three months, was never confirmed by the Senate.
Gonzales is hopeful Biden will break that barrier and says there’s a strong surplus of contenders. The Victory Institute intends to put forward former presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg as a possible secretary of Veterans Affairs and former Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau as secretary of education.
In 2009, Juneau, a lesbian, became the first Native American woman elected to statewide office in the U.S. “As a woman, a former teacher and a Native American, Denise would be such an asset,” Gonzales said.
Other names being floated include Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to head up Health and Human Services and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., for secretary of Veterans Affairs.
At the very top of Gonzales’ personal wish list, though, is Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, one of just a few transgender officials in government. Gonzales would like to see her confirmed as surgeon general.
“Having a transgender person taking that kind of leadership role would be a win on so many levels — from her understanding of the complexities of health care in America to helping people understand trans lives,” he said. “Dr. Levine received unanimous support in Pennsylvania when she was nominated — from Democrats and Republicans both — and we hope the Senate will follow that example.”
Laurie McBride, a beloved LGBT+ leader who became a figurehead for the community during the HIV/AIDS crisis, has sadly passed away at the age of 71.
McBride died of a heart attack on Friday, 4 December, having suffered a stroke in October. She is survived by her wife of 35 years, Donna Yutzy.
The activist will be known to many through her work in defending the rights of HIV-positive people as co-chair of the Californian lobby group Mobilisation Against AIDS.
In 1986 and 1987 she led the successful grassroots campaigns “No on 69” and “No on 64”, bills which would quarantine HIV-positive people and limit their employment.
Together with law student John Duran – who later became mayor of West Hollywood – she drafted the groundbreaking “gay rights” bill, AB 101, which prohibited private employers from discriminating against employees because of their sexual orientation.
“Laurie was a lesbian warrior,” Duran told the Los Angeles Blade, remembering how they drove across California rallying the LGBT+ community to their cause.
“She fought for her brothers with AIDS. So many gay men alive today are deeply indebted to Laurie for saving their lives.
“My heart goes out to her wife Donna,” he added. “She was one of a kind, gentle and fierce at the same time.”
Donna Yutzy confirmed the sad news on Facebook, saying that Laurie had left her “for a new adventure beyond the stars”.
“She was so proud of the culture-changing accomplishments you all worked on together and I know she cherished her friendship with each and every one of you,” she said.
Those wishing to make a donation in her honour are directed to the scholarship programme that was established in McBride’s name at Sacramento State University.
“This scholarship has paid for the tuition of a number of young people to help them on the road to making the world a better place,” Yutzy said.
“She was the light of my life for 35 years and I will hold every single minute of those memories in my heart forever. We will have a big celebration of Laurie’s life in Sacramento post-COVID. I was proud to be Laurie McBride’s wife.”
The only NHS gender clinic for under-18s has stopped referring transgender youth for puberty blockers following a High Court ruling.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs youth gender clinic GIDS, has confirmed that no new referrals will be made to endocrinology services until there is more “clarity” on the situation following the judgment on Tuesday (December 1).
A spokesperson confirmed that no current GIDS patients who take puberty blockers have been contacted yet, due to the a stay on implementation for the time being.
“The court has ruled that there will be a stay on implementation of its judgment until the later of 22 December or the determination of any appeal,” they said.
“This will give us a chance to work through the specific implications of the judgment for different patient groups with our partners, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust.
“We will not be making new referrals to endocrinology until we have more clarity.”
GIDS has published a Q&A for current patients to help ease the uncertainty around the judgment. For those currently taking puberty blockers or HRT, GIDS says “they will be in touch with you once more detail is known to let you know what will happen with regard to your care”.
The verdict came in a case brought by Keira Bell, 23, and the mother of a trans teen. It argued that under-16s cannot give informed consent to puberty blockers, a reversible, “life-saving” treatment that prevents trans kids from going through the wrong puberty.
Transgender under-16s must now understand the nature and implications of puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the likelihood of having gender-affirming surgery before they can be deemed to give their informed consent to blockers, the High Court has ruled.
Photographers around the world now have access to new guidelines aimed at helping them more accurately capture transgender subjects in their stock and commercial imagery. The guidelines were released Wednesday by Getty Images, one of the world’s largest stock photo agencies, and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ advocacy organization.
Stock images are photos that are licensed for use in a variety of places — from corporate websites to advertising campaigns and even on news sites. Examples could range from an image of child models playing with a toy for a retail company’s catalog to a photo of Hong Kong’s skyline for a news article about the world’s most expensive cities.
Nick Adams, GLAAD’s director of transgender representation, said the wide reach of Getty’s clients (NBC News among them) will hopefully mean people around the world will be exposed to — and eventually accustomed to — seeing transgender people in a variety of visual campaigns and stories that go beyond those that are specifically about transgender people. The guidelines hope to give trans individuals — who experience a disproportionate amount of discrimination and violence — exposure by making available stock images of them doing everyday things, like getting a cup of coffee or shopping with friends.
Stock photo showing a portrait of a senior transgender person.trisha ward / Getty Images
“In the past, trans images in stock photography have included many tropes and cliches or even replaced actual transgender people with impersonal symbols like flags,” Adams said.
“Stock images tell a story without words,” he added. “When those images don’t reflect the full diversity that exists within the transgender community, then our story isn’t being told in an authentic way.”
Getty Images said there has been a demand from editorial and advertising clients for photos of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people in its stock and editorial photo library, based on internal metrics, which prompted the company to begin working with GLAAD this year. Images in Getty’s library are used mainly for advertising, in-house corporate imagery and news and entertainment stories.
All of Getty’s contributors around the world will have access to the new guidelines, which have been translated into multiple languages, according to Guy Merrill, global head of art at Getty Images and iStock.
The guidelines cover a variety of different creative aspects for stock photos and ensure that models have control over how they are referred to in captions, making sure no assumptions are made about their gender identities. Additionally, photographers have a set of guidelines to make transgender subjects feel comfortable and empowered on set.
Merrill stressed that simply shooting trans people in stock photography is not enough, adding that there has to be an effort to consistently include the community in photographs and ensure that harmful stereotypes about trans people are not perpetuated. The goal of the partnership between Getty and GLAAD, he added, is to empower trans people in the realm of stock imagery, not use their likeness for any narrative.
Merrill admitted that when Getty looked through its archives over the last five or six years, the company found “very little, if any” photos of the trans community and described the ones that were in the company’s archive as “tokenistic.”
“We are not looking for our contributors to go out and just shoot some portraits of transgender persons. That is not the point at all,” Merrill said. “It’s that level of nuance that brings in that authenticity in terms of people you choose. It is all those small moments that really kind of authentically tell that broader story.”
Gillian Branstetter, founding member of the Trans Journalist Association, said the new guidelines “could be really beneficial for both trans people who want to see our lived experiences in the world around us” and “cisgender people as well.”
“I think a lot of reporting tends to treat trans people as if we live in a vacuum and live on a separate planet and we don’t interact with the systems that cis people do,” she told NBC News. “I think the press, and photographers as well, could play a huge part in showing who trans people are instead of focusing on what’s most sensationalized and exploitative.”
LGBTQ rights groups have weighed in on the political crisis in Cuba sparked by the hunger strike of the San Isidro Movement, a group of dissident activists, and the protest in front of the Culture Ministry on Nov. 27 where hundreds of people demanded the government respect the rights of artists and citizens.
La Plataforma 11M, an independent LGBTI+ collective, in a short statement it published this Saturday backed “the initiative of the group of young intellectuals and artists” to go protest at the Culture Ministry, “under the conviction that dialogue is the way forward to guarantee freedom of speech and artistic creation in Cuba.”
Vice Culture Minister Fernando Rojas received the protesters and met with them until the early hours of Saturday.
The demands the protesters presented to Rojas include the right to freedom of speech and artistic creation, among other points. They asked for an end to harassment and censorship against the independent artistic and intellectual community and that the government respect due process against Denis Solís, a rapper who was sentenced to 8 months in prison for “disrespect.”
His incarceration prompted several San Isidro Movement members to go on a hunger and thirst strike. They demanded the rapper’s release during the several days they spent holed up in the group’s headquarters until the police removed them this past Thursday. The majority of them, including Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of its principal leaders, have ended their strike since then.
The “disrespect” for which Solis was prosecuted was recorded live on Facebook and it included various anti-gay insults. He later apologized to the LGBTI+ community for these outbursts in the last video available on his profile.
“We strongly reject any homophobic and misogynist speech,” said La Plataforma 11M’s statement that also noted its members remain opposed to violence.
11M in its statement also said that “freedom of speech, within the system of socialist law, is a basic element for the defense of socialism’s achievements and collective social progress.”
“Q de Cuir”, a digital publication that focuses on LGBTI+ activism, also spoke about the case in an editorial published this Nov. 24. The magazine urges the government to “respond to the San Isidro Movement situation from a position other than intransigence and violence.”
“Q de Cuir”‘s editorial declares it does not share “the political perspective expressed by Denis Solís” and rejected his “homophobic and misogynist speech.”
“They are elements that we cannot ignore and they are not insignificant to us, because LGBTIQ+ people and even women remain inferior and excluded in the idea of a country that Denis raises in his video,” said “Q de Cuir.”
The text, however, defends the right to receive “due process under the law.”
“The dissidence of thought cannot be perceived as a threat to the construction of our social experiment; but rather as a necessary scenario to generate better realities through dialogue, participation, respect of human rights and the protection of marginalized groups in society,” it concluded.
Lidia Romero Moreno, a lesbian activist who is a member of La Plataforma 11M, has a position that is similar to that of “Q de Cuir.”
“I don’t sympathize with the San Isidro Movement, but I do respect what they are doing. Everyone has the right to freely express themselves. The Cuban Constitution guarantees us this right,” Romero told Tremenda Nota.
The activist was among the protesters who protested at the Culture Ministry.
“I am here because I think that everyone has the right to have our representatives and leaders listen to them, regardless of their ideological and political position,” she said.
Yasmín Portales, an LGBTI+ activist who is also a member of La Plataforma 11M and the former coordinator of Proyecto Arcoíris, a one-time group of activists who defined themselves as “anti-capitalist,” told Tremenda Nota that she does not support the San Isidro Movement, although she feels that “the Cuban government has mishandled the situation through its legal framework and even appearances” with regard to its treatment of this group of dissident activists.
“I cannot empathize with people who have not put forth any political proposal aside from confronting Cuban authorities and whose expression reveals gentlemanly homophobia and machismo,” said Portales.
A group of young university students on Sunday organized a rally in support of the government in the face of the ongoing political crisis and in response to the Culture Ministry protest. The gathering took place in Trillo Park in Centro Habana. President Miguel Díaz-Canel arrived during the middle of it.
The event was called a “tángana,” a word frequently used in Cuba decades ago to refer to street protests, especially those that took place against the Machado dictatorship during the Revolution of 1933.
At least one LGBTI+ group, the TransCuba Network, which is affiliated with the National Center for Sexual Education, participated in the “tángana.” Speakers at various points alluded to the rights of the gay, lesbian and transgender community, a tricky issue for the Cuban revolution and a particularly controversial one because of the forced labor camps that operated in Cuba in the mid-1960s.
“There were many (trans) girls there who were supporting the activities that have taken place in recent days because of the amount of provocation,” TransCuba Coordinator Malú Cano told Tremenda Nota.
Raúl Escalona, president of the University Students Federation in the University of Havana’s School of Communications, was one of the organizers of the Trillo Park event. Escalona was also one of the speakers who referred to the LGBTI+ community from the “tángana” podium.
“If we must all be clear about something, from the country’s highest leadership to every last citizen, it is that if the revolutionary radical left does not lead the LGBTI+ movement’s struggle, reaction will hegemonize it.”
Yasmín Portales noted to Tremenda Nota that this idea “is profoundly reductionist and a bit homophobic because it assumes an identity trait defines a person’s ideological position.”
“No human group can be capitalized by this political line or another, because people have the ability to discern and choose the political proposal that suits us best,” said the activist.
South Australia has finally abolished the ‘gay panic’ defence for violent crimes, becoming the last state in Australia to do so.
It is officially called the provocation defence or the ‘homosexual advance defence’. The accused can use it downgrade charges of murder to manslaughter when they claim to have become violent upon finding out a victim’s sexuality or gender identity.
The ‘gay panic’ defence is set to be banned in South Australia (Envato Elements)
South Australia has finally abolished the ‘gay panic’ defence for violent crimes, becoming the last state in Australia to do so.
It is officially called the provocation defence or the ‘homosexual advance defence’. The accused can use it downgrade charges of murder to manslaughter when they claim to have become violent upon finding out a victim’s sexuality or gender identity.
The accused may also claim temporary insanity due to ‘gay panic’ to reduce sentences for other violent crimes.
A petition was signed more than 38,000 times urging the government to repeal the legislation allowing the ‘gay panic’ defence.
Equality Australia & South Australian Rainbow Advocacy Alliance started the petition, aimed at Vickie Chapman, attorney general of South Australia.
Vickie Chapman told the state parliament: “The defence has been criticised for being complex, gender-biased and for encouraging victim-blaming.
“Notwithstanding the offence was rarely successful in this context, its operation is offensive and unacceptable.”
South Australia was the first state in Australia to decriminalise homosexuality in 1975
All other Australian states and territories have reformed their laws to abolish the ‘gay panic’ defence. Victoria passed a bill in 2005, followed by Western Australia in 2008 and Queensland in 2017. However, Queensland’s reform still includes a clause which allows the defence in exceptional circumstances, as determined by a magistrate.
New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory have all reformed their laws to stipulate that non-violent sexual advances of any kind are not a valid defence. This effectively banned the ‘gay panic’ defence.
Four defendants have used this defence in the last ten years. Michael Lindsay famously used the defence in 2011 for the murder of Andrew Negre, who he stabbed and killed in Adelaide. Despite an appeal and a retrial, the court found him guilty of murder in 2016.
Between 1993 and 1995, at least 13 defendants successfully used the ‘gay panic’ defence in New South Wales alone.
Some US states are also moving to outlaw the legal defence, with Colorado becoming the 11th state to do so in July. Previously, there have been attempts to ban the defence in federal law, but all proposed bills thus far have failed.
The Human Rights Law Centre recommended that South Australia abolish the defence in 2018.
