LGBTQI History: A Sonoma County Timeline 1990s
Next Wednesday, 8/5, 1:30 – 3pm is the last class of Summer session! We’ll be wrapping up the 1990s with a short powerpoint presentation followed by discussion. Hope you can make it!
Still online via Zoom.
Please contact me to enroll in this FREE class and receive
a Zoom invite: cdungan@santarosa.edu
The coronavirus pandemic has “robbed” LGBT+ youth – who already had a higher risk of mental-health problems – of support, the head of The Trevor Project has written.
Writing for the World Economic Forum, Amit Paley, the CEO of youth suicide-prevention organisation The Trevor Project, called for better data to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on queer youth.
This follows a surge in the number of young LGBT+ people reaching out to The Trevor Project – the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organisation for young LGBT+ people – reaching double the usual numbers, at times.
A study by the organisation in May found that almost a third of trans and non-binary youth have attempted suicide in the past year. The pandemic will only have “exacerbated” pre-existing problems such as this, Paley wrote.
“Prior to the pandemic, LGBTQ youth have been found to be at significantly increased risk for depression, anxiety and attempting suicide,” he said.
Paley continued: “This correlates with the minority stress model, in which experiences of discrimination, rejection and violence are compounded, and can lead to negative mental health outcomes.
“Furthermore, young LGBTQ people already faced disproportionate rates of unemployment and homelessness. It is clear that the widespread anxiety, physical distancing and economic strain caused by COVID-19 have exacerbated these concerns, and created new, unique problems for many of them.”
Widespread school closures during the pandemic have affected all youth – but Paley argues that, given LGBT+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide compared to their peers, “for many young LGBTQ people, school might be their one safe space and source of affirming community”.
“According to the Trevor Project’s research, young LGBTQ people who report having at least one accepting adult were 40 per cent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year. For some, that accepting person could be a teacher, coach or school counsellor.
“Another unintended consequence of physical distancing has been an increase in negative interactions. Many now find themselves confined to unsupportive home environments – which can result in increased anxiety and emotional pain, particularly among transgender and nonbinary youth, as they may need to hide their authentic selves to maintain safety.
“Among young LGBTQ people, only one-third experience parental acceptance, with an additional one-third experiencing parental rejection, and the final one-third not disclosing their LGBTQ identity until they are adults.”
Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
As the hearse carrying John Lewis’ body drove through Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Wednesday, it made a lengthy and symbolic stop at a rainbow crosswalk as dozens of people gathered on the sidewalk to watch the procession pass.
“It feels very appropriate that that stop was prolonged for John Lewis’ legacy,” Victoria Kirby York of the National LGBTQ Task Forcetold NBC News. “I believe his vocal leadership and support in championing LGBTQ equality — even prior to it becoming a cool thing for people to hop on the bandwagon for — was critical in being able to shift public opinion across the country.”
York added: “He was about civil rights, equality and liberation for everybody. Period. Full stop.”
The stop by Lewis’ motorcade — lasting nearly a minute — was an acknowledgement of his vocal advocacy over the years for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans.
Lewis, who represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from 1987 until his death on July 17, did not wait until it was politically safe to stand up for LGBTQ rights.
In 1996, when 65 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, Lewis delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor decrying the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA — federal legislation that sought to define marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman — as a “mean” and “cruel” bill.
“This bill is a slap in the face of the Declaration of Independence. It denies gay men and women the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage is a basic human right,” he said. “You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say when people talked about interracial marriage and I quote: ‘Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.’”
DOMA, considered a political compromise at the time, easily passed both the House and Senate and was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in September 1996. It was the law of the land until 2013, when United States v. Windsor chipped away at the heart of the legislation. Same-sex marriage would not be legal across the U.S. until 2015, when the Supreme Court handed down its Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
York said Lewis’ early support for LGBTQ rights was unsurprising, given his activism in the preceding decades.
“When you’ve stared death in the face solely because of the color of your skin, it gives you a different view of justice,” York said, referring to Lewis’ multiple near-death experiences fighting for civil rights, including during the infamous “Bloody Sunday” protest on Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. “He put his body on the line to create the world that we all thought was impossible.”
“John Lewis’ moral compass overruled whatever the stigma of the day was,” she added. “Equality for black people means equality for Black LGBTQ people, and equality for Black LGBTQ people means equality for all LGBTQ people, and I think that was a clear through-line for him.”
Lewis would continue to be on the forefront of nearly every major congressional proposal to advance LGBTQ rights.
On Lewis’ congressional website, there is a page dedicated to LGBTQ issues, which prominently features a powerful quote from Lewis.
“I fought too long and too hard to end discrimination based on race and color, to not stand up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” it reads. He then goes on to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he led the movement for racial equality, saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Lewis was a co-sponsor or vocal advocate for over a dozen congressional bills that sought to either expand LGBTQ rights or limit anti-LGBTQ discrimination, including the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) and the Respect for Marriage Act.
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, noted that Lewis worked closely with Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., during the drafting of the Equality Act — which would modify existing civil rights legislation to add protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity— and was a lead sponsor of the legislation.
Following Lewis’ death, Alphonso David, the Human Rights Campaign’s first Black president, called Lewis “a hero and civil rights icon who pushed our country closer to the promise of a more perfect union.”
“Future generations will learn how he faced down discrimination with courage and defiance, boldly challenging the United States to envision a future where every person, no matter their race, sexual orientation or gender identity, has an equal chance at the American Dream,” David said in a statement.
Lewis appeared at an HRC fundraiser in 2016 and told the crowd of mostly LGBTQ people, “You and I are partners.”
“We are part of an ongoing struggle to redeem the soul of America, to help people in this country and around the world come to grips with one simple truth: We are one people,” he added. “We are one family. We are the human family.”
York said she hopes Lewis’ drive to fight for equality — even if not for a group to which he belonged — will inspire others to do the same.
“He gave full-throated, passionate appeals that all of God’s children be treated equally, and that that included LGBTQ people, and that meant so much to me, both in my career as an advocate and advocating for other marginalized communities that I may not identify with, like the transgender community and intersex community,” she said. “He was a powerful example of how we should be doing advocacy at the margins, and I hope every member of Congress has taken a lesson from him.
While Lewis’ LGBTQ advocacy undoubtedly changed hearts and minds across demographic spectrums, York, who is Black, said there was a special significance and power in having a straight, cisgender Black man as such a visible ally.
“I think that all of those identities that he carried helped Black fathers, brothers, nephews all across the country learn how to talk and accept their own children, their own relatives who had been hurt by homophobia and transphobia,” she said, adding that he “gave permission for so many others who were potential allies to be able to step out of their fear” and support LGBTQ equality.
“John Lewis is a man of deep faith — no one could question that,” she added. “So for someone who is a man of deep faith to say that LGBTQ people matter, are equal and deserve protection and dignity, that gave other people the language to be able to say the same thing in their families, in their churches, in their homes. I believe that probably saved countless lives.”
In a sobering survey released this month, The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis prevention organization, found that 2 in 5 LGBTQ youth in the U.S. have “seriously considered” suicide in the past year.
“I do believe that those numbers could have been even higher if it wasn’t for the full-throated advocacy that John Lewis gave, and by him doing that, the permission he gave to others to really show up as the fathers that they wanted to be for their children,” she said.
In a posthumous op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday, Lewis wrote: “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”
York said this message underscores the “power of his legacy.”
“We all have the capacity to create change,” she said, adding that Lewis “started as a teenager doing work to bring equality for all people, and that’s something that our youth should be excited about.”
“These protests and rallies over the course of this summer are moving this country forward,” she added. “If we can just stay in it together — despite hurt feelings, despite trauma, despite the healing we’ve got to do together, despite our blindness to other people’s experiences — if we remain open to it all, we can create a country we can be proud of for our children and our children’s children.”
York said this coming together of different groups is also part of Lewis’ legacy.
“It hasn’t been about one group over the other,” she said. “It’s been about all of us getting across the bridge together.”
And, if Lewis’ many supporters are successful, that bridge could one day be named after him.
Officials in California are set to start tracking how coronavirus is spreading in the LGBT+ community in a groundbreaking move.
The state will start collecting data on the sexual orientation and gender identity in all new cases of COVID-19, making it the first state in America to do so, CBS Sacramento reports.
The move will help officials better understand the unique challenges the pandemic poses for queer people after months of warnings from LGBT+ organisations that the community has been disproportionately affected.
The move came about after senator Scott Wiener worked with LGBT+ rights organisation Equality California to advocate for the data to be collected.
They introduced legislation in May that would require sexual orientation and gender identity data to be collected in all new coronavirus cases.
The bill was recently amended to include all reportable diseases. It was passed by the California senate unanimously on 25 June, paving the way for LGBT+ organisations to better understand the impact COVID-19 is having on the community.ADVERTISING
It will now be referred to the Assembly Committee on Health, where it will be heard on 4 August.
If passed and signed into law, the bill would take immediate effect.
From the beginning of this crisis, we have been clear: If LGBTQ+ people are left out of COVID-19 data, we will be left out of California’s data-driven response.
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Governor Gavin Newsom said the decision was a move in the right direction.
Equality California executive director Rick Chavez Zbur welcomed news that the bill was passed by the state senate.
“The COVID-19 crisis has devastated the LGBT+ community. But for months, we haven’t had the data to understand how, why or exactly what to do about it,” he said.
“From the beginning of this crisis, we have been clear: If LGBT+ people are left out of COVID-19 data, we will be left out of California’s data-driven response.
“Thanks to governor Newsom’s leadership and his administration’s hard work, we will start to have answers.”
He added: “This data will finally give our government, our public health leaders and our community an understanding of the degree to which this pandemic is devastating LGBT+ people — and what steps need to be taken to save lives.”
Three police officers have been jailed for murdering a trans woman in El Salvador, in the nation’s first-ever homicide conviction with a trans victim.
According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Camila Díaz Córdova, a 29-year-old trans woman, had fled El Salvador for the US after being subjected to death threats by a gang, but was deported two years ago as she could not provide enough proof that her life was in danger.
Díaz Córdova, a sex worker, was picked up by three police officers in January 2019 accused of creating a public nuisance.
The officers handcuffed her face-down and brutally assaulted her in their patrol car, before throwing her out of the moving vehicle. She was found by the side of the road, and died in hospital three days later.
The three police officers have each been handed 20-year prison sentences for her murder, and their convictions mark a huge victory for the queer community in El Salvador.
According to advocacy group COMCAVIS Trans, the country has seen 600 LGBT+ murders since 1993.
Government data shows that of the 109 LGBT+ murders between December 2014 and March 2017, only 12 went to trial, and none ended in convictions.
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Cristian Gonzalez, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters: “It’s a landmark case for the rights of transgender Salvadorians.
“It sends a strong signal that anti-trans and more generally anti-LGBT violence is not going to be tolerated in the country.”
Activists are disappointed, however, that despite 2015 hate crime legislation that covers gender identity, Díaz Córdova’s murder will not be classified as such.
Roberto Zapata of advocacy group AMATE El Salvador said: “It leaves a bad taste in our mouths that the prosecutor’s office wasn’t able to build the case as a hate crime.
“If the state had recognised the homicide as such, it would have sent a much stronger message.”
According to local media, the police officers plan to appeal the ruling.
A gay Baltimore intensive care doctor passed away from coronavirus in his husband’s arms after months of battling the pandemic on the front line.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Dr Joseph Costa, 56, was the chief of the critical care division at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
As he was dying in the hospital he worked at on Saturday, 25 July, his husband of 28 years David Hart held him, while around 20 of Costa’s colleagues held a vigil.
Hart said: “Those who cared for Joe were his best friends. A housekeeper who knelt by his bed and shook with grief said: ‘I’m now losing my best friend.’”
He described his husband, who had worked at Mercy Medical Center since 1997, as the bravest man he ever knew.
Costa was an “egalitarian person”, Hart said, who often volunteered to work on holidays so his colleagues could spend time with their children.
The couple had a farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and Hart said: “Being married to a doctor isn’t easy and you give up a lot.
“When Joe and I were at the farm we always had such a good time. He was a workaholic and he told me I taught him how to relax.”
Hart said his husband’s death makes him even more frustrated to see people not taking the proper precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
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There have been more that 3,000 deaths in Maryland due to COVID-19, and Hart added: “I keep thinking, now there is one less ICU doctor to care for pandemic patients in Baltimore.”
“I get so angry when I see people not wearing masks,” he said.
“It makes me want to take a bar of soap and write on my car’s rearview window that ‘My husband who saved so many lives died of COVID-19. Wear a mask!’”
Mercy Medical Center released a statement on death of the gay Baltimore doctor from coronavirus, saying Costa was “admired and respected” throughout Baltimore for “his clinical expertise”.
It added: “He was beloved by his patients and their family members – known for his warm and comforting bedside manner as well as his direct and informative communication style.
“When he counselled our patients and families, he did so with great compassion and empathy.
“For all the nurses and staff who worked closely with Joe on the intensive care unit, he was like an older brother that all admired and revered… A life so beautifully lived deserves to be beautifully remembered.
“Planning is underway now for a memorial service and details will be shared as soon as possible. We will grieve together and we will get through this challenging time together.”
A Saudi court has sentenced a Yemeni blogger to 10 months in prison, a fine of 10,000 riyals ($2,600) and deportation for a social media post supporting equal rights for people in same sex relationships, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The group said Mohamad al-Bokari fled Yemen in June 2019 and was living as an undocumented migrant in Saudi Arabia when he was arrested on April 8 for a Twitter video that drew online condemnation from Saudis and calls for his arrest.
In the video, seen by Reuters, Bokari was asked by one of his Twitter followers for his view of same-sex relations, to which he replied, “Everyone has rights and should be able to practice them freely, including gay people.”
In a statement to Saudi-owned Al Arabiya confirming Bokari’s arrest, the spokesman for Riyadh’s police department said in April that the video contained “sexual references” which “violate public order and morals”.
Bokari was charged with violating public morality, “promoting homosexuality online” and “imitating women,” said HRW, adding it showed authorities discriminated against Bokari for his “perceived sexual orientation and gender expression.”
A Reuters request for comment to Saudi Arabia’s government media office went unanswered.
Bokari was sentenced on July 20 and has 30 days from that date to appeal.
Saudi Arabia has no codified legal system and no laws regarding sexual orientation or gender identity. Judges have convicted people for “immorality”, having sexual relations outside of marriage, and homosexual sex.
Italy has been divided by debate over the country’s first law that would punish discrimination and hate crimes against LGBT+ people.
The proposed legislation would bring Italy in line with its western European counterparts by explicitly recognising discrimination against LGBT+ people as well as women.
As lawmakers begin debating the draft in parliament on Monday (July 27), the bill is already being virulently opposed by far-right parties and religious groups.
On July 16 politicians from the right-wing populist Lega party joined hundreds of Catholics protesting at Rome’s Piazza Montecitorio, insisting that the bill was a threat to their freedom of speech.
They carried banners with the slogan “Establishing a new crime is not needed and is wrong”, but countless LGBT+ Italians beg to differ.
“We need this law,” said Marco, a gay man who spoke to The Guardian ahead of the parliamentary debate. He and his boyfriend have been repeatedly harassed by a neighbour who forced his way into his home, called them “dirty faggots” and threatened to torch their car.
“My boyfriend managed to get rid of him but he returned with a baton and threw himself against the door, repeating the same insults and threatening to set us alight when we were asleep,” he said.
His pleas to police have been ignored, despite the recorded evidence on his mobile phone, and he’s seen the same inaction from police when a gay friend of his was similarly harassed.
“Twice the police came, and twice they did nothing,” he said.
Italy currently punishes hate crimes for racial, ethnic and religious reasons, as well as neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist actions and slogans. But the law still doesn’t recognise attacks based on gender identity or sexual orientation as hate crimes.
The push for legislative change was sparked by a spate of violence against the LGBT+ community, including a brutal attack by a gang of seven on a young man who was walking hand-in-hand with his boyfriend in Pescara.
The victim was beaten so badly that his jaw was smashed and had to be surgically reconstructed with titanium.
“After what happened, no one in the LGBT community feels able to walk freely,” one gay man told the FT. “The sense is that there could be aggression at any time. Everyone feels threatened.”
A recent Eurobarometer survey showed that LGBT+ acceptance in Italy was well below the European average. Only 55 per cent of Italians stated they would feel comfortable with a LGB person in the country’s highest elected office, compared to 90 per cent of people in Sweden and 93 per cent in the Netherlands.
Alessandro Zan, the centre-left MP who has championed the law change, said there was an urgent need for Italy to align itself with other European countries.
“Homophobia is widespread across the country — even if it’s often hidden. It emerges every time gay, lesbian and transgender men and women try to live openly,” he told the FT.
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Monica Cirinnà, a senator from the centre-left Democratic party, added that the debate over the proposed law highlights the conservatism “ingrained” in Italian society.
“Italy has been reluctant to embrace diversity because people are pigeonholed in gender stereotypes due to a mixture of deeply rooted patriarchal and Catholic culture,” she told the paper.
“When you don’t fit into one of these stereotypes, you’re to be feared or kept away. But it’s time to move on,” she said.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of LGBT+ advocacy organisation GLAAD, is calling for LGBT+ people and their allies to do three crucial things ahead of the US election.
“We have 100 days to impact the course of history and put LGBTQ+ equality and social justice back on the forward-moving path,” Ellis said in a passionate op-ed for The Advocate.
Ellis urged everyone to register to vote, to talk to 10 people they know about how the election impacts them as an LGBT+ person, and, crucially, to get out and vote on November 3.
Exit polls during the 2018 mid-terms suggested that six per cent of voters are LGBT+. Trump won “razor-thin victories in key swing states” that could be flipped, Ellis said, if more LGBT+ people get out and vote.
And on top of this, she pointed out that the “rainbow wave” in 2018 could be repeated: “In 2018, LGBTQ+ voters and our allies helped to create a Rainbow Wave — electing an unprecedented number of LGBTQ+ people to public office at all levels and contributing to the tide that swept in a pro-equality majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.”
“This year,” Ellis said, “we can do the same in the U.S. Senate.”
Ellis wrote that Donald Trump and his administration have been “disastrous” for the LGBT+ community, pointing to GLAAD’s monitoring of his policies and campaign rhetoric.
“GLAAD has tracked more than 160 attacks in policy and rhetoric from the president and his appointees since he took office in January 2017, and the number continues to grow,” she said.
“It literally started on day one with the removal of all mentions of LGBTQ+ people and policy from the official White House website and has continued nonstop.
“From the egregious ban on transgender service members to the elimination of tracking LGBTQ+ bullying and harassment in our schools to arguing against our equality in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, the attacks have been incessant.
“The president even asserted that businesses should be able to hang signs in their windows that say, ‘Gays Not Allowed’.”
LGBT+ people and their allies must block Donald Trump’s re-election bid, Ellis argued.
Hundreds of Thai LGBTQ activists and allies raised rainbow flags on Saturday evening as they called for democracy and equal rights, the latest in a series of youth protests calling for the government to step down.
Several youth-led demonstrations have sprung up across the country since last week, when thousands of Thai activists defied a coronavirus ban on gatherings and staged one of the largest street rallies since a 2014 military coup.
The activists on Saturday danced and sang and performed stand-up comedy sketches making jabs at the government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army chief who ousted an elected government six years ago. Pride flags were waved against the backdrop of Bangkok’s Democracy Monument.
“We’re here today mainly to call for democracy. Once we achieve democracy, equal rights will follow,” said a 21-year-old activist who went by a made-up name, Viktorious Nighttime.
“The LGBT group do not yet have equal rights in society, so we’re calling for both democracy and equality,” added Viktorious, who was wearing a glittery tiara and a face mask.
The calls came after Thailand’s cabinet backed a civil partnership bill earlier this month that would recognize same-sex unions with almost the same rights as married couples.
Saturday’s gathering was the latest in a series of protests under the Free Youth movement, which has issued three demands: the dissolution of parliament, an end to harassment of government critics, and amendments to the military-written constitution.
“Even if they don’t step down from power today, we want to let them know that we won’t go anywhere, we will be here,” said a 21-year-old protestor who gave her name as Yaya. “Even if they get rid of us, our ideology will never die, we will pass this on to the next generation.”