A Wisconsin man was so badly beaten in an an alleged anti-gay hate crimeattack that he had to have all his teeth removed.
Cedrick Green of Racine, Wisconsin, is facing a hate crime charge of battery causing great bodily harm over the incident, as well as a charge of bail jumping.
Local outlet The Journal-Times reports that the victim, who is yet to come forward publicly, was attacked by three men who called him gay and taunted him for his sexual orientation.
Victim’s jaw was ‘so broken he had to have teeth removed’.
According to the criminal complaint, the victim was repeatedly beaten by the men, and sustained injuries to his face, jaw, arm and knee.
The complaint adds that the victim’s jaw “was broken so severely it required all of his teeth to be removed from his mouth”.
The victim managed to escape by running to a local petrol station for help, where he was able to get a ride home, before seeking medical attention.
Cedrick Green, 23, of Racine, Wisconsin, is facing a hate crime charge over the alleged anti-gay beating
The victim was able to identify Cedrick Green, 23, as one of the attackers after looking at a photo lineup.
The man who suffered the attack is yet to be identified, and the date of the incident was not included in the criminal complaint.
A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for October 17. The cash bond was set at $10,000.
String of previous convictions.
The newspaper adds: “Green also has several other criminal charges filed against him, including hit-and-run, theft, domestic abuse, battery, criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct, and resisting or obstructing an officer.
“He also has prior convictions for carrying a concealed weapon, possession of THC, theft, and resisting or obstructing an officer.”
A Russian court has ruled that two crucial LGBT+ groups must be disbanded on the country’s largest social network, VKontakte, for “denying family values”.
The Russian LGBT Network, which was instrumental in evacuating 150 people threatened by the anti-gay purges in Chechnya, must no longer be active on VKontakte.
The social site, owned by internet company Mail.Ru, has around 100 million users and ranks as the second largest global social network.
LGBT+ advocacy groups “propagate nontraditional sexual relations”, says court.
Now the queer activist group, as well as Russian LGBT Community, must decamp from the network, severing contact from a large portion of Russians.
This is the result of the county’s controversial ‘gay propaganda law’. The unanimously approved federal bill has prohibited even the mention of homosexuality since 2013.
The Oktyabrsky District Court found that the groups “deny family values, propagate nontraditional sexual relations and cause disrespect to parents and other family members,” according to a Russian LGBT Network news release.
Members and supporters of the LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) community take part in a May Day rally in Saint Petersburg on May 1, 2015. AFP PHOTO / OLGA MALTSEVA (Photo credit should read OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images)
Moreover, the group stated that judge Yelena Nikolayeva granted the prosecutor’s request to block the pages after both were monitored for content that violates censorship regulations.
The analysis found “pictures, photos and video content demonstrating homosexual love between men and women” which is “considered to be promotion of nontraditional sexual relations”.
As well as information “which neglects family values, promotes nontraditional sexual relations and forms disrespect to parents and/or other family members”.
By ousting the queer groups, it has thrown the country’s queer population even further into the margins. One where caustic laws mute and deny LGBT+ people rights.
Svetlana Zakharova, communications manager of the Russian LGBT Network, confirmed to PinkNews that the group plans to appeal the ruling at the St. Petersburg City Court.
“We have 30 days before the decision of the court enter into force,” she said.
“We believe that our rights to freedom of speech and expression were severely violated. We believe that all our materials should be available for everyone including minors.”
Alexander Belick, a lawyer for the Russian LGBT Network, emphasised in the release that censorship is commonplace in the country and that the court’s judgements were all identical – right down to “grammatical mistakes”.
He also referenced the Roskomnadzor, a federal service responsible for media censorship, which has blocked pages in the past without asking the owner for information, he claimed.
Clamp downs on LGBT+ groups in Russia has happened both and online and offline.
Moreover, a student last month was allegedly expelled from a university after the institution’s in-house social media monitoring combed his account, reportedly finding LGBT+ content.
Pharmacists in California will be able to dispense HIV prevention pills to patients without a doctor’s prescription after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Monday that supporters say will greatly reduce the spread of infection.
Advocates of Senate Bill 159 say California is the first state to authorize pre-exposure prophylaxis, also called PrEP, and post-exposure prophylaxis, known as PEP, without prescriptions. California is already considered a leader in AIDS prevention, they say.
PrEP is a once-daily pill for HIV-negative people while PEP is a medication that people take to prevent the virus from taking hold. Supporters say PEP significantly reduces the risk of infection, but only if started within 72 hours of exposure to the virus.
Not everyone can get to a doctor in that time frame, says Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California.
“The ability to go into a pharmacy to avail themselves of the medication is a huge improvement to removing a barrier,” he said.
He says the law will greatly improve access and help reduce the stigma around the drugs, especially in rural areas and among minorities.
Nearly 30,000 people in California use PrEP and 6,000 use PEP, according to the California Health Benefits Review Program, which provides analysis to the Legislature.
The California Medical Association was initially opposed to the legislation but became neutral on it after it was amended to limit the number of PrEP pills patients can get without a physician’s note to 60 days, said Anthony York, spokesman for the association.
The association was concerned about “long-term use without physician oversight,” he said.
The law also prohibits insurance companies from requiring patients to get prior authorization before using insurance to get the drugs, eliminating another obstacle.
The bill was co-authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who has publicly disclosed that he takes PrEP as an HIV prevention strategy.
“To end new HIV infections, we must dramatically expand access to PrEP and PEP, yet far too many Californians who need these drugs struggle to access them,” he said.
Pharmacists in California are already authorized to dispense emergency contraceptives and birth control without a prescription.
Newsom also signed legislation Monday aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs. The new law targets so-called “pay for delay” agreements, when makers of brand-name drugs pay for makers of similar generic drugs to delay putting the products on the market.
The new law presumes such arrangements are anti-competitive and steps up enforcement to stop them.
Drug companies argue the bill will cause more delays for generic drugs by ensuring lengthy legal battles over patents.
Friday, October 117:00–9:00 p.m.The GLBT Historical Society Museum4127 18th St., San Francisco$5 | Free for members
In this illustrated presentation organized for National Coming Out Day on October 11, San Francisco resident Laura Hall recounts the life story of her gay father, Ralph, from 1918 to 2008. Hall was 24 when her father came out to her in 1975. She learned that in the late 1930s, her father had been in a relationship with a musician in Los Angeles. But two arrests for homosexual activity sent him back into the closet, prompted him to enlist in the Army and ultimately led him to marry a woman. With a panoramic sweep covering the conservative California Central Valley oilfield culture of Ralph Hall’s youth, to his postwar double life, to his care for dying friends during the AIDS crisis, this universal love story — a preview of Laura Hall’s recently completed memoirs — is a window into the life of a man who felt that he had no choice but to live in the shadows. Tickets are available online here.
A Florida judge has rejected a Tampa ordinance aiming to ban traumatising conversion therapy for minors, claiming that it would limit parental rights over their child’s healthcare.
Medical experts consider interventions to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity to be pseudo-scientific, ineffective and harmful.
The ordinance would have blocked professionals from providing ‘therapy’ to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of young people, but it was challenged by marriage and family therapist, Robert Vazzo, and Christian ministry New Hearts Outreach.
US district judge William Jung sided with Vazzo and New Hearts Outreach, and wrote in his decision that a conversion therapy ban would negatively impact “Florida privacy rights and rights to parental choice in healthcare”.
He added: “Nothing is more intimate, more private, and more sensitive, than a growing young man or woman talking to a mental health therapist about sex, gender, preferences, and conflicting feelings.”
Vazzo has previously denied that conversion therapy is harmful, and in an interview with Voices of the Silenced, he previously said: “I view homosexuality as a type of fetish where the object happens to be human.
“The first thing I do of course is take a history, and then what I look for is where is the wound. Where we find the eroticisation we also find a wound… Typically we find [traumas].
“The client himself might not be able to identify the trauma because it is buried and it’s unconscious, but we have many tools to bring those traumas to the surface.
“There’s no witch hunt, the trauma is there. It’s hidden, but there are symbols of it. In the case of homosexuality… it could be an overt complaint about a father who wasn’t there, about being bullied.”
The Florida judge said banning harmful conversion therapy would impact “parental rights.” (Envato)
New Hearts Outreach offers “one-on-one discipleship and healing prayer, weekly confidential support groups with accountability, and referral to licensed Christian counselling” to “heal” people of homosexuality.
Its motto is: “Glorifying God by connecting the sexually and relationally challenged to Jesus Christ.”
Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel, which is a designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT+ hate group, said in a statement: “This is a great victory for counsellors and clients… This ruling dooms every municipality in Florida and is the beginning of the end of more than 50 similar local laws around the country.”
A black transgender woman has described a confrontation in the ladies bathroom of an In-N-Out restaurant that left her feeling “demoralised, devalued and powerless”.
The encounter happened at an In-N-Out restaurant in the Bay Area, San Francisco. Mitchell was alone in the ladies loos when a manager approached her stall.
The woman reportedly misgendered Mitchell, telling her: “Sir, sir – you’re not supposed to be in here.” Mitchell responded: “Ma’am, it’s just me in here.”
Unfortunately, Mitchell says that wasn’t enough for the manager. “I thought she would leave and that would be it. But I’m a black transgender woman, and people don’t just let us live our lives,” she said.
The manager allegedly came up to the stall door and started looking through the cracks, and appeared to be scanning Mitchell’s body up and down.
(Tim Mossholder/Pexels)
“I got very scared. I clenched my purse to cover myself. I felt she was trying to look at my genitals, attempting to determine my gender. I asked her to leave while she continued to ask whether I was a man,” she said.
Eventually, the manager gave up and left Mitchell in peace. When Mitchell left the toilets she approached the woman and reminded her that she is “a human that deserves privacy in the bathroom”.
But the In-N-Out manager refused to explain her behaviour and just dismissed Mitchell: “I don’t have time for this.”
It was a crushing blow to her confidence. “I drove home to Oakland in a fog. I told my partner what happened and broke down crying angrily,” she recalled.
The “demoralising” encounter exacerbated her anxiety, stress and paranoia, and she grew increasingly depressed at a time when she was trying to focus on her career.
Afterwards she didn’t leave the house as she feared being harassed. When she felt able to go out again, she waited until she got home to use the bathroom as felt like “the safest thing to do”.
“I had regressed and had to rebuild my strength just to walk in and use a bathroom,” she said. “The smell of In-N-Out still bothers me.”
Mitchell filed a discrimination complaint against In-N-Out, as California’s laws clearly state that people can use bathrooms that match their gender identity.
But In-N-Out’s lawyers “made it clear that they do not feel the company did anything wrong”. A spokesperson told The Guardian that In-N-Out did not harass or discriminate against Mitchell and that the manager was not aware she was transgender.
A company report stated that a customer repeatedly raised the concern of a man in the women’s restroom. The manager claims she went to investigate, called out “Sir?” and when Mitchell answered “Excuse me?” she exited the bathroom after saying: “I’m sorry – we had a customer let us know there was a gentleman in here so I was just checking.”
Mitchell rejects this explanation, saying: “It felt as if they told me I was worth nothing. They offered me a settlement that I found offensive. I said no.”
She was encouraged to speak out ahead of an upcoming Supreme Court case that will decide if anti-LGBT+ employment discrimination qualifies as discrimination.
“I won’t be silent,” she insisted. “When it comes to black and brown trans folks, it feels like we don’t matter.
“Why can’t we exist in peace and have the same rights other people have? Why should somebody else’s opinion of what I should be get to dictate what my existence is?
“I’m asking that we are able to go about our lives and use the bathroom, without you kicking open the door and dragging us out.”
Samantha Boucher is on her way — both to Iowa for the 2020 U.S. Senate race there and to becoming the first openly transgender person to manage a U.S. senatorial campaign. Boucher, 24, will head Democratic candidate Kimberly Graham’s Senate campaign in the state against the Republican incumbent, Joni Ernst.
“Just the opportunity to do something so huge, to have a national impact, potentially, that really excites me, and I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth in,” Boucher told NBC News.
Trans people are entering the political arena during an era when their rights are increasingly under attack — from a recent military ban on trans service members to myriad Republican-backed “bathroom bills.” At least 20 trans candidates have been elected to city and state offices across the country in recent elections. Prominent trans activist Sarah McBride recently launched her 2020 campaign to run for the Delaware senate.
Graham, a lawyer who represents abused and neglected children, said she wants to ban conversion therapy and has vowed to push the Equality Act, a bill that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights law to prevent discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. She said she hired Boucher after realizing “how dedicated she is to changing things for the better through political action, through her own activism and through her own history.”
“I don’t think it’s OK for me to go around talking about social justice, LGBTQ+ rights, criminal justice reform and economic justice without hiring people for this campaign who reflect as much as possible all of that,” Graham told NBC News.
Graham will vie with four other Democrats — Michael Franken, Theresa Greenfield, Eddie Mauro and Cal Woods — for the right to take on Ernst.
As an out trans person, Boucher said the opportunity to manage a U.S. Senate campaign is “equal parts exciting and terrifying.”
Last year, Boucher served as a campaign manager to Danielle Mitchell, a doctor who won the Democratic primary but lost the general election in Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District. During that campaign, Boucher was not vocal about her identity. But the 2020 campaign in Iowa, she said, will be different, and she expects there to be controversy.
“To me, it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s not something to hide or try to avoid,” Boucher said. “It is a part of who I am, and it means I am well positioned to help represent a part of our country that just hasn’t been represented well before in government.”
Boucher has been a longtime activist for the LGBTQ community in eastern Tennessee where she lives and where she has spent most of her life. She organized Chattanooga’s Queer Community Forum, a local collective that fought for an LGBTQ equality ordinance in the city, and helped launch a “Queer the Vote” app that made it easy for voters in Chattanooga to identify which candidates on the 2018 ballot supported LGBTQ rights.
When Boucher isn’t advocating for the LGBTQ community, she’s using her tech skills as a volunteer intelligence analyst to save lives. She served on the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol and Team Rubicon, a nonprofit, all-volunteer force of ex-service members who conduct search and rescue missions domestically and internationally.
Boucher, who will be based in Des Moines, Iowa, during the campaign, said she hopes her position as Graham’s campaign manager will give a voice to trans people during a time when it’s needed most.
“There are a lot of people whose voices go unheard, a lot of people who are pushed out and disenfranchised from the system,” Boucher said. “But hopefully it will inspire others to know it’s not a door that’s closed to them, and it’s something they can accomplish, too.”
Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro went to Mexico to meet with migrants seeking U.S. asylum who are now required to stay south of the border under the Trump administration’s Migration Protection Protocols, also known as the Remain in Mexico policy.
As President Donald Trump pushed forward new restrictions on immigrants seeking visas to the United States, Castro visited a refugee encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville in deep South Texas. He planned specifically to meet with people with disabilities or who are LGBTQ, and also planned to cross the bridge with migrants to help them petition for asylum.
“There are thousands of migrants who are suffering because of Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy. They are being kidnapped, extorted and subjected to violence. I want to speak out particularly for the most vulnerable, migrants with disability and migrants who are LGBTQ. They’ve been particularly hurt by this policy,” he told NBC News in a phone interview before crossing the border.
“If I’m elected, I’ll end this policy immediately,” Castro said. He has said he’d do so through an executive order.
In a tweet, the campaign said several cases of migrants who are supposed to be exempt from the Remain in Mexico policy were being reviewed after Castro went with them to the international bridge and demanded to speak to Customs and Border Protection supervisors.
Under Trump’s policy, migrants must wait in Mexico in towns along the U.S. southern border while their asylum claims are considered. The policy almost completely cuts them off from legal assistance to navigate the asylum process. In addition, NBC News reported, the policy has led to more separations of families and subjected migrants to kidnapping, extortions and violence while they wait in Mexico.
Castro said migrants are supposed to be given opportunities to appeal being forced to remain in Mexico, but that exemption means “zero right now because the administration is not honoring it.”
His visit follows Trump’s announcement late Friday that legal immigrants would be denied visas if they could not prove they have health insurance or means to cover medical costs in the U.S. Castro had announced his trek to the border before the latest news emerged.
“This president uses migrants as a punching bag whenever he wants to rile up his base … Cruelty is his political lever and Americans of good conscience cannot allow him to make life worse for migrants simply so he can get more points,” he said.
Previously migrants considered to have a credible fear of persecution if they returned to their countries were allowed to remain in the U.S. while their case moved through the court process.
But as the number of people from Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador seeking asylum at the border increased and court docket backlogs expanded, Trump ordered they be made to remain in Mexico.
In a June letter to acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., raised concerns about the danger that migrants face under the new policy and the higher standard it set for asylum seekers to be exempted from it.
Grijalva said that the policy creates health and safety concerns for vulnerable populations, especially the LGBTQ community.
According to Grijalva’s letter, 83 percent of LGBTQ asylum-seekers and refugees from North Triangle countries who were interviewed by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees were victims of sexual and gender-based violence in their countries. Two-thirds reported sexual and gender-based violence in Mexico.
“Many of these individuals have been persecuted already where they are coming from,” Castro said in the telephone interview. “They’ve struggled tremendously in their home countries and journeyed to the U.S., and now they are being victimized disproportionately in Mexico.”
Castro was the first 2020 presidential candidate to roll out an immigration reform platform, which was the first policy proposal of his campaign. His proposal to make crossing the border without legal permission a civil violation rather than a criminal misdemeanor has drawn the most attention. Other candidates have since endorsed the idea and some have their own immigration proposals.
It is not illegal to seek asylum in the U.S. and many people had previously done so by crossing an international bridge connecting the U.S. and Mexico and requesting it at a port of entry. But the administration began limiting how many people could do that daily and in some places stopped it.
Along with ending the Remain in Mexico policy, Castro’s plan calls for increasing access to legal assistance for asylum-seekers and reversing guidance issued by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions that prevented victims of domestic or gang violence from seeking asylum. A federal district judge in the District of Columbia has struck down that prohibition, but the ruling is being appealed in the D.C. Circuit Court.
Locals in the city of Ames, Iowa, are delighted with their new Pride crossings – but the federal government isn’t.
The Trump administration told the town that they must remove the rainbow crosswalks, which are painted in different colours to represent different members of the LGBT+ community.
The Iowa city’s response? They’ve decided to say no.
Pride crosswalks don’t comply with federal rules.
The city was told in a letter last month from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that their Pride-themed crosswalks were in violation of federal rules, CNN reports.
The letter further said that they must remove the crosswalks as they fail to comply with traffic control standards. Federal rules dictate that crosswalks must only use white paint.
“Crosswalk art has a potential to compromise pedestrian and motorist safety by interfering with, detracting from, or obscuring official traffic control devices,” the letter said.
“The art can also encourage road users, especially bicycles and pedestrians, to directly participate in the design, loiter in the street, or give reason to not vacate the street in an expedient or predictable manner.
Crosswalk art has a potential to compromise pedestrian and motorist safety by interfering with, detracting from, or obscuring official traffic control devices.
“It also creates confusion for motorists, pedestrians, and other jurisdictions who may see these markings and install similar crosswalk treatments in their cities.
“Allowing a non-compliant pavement marking to remain in place presents a liability concern for the City of Ames in the event of a pedestrian/vehicle or vehicle/vehicle collision.”
Ames city attorney says the federal government does not have jurisdiction over the road.
However, the FHWA’s claims may not be entirely correct. Ames city attorney Mark O Lambert sent a memo to the mayor saying that he believes the federal body does not have control over the roads where their Pride crosswalks are based.
He also said that they were unlikely to face monetary penalties for keeping the Pride crossings in place.
The Ames City Council discussed the issue at a meeting last week and decided on their plan of action: they would do nothing.
Council member Chris nelson asked at the meeting if they need to do anything, the Ames Tribune reported.
“Can we just accept the letter and say thank you?”
It appears that that is exactly what they are going to do.
History was made 30 years ago on October 1, 1989, when Denmark became the first country in the world to allow same-sex couples to tie the knot.
The trailblazing move was the culmination of a 40 year campaign by Danishcivil rights activists, and it would spearhead the equal marriage movement for decades to come.
‘Registered partnerships’, as they were then known, gave same-sex couples almost all the same rights as heterosexual ones, with the exception of adopting or sharing joint custody of a child.
The Danish bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of 71-47. The opposition came mainly from the small Christian People’s Party which calledthe legislation unnatural, unethical and dramatically at odds with the laws of other countries.
But this, too, would change: just three years later, Norway would follow Denmark’s lead with a similar registered partnership bill, as would Sweden in 1994 and Iceland and Greenland in 1996.
Taiwan recently became the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriages (Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty)
The move towards full same-sex marriages began with the Netherlands in 2000. But the LGBT+ community will never forget that day in 1989 when 11 Danish same-sex couples were legally wed with the eyes of the world on them.
The very first were were Axel and Eigil Axgil, who were 74 and 67 years old at the time and have now sadly passed away. The second were Ivan and Ove Carlsen, who recalled the unforgettable day in an interview with AFP.
It was a pioneering act to get married that day,” said Ivan. “It was a ceremony that takes place every day at city hall. But for us, for the first time in history two men could experience this ceremony.”
Ove and Ivan Carlsen (left) were the second same-sex couple to marry in Denmark (Francis Dean/Corbis/Getty)
“We thought it was necessary to talk about what was happening in Denmark, to spread the message: it’s OK and it was possible,” Ove said.
Ivan, a Lutheran pastor, had met Ove, a psychologist, three and a half years earlier. Both dressed in cream-coloured suits, with Ove wearing a pink bow tie and Ivan wearing a blue one.
“We had been told that you can have 25 guests with you at city hall,” said Ivan. “We had three.”
“Because of the journalists,” his husband added.
Ivan and Ove married again in 2012 when full marriages were offered to same-sex couples. The pair are now enjoying their retirement in a cosy Copenhagen apartment they share together.
They may have been the first gay couple to marry but they are far from the last – today same-sex marriages are legal in 28 countries, with a further 16 recognising civil partnerships.
