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▪ Never Again is Now ▪ GoCompassion ▪ Of One Soul Interfaith Sanctuary ▪ Comite Vida
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Featured speaker: Elaine Leeder, Dean Emerita, Sonoma State University on the History of American Jewish immigration.
It surveyed 866 teenage boys in community settings like after school programmes and libraries, covering 20 lower-resource neighbourhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
According to researchers it is the first study to ask teenage boys about violence and attitudes to gender in “US urban, community-based settings”, rather than schools or clinics.
Researchers found that when male high school students supported equality between genders, they were less likely to engage in violent behaviours, for example bullying or sexual violence.
Boys who had seen their peers engage in at least two different abusive behaviours towards women and girls were twice as likely to commit rape and five times as likely to bully others, regardless of gender.
However, of the 866 teenagers, 73.2 percent had engaged in homophobic teasing, for example calling other “homo” or “gay” in a derogatory way.
The study describes the result as “puzzling”, because in contrast to other violent behaviours, views on gender equality had no effect on levels of homophobic teasing, even though questions assessing their views on equality included some about homophobia.
Alison Culyba, assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, told CNN: “It is so commonplace, they may see it as a form of acceptable, possibly even pro-social, interaction with their peers.”
Homophobic, biphobic and transphobic teasing and bullying severely affects teenagers around the world, and can lead to mental health problems and even suicide.
If you don’t know who Jenna Ellis is, you are hardly alone. Many officials at the upper echelons of Trumpworld don’t really know her, either.
In more than a dozen conversations with senior figures in the White House, 2020 campaign, and broader Trump orbit, barely anybody had known Ellis as more than a blip on the Fox News radar—if that—before this October. “She literally came out of nowhere,” said one person close to President Donald Trump.
And yet, Ellis, a constitutional law attorney who’d worked since last year as the public policy director at the James Dobson Family Institute, has quickly gone from relative obscurity to talking directly with the president about politics and impeachment. In recent weeks, he’s reached out to her to ask about fighting back against his Democratic enemies, and has casually analyzed and praised her TV hits when she’s not around, say two people with knowledge of the president’s conversations.
“She gets it,” Trump has privately gushed in the past month, according to one of these sources.“I’m disappointed conservatives are acquiescing to the LGBT agenda… The Orlando shooting was absolutely terrible and tragic. But the response to this tragedy should not be embracing and advocating for gay rights.”— Jenna Ellis, after the Pulse nightclub massacre
More recently, Ellis says she’s even had the opportunity to flex her influence by counseling the president on his bombastic six-page letter delivered to Capitol Hill shortly before he was impeached this month, bashing Democratic leaders and insisting that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials” in the 17th century.
“I reviewed [the letter]…but it’s 100 percent him. It’s perfect,” Ellis told PJ Medialast week. The letter’s drafting process included White House brass such as Trump’s immigration adviser and chief speechwriter Stephen Miller, though White House attorneys were largely cut off from the initial process.
As of November, Ellis has been a senior legal adviser to both the Trump campaign and the president, and she’s quickly earned accolades from Trump’s core group of political advocates, not just for her legal work but for her reliably on-message cable news appearances.
“Jenna is an accomplished legal mind and a valuable asset to the President and campaign team,” Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, told The Daily Beast in a brief statement. “She is a strong advocate for the President and provides compelling legal analysis. We are thrilled she is on the team.” (Ellis did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.)
Indeed, Ellis has earned an honor befitting the president’s favorite aides, pundits, and public advocates: being retweeted by the big man himself. Trump even promoted a whole anti-impeachment tweetstorm of hers this month to his 68 million followers.
Behind the scenes, Trump is known to seek Ellis’ counsel, recently on matters pertaining to his impeachment, which Ellis has taken to her platforms on Fox and at the Washington Examiner to deride as a legal and political sham. From September to November, the West Wing promoted no fewer than five of Ellis’ Examiner columns in official White House newsletters.
Ellis, meanwhile, has made herself seen at—where else?—the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., where she’s been pictured since November mingling with Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Fox host Jeanine Pirro, senior Trump campaign aide Mercedes Schlapp, and Marc Lotter, the campaign’s director of strategic communications.
Ellis already had some notable connections in Trumpworld that aligned her with both its public communications apparatus and the machinery it constructed to beat back the many investigations and legal challenges it’s faced since Trump took office.
Prior to her promotion to senior legal adviser, Ellis had been a member of Trump’s 2020 media advisory board, a collection of TV and radio surrogates for the president and campaign that had been overseen by Trump campaign communications hand Mark Serrano. And according to state bar records in Colorado, she has also worked for Serrano’s firm, ProActive Communications.
Serrano also ran comms for the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust established to help pay legal bills accrued by White House aides and other Trump allies during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Ellis has also collaborating with two of Trump’s top outside allies, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. and Charlie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump student group Turning Point USA. Kirk and Falwell have teamed up to form the eponymous Falkirk Center and Liberty, a think tank devoted, more or less, to promoting Trumpism as a political philosophy. Ellis serves as an “ambassador” to the group.
Ellis’ roots are firmly in the Christian right. Her 2015 book, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution, argues that progressive judicial philosophy has spawned “a culture that lacks objective morality and embraces secular ideas” and urges the country to “get back to being a biblically moral, upright society.”
“In an increasingly politically and religiously diverse America, we have been sold the idea that the political questions of government, rather than being dependent on faith, are completely separate,” Ellis argued in a 2017 column. “But the Founders saw these questions of who we say Jesus is and what we say government is [as] inextricably intertwined.”
Much of her recent fire as a legal commentator has been aimed at the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. And while she couches those arguments in legal terms, Ellis has also exhibited some general antipathy to the gay community. Her book complains that the Supreme Court “told the LGBT community that their homosexual lifestyle was not just legal privately, but morally validated openly through government recognition and social celebration and therefore equally as valued as heterosexual unions.”
In the wake of a 2015 shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 49 dead, Ellis penned a column that condemned the massacre, but bemoaned that it was being used to dignify homosexuality.
“I’m disappointed conservatives are acquiescing to the LGBT agenda,” Ellis wrote. “Let me be clear—the Orlando shooting was absolutely terrible and tragic. But the response to this tragedy should not be embracing and advocating for gay rights.” The piece was headlined, “Two Wrongs Do Not Make an LGBT Right.”
Ellis’ husband, David Rives, is also a Trump supporter who runs an online broadcast network devoted to promoting Creationism and frequently contributes video segments to the far-right conspiracy website WorldNetDaily. As his wife advised the Trump campaign over the summer, Rives signed onto a letter from a number of faith leaders calling for a “national day of prayer for President Donald J. Trump.”
Ellis’ elevation into the president’s inner sanctum comes as Trump’s historically strong support in the evangelical community has been challenged in some minor, but notable, ways.
Last week, the editor in chief of the prominent evangelical magazine Christianity Today published a scathing op-ed hammering Trump’s “profoundly immoral” conduct and calling for his removal from office. Hours later, Ellis penned Trumpworld’s rebuttal at the Examiner.
The Christianity Today op-ed “is so devoid of any pretense of understanding the Constitution I am genuinely embarrassed for evangelicals (of which I am a member),” she wrote. “Pious ‘Never Trumpers’ who feel morally justified about this impeachment charade are as morally reprehensible as Democrats.”
International teachers in some Indonesian schools are being subjected to intrusive ‘psychological exams’ aimed at uncovering their sexual orientation and attitude towards LGBT+ rights.
Questions seen by the New York Times include “Agree or disagree: ‘I would feel uncomfortable knowing my daughter’s or son’s teacher was homosexual,’” and “True or false: ‘The gender composition of an orgy would be irrelevant to my decision to participate.’”
Some questions were reserved specifically for men, such as: “I wouldn’t want to die without having experimented sexually with both men and women,” and “I can be sexually attracted to anyone in the right circumstances.”
Homosexuality is currently not illegal in Indonesia except in the autonomous province of Aceh, where LGBT+ people can be caned under Shariah law.
However, the test is allowed under a 2015 government regulation that prohibits international schools from hiring foreign teachers who have ‘an indication of abnormal sexual behaviour or orientation.’”
This regulation applies to the 168 international schools across the country and requires schools have a psychologist certify that each teacher holds acceptable views. Teachers critical of the tests have been afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.
One school, The Mentari Intercultural School in Jakarta, reportedly asked at least 38 questions concerning sexual orientation and attitude towards LGBT+ rights.
Teachers there were asked whether they agreed that Pride celebrations are “ridiculous because they assume an individual’s sexual orientation should constitute a source of pride,” and if they thought they should try to reduce students’ prejudice toward homosexuality.
“For foreign teachers, if the psychologist declares that a candidate has a deviant sexual orientation, certainly the school will not hire that person,” a Ministry of Education and Culture official told the New York Times.
Anti-LGBT+ sentiment is growing in Indonesia
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and is becoming increasingly intolerant towards gay rights, with the newly-elected vice president, Ma’ruf Amin, supporting criminalisation of LGBT+ people.
It recently emerged that several Indonesian ministries have issued an outright ban on LGBT+ applicants, saying they only want to hire “the normal ones” without “behavioural deviations”.
The LGBTQ+ Danger Index recently ranked Indonesia as one of the many countries unsafe for LGBT+ travel due to its censorship laws and lack of criminalisation of violence.
President Donald Trump’s Interior Department removed “sexual orientation” from a statement in the agency’s ethics guide regarding workplace discrimination.
“You shall adhere to all laws and regulations that provide equal opportunities for all Americans regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, or handicap,” reads one of 14 principles of ethical behavior in the agency’s 2017 guidelines.
The 2009 version President Barack Obama’s Interior Department issued included the categories “race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability.”
The above-linked report notes that current Interior Sec. David Bernhardt literally red-lined the phrase out of a letter sent on his first day with the agency in 2017 while serving in a lesser role. Hit the link for more.
Since they married in 2015, Jonathan Hobgood, 37, and his husband, Kerry Johnson, 36, have wanted to be dads. At first, the couple saw adoption as the best path to parenthood, but South Carolina, where they live, is one of 10 states with religious exemption laws that make it more difficult for same-sex couples to foster and adopt, and they worried that adopting would set them up for a legal nightmare down the road.
“Our concern was that if we did a private adoption and the birth mother decided a couple of years later that she wanted her child back, we would be in for a rather extensive legal battle to try to keep the child,” Hobgood told NBC News. “Most likely the courts would have sided with the biological mother, so that became a big worry for us. So we just decided, ‘Well, let’s take ourselves down the surrogacy path from there.’”
The couple did their research. The cost of hiring a female surrogate, they learned, would be steep — $120,000 to $150,000, a price that Hobgood, a project specialist for a medical insurance company, and Kerry, a management analyst with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, could hardly afford. But it did not deter them.
“I knew I wanted to be a child’s father,” Hobgood said. “I really just wanted to go through and enjoy bringing up this wonderful child who is a part of our family.”
Hobgood and his husband are among an increasing number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the U.S. planning to have children, according to data released this year by the Family Equality Council, a national nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ families. And despite the additional financial barriers for many prospective parents in this group, this increased desire to have children was found across income levels, according to a report the council released this month, “Building LGBTQ+ Families: The Price of Parenthood.”
The Family Equality Council polled 500 LGBTQ and 1,004 non-LGBTQ adults, and found that the desire to become parents is nearly identical among both lower- and higher-income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Forty-five to 53 percent of LGBTQ people between the ages of 18 and 35 are planning to become parents for the first time or add another child to their family (compared to 55 percent for their non-LGBTQ counterparts, a gap that has narrowed significantly compared to older generations).And those making less than $25,000 a year plan to have children at a similar rate to those making over $100,000, according to the report.
Amanda Winn, the council’s chief program officer, was surprised by the findings.
“I was expecting that folks who were living at the poverty line would report lower rates of wanting to bring children into the home knowing that finances were tight, but that’s not the case,” Winn told NBC News. “That innate, strong desire to have families exists regardless of income levels.”
LGBTQ prospective parents are more likely to face financial hurdles than their heterosexual peers, according to the report. Reasons include their relatively lower annual household incomes and the additional costs associated with having a child using an option other than sexual intercourse, which is considered by only 37 percent of LGBTQ people planning to start their families or have more children.
Assisted reproductive technology: ‘an impossible barrier’ for some
Thanks to advancements in assisted reproductive technology (ART), such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, more LGBTQ people can have children through nontraditional methods, and interest is growing. Forty percent of LGBTQ people are considering such technology to conceive children, according to a Family Equality Council survey published in February — but many of these prospective parents will pay for it out of their own pockets, and the technology can be expensive.
“Most LGBTQ+ individuals will learn that their health insurance plan does not cover the cost of fertility treatments at all, and, if they do, the individual or family unit must prove that they have been ‘trying’ to conceive for 6-12 months before coverage begins,” the Family Equality Council report states. “This stipulation in the policy results in high monthly expenses for some and creates an impossible barrier for others.”
The report outlines the diverse array of options now available to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people looking to have children, and the costs associated with them, which can range from less than $300 for those using a known sperm donor to over $150,000 for those pursuing gestational surrogacy.
Same-sex female couples typically rely on artificial insemination with donated sperm to conceive children, which usually costs several thousand dollars and is not always covered by insurance. If two women choose to have a child through reciprocal in vitro fertilization, where the fertilized egg of one partner is implanted in another, the cost is higher — typically from $12,000 to $15,000 for a basic cycle, according to Internet Health Resources.
Chandra Chester, with her wife, Lynn Doyle and their two children.Lisa Fleet
Chandra Chester, 40, and her wife, Lynn Doyle, 37, both social workers who live in Maryland’s Baltimore County, conceived two children — a daughter, 4, and a son, 1 — through artificial insemination without IVF.
Chester said their insurance covered some of the cost, but she estimated they spent about $6,500 out of pocket for their pregnancies, including one that ended in miscarriage. Additionally, the sperm, which came from the same anonymous donor for both children, cost $500 yearly to store, she said.
On top of fertility care and doctor visits, the couple pays $30,000 annually on day care for both kids. Along with food, clothing, diapers and other necessities, paying for their children consumes at least 50 percent of their gross annual income, said Chester, who works two jobs to make ends meet and will soon get a third. She said in hindsight, she wishes she had saved up more money for the fertility expenses and day care before having kids.
“I knew it was going to be expensive,” Chester said, “but I had no clue it would be this expensive.”
Impact of ‘religious freedom’ adoption laws
State laws that limit gay couples’ ability to adopt can make the process even more difficult and costly, with some prospective parents opting to relocate to more LGBTQ-friendly states to adopt or pursue fertility treatments.
Kenneth Livingston and his husband, Ashley Redmond, both in their 30s, moved from Mississippi to Boston in 2013 so they could adopt a child. Livingston said it would have been too difficult to adopt in Mississippi, where adoption agencies could legally turn them away and where their marriage wasn’t yet legally recognized.
“We moved away from Mississippi not just to adopt, but to raise our child in a state that embraces diversity and inclusion, and we would never have that in Mississippi,” Livingston said.
At least nine states permit state-licensed child welfare agencies to refuse to place children with LGBTQ families if doing so directly conflicts with their religious beliefs, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. In November, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would allow faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to continue receiving taxpayer funding even if they exclude LGBTQ families and others from their services based on religious beliefs.
Foster care is the least expensive route to parenthood for most LGBTQ people, and typically costs no more than $2,600, according to the Family Equality Council report, but many can be turned away in states with religious exemptions.
Kelly McGlasson in Sparta, N.J. in December 2018.Courtesy of Kelly McGlasson
Kelly McGlasson, 43, a single lesbian in northern New Jersey, always wanted to be a mom, but she didn’t have an insurance policy that covered fertility and couldn’t afford private adoption. So McGlasson, an early childhood coach for a nonprofit that advocates for children, decided to adopt through the foster care system in New Jersey, one of seven states that explicitly prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people in foster care and adoption.
“It was something I knew I needed, to be a mom, and time was running out,” she said. “So I made that choice.”
Helping to offset the ‘price of parenthood’
A number of programs have emerged in recent years that help LGBTQ people offset the relatively high cost of building their families.
When LGBTQ couples choose to privately adopt a child without going through the foster care system, the cost can be $20,000 to $70,000, depending on whether the adoption is domestic or international, according to the “Building LGBTQ+ Families: the Price of Parenthood” report.
Even in Massachusetts, Livingston and his husband have struggled to adopt a child. Ashley, a freelance event planner, has had difficulty finding steady full-time employment. Livingston, a contract specialist, is the couple’s main source of income. The couple, who have been waiting to adopt since January 2018, saved as much money as they could since their move, obtained a no-interest $10,000 loan through a charity that works with their Massachusetts-based adoption agency, and qualified for a $15,000 grant from Help Us Adopt, a nonprofit that helps people adopt children regardless of “race, religion, gender, ethnicity, marital status or sexual orientation.”
Kenneth Livingston, left, and his husband, Ashley, on Ogunquit, Maine.Courtesy of Kenneth Livingston
Livingston said adopting would be “extremely difficult” for him and his husband without the financial assistance.
“It’s just helping us avoid further debt, and helps us fulfill our wish of becoming parents, and allowing us to focus more on preparing for a child and less time worrying about finances,” he said.
Interest among same-sex male couples who wish to have biological children through surrogacy is growing, but few can afford it, according to Lisa Schuster, a program manager for Men Having Babies, a nonprofit that provides financial assistance to men who want to become parents through surrogacy. Annual applications for financial assistance rose from 157 in 2014, when the grant program began, to over 450 applicants in 2019, Schuster said.
“The demand is huge, and there is also a growing trend of younger and younger men who are wanting to start families and are looking to surrogacy,” she said.
When Hobgood and his husband, who live just outside Columbia, South Carolina, learned they qualified for financial assistance to pursue surrogacy through the Men Having Babies program, they were thrilled.
“At first, I was in that shock mode,” Hobgood recalled.
The program also helped connect the couple with a surrogate, and it is helping them navigate through the complex medical and legal process of surrogacy.
Even with the financial assistance, Hobgood and his husband will pay about $70,000 — roughly half of what they would pay without the assistance, according to Hobgood. But the couple’s journey to fatherhood is far more certain than ever before, and will likely end with a trip to Iowa, where their prospective surrogate lives, to witness the birth of their child.
That’s the “most exciting part,” Hobgood said — “just having our family grow.”
A trans woman and activist who tirelessly worked to battle transphobia was allegedly murdered last weekend in Canada and a suspect has been arrested.
Julie Berman, 51, based in Toronto, had for years exerted energy in raising awareness of the rocketing rates of anti-trans violence across the city.
She lit candles and delivered potent and inspirational speeches at Transgender Day of Remembrance vigils, loved ones and colleagues said.
But according to authorities, she was killed in a downtown boarding home near the corner of Brunswick Avenue and Harbord Street, a residential neighbourhood with fish and chips eateries and university accommodation.
Toronto Police said officers were called to the scene, near Bathurst and Bloor Streets, at around 2:20pm on December 20, theToronto Sun reported.
‘Let the lights shine on the wonderful life and courageous advocacy of Julie Berman’.
While information is scant, detectives alleged that the victim suffered from head injuries and Toronto local Colin Harnack was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
She was swiftly taken to hospital, but medics pronounced her death later that day.
Local authorities have yet to confirm she is trans, but numerous loved ones and community leaders have identified her and gathered to mourn their loss.
“Let the lights shine on the wonderful life and courageous advocacy of Julie Berman, a trans woman from Toronto who was murdered this weekend,” said Freddie Arps, a legal aid.
“Another trans woman, taken from the world too soon,” explained Karl Jennings, a trans activist.
“She had reported harassment to some of her friends, earlier in the week – though I have not heard yet if this is connected to her murder.
“Sadly the first transgender death since the yearly November 20th memorial – sadly the first Toronto name on the 2020 list.”
Pride Toronto confirmed her passing on December 24, describing Berman as a “staunch supporter […] and a good person.
Moreover, community leaders stated that the suspect in her reported killing is not known to be a member of the LGBT+ community, The Globe and Mailreported.
Via press release from hate group leader Mat Staver:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that burning the American flag is First Amendment protected speech. But if you burn an LGBT flag, it’s another story. An Iowa court just sentenced a man to 16 years in prison after he torched an LGBT flag.
That’s a hate crime in Iowa, which means Adolfo Martinez, who stole the pro-homosexual banner off a church and used lighter fluid to set it aflame, will spend the next decade-and-a-half behind bars.
What he did was wrong, but no one was hurt or verbally threatened. Sixteen years is an extreme and disproportionate sentence. It’s also an ominous signal of LGBT power and the growing threat it poses to your freedom and mine.
That’s why—with your help—we fought throughout this year to STOP the radical LGBT assault on freedom misnamed as the “Equality Act.”
Staver goes on to make the usual money beg but never mentions that Martinez got such a hefty sentence due to his prior felony convictions. Iowa has a three strikes-style mandatory sentencing guideline passed by the Republicanstate legislature.
Eleven Christian ministers and the Tennessee Independent Baptists for Religious Liberty (TIBRL) are challenging the legality of marriage certificates issued to same-sex couples.
The group filed a Declaratory Order with the Tennessee Department of Health on Thursday, arguing while the state is following a federal order allowing same-sex couples to wed in the state, there is nothing in the Tennessee Constitution which defines marriage as anything other than that between a woman and a man.
In a statement release by The Family Action Council of Tennessee’s Constitutional Government Defense Fund (FACT), which is representing the case, FACT says the “state’s definition of marriage implicates the civil rights of the ministers in regard to the liberty of conscience guaranteed to them under the Tennessee Constitution.”
Tennessee’s FACT has been battling to have Obergefelldeclared void since the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in 2015.
