Opinions

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Affirming LGBTQ youth will save their lives

As Americans, we encounter diversity daily. While we continue to see some signs of progress, the 2021 LGBTQ Youth Mental Health Study by the Trevor Project noted that at least once in their lifetime, 75% of LGBTQ youth reported experiencing discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. No matter how much progress we make, discrimination in any form hurts and can have a grave impact on one’s mental health. As the Director of Health Care International’s (HCAI) Youth & Family program, I have the good fortune of being able to speak to teachers, parents, school administrators and kids […]

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When I started growing breasts as a teen boy, I got gender-affirming care without stigma

The trial over Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for trans children recently began. As vulnerable children await to hear if their bodily autonomy will be stripped away, we should remember that cisgender children seek gender-affirming care with relatively little social stigma attached.  Twenty years ago, in rural Maine, I was one of them. As a teen boy who identified as a boy — randomly sprouting breasts really, really sucked. I hated my body, wore a shirt in the pool, dreaded the school locker room, dressed in layers and walked hunched over to hide my shape. When I was going through puberty, my […]

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Monkeypox reckoning

As the famous TV commercial went from the ‘70s – “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Mother Nature has a way of exacting her revenge.  The immediate task at hand is to educate gay and bisexual men how to avoid monkeypox and to get vaccinated. But it isn’t too early to assess what brought us to this point. In the last 10 years there has been a wholesale abandonment of safer sex promotion in favor of PrEP brought to you by Gilead. The result has been the destruction of the condom culture, which was so carefully built in the […]

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What women & LGBTQ people lose when church & state collide

After standing with Donald Trump throughout his morally reprehensible actions and policy directives, conservative Evangelical Christians – along with other anti-choice, anti-contraceptive, and anti-LGBTQ zealots – were downright giddy over the possibility of finally receiving some of the promised dividends for selling their souls to the Devil. This group has sacrificed all of their “deeply held religious beliefs.” They have stood with him from his destructive and epithet-laden tweets, to his promise of constructing a wall on our southern border, to the Access Hollywood tape, to revelations of his payoffs to quiet a porn star, to separating babies and young […]

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Republicans think keeping kids as ignorant as possible is the key to academic excellence

As the GOP lurches toward authoritarianism, one of its key tactics is to suppress free thinking. What better place to start that effort than in the schools (and by extension school libraries)? It’s no surprise that schools have emerged as one of the key battlegrounds in the culture war. But what’s less noticed is that in branding itself the education party, the GOP is actually the ignorance party. Republicans’ constant attacks on bogus controversies like critical race theory are just an excuse to dumb down the school curriculum. That’s because Republicans believe that schools are where children should be taught […]

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LGBTQ people: Canaries in a violent coal mine

Did you read about the group of staid U.S. historians who just met privately with President Biden to warn him that U.S. democracy is teetering? They told him we’re closer to civil war and authoritarian rule than at any point in history since the 1860s. Guess who knew that already? Queer people. Black people. Immigrants. Women. Politicians on the right are using us as punching bags, and violence is breaking out everywhere. It’s not in our imaginations, and I’ll show you the data in just a minute to back that up. Then I’ll explain what that has to do with […]

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Supporting LGBTQ rights is good for business and the right thing to do

In communities across the United States, LGBTQ+ people and their families are facing a growing number of significant barriers to equal rights and protections. In 2022 alone, at least 30 states have introduced anti-LGBTQ+ bills, with a majority targeting transgender and non-binary youth, on top of continued anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and bias in various states across the country. Despite progress toward equity and inclusion, the LGBTQ+ community is increasingly struggling for equality and basic human rights. I’m truly concerned for members of my community, given the impact these actions are having on our mental health and wellbeing. Several of my LGBTQ+ […]

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Senate Republicans are too quiet on marriage equality

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Will they or won’t they support marriage equality? That is the question facing Senate Republicans. Backers of the Senate version of the House’s Respect For Marriage Act think they are close to finding 10 Republican votes to make up the 60 votes needed to pass the measure and overcome a filibuster. But many Republicans have been very quiet about whether or not they support the bill. A common response is that they haven’t looked at the bill — a four-page document — yet.  Republican Senators Susan Collins and Rob Portman have co-sponsored the bill.  The time it’s taken just to confirm that eight more members of the GOP will vote yes on […]

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Call to Action:  BOYCOTT Luther Burbank Center for the Arts for Bringing Anti-LGBTQI+ Hate to Sonoma County

The tasteless, anti-LGBTQI+ comic Dave Chappelle performed five shows at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa.  It is difficult to believe the LBC staff and board were unaware of Chappelle’s numerous anti-LGBTQI+ comments that are well-documented and for which he has offered no apologies.  Chappelle identifies as a so-called “TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist)” joining author J. K Rawlings in such dangerous hate speech.  These people refuse to accept that we are in the position to declare our gender or lack thereof.  Netflix came under fire for producing and airing two Chappelle shows that feature anti-Trans comments. LGBTQI+ Netflix employees […]

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Lebanon: Unlawful Crackdown on LGBTI Gatherings

Lebanese authorities have unlawfully banned peaceful gatherings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, the Coalition to Defend Freedom of Expression in Lebanonsaid today. The ban violates LGBTI people’s constitutional rights to equality, free expression, and free assembly and Lebanon’s obligations under international law and comes during an economic crisis and a worsening climate for the rights of LGBTI people in the country. On June 24, 2022, Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi sent an urgent letter to the directorates of Internal Security and General Security instructing them to ban any gatherings aimed at “promoting sexual perversion.” The letter includes vague and overly broad grounds, citing […]

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