Andrei Vaganov and Evgeny Erofeyev have been raising their two sons, now 12 and 14, for nearly a decade. The children were adopted by Vaganov shortly before he and Erofeyev were married in Denmark.
The couple didn’t face any problems until the youngest son, Yuri, was hospitalised due to a stomach ache and doctors realised he had no mother.
This precipitated a sexual abuse investigation that threatened their right to live freely as a family.
Here we live, we are an ordinary family
“We never asked our children to hide anything,” Vaganov told independent Russian news outlet Meduza. “This was our conscious position: why is it somehow stigmatising and so on. Here we live, we are an ordinary family.”
The morning after Yuri was discharged from hospital, Vaganov and Erofeyev were told to report to police for questioning.
What started as a “pre-investigation check” quickly became more serious, and Yuri was ordered to undergo a physical exam to rule out abuse.
“This, frankly, is a very traumatic event for a child,” Vaganov explained, particularly as Yuri had a troubled childhood before adoption. “They inspect Yuri, he swears, cries. 40 minutes, probably this all went on.”
By the time Vaganov and his son were allowed home, the story that a gay couple had ‘raped a child’ was already all over the internet.
Later their elder son Denis was also called in for an interview, and a family law attorney advised them to prepare to flee the country. The couple were told protective services would almost certainly try to place their children in foster care.
“Because in such situations, children are simply removed from the family before further proceedings, which can last for years, since the article is related to the sexual integrity of the child,” Vaganov said.
Shortly afterwards authorities suggested that Yuri be turned over to a state-owned rehabilitation centre while the case was investigated, despite forensic testing showing no signs of physical abuse.
Erofeyev and Vaganov decided the time to leave had come; not long after they did so, investigators demanded they turn themselves in for questioning.
No charges have been made against them yet, but Buzzfeed News reported that the case has only gotten more dire in the last month.
On July 15, a speech in Russian Parliament denounced gay adoptions as the potential end of mankind. The next day, the Investigative Committee opened a case against the agency that allowed Vaganov to adopt his children.
The law bans the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors” – a reference universally understood to mean a ban on information about LGBT+ lifestyles.
Human rights groups say that the law has exacerbated hostility towards LGBT+ people in Russia, and that in preventing LGBT+ people from accessing inclusive education and support services, it has had detrimental impact on children and young people.
The European Court of Human Rights has found Russia to have violated LGBT+ people’s rights three times in as many years.
LGBTI people in four Caribbean countries over the last year have filed lawsuits against their nations’ colonial-era sodomy laws.
Javin Johnson and Sean Macleish on July 26 filed a lawsuit against two laws in St. Vincent and the Grenadines that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations.
Daryl Phillip, founder of Minority Rights Dominica, and Maurice Tomlinson, a senior policy analyst at the Toronto-based HIV Legal Network, on July 18 announced a gay man who remains anonymous filed a lawsuit against Dominica’s sodomy law.
Alexa Hoffmann, a transgender activist in Barbados, along with a gay man and a lesbian woman on June 6, 2018, filed a lawsuit against their country’s sodomy law with the same commission. Tomlinson, who was born in Jamaica, in 2015 challenged his country’s sodomy law before the Jamaica Supreme Court.
The commission on July 15 sent a letter to Barbados’ government that said it has three months to respond to the lawsuit. The Jamaican government received a similar letter three days later in response to a lawsuit that Tomlinson filed against the country’s same-sex marriage ban in 2018.
“The anti-sodomy law and serious indecency law in Barbados serve no purpose other than to foster alienation and marginalization against LGBT people,” Hoffmann told the Washington Blade on Tuesday on Facebook Messenger. “Any person who has anal sex, oral sex, engages in mutual or other masturbation or sexually interacts with another consenting adult, even in private, is legally branded a criminal, and the social implications are nothing nice, to say the least.”
Macleish told the Blade on Tuesday during a telephone interview from Chicago where he has lived for more than 30 years that his case “is very personal to me because of my experiences being gay in St. Vincent” with “all of the homophobia and discrimination that I experienced there.” Philip in a press release that announced the Dominica lawsuit echoed Hoffmann.
“Brutal and often life-threatening experiences are a daily reality for many LGBT people in Dominica, and elsewhere in the Caribbean,” said Philip. “Because the law criminalizes all LGBT individuals, it sends a powerful message that other people — whether law enforcement or regular citizens on the street — are entitled to discriminate and commit human rights abuses against LGBT individuals.”
Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados and Jamaica are among the handful of English-speaking Caribbean countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
The government of Trinidad and Tobago has appealed a 2018 ruling that declared the country’s colonial-era sodomy law unconstitutional. Tomlinson said an appeal of the Belize Supreme Court’s 2016 decision that struck down the Central American country’s sodomy law is pending.
The Dominica lawsuit was filed in the country’s High Court of Justice, while Johnson and Macleish brought their case before St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ High Court.
The Caribbean Court of Justice — which last November struck down a Guyana law that criminalizes cross-dressing — would consider an appeal in the Dominica case. The Privy Council in London would consider an appeal in the case from St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which the Organization of American States created in 1979, enforces provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights that Barbados recognizes.
The court in 2018 issued a landmark ruling that recognizes same-sex marriage and trans rights. It also ruled in favor of Karen Atala, a lesbian judge in Chile who lost custody of her three daughters to her ex-husband because of her sexual orientation, in 2012.
“We expect a complete victory there,” said Tomlinson, referring to the Barbados case.
He added he also remains optimistic about the St. Vincent and the Grenadines case. Tomlinson told the Blade the rulings from Trinidad and Tobago and Belize, along with recent decisions against colonial-era sodomy laws in India and Botswana, will influence the English judges who sit on the Privy Council.
“I don’t think there will be any fear that they will be regressive,” he said.
Tomlinson told the Blade his case “presents a little unique challenge” because Jamaica’s constitution appears to preserve laws that were in place before the country’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms took effect in 2012. He said he is arguing this provision does not apply to the sodomy law because a provision that penalizes registered sex offenders without a pass with a $9,000 fine and a year in prison came into force that year.
“The cases all have different apex courts,” he said. “The issue is how these different courts view LGBT rights and the countries also have different constitutions, so the issue will then will be how the constitutions interpret LGBT rights.”
Tomlinson also noted Caribbean politicians “have taken a hands-off approach” to the lawsuits.
“Truth be told we suspect that every politician in the Caribbean wants these laws to be struck down via court action so they have political cover,” he said, noting potential criticism they will face from religious conservatives. “They’re cowards, so they don’t want to do it themselves because of the potential of blowback, but they’re happy that it’s being done this way.”
A bill moving through the California Legislature could make PrEP available over the counter, Capital Public Radio reports.
Advocates and patients say some people who need PrEP don’t know it exists or are unsure about how to talk to their doctors about it. Many physicians aren’t educated on what PrEP is or when to prescribe it, said Courtney Mulhern-Pearson, senior director of policy and strategy for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which is sponsoring the bill.
“(The pharmacy) is a more accessible access point for a lot of people,” she told Capital Public Radio. “It wouldn’t require an appointment, and they’re in every community. So for all pharmacies that are willing to participate in this, we potentially have a broader reach of access points than we have currently.”
Los Angeles resident Gabe Zichermann said he had to be his own advocate when it came to PrEP, and that it took months to get a prescription for the treatment. When he switched doctors, he said he had to start the process all over again. And his insurance plan put up additional barriers.
“It was like pulling teeth,” he told Capital Public Radio. “They rejected it multiple times … I’m glad that legislators in California are looking to make it easier, because it’s just going to save a lot of lives.”
The bill would also ban prior authorization for PrEP and PEP, a process by which doctors have to get special approval from health plans before writing the script. Mulhern-Pearson said this poses a challenge, especially for patients who need urgent access to PEP, which is only effective in the first 72 hours after a potential exposure, Capital Public Radio reports.
Students in Illinois public schools will learn about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in state and national history after approval today of the Inclusive Curriculum Law by Gov. Pritzker, according to Equality Illinois.
Starting with the 2020-21 school year, the Inclusive Curriculum Law — House Bill 246 — will ensure the inclusion of the contributions of LGBTQ people in the history curriculum taught in Illinois public schools. Illinois is the fifth state to enact such legislation, after California in 2011 and New Jersey, Colorado and Oregon in 2019.
Sponsored by State Rep. Anna Moeller ( D-Elgin ) and State Sen. Heather Steans ( D-Chicago ), the Inclusive Curriculum Law is an initiative of Equality Illinois, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, and the Legacy Project and is supported by more than forty education, health care, and civil rights organizations across Illinois.
he body of a 40-year-old trans woman known as ‘La Gata’ was found by her family in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas in the South American country.
This is the eighth case of murder or violent death of a trans person in the country this year, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Diane Rodriguez, the first trans woman elected to Ecuador’s National Assembly, told Reuters: “Once again, the LGBT community in Ecuador is in mourning. We thought (the attacks) were going to decrease, but on the contrary, we’ve been surprised by this year’s statistics.”
The killing has sparked fears of a rise in anti-LGBT violence in the country, which has seen progress for the LGBT+ community in recent years.
The constitutional court in the capital Quito voted five-to-four to approve same-sex marriage in the cases of the two, extending gay marriage across the country.
A 23-year-old Las Vegas man who allegedly wanted to attack Jews and patrons of an LGBTQ bar was arrested on suspicion of possessing parts to make a bomb, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada said Friday.
Conor Climo, who was arrested Thursday, was connected to white supremacists though encrypted online conversations, federal prosecutors said.
“Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this country,” Nicholas A. Trutanich, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, said in a statement.
Climo had already caused concern among his neighbors in 2016 when, in a video posted to his now-deleted YouTube channel, he announced plans to patrol his Centennial Hills neighborhood with an AR-15-style rifle, four 30-round clips, and camouflaged packs.
FBI agents with the Las Vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force began looking at Climo in April when, according to the complaint, they learned he was communicating with the white extremist group Atomwaffen Division.
Members of that group have been linked to at least five deaths since 2017, including a Tampa man who killed his two roommates and told police they were members of the group planning a large-scale attack.
Climo, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, was arraigned in federal court on Friday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for Nevada.
His arrest stemmed from an investigation conducted by an FBI task force specializing in monitoring the activities and online communications of extremists and domestic terror groups. The investigation was detailed in an 11-page criminal complaint and probable cause statement filed in court federal prosecutors and the FBI.
During encrypted online conversations with undercover FBI operatives, Climo discussed attacking a Las Vegas synagogue and making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices, according to the criminal complaint.
The evangelical blogger made anti-LGBT comments as he destroyed the books, including young adult novel Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, illustrated LGBT+ history book This Day in June by Gayle Pitman, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino and Families, Families, Families! by Suzanne Lang.
Dorr was found guilty of 5th degree criminal mischief in Sioux County District Court on Tuesday (August 6).
The state of Iowa had sought the maximum penalty, a fine of $625.
Dorr, who represented himself, had told the court: “My motive was to honour the Triune God in whom my faith resides and to protect the children of Orange City from being seduced into a life of sin and misery.”
LGBT+ campaigners condemn ‘reprehensible’ burning of library books
Courtney Reyes of One Iowa told Iowa Public Radio: “Libraries are safe havens where every person has free access to all ideas and expressions without restriction.
“Dorr intended to deprive the children of Orange City that access, to isolate LGBTQ youth from reflections of themselves in stories, to take from all youth the opportunity to empathise with people different than themselves. Such an act is terrible, and we are glad justice was served today.”
Bettis Austen of the ACLU of Iowa said: “Burning public library books is the destruction of ideas, and that’s reprehensible.
“The destruction of books from a public library is a clear attempt to shut down the open sharing and discussion of ideas.
“No one person or even group should decide that they are the gatekeepers of ideas for the rest of the public.”
Dorr has previously expressed the belief that people become gay because of “the harm that adults did to you as children” and urged LGBT+ people to “walk away from your degeneracy… repent and turn back to Christ.”
Explaining his actions, Dorr had said: “I cannot stand by and let the shameful adults at the Orange City Library Board bring the next group of little children into their foul, sexual reality without a firm resistance.”
One of the books burned, David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing, was ranked as the fifth most-banned book during the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week in 2016.
Between August 2 and August 6, Pence was at a conference organised by conservative blogger Erick Erickson, a roundtable with Donald Trump’s religious freedom ambassador Sam Brownback and a “fireside chat” with Mike Farris, CEO of anti-abortion Christian lawyers the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Human Rights Campaign said that Pence is on an “anti-LGBTQ crusade.”
On August 2, Pence appeared on stage at The Resurgent Gathering conference in Atlanta with Erick Erickson, a conservative evangelical American blogger and radio host who organised the conference.
Erickson, in a blog post on the same day, lashed out at Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg for not “repenting” his sexuality.
Erickson, a former Fox News pundit who hosts a right-wing radio show, took aim at Buttigieg on his blog, The Resurgent.
“Pete Buttigieg is a practising homosexual who wilfully refuses to recognise Holy Scripture identifies that as a sin,” Erickson wrote.
Sam Brownback has repeatedly been homophobic and transphobic
On August 5, Pence met with Sam Brownback, Trump’s new ambassador for religious freedom – who has a history of attacking LGBT+ people, often justifying his actions through religious freedom.
Pence and Brownback were part of an International Religious Freedom roundtable, at which Pence “reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to stand with people of every faith in every country around the world.”
Brownback, who gained Pence’s tie-breaking vote to be confirmed in the Senate, repeatedly promoted homophobic and transphobic policies in his seven years as Governor of Kansas.
Alliance Defending Freedom is anti-LGBT, anti-abortion
On Tuesday (August 6), Pence then went to an event run by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an evangelical Christian group that lobbies against reproductive rights in the US.
The ADF is currently involved several anti-trans lawsuits, including in Connecticut where it has filed a federal discrimination complaint challenging the state’s policy of letting trans students compete on sports teams according to their gender identity.
A Northern California city has denied a request to hold a so-called Straight Pride rally at a park. Modesto city officials on Friday denied an application by the National Straight Pride Coalition for an Aug. 24 event at Graceada Park.
Organizer Don Grundmann had estimated 500 people would attend. The group says it supports heterosexuality, Christianity and white contributions to Western civilization. Opponents argued the rally would promote hatred of LGBTQ people and minorities.
City spokesman Thomas Reeves says the permit request was denied over safety concerns, because the group lost its liability insurance and the parks department determined the event wasn’t consistent with park use.
The other Straight Pride event in Boston is still on.
More than two years after President Trump tweeted he’d ban transgender people from the U.S. military “in any capacity,” the military services say the policy hasn’t resulted in denials of service for otherwise qualified individuals — a claim transgender advocates say is dubious at best.
The Washington Blade reached out to each of the military services — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — to obtain numbers of discharges and denials of enlistment of transgender people since the Defense Department implemented the policy, DTM-19-004, on April 12.
Each of the services — with one exception — had the same reply when asked how many otherwise qualified transgender individuals were denied accession, or enlistment, into their ranks: zero. (The exception was the U.S. Coast Guard, which reported denying enlistment to two applicants under the policy.)
Moreover, each of the services uniformly had the same answer in response to a question about the number of separations under the anti-trans policy: zero.
Stephen Peters, spokesperson for the LGBT group Modern Military Association of America, said the assertion that no transgender applicants were denied enlistment is “incredibly misleading.”
“While I’m sure whoever is responding to your inquiry is justifying their response based on semantics, there is no denying that numerous qualified trans patriots want to enlist or commission into the military,” Peters said.
As evidence of transgender applicants being denied accession into the military, Peters pointed to his organization’s lawsuit against the ban, Karnoski v. Trump, which is pending before a trial court after remand from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Ryan Karnoski, Staff Sergeant Cathrine Schmid and Drew Layne — transgender people blocked under the ban from accession into the military. (Each of these individuals joined the lawsuit before the current policy went into effect on April 12.)
On July 26, 2017, Trump surprised the world, including leadership in the U.S. military, when he announced he’d ban transgender people from the military “in any capacity.”
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” Trump tweeted. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
Essentially, the tweet announced a reversal of policy allowing transgender people to serve openly and obtain transition-related care without fear of discharge — a policy that was implemented by former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in the last six months of the Obama administration.
It took nearly two years for the Pentagon to implement Trump’s pledge to ban transgender troops. The policy became know as DTM-19-004, “Military Service by Transgender Persons and Persons with Gender Dysphoria.”
Why the delay in implementation? Trump tweeted the policy at the same time as former Defense Secretary James Mattis was conducting a six-month study reevaluating transgender service. Following Trump’s tweets, the study concluded transgender people should not serve.
Moreover, courts had until the time blocked Trump’s policy from going into effect. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the orders from the lower courts, essentially allowing the policy to go forward.
Under DTM-19-004, service members are discharged who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria or are prescribed transition-related care. In terms of enlistments, the policy bars applicants with a history of gender dysphoria — unless the individuals are willing to serve in their biological sex (an extremely small number of transgender people). Applicants who obtained transition-related care are outright banned.
The transgender ban contains an exemption that allows transgender people who came out during the Obama-era policy to continue to serve and receive transition-related care. But those troops could face complications under the ban, such as if they seek promotions, want to change services or drop out to pursue educational opportunities and seek to re-enlist.
The Defense Department has insisted the new policy is a medical-based policy applied to every service member, even though the policy applies to conditions faced solely by transgender people, and is not a ban, even though it bars many transgender people from service.
In response to the Blade inquiry, each of the four services under the Defense Department — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps — each claimed zero applicants were denied enlistment under DTM-19-004, while the Coast Guard, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, claimed two denials.
(Initially, an Army spokesperson responded, “No applicant meeting the medical accession standards contained in DTM 19-004 has been denied entry into the Army under DTM 19-004.” When the Blade followed up by asking for the numbers on how many were denied as not meeting the standard, the response was “None.”)
Similarly, a Navy spokesperson initially replied, “By policy (DTM 19-004) there can be no denial of accessions based on gender identity alone. Therefore the answer is zero related to gender identity.” When the Blade pointed out no mention was made of gender identity, the new response was “zero.”)
Aaron Belkin, director of the San Francisco-based Palm Center, said the difference between numbers of the Coast Guard and other services suggests the former views the transgender ban differently.
“The fact that the Coast Guard is reporting the data honestly shows that it is not afraid to acknowledge evidence that indicates what we have long known, which is that the transgender ban harms readiness,” Belkin said.
It’s possible the number of applicants denied enlistment under the ban don’t reflect individuals not just blocked from enlisting under the transgender ban, but due to reasons unrelated to the policy.
Moreover, those numbers don’t capture the impact of the policy as a deterrent. At a time when the military is falling short of its recruitment goals, many transgender people may not attempt to enlist even if they would otherwise be interested in military service.
A gay Democratic statistician in New York City, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to talk to the press, said the likelihood the Army denied enlistment to no applicants when the Coast Guard denied enlistment to two is infinitesimally small.
“While it’s difficult to say anything with much certainty because we have been given so little data to work with, the odds that a service like the Army that gets nearly 10 times as many applicants as the USCG had zero rejections, while the USCG had two are incredibly low,” he said. “Far less than one percent odds.”
Belkin said the services reporting no separations is “not surprising” because the process for those separations may not be yet finalized.
“The process for administrative separation set out in DTM-19-004 is efficient but not instantaneous, and it’s only been three months since the ban took effect,” Belkin said. “Candidates for separation, by definition, would be service members who had not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by April 12 (otherwise they would be grandfathered). The process for administrative separation could not even begin until diagnosis, followed by another determination that gender-transition treatment was medically necessary.”
Belkin added transgender service members may be serving in the shadows like under like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on openly gay service repealed during the Obama administration, and avoid seeking transition-related care, which would initiate a discharge.
“Transgender members will avoid medical and health care encounters that could expose them to separation,” Belkin said. “Separations are the tiny tip of the iceberg.”
The Blade also sought to obtain information on waivers under the trans ban. Under Section 3 of DTM-19-004, the military departments and Coast Guard may grant a waiver to allow a transgender person who would otherwise be blocked from service.
Each of the services uniformly replied they had granted no waivers under the transgender ban, nor had they denied any requests for waivers. The Air Force and the Navy added they have obtained no requests for a waiver to begin with since the implementation of the policy.
Belkin said admission from the services they had not granted any waivers speaks volumes about these waivers being a false promise.
“This rebuts claims from military leadership that availability of waivers will soften the effect of the ban,” Belkin said. “In particular, some waivers should have been expected soon after the ban took effect because a number of service members got caught short by the sudden April 12 effective date and the inability to obtain qualifying diagnoses on short notice.”
Transgender people who sought diagnoses prior to April 12, Belkin said, would have been obvious candidates for waivers as well as military students in ROTC.
The Blade also asked whether the military services granted any exemptions under Section 1 of the policy, which contains a grandfather clause allowing transgender service members who came out during the Obama administration to continue military service without fear of discharge.
The Coast Guard reported zero, the Air Force said no exemptions were granted or requested and the Army said no in-service exemptions have been granted.
The Navy spokesperson, however, said one exemption “was granted due to when they started the enlistment process.”
The Marine Corps declined to answer that inquiry altogether, asserting “we do not track those numbers” because the question is a medical issue and “protected (to an extent) by HIPAA,” the federal law providing data privacy for medical information.
Belkin, however, said claims of being unable to provide numbers on exemptions due to concerns about HIPAA are flat-out “wrong.”
“For example, the Accession Medical Standards Analysis & Research Activity (AMSARA) writes a report every year tracking the medical status of service members to determine how effectively medical accession standards are screening for fitness,” Belkin said.
Belkin added the “we do not track” excuse recalls Mattis’ attempt in an exchange with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to undercut the testimony by military service chiefs that the inclusive policy has not harmed readiness.
“In short, the ‘we do not track’ assertion is false and is used to avoid conceding that inclusive policy worked and that there is no evidence to suggest otherwise,” Belkin said.
Meanwhile, the transgender military ban continues to face acts of resistance, including the litigation filed by LGBT legal groups that remains pending in federal court.
Two major universities — the University of Wisconsin Law School and American University — have threatened to ban military recruiters on campus as long they refuse to admit transgender candidates. (If the schools make good on that threat, they would likely face a loss of federal funding under the Solomon Amendment.)
Moreover, transgender advocates praised recent Senate testimony from Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, Trump’s pick to become the next chief of naval operations, in which said he transgender service members have had no negative impact on unit cohesion.
“I am unaware of negative impacts on unit or overall Navy readiness as a result of transgender individuals serving in their preferred gender,” Gilday said in written responses for his confirmation hearing.
Peters also said transgender people making an attempt to enlist despite the ban is helpful in efforts to dismantle the policy.
“There are also numerous trans patriots who want to enlist, but they are not going through the process because they are well aware the ban is in place,” Peters added. “It’s no secret the administration has implemented this ban, so they know they would be rejected based on who they are.”