Three key pieces of California legislation that were tabled last year for various reasons will see the floor in 2020.
These bills – SB 132, SB 145 and SB 201 were all introduced by openly gay Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and were co-sponsored by Equality California.
SB 132, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, aims to improve the living conditions for incarcerated transgender person. SB 132 will require that incarcerated transgender people in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) be classified and housed based on their sense of health, safety and gender identity — rather than the sex they were assigned at birth. The bill will also require all staff and contractors of CDCR to consistently use the gender pronoun, honorific, and name the person has specified in all verbal and written communications with and regarding that person.
SB 145 is the LGBTQ Young People Nondiscrimination in the Sex Offender Registry Act. It would allow judges to decide whether a person should have to register as a sex offender if the person is within 10 years of age as the consensual sexual partner between ages 14-17. Current law mandates that such adult would automatically be added to the state’s sex offender registry. The bill aims to prevent LGBTQ+ adolescents from having to be listed on the state’s registry for sleeping with a boyfriend or girlfriend under the age of 18.
SB 201 would ban medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex infants. This would allow the individual to make the decision for themselves when hey are older. Currently, intersex infants often undergo cosmetic surgeries to help assign a gender. Weiner Tod the B.A.R. that the bill will be amended so that the age of informed consent is set at age 6.
“By that age kids can express, you know, what they want,” Weiner said. “They know what they want to look like and they can express their gender.”
The Senate committees has until January 24 to send it to the full Senate for a floor vote. That Chamber must pass it by January 31, sending it to the Assembly for approval.
The Council of the District of Columbia on Tuesday introduced legislation that would strip gendered and “patriarchal” terms from the D.C. code and replace them with gender-neutral language.
The Gendered Terms Modernization Amendment Act of 2020 would change instances of “he” or “she” in the law books to “the individual” or “they.” The bill was introduced by David Grosso, an at-large independent member of the council who has been a leader on LGBTQ legislation during his council tenure.
“We believe very strongly that language matters, that it actually holds power, and that the language of our laws matters,” Grosso told NBC News. “And it’s incredibly important that people feel included in the District of Columbia code to the fullest extent.”
The 43-page bill contains a list of “suggested” terms, Grosso said, “because for me it’s important that we have a hearing and listen to the public fully on what they think we should change it to as well.”
“His” would become “the individual’s,” “men” would become “individuals” or “humans,” “brother” and “sister” would become “sibling” and so on.
“Although we have done a lot of research and a lot of work on this, it is not something we should put out there and say: ‘We’ve got all the answers,’” Grosso said.
Among dozens of other proposed changes, the bill supports modifying the D.C. Charter and Home Rule Act so, for example, “chairman” of the District of Columbia Council would become “chairperson.” Modifications to the Charter and Home Rule Act would need to be approved by Congress.
The bill is co-sponsored by 10 of the 13 council members, and was introduced on a tense day during which member Jack Evans offered his resignation instead of facing a disciplinary hearing over an alleged ethics violation.
D.C. is not the first city to undergo a “linguistic cleansing,” according to Fern Johnson, a Clark University English professor. In a recent interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the efforts of Berkeley, California, to make its city code more gender inclusive, she said “Albuquerque, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis, New York and Seattle have all made language less gender-specific, but these changes are usually incremental and happen without much fanfare.”
The broadening use of gender-neutral language in everyday vernacular and official documentation is accelerating. In 2017, the Associated Press Stylebook endorsed the use of the singular pronoun “they,” and this year, “they” was Merriam-Webster’s “word of the year” because of high public interest in the word’s definition and use as a singular pronoun.
Authorities are searching for a suspect after a transgender activist was found shot and killed in McAlester, Oklahoma, while on his way to pickup a taxi fare.
Dustin James Parker, 25, was found dead Wednesday with the windows of his car shot out after a 911 caller told police they heard gunshots in the early morning, according to NBC affiliate KJRH.McAlester Mayor John Browne assured the community that law enforcement was doing all it could to locate a suspect in Parker’s death.
“McAlester lost a supremely nice person who had such a positive outlook in his life,” Browne said in a statement. “He loved his job especially that it allowed him to help people. His passing is a loss for our community.”
Rover Taxi owner Brian West, 42, told NBC News Saturday that Parker was the first employee hired for the company, which launched in September. Parker, married with four children, had struggled previously juggling multiple jobs.
“I called him and said I have this idea I want you to help me build this and he did,” West said.
The two friends knew each other for about a year and worked together to launch a McAlester chapter of Oklahomans for Equality in May. Despite their short time together, West said that Parker felt like family.
“You couldn’t ask for a better friend, you couldn’t ask for a better husband, you couldn’t ask for a better employee,” West said. “He was an all around awesome person.”
Human Rights Campaign said in statement that it suspects Parker may be the first violent death of a transgender or gender non-conforming person in the new year. HRC has tracked violent deaths of at least 25 transgender or gender non-conforming people in 2019.
The organization has documented more than 150 killings of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals since the beginning of its “Violence Against the Transgender Community” project
“We say ‘at least’ because too often these stories go unreported — or misreported,” HRC said Thursday. “These victims are not just numbers or headlines. They were real people worthy of dignity and respect, of life and love.”
The government is giving trans people a special health card that will give them access to an existing government health insurance scheme, which was introduced in 2015 to provide health cards for those earning less than $2 a day, although trans people will not face that financial test.
Prime minister Imran Khan said that his government was “taking responsibility” for trans people, who say they are routinely denied treatment and can face harassment or ridicule from hospital staff and patients.
“It is part of a grand programme to provide health insurance not just to the poor but the vulnerable sections of society, including … transgender (people),” said Mirza.
“Any person who identifies as transgender is eligible for this health insurance programme,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Trans people have historically faced severe discrimination in healthcare settings, with doctors denying trans people treatment when they could not decide whether to treat them in a male or female ward.
The health ID cards giving access to the free healthcare scheme will be immediately available, but only to trans people who have registered as trans on their other identity documents.
Pakistan officially recognised transgender people in 2012, adding a third gender option to forms and official documents.
The 2017 national census counted Pakistan’s trans population for the first time, recording 10,418 trans people in a population of about 207 million, though charities estimate there are at least 500,000 trans people.
“The scheme is good but healthcare providers need to be sensitised,” said Zehrish Khan, project manager for trans rights group Gender Interactive Alliance. “Many of us resort to drugs and alcohol because we need psychiatric help and empathy to overcome the continuous harassment we face.”
Aisha Mughal, a trans rights expert, said about 2,500 trans people were currently registered under the government’s third gender option, which means that the new free healthcare is not readily accessible.
“Only a few transgender people know about this and the first step is to spread the word,” Mughal said. “It is just the beginning.”
A battle against an outdated colonial law has finally come to an end, after the court of appeals in Belize unanimously upheld a 2016 ruling that a ban on gay sex is unconditional.
Belize, a small Anglophone Caribbean nation tucked into the eastern flank of Guatemala and Mexico, has been a battleground for LGBT rights for more than a decade.
It’s been a battle that started in 2010 and ended in 2019, rounding off the decade with a win for LGBT+ activists who tirelessly worked to get the ban dropped.
Their efforts proved successful in 2016. But soon after, both Belize’s government and the Catholic Church attempted to appeal the ruling.
However, on December 30, 2019, a three-judge appeal panel all rejected the appeal, cementing anti-discrimination protections for queer people conclusively, The Gleaner reported.
Upholding of ruling against gay sex ban branded a ‘renewal of hope’ by the campaign’s founder.
On the ruling, justice Samuel Awich said that the chief justice did not exceed the court’s power when he assigned the meaning “sexual orientation” to the word “sex” in the anti-discrimination Section 16 of the constitution.
He added: “Consensual sexual intercourse between adult gays or between adult lesbians in private does not harm the fundamental rights and freedoms of others, nor does it intolerably harm contemporary public interest.”
Caleb Orozco, a gay Belizean behind the fight to legalise gay sex.
The other two appeal court judges on the panel were justices Murrio Ducille and Lennox Campbell.
Behind the battle to strip the gay sex ban was activist Caleb Orozco, who welcomed the court of appeal’s ruling.
“I have proven as a citizen that our fundamental rights have value and can be upheld by our courts, and that any alienated section of society can stand on principle and can go to court and use the fundamental rights to ensure that the state leaves no one behind,” he said.
“Today is a renewal of hope in the substance of the chief justice’s decision in 2016, which still stands.”
A 10 year battle for equality in Belize.
In 2010, Orozco’s legal team walked into the Belize Supreme Court Registry armed with a stack of papers that incited the first challenge in Caribbean history to the criminalisation of gay sex.
Stretched across three years, the Supreme Court first heard the case in 2013, but it took justices a further three years to reach a verdict.
Activists were speechless when the case finally came to an end as the ban was finally overturned. Orozco was later honoured with the David Kato Awardfor his efforts.
Many Caribbean activists hope that as more nations turn the tides against homophobic colonial traditions, it’ll create a domino effect.
Last year, a gay man caused shockwaves in the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica after he filed legal action against the county’s laws banning gay sex.
A similar battle has been waged in Africa, as though the continent has a rich queer-positive history, colonialism wove anti-LGBT laws into many African country’s penal codes.
In the push and pull between campaigners and lawmakers, the track record for change in Africa has been spotty and sluggish. Last year, Botswana courtsvoted to shelve the federal ban on gay sex.
Friday was historic moment for transgender rights in Chile because the country’s Gender Identity Law came into force.
Trans people who are at least 18 and single can now change their name and legal gender with a simple procedure in the country’s Civil Registry. Teenagers who are between 14-18 can do so in court, but the new law does not include trans children and adolescents who are under 14.
“Today alone we have 136 people who will complete their procedure throughout Chile,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Hernán Larraín told local media.
“There was an invisible reality here; people who had a gender identity different from their biological sex and who could not exercise their rights,” Larraín added.
Daniela Vega celebrates new law
Another 921 people are already registered to exercise the right to their identity in the next few days. Daniela Vega, a trans actress who starred in “A Fantastic Woman,” a Chilean movie that won an Oscar in 2018, shared a message on her Instagram page to celebrate.
“I dedicate this day to the beautiful conquest of ruling the name,” she wrote. “I dedicate this day to those who did not see it arrive. To their bodies, dignified by the memory of rebellion.”
“Finally, today, to have the right to live the name previously denied, to govern time dressed as testimony, to belong,” added Vega. “Future body, white canvas of new struggles, of new utopias, of movement, of dignity.”
Paula Denmark and Alejandro Berrios, who lamented Chilean laws that excluded trans children, began the process that led to Sunday’s historic milestone.
“I feel that I was born again, with the identity that I always had, but that it was always denied,” said Denmark after she legally changed her identity. “I feel happy and able to take this step.”
Alessia Injoque, president of Fundación Iguales, a Chilean LGBTQ organization, will also change her identity in the next few days. Injoque said, “we are aware that this is only a first step.”
“We are indebted to the children, who were left out of the law,” said Injoque. “There are also debts to the trans community in education, health and work.”
The past decade has seen a backlash against human rights on every front, especially the rights of women and the LGBT communities, according to a top U.N. human rights official.
Andrew Gilmour, the outgoing assistant secretary-general for human rights, said the regression of the past 10 years hasn’t equaled the advances that began in the late 1970s — but it is serious, widespread and regrettable.
He pointed to “populist authoritarian nationalists” in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, who he said are taking aim at the most vulnerable groups of society, including Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, Roma, and Mexican immigrants, as well as gays and women. He cited leaders who justify torture, the arrests and killing of journalists, the brutal repressions of demonstrations and “a whole closing of civil society space.”
‘I never thought that we would start hearing the terms ‘concentration camps’ again,’ Gilmour told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. ‘And yet, in two countries of the world there’s a real question.’
He didn’t name them but appeared to be referring to China’s internment camps in western Xinjiang province, where an estimated 1 million members of the country’s predominantly Muslim Uighur minority are being held; and detention centers on the United States’ southern border, where mostly Central American migrants are being held while waiting to apply for asylum. Both countries strongly deny that concentration camp-like conditions exist.
FILE- In this Feb. 19, 2019, file photo, children line up to enter a tent at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla. The U.S. government didn’t have the technology needed to properly document and track the thousands of immigrant families separated at the southern border in 2018. That’s according to a new report by an internal government watchdog. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
Gilmour is leaving the United Nations on Dec. 31 after a 30-year career that has included posts in hot spots such as Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and West Africa. Before taking up his current post in 2016, he served for four years as director of political, peacekeeping, humanitarian and human rights affairs in former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office.
Despite his dim view of the past decade, Gilmour — a Briton who previously worked in politics and journalism — said he didn’t want to appear “relentlessly negative.”
“The progress of human rights is certainly not a linear progression, and we have seen that,” he said. “There was definite progression from the late ’70s until the early years of this century. And we’ve now seen very much the counter-tendency of the last few years.”
Rohingya Muslim children, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, wait squashed against each other to receive food handouts distributed to children and women by a Turkish aid agency at the Thaingkhali refugee camp in Ukhiya, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm over the plight of Rohingya Muslims in remarks before Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders from a Southeast Asian bloc that has refused to criticize her government over the crisis.(AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)
Gilmour said human rights were worse during the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, “but there wasn’t a pushback as there is now.”
He pointed to the fact that in the past eight years or so, many countries have adopted laws designed to restrict the funding and activities of nongovernmental organizations, especially human rights NGOs.
And he alleged that powerful U.N. member states stop human rights officials from speaking in the Security Council, while China and some other members “go to extraordinary lengths to prevent human rights defenders (from) entering the (U.N.) building even, let alone participate in the meetings.”
In March 2018, for example, Russia used a procedural maneuver to block then-U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein from addressing a formal meeting of the Security Council, the U.N.’s most powerful body, Gilmour said.
Zeid was able to deliver his hard-hitting speech soon after, but only at a hurriedly organized informal council meeting where he decried “mind-numbing crimes” committed by all parties in Syria.
Truckloads of civilians flee a Syrian military offensive in Idlib province on the main road near Hazano, Syria, Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2019. Syrian forces launched a wide ground offensive last week into the northwestern province of Idlib, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants. The United Nations estimates that some 60,000 people have fled from the area, heading south, after the bombings intensified earlier this month. (AP Photo/Ghaith al-Sayed)
Gilmour also cited the United States’ refusal to authorize the council to hold a meeting on the human rights situation in North Korea, a move that effectively killed the idea.
The rights of women and gays are also at stake, Gilmour said. He said nationalist authoritarian populist leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have made “derogatory comments” about both groups.
He said the U.S. is “aggressively pushing” back against women’s reproductive rights both at home and abroad. The result, he said, is that countries fearful of losing U.S. aid are cutting back their work on women’s rights.
Gilmour also pointed out a report issued in September that cited 48 countries for punishing human rights defenders who have cooperated with the U.N.
“I feel that we really need to do more — everybody … to defend those courageous defenders,” he said.
Gilmour said the U.N. should also stand up when it comes to major violations of international law and major violations of human rights, but “I have found it extremely difficult to do so in all circumstances.”
He said he was happy to hear that the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Kelly Craft, feels strongly about ensuring human rights.
“And I do hope that she will be gently and firmly held to that high standard,” he said.
Gilmour said that after his departure from the U.N, he will take a fellowship at Oxford’s All Souls College, where he will focus on the importance of uniting human rights and environmental rights groups.
“The human rights impact of climate change — it’s going to be so monumental,” he said.
As he relinquishes his post, Gilmour said he is counting on younger generations to take up the mantle of human rights and fight for other causes aimed at improving the world.
“What gives me hope as we start a new decade is that there will be a surge in youth activism that will help people to get courage, and to stand up for what they believe in,” he said.
A Trump-supporting Florida judicial candidate has had his law license suspended after saying that gay people will “face eternal damnation.”
Attorney Donald McBath has been suspended from the Florida Bar for violating the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct while running to become a state circuit court judge.
In a filing with the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Bar asserted that McBath had “failed to maintain the dignity appropriate to judicial office and act in a manner that is consistent with impartiality, integrity, and independence of the judiciary” due to anti-Muslim and anti-gay messages posted to social media.
Trump-supporting attorney claimed God can ‘heal’ gay people
One message posted to Twitter states: “If the homosexual continues committing that sin of sodomy, his soul faces ETERNAL damnation. Abstain, if you really have that mental illness. It’s not love.”
Another added: “A person with homosexual tendencies that abstains from committing the sin of sodomy, is a man that is trying to live and cope with their mental illness. A person could be healed with the right help from professionals and with the Grace of God.”
McBath – who described himself in his Twitter profile as a “100% Trump supporter #MAGA; #KAG; proud DEPLORABLE; Pro-God; Christian” – sent other messages referring to Muslims as “deranged” and claiming: “Never trust a Muslim.”
Donald McBath made the comments while running to become a judge
According to the Miami Herald, the state Supreme Court leveraged a 91-day suspension and a $1,386 fine against McBath after he declined to contest the state bar’s claims.
The suspension of his law license will run concurrently with a preexisting, unrelated suspension for incompetence, the newspaper reports.
‘Pro-God Christian’ lawyer worked as a divorce attorney
In a statement in 2018, McBath said: “I have very strong personal beliefs about what is right and wrong.
“As a Christian, I love homosexuals. I just don’t like the sinful act of sodomy. In my personal opinion, the Bible is clear as to the sin. It is unnatural.
“It doesn’t mean that two males or two females can’t be best friends. Our Lord Jesus Christ talks about the fact we should love the sinner but hate the sin.”
Despite his apparently devout Christian beliefs, McBath has worked as a divorce attorney.
At the dawn of the year 2010, few Americans could predict that the coming decade would revolutionize the legal and cultural landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. After all, it was only in 2003 that homosexuality was decriminalized across the country, thanks to a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Over the past 10 years, the United States saw the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, the emergence of transgender rights as the central frontier in the LGBTQ rights battle and the introduction of PrEP to fight the HIV epidemic. The decade also saw tragedies and setbacks, like the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and the trans military ban.
As the 2010s come to a close, NBC Out looks back to some of the decade’s many LGBTQ milestones.
Following through on a campaign promise, President Barack Obama on December 22, 2010, signed the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the 1994 Clinton administration policy that banned military service by openly gay people. DADT was a compromise after Clinton failed to deliver on a 1992 campaign promise to allow gay and lesbian Americans to join the military. The repeal went into effect in September 2011.
Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law on June 24, 2011, just hours after the New York State Senate passed the Marriage Equality Act. Spontaneous celebrations erupted across the state and particularly at New York City’s Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
Hillary Clinton: ‘Gay rights are human rights’
In an echo of her iconic 1995 speech in Beijing as First Lady, where she declared that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a speech on Dec. 6, 2011, to the United Nations declaring, “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”
Ahead of President Obama’s widely telegraphed “evolution” on same-sex marriage, Vice President Joe Biden in a May 2012 appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” announced that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage.
FDA approves Truvada as HIV PrEP
TruvadaAnthony Correia / NBC News
In July 2012, the Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada as HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, to prevent HIV acquisition in high-risk individuals, particularly gay men and transgender women. PrEP was controversial when approved but has grown more widely used and accepted as cities, states, and the federal government have moved to widely promote its use as a tool to end the HIV epidemic. In places like New York City that have high rates of PrEP uptake, HIV infection rates have begun to decline.
Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin became the first LGBTQ person ever elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2012. But even then, Baldwin — who was first elected to political office more than three decades ago at 24 — was no stranger to making history. In 1998, when she was elected to the House of Representatives, she became the first gay woman and the first openly LGBTQ nonincumbent elected to either chamber of Congress.
-2013-
Supreme Court axes Defense of Marriage Act
Edie Windsor on June 23, 2014 in New York City.Bryan Bedder / Getty Images for Logo TV
The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, passed in 1996 in response to Hawaii’s brief flirtation with legalizing same sex-marriage, was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the June 2013 landmark U.S. v. Windsor decision. The ruling allowed federal benefits to flow equally to same-sex married couples in Washington, D.C., and the 12 states where gay marriage was then legal.
-2014-
Laverne Cox appears on cover of Time
Laverne Cox on cover of TIME in 2014.TIME
Laverne Cox, best known for her role in the hit Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine in June 2014. A month later, she became the first trans person to be nominated for an Emmy.
-2015-
Caitlyn Jenner comes out as transgender
Caitlyn Jenner on Vanity Fair cover in 2015.Vanity Fair
In a coming out heard ’round the world, Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender in a glamorous June 2015 Vanity Fair cover photo shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Citing its 2013 decision that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, the Supreme Court in the landmark June 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision found a constitutional right to marriage that included same-sex couples, legalizing gay marriage nationwide. In an iconic image beamed around the world, the White House was lit in the colors of the LGBTQ pride flag to celebrate the ruling.
A gunman opened fire in the Orlando LGBTQ nightclub Pulse on June 12, 2016, killing 49 people. The shooting was briefly the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. In a subsequent trial of the shooter’s wife, details emerged showing that the gay club Pulse was chosen randomly after heterosexual clubs appeared to be too securely guarded.
On June 30, 2016, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that transgender Americans would be permitted to serve in the armed forces, sealing President Obama’s legacy as a leader in LGBTQ equality in the military. “This is the right thing to do for our people and for the force,” Carter said.
Kate Brown elected governor of Oregon
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown speaks to the crowd of supporters in Portland after being elected on Nov. 8, 2016.Steve Dykes / AP
Kate Brown, an out bisexual, made history in November 2016 when she became the first openly LGBTQ person to ever be elected governor of a U.S. state. She had become the governor by default the year prior, after the state’s longest-serving governor, John Kitzhaber, resigned amid a scandal.
-2017-
‘Moonlight’ wins Best Picture Oscar
Trevante Rhodes in “Moonlight.””Moonlight” – A24 / IMDB
The 2016 film tracks Chiron, a young black man, who is coming to terms with his homosexuality. “Moonlight” dazzled festival audiences and critics before becoming the first ever LGBTQ-centered film to win an Academy Award for best picture in 2017.
In a series of early morning tweets on July 26, 2017, that reportedly took the Department of Defense by surprise, President Donald Trump announced that he was reinstating the repealed ban on transgender military service.
Sharice Davids, Jared Polis and Angie CraigWhitney Curtis, Rick T. Wilking, Craig Lassig / Getty Images / AP Images for Human Rights Campaign
The LGBTQ candidates who saw victory in November 2018’s “rainbow wave” included Democrat Jared Polis, who became the first openly gay man elected governor in the United States, and DemocratSharice Davids, who flipped her district in Kansas against a four-term incumbent to become the first openly LGBTQ member of Congress from Kansas and one of the first two female Native Americans elected to Congress.
I launched a presidential exploratory committee because it is a season for boldness and it is time to focus on the future. Are you ready to walk away from the politics of the past?
In a video posted to Twitter on Jan. 23, 2019, Pete Buttigieg announced the formation of his presidential campaign exploratory committee. The millennial mayor spoke to NBC News and said he once “believed that coming out might be a career death sentence.” Buttigieg is the first openly gay man to ever appear in a Democratic primary debate.
On June 28, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the New York City riot that sparked the modern gay rights movement, #Stonewall50transformed into a giant global celebration of LGBTQ rights. New York City even hosted dueling, record-breaking LGBTQ pride marches
‘They’ is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year
The word “they” is displayed on a computer screen on Dec. 6, 2019, in New York.Jenny Kane / AP
In a “data-driven” decision guided by internet users’ searches, the dictionary brand announced in mid-December that the word of the year is the nonbinary singular pronoun “they,” which preferred by some transgender and nonbinary people. Merriam-Webster added the entry in September.
Canada’s federal government posed a rather simple question to its residents: are they comfortable with LGBT+ people?
In a preliminary assessment to better understand the challenges faced by the country’s queer community, a wing of the government surveyed Canadians and found an overwhelming amount are, indeed, comfortable.
Phew.
‘We obviously have more work to do’, LGBT+ activists say.
The survey, conducted in the summertime, asked Canadian citizens whether they would be comfortable if their neighbour, manager or doctor was LGBT+, Global Newsreported.
Around 91.8 per cent said that would be comfortable if a next-door neighbour were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and 87.6 per cent would be comfortable if that neighbour were trans.
“It’s really good to see the attitude of Canadians changing and being more open and inclusive,” said Helen Kennedy, executive director of the LGBTQI2S advocacy group Egale Canada.
“We obviously have more work to do. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
Hundreds of thousands came out to celebrate Toronto’s Pride Parade. (Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
The survey was conducted by the Privy Council Office, the department that supports the work of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Weekly polls are part and parcel of the PCO, and for the survey on the week of July 26, the body included six questions that gauged Canada’s attitudes towards queer folk.
The poll questions were:
“How comfortable would you be in each of the following situations?
If you had a next-door neighbour who was gay, lesbian, or bisexual
If you had a next-door neighbour who is a transgender person
If you had a manager or supervisor who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual
If you had a manager or supervisor who was a transgender person
If you had a doctor who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual
If you had a doctor who was a transgender person.”
The survey suggested that 90.5 per cent of Canadians are ‘very comfortable’ or ‘somewhat comfortable’ with an LGB boss, versus 7.6 per cent who said they would be ‘somewhat uncomfortable’ of ‘very uncomfortable’.
Sightly less Canadians are comfortable with trans doctors, poll suggests.
Moreover, 88.2 per cent said they’d be ‘comfortable’ versus 10.2 per cent ‘uncomfortable’ with an LGB doctor.
Although, this number dipped slightly with trans medics – 79.9 per cent ‘comfortable’ and 17.6 per cent ‘uncomfortable’.
“The separate questions regarding gender identity were deliberate given experiences of discrimination faced by many transgender people in Canada,” PCO spokesperson Stephane Shank said in e-mail Saturday.
“The Government of Canada is committed to better understanding the challenges faced by LGBTQ2 people.
“That is why the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth [Bardish Chagger] has been given a mandate to consult civil society representatives of LGBTQ2 communities to lay the groundwork for an LGBTQ2 action plan that would guide the work of the federal government on issues important to LGBTQ2 Canadians.”
The findings of the study comes after Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party secured asecond mandate to helm the government earlier this year.
Trudeau’s administration has several positive initiatives for the community in the pipeline, such as increased funding to aid LGBT+ organisations hire more staff and expand and banning conversion therapy.
