It happens every June. Well meaning folks supporting queer rights completely ignore the intersex community, people like myself who are born with sex characteristics (chromosomes, genitals, hormone levels and/or internal organs) that don’t align with typical notions of either “male” or “female” bodies. Although we make up nearly 2 percent of the population and have been speaking out about the human rights abuses based on our non-binary bodies for over three decades, we continue to be erased even by those in the rainbow community who share these experiences of oppression rooted in the same sexist, homophobic and transphobic stereotypes. Some intersex people identify as gay or trans, while many, like myself, do not. Nevertheless, we all experience similar harms largely based on other’s irrational fear of difference.
Traditional gender norms and non-scientific beliefs about binary sex are driving the most detrimental type of discrimination against the intersex community: Physical erasure through irreversible, nonconsensual and medically unnecessary procedures. These medical interventions often cause long term physical and emotional harms and have been deemed human rights abuses by the U.N. and other human rights bodies and organizations, yet continue to occur largely unregulated, around the world.
Much like the trans community, intersex people are also fighting for bodily autonomy. LGBT+ communities and their allies in the United States are well aware of the influx of hateful legislation denying trans youth the right to gender affirming healthcare. But nobody’s talking about the fact many of these bills include specific exclusions for intersex children expressly permitting doctors to irreverisbly surgically “fix” their healthy bodies without their consent. The same oppressive movement denying trans youth healthcare they want and need is promoting harmful unwanted intervention on intersex kids. And it seems to go unnoticed and without a peep from the queer community.
Kudos to President Biden for recongizing the intersex community and including us in the recent White House statement in support of Pride month. It is time for the LGBTQ+ movement to finally join the fight for intersex rights and the celebration of intersex lives.
As someone who has spent over three decades fighting for the rights of our LGBTQ+ communities, particularly safe spaces for our youth, I have seen and been part of many forward changes. I lead the LGBT Network, which held the first LGBTQ+ youth prom in America’s suburbs, started the first recognized Parent-Teacher Association in the nation to focus on LGBTQ+ youth, and opened America’s first LGBTQ+ senior affordable housing in suburbia. We have helped to start hundreds of gay-straight alliance clubs in our schools and have been a part of the many struggles, rallies, and fight for full equality and equity. After watching the most recent episode of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, it feels like 1993 all over again, although this time it’s different and even more frightening.
On last Friday’s Real Time With Bill Maher, Maher said the number of youth identifying as LGBTQ+ is rising because it’s “trendy,” while he spewed other harmful, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. Maher continued his vitriolic commentary by taking several more potshots at LGBTQ+ youth, including claims that society was “experimenting” on children through the use of puberty blockers and genital surgery as a means to perpetuate culture wars. Maher correlated his comments on “trendiness” with statistics on LGBTQ+ youth in California versus other states, like Ohio, claiming that “either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them.”
Back in 1993, I would chalk this up to ignorance and truly believed education would help folks to critically think and change, and it did. But today is different, and the alarm bell is ringing — loud! The onslaught of attacks legislatively and in the media against our community goes well beyond ignorance; it is hateful, purposeful, and intentional. We need to wake up and be smart in our fight, as all our LGBTQ+ youth need us now more than ever. We need to speak up and hold everyone accountable, even those who purport to be “liberal and progressive.” That’s why I am calling for the LGBTQ+ community and supporters of LGBTQ+ youth to boycott HBO until Real Time With Bill Maher is removed from its platform. Maher has gone too far.
Now, I am not one for getting caught up in the extreme left and right’s battle on “cancel culture,” and I know many of us, including myself, will suffer from not being able to watch Jean Smart in Hacks. But the LGBTQ+ youth are the ones who are really suffering from being told that it is a trend to say you are LGBTQ+, while at the same time being shoved and kicked in school hallways, and HBO must take immediate action and remove Bill Maher and simultaneously take action to let every LGBTQ+ youth know they are loved.
The consequences of not doing anything can be deadly. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and it’s comments ones Maher’s thar give license to others to dehumanize and torment LGBTQ+ youth. Maher’s words are also nothing more than a dog whistle for those who seek to roll back the rights of the LGBTQ+ community which we are seeing happen throughout our nation. The trend is not willy-nilly identification as being LGBTQ+; it is the alarming measures being passed to deny LGBTQ+ people’s existence and rights. Whether it’s Florida’s “don’t say gay” law or the dozens of states that are banning trans athletes and rights, this is unfortunately the real trend we should be talking about and organizing around to change.
Our LGBTQ+ youth are perfect just the way they are — they need no fixing. They need supportive spaces and policies to be completely free and authentic and to achieve their full potential. What they don’t need are the rants on a platform like Bill Maher’s show, which pose the greatest risk to LGBTQ+ youth’s safety and well-being. Call on HBO now to take immediate action and remove Real Time from its lineup. Maher has simply gone too far. Our actions and voices will send a loud message that these types of careless and negligent behavior and speech will not be tolerated, and in doing so we can instead focus on the work of making sure that not one more kid contemplates taking their life simply for being who they are. It’s the least we could do as we get ready to celebrate Pride.
David Kilmnick is the founder and president of the LGBT Network, one of the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in the U.S., which is based in New York City and Long Island, N.Y. The LGBT Network operates four LGBT community centers throughout the expansive Long Island and Queens region to reach and serve as many LGBTQ+ people and their families as possible.
Cubans might have a chance this year to do something they’ve done very rarely: cast a meaningful vote. The government, which rarely consults its people, says it will allow Cubans to “have their say” in a referendum, with respect to whether same-sex couples, a minority, can marry.
Cuba’s government has a well-documented history of violating citizens’ right to vote in free and fair elections and to take part in public affairs. The Communist Party, the only one allowed in the country, has governed since the 1959 revolution without giving citizens the option to vote its leaders out of office—or even to protest their actions.
But now, authorities are subjecting basic rights to a political football between advocates for equality and non-discrimination and their opponents, some of whom mischaracterize their work as “gender ideology.”
To be sure, the inclusion of marriage equality in the draft Family Code, which has been undergoing a “public consultation” since February, is a positive development. It includes a gender-neutral definition of marriage, thereby opening the door to marriage between same-sex couples.
The draft Family Code also strengthens women’s rights in domestic law by reinforcing their sexual and reproductive rights and upholding the equitable distribution of domestic and care work. It also expands children’s rights by, for example, enshrining their rights to be heard and to physical integrity, as well as the principle of progressive autonomy, to allow children to participate in decisions affecting them based on their age and maturity. The right of same-sex couples to be free from discrimination, however, is proving the be amongthe most contentious of the draft Code’s provisions.
The “public consultation” process ended on April 30 and the draft will be put to a referendum vote later this year. But there’s serious reason to doubt that the plebiscite will fully respect voters’ rights. Given that the administration of Miguel Díaz-Canel controls all branches of power and severely restricts freedom of expression, respecting people’s will in the polls will ultimately be up to the administration.
What’s also troubling is the political pageantry of putting individual rights, including the right of gay and lesbian couples to be free from discrimination, to a popularity vote. In Cuba, this comes after public protests in 2019 against redefining marriage to include same-sex couples in the draft of a new constitution. In response to this outcry, the government withdrew that provision from the draft, approved that same year, and punted the marriage equality question to this Family Code referendum.
Other countries have tried this. Ireland (which was required by law to hold a referendum to change the constitution) and Australia upheld the rights of same-sex couples when citizens voted overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality. Bermuda and Taiwan’s referendums rejected same-sex marriage (Taiwan’s legislature later passed it).
Referendums can be an important component of democracy and can, in some circumstances, help break the political inertia to uphold rights and promote rights-respecting policies. Yet, ultimately, the recognition of the rights of minorities, including LGBT people, should not hinge on a popularity vote. That is an affront to the human dignity of already marginalized people subject to violence and discrimination, and could expose their lives and identities to unnecessary and harmful public debate, scrutiny, evaluation.
What would we say if the referendum was about whether a religious minority could practice their religion openly? Or, whether an ethnic minority should enjoy freedom from discrimination? This would provoke moral outrage. There should be no differences when the right of same-sex couples to be free from discrimination is at stake.
What’s worse, in Cuba, news and government reports suggest the vote may be close, a prospect that is not helped by the Catholic Church describing the Family Code as attacking “the nature of the family” and constituting “gender ideology.” Evangelical and other churches have also opposed the Code’s provisions on these grounds.
“Gender ideology” is a vacuous catch-all term generally intended to denote an ill-defined gay and feminist conspiracy to wreak havoc on traditional values. Far-right movements and politicians worldwide, including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Florida’s Ron Desantis, have peddled disinformation to popularize the term, using it to attack LGBT, children’s, and women’s rights. Yet, what in Cuba they are calling “gender ideology” is really about gender equality.
Cuba should urgently rectify its miserable rights record, including by allowing people to participate in periodic free and fair elections. But this would-be referendum is categorically misguided. The people’s will should certainly guide public policy, but not dictate whether well-established international human rights will be upheld. Instead of passing on its duty to the electorate, Cuban authorities should themselves uphold these rights, including if the referendum fails to do so.
Oklahoma’s legislature has passed a bill that would ban transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Senate Bill 615 would require students in the state’s public schools to use restrooms according to the sex on their birth certificate, barring transgender girls from using female bathrooms, and transgender boys from using male bathrooms. Governor Kevin Stitt is expected to sign the bill into law this week.
Bathroom bans have a pernicious history. In 2016, at least 18 US states considered bills that would restrict transgender students’ access to restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities. Now, after two years of relative silence from state lawmakers, there are troubling signs of a resurgence of these legislative efforts: Alabama recently enacted a bathroom ban, and now Oklahoma is on the verge.
Oklahoma’s bathroom ban is part of a larger wave of recent attacks against transgender youth in the United States. Lawmakers in at least 30 states have proposed athletic bans this year limiting or completely barring transgender students from participating in sports; 16 states now restrict transgender students from playing alongside peers. In addition to these athletic bans, officials in Texasand Arkansas have taken steps to investigate or prosecute the provision of gender-affirming care for transgender children.
Oklahoma’s bathroom ban would endanger transgender students’ health and undermine their rights to education and privacy. Bathroom bans are documented to exacerbate physical and verbal harassment against transgender children, and adversely affect their physical and mental health, academic achievement, and participation in school. If enacted into law, Senate Bill 615 would further isolate and stigmatize transgender children who are already prone to bullying, rendering schools an unsafe and hostile environment. Many students are effectively “outed” through these bans as they are compelled to implicitly disclose their transgender status through their bathroom usage.
Oklahoma’s lawmakers have chosen to expand a nationwide assault on transgender children’s rights. Officials should instead ensure transgender children have safe and comfortable access to bathrooms, and an education free from discrimination. Lawmakers should defend the rights of all students, not undermine them.
This year, the Republican majority in the Arizona state legislature passed two bills, S.B. 1138 and S.B. 1165, which target trans children. The day before the 2022 Trans Day of Visibility, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed them into law, claiming they were about “fairness.”
In reality, S.B. 1138 and S.B. 1165 willfully restrict the opportunities and medical care available to trans children, with no regard to their quality of life or peace of mind.
The passage of these laws will humiliate and harm trans youth in Arizona, and increase the risk of bullying and social ostracization. And when we know that over 52% – over half – of all trans and non-binary minors seriously consider suicide, laws that target and restrict their lives further could quite literally be a death sentence.
S.B. 1165 bans trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams because “there are inherent biological distinctions that merit separate categories” for players.
In other words, trans girls are not real girls.
Schools will be forced to prove that girls weren’t assigned male at birth by performing invasive bodily searches of their genitals. The same Republicans who insist that LGBTQ education in schools is sexualizing children would force girls to undergo these searches.
Arizona Republicans pretend that this anti-trans sports law is about fairness. Gov. Ducey cites the need to protect cisgender girls from trans girls who would seek to “unfairly” steal their “titles, standing, and scholarships.”
At the core of this law is the belief that trans girls are not real girls – they are boys masquerading as girls, trying to cheat. This is a gross interpretation of a positive trend – that transgender athletes are finally starting to experience the freedom to compete on the teams of their real gender.
Having access to spaces, like sports teams, where their gender identity is embraced dramatically reduces the likelihood that trans youth will attempt suicide.
S.B. 1138 prohibits trans minors from accessing gender reassignment surgery, which is both affirming and often lifesaving for trans youth experiencing gender dysphoria. There is a reason why every major medical association supports gender-affirming healthcare.
Gov. Ducey and other members of the Arizona GOP claim that they are acting in the best interest of trans youth. But for trans children, who bear disproportionately high rates of mental illness, this is the very care that will transform their lives for the better.
It is undeniably wrong for politicians to have more say over a trans child’s body than themselves and their family members. And anti-trans sports bills are just another way of invalidating transgender people and seeking to cast us to the sidelines once more.
But we will not be silenced. Fighting against atrocities like these bills is about saving lives – the lives of children.
Republican leaders in Arizona, and across the country, are obsessed with trans children, and LGBTQ youth more broadly. In 2022, Arizona led the nation with the most anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in its state legislature. These laws are not about fairness or respect, as Ducey says. They are a sinister step toward controlling and coercing trans youth. They are absolutely reprehensible, and everyone in Arizona, and across the nation, should be raising their voices in outrage.
In 2023, the Super Bowl LVII is scheduled to take place in Arizona, outside of my hometown Phoenix, the same city where I am running as a candidate for the state legislature. Phoenix has one of the highest populations of LGBTQ residents of any city in the United States, and my district in particular, Legislative District 5, has a high concentration of LGBTQ constituents.
And we’re not alone. Religious leaders and voting rights activists all over the country have already called for the Super Bowl to be relocated over the countless heinous restrictive voting and election laws passed by the Republicans in Arizona this year.
If the NFL truly stands with us, they know what to do. They talk the talk; now it’s time to walk the walk.
Brianna Westbrook, a transgender working-class parent who grew up in poverty, is running for State Representative for District 5. For nearly a decade, she has worked tirelessly with local and national progressive organizations and organizers to meet the community’s needs.
My decision to transition took place while in the midst of reading the classic George Orwell opus on war: Homage to Catalonia.
Having been on and off feminizing hormones for the previous nine months, it was in Barcelona when I called my best friend and told her that my 35-year wait to embrace myself was finally ending.
Barcelona was also the city where Orwell’s personal narrative of fighting for a foreign nation in combat took place.
When coupled with other works on conflict by literary luminaries from the past including Faulkner and Hemingway, I’d come to appreciate the skill seemingly necessary when trying to write under such conditions and respected the apparent sacrifices that came with their tales.
Almost three years after that May 2019 phone call took place, I too am experiencing the conditions faced by the writers named above. However a different realization has taken place in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and my time spent here on the front lines.
That reality has imbued me with a new perspective on life as a writer, a transgender female and a minority in general, one that, no doubt, many others realized as part of their own existence well before I did in mine.
Put bluntly, the danger and microaggressions that non-cis, non-hetero, non-white, non-males face in the United States is the same as being in a European ground war.
The comparison is apt for several reasons.
After decamping to the northeast Ukrainian battlefront for the last month and counting, I understood with stark clarity that ever since announcing the decision to live as my most authentic self, I had been faced with the same obstacles I’m encountering here including the need to exhaustively be on guard against danger, to prove myself over and over as an outsider, and to wake up wondering every morning if this is the day I’ll die.
Having lived as a cishet white male for the vast majority of my life, the risks faced by those who blazed the pathways for my own success had always been a concept which eluded me.
No longer.
In recognizing the physical, mental, and emotional similarities which exist between the two spaces, I finally accepted that whatever privilege I’d previously enjoyed had long since dissipated. Furthermore, in spending the last few years compartmentalizing the slights, bigotry, and prejudice directed towards me, I was unable to fully grasp the constant struggle too many others are forced to endure.
Being a party to an actual, defined war has forever rendered my unintended ignorance moot.
In addition to making me aware of societal hostility, and the ramifications surrounding it, living among constant shelling, rocket attacks, and machine gun fire has also made me further consider why bloodshed, and the scent of ever looming death, may have creatively driven the authors I previously mentioned.
My current belief is that for those men, whose lives were otherwise bland, pedestrian, and without racial-, ethnic-, or gender-based burdens, seeking out the ultimate confrontation allowed for them to feel alive and stare at death.
For many who are minorities, every day brings a slight twist on that challenge: we avoid death, while hoping to grasp life.
Now is the time for the larger progressive movement to connect the struggles for LGBTQ and reproductive rights more deeply, especially for those who are transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary.
Trans people get pregnant. Trans people need abortions. Trans people deserve access to culturally competent medical care. Trans people must have the freedom to live, something that is currently under unprecedented direct attack through hundreds of pieces of legislation across the country. Despite all of this, trans people have been marginalized in the mainstream fight over body autonomy. That must end. The reasons why are right in front of us.
Take Idaho as a recent and obvious example. Headlines there within two days of each other make the point: “Idaho House passes Texas-style abortion ban” and “An Idaho bill would criminalize medical treatments for trans youths. It echoes abortion bans.” These links are undeniable.
As is often the case, the forces opposed to body autonomy for cisgender women also oppose it for trans people. It is clear that this is one fight, but for decades, there has been an over-emphasis on cisgender women in the reproductive rights movement and transgender people have been left out and left behind. Restricting a women’s right to choose, curtailing sexual freedom, homophobia and transphobia are all inextricably linked with common roots.
The right wing mainstays of the anti-abortion movement, including The Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Liberty Council are at the forefront of the anti-trans movement, especially the ability for trans people–including children–to have equal access to health care.
TransLash’s investigative series last year, the Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality discussed how these very organizations, many of whom have been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, are targeting the trans community as the next wave in the war over who gets to control our bodies.https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gh3rPqhWLXo?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1
For these organizations, the fight against abortion and the fight against trans rights are increasingly one and the same. And as was detailed in a recent Time Magazine piece, anti-trans forces are borrowing tactics from the anti-abortion movement in targeting doctors who provide gender-affirming healthcare.
By missing these obvious connections and denying a broader civil and human rights frame, the mainstream reproductive rights movement is playing into the hands of the right wing.
At the December 1, 2021 protests outside the Supreme Court hearing on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Task Force witnessed hundreds of protesters but the ones hoping to see Roe v. Wade overturned were not just holding anti-choice signs, but also anti-LGBTQ placards. They clearly get the connection.
Each of us who wishes to decide what we do with our body is in the crosshairs. As individuals, we know that our humanity is larger than the physical forms we are born into. A coalition of people with this understanding, in addition to a deep commitment to racial, disability and economic justice, would create a powerful force for human rights grounded in body autonomy. And that force is needed now to preserve and extend hard fought gains made over the past fifty years.https://www.youtube.com/embed/2oDMaQ0Wwqg?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1
But there is a solution. Visibility. Conversation. Education. Advocacy. The need for us to end this erasure is why Translash created the “Trans Bodies, Trans Choices” short-film series. Putting transgender people and their stories at the center of the discussion is essential if we are going to create the understanding necessary to bring people together both cis and trans. This is about transgender people rather than “transgender issues”.
“Trans Bodies Trans Choices” tells powerful stories of trans people whose lives were changed forever because they had access not only to abortion but also reproductive services and trans-affirming medical care. These are stories that tens of millions of people can relate to, and they bind us all together in a common cause.
Telling our truths and leveraging our collective power is how we will create the change required for us all to live whole and with dignity. Storytelling is the first step in creating a common bond but there are so many other steps that must follow.
The only way we will make progress is if we are in it together.
Imara Jones is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning journalist, intersectional-news producer, and creator of TransLash. Kierra Johnson is the Executive Director of the National LGBGTQ Task Force.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has finally been attracting some attention for her ultra-conservative views. Mostly, the focus has been on the extraordinary conflict of interest she represents for her husband, and she hands out awards to people appearing before the court and advocates for issues her husband will be deciding on.
But this week, Thomas surprised even her fiercest critics by engaging in what can only be called treason. In a series of emails released to the House committee studying the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, Thomas called for the overturning of the election results with a religious fervor second only to Trump himself.
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!,” Thomas wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
At another point, Thomas took a swan dive into the deep end of the conspiracy pool. “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,” she told Meadows.
Thomas also floated a favorite Q-Anon theory that Trump-inspired watermarked ballots were part of a “white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states.” Such ballots exist only in fever swamp fantasies.
Thomas had previously admitted to attending the pro-Trump rally on January 6, but said she had “no role” in planning it and left before attendees stormed the Capitol.
But that bland admission wildly minimized just how involved Thomas was in pushing the lie that the election was stolen. Within days of the election, she was telling Meadows “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”
Thomas was also promoting Sidney Powell, the loose cannon attorney who along with Rudy Giuliani led Trump’s legal team brigade and became a punchline for her “release the Kraken” shenanigans.
The texts are disturbing, all the more so because there are undoubtedly more than the 29 that the committee has. (Meadows has since stopped cooperating with the committee.) But what is especially disturbing is the worldview that Thomas and Meadows display.
It’s not just that Thomas is a far-right agitator. She’s advocating for a special kind of ultra-right philosophy: Christian nationalism.
Overturning a legitimate election was not a political cause for Thomas and people like her. It was a theological one.
“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote to Thomas. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues.” (Meadows is a fervent evangelical.)
Thomas responded, “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”
The fact that someone embedded at the very heart of the political establishment–the wife of a Supreme Court justice–not only believes in bizarre conspiracies but actually advocated for undermining a free and fair election is mind-boggling. It also indicates just how far the GOP political establishment has veered from any sense of normalcy and ethics.
Speaking of ethics, Justice Thomas has besmirched the entire Supreme Court by refusing to recuse himself from everything his wife has touched. That includes Trump’s challenge to the election, which Justice Thomas was the only justice willing to consider.
In any other job, Thomas would be facing a reprimand at a minimum and perhaps a pink slip. Of course, the Supreme Court is immune to normal HR policy, including conflict of interest policies. It’s all up to the individual justices. Justice Thomas insists that Mrs. Thomas’ beliefs don’t influence him, and we’re supposed to take his word for it. After this latest revelation, that’s a pretty big pill to swallow.
Proponents of restrictions on how U.S. public schools address sexual orientation and gender identity say their ultimate goal is to allow parents more involvement in their children’s education and ensure classroom materials are age-appropriate.
But in heated debates at school board meetings and in statehouses across the country, the argument they repeatedly put forth is that they are trying to prevent children from being “groomed” — the same term commonly used to describe how sex offenders initiate contact with their victims.
“They support injecting woke gender ideology into 2nd grade classrooms,” he added. “They support enabling schools to ‘transition students’ to a ‘different gender’ without the knowledge of the parent … without the parent’s consent.”
DeSantis never uttered the word “groom,” but his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, remarked on Twitter that the legislation dubbed by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill would be more accurately described as an “Anti-Grooming Bill.”
The use of the term is an attempt to distort the goal of teachers “who are being intentional about expressing their acceptance of LGBTQ people, or perhaps sharing their own stories … so that all students can know that they have representation within the school,” said Casey Pick, a senior fellow for advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides support services for LGBTQ youth.
Asked why she used it, Pushaw replied in an email to The Associated Press, “I have never stated that all groomers are LGBT, all LGBT people are groomers, or anything of that nature.” She did not elaborate.
In Tennessee, country music singer John Rich testified in front of lawmakers that school librarians who defend controversial books about gender identity and featuring LGBTQ characters “groom” children to become desensitized to sexual abuse and pornography.
“What’s the difference between a teacher, a librarian putting one of these books on the desk of a student, or a guy in a white van pulling up when school lets out, saying, ‘Come around kids, let me read you this book?’” Rich asked last month. “What’s the difference between those two scenarios? There is a difference. They can run away from the van.”
An Oklahoma school choice advocacy blog, Choice Remarks, shared an article on its Facebook page alleging that public schools are sexualizing children. “Groomers are gonna groom,” the group declared in comments accompanying the article. “The solution is educational choice.”
When the New York State Education Department tweeted a book recommendation of Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” the agency was attacked online as providing “pornographic” material to children, as well as “grooming” and “preying” on them. The agency later deleted the tweet.
DeSantis and other conservative politicians and parents who have criticized schools’ use of books with sexually explicit material argue that parents, not teachers, should be broaching such subjects with their children.
The main point of the Florida law is that it “empowers parents to be engaged in their children’s lives,” said Republican Rep. Joe Harding, who sponsored the legislation. At Monday’s signing ceremony, a placard affixed to the speakers’ podium and signs held up by young children featured the slogan “Protect Children/Support Parents.”
But Catherine Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., said conservative groups are capitalizing on the fear of unknown materials, books and discussion taking place inside classrooms to propel measures that would place more “surveillance” on teachers, librarians and other educators.
These groups “are really coming from this idea that sexual orientation (and) gender identity is something that’s being imposed upon kids,” Oakley said. “It comes from just a really fundamentally wrong position about where a person’s LGBTQ identity comes from.”
The current trend to limit the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity echoes similar campaigns of the 1970s in which far-right religious groups characterized people who identified as LGBTQ as trying to “convert children,” said Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who researches the U.S.-based religious right and the white nationalist movement. The accusation helped stall the expansion of civil rights for sexual minorities, Bjork-James said.
Brittany McBride, associate director of sexuality education at Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that promotes adolescent sexual health and rights, sees a coordinated effort to create discomfort in school districts across the country, the result of which is to limit the education that students can receive.
“Adult discomfort has always seemed to take the priority over the rights and responsibility as a society to provide our young people with the information that they deserve,” McBride said.
Waking up in a car parked on a muddy alleyway 30 minutes from the front lines of the Battle for Kharkiv was an inconceivable notion to me 3 days ago. Yet in the front seat of a beaten down Jeep Cherokee, I slept. Artillery blasts and other sounds of war created a cacophony of destruction throughout the night. However, in a world where a former US President is refusing to outright condemn the barbaric and terroristic actions unleashed by the tyrannical head of Russia against a steadfast ally, and an out transgender journalist is at the front lines of the major European land war in 2022, is anything truly inconceivable?
No.
More than six years ago, pre-transition, I embarked on an attempt to cover the “Syrian Refugee Crisis.” Beginning in Turkey, and then heading into the Balkans, I crossed Europe, ending my voyage on the shores of the English Channel by spending several days in Calais, France inside the sprawling migrant encampment known as “The Jungle.”
In total, I went overland across 11 countries following the stories of these displaced peoples from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as several African nations, while also examining a European Union which was both unprepared and unwilling to fully integrate them into their societies. Ultimately, the book that came from it, Along the Tracks of Tears, was a woefully incomplete look into the lives of those whom I set out to report on, and this failure by me to dive fully into the deepest crevices of their torment is something that had haunted me ever since.
In 2015, I eagerly accepted the opportunity to go into Syria and speak directly with some of those fleeing from their home soil during the civil war there. Going so far as to cross the Bosphorus Strait and travel deep into the eastern part of Turkey, fear eventually swept over me. I caved to concerns of being kidnapped or killed and abruptly canceled my plans. Pangs of regret began to fill me from almost the moment of turning around, weighing heavily on my work.
Another aspect of that sojourn that gnawed at me was living as a male during my travels. At the time, pretending to be a guy wasn’t anything new. I’d lived as one for almost 40 years at that point, but guilt over the lie had begun to impede all of my undertakings, an impediment magnified by being given space among the majority Muslim male refugees who I presume would otherwise have shunned the true me. And so my publication, weighed down by those two burdens, fell far short of what it could have been.
Years passed.
In the time since, much has happened to me personally and professionally. I published a novel, finally transitioned, and eventually became heavily involved in Nevada politics, the last area leading to the launch of a politics and news portal focused on the state.
Then in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and with that arose an opportunity to create a follow-up to my 2015-2016 coverage of the previous European refugee crisis – and this time attempt to do it right.
Beginning in Poland and then crossing into Ukraine, before eventually traversing the Ukrainian countryside, I arrived at the front, intent on learning about every aspect of what the victims of the invasion are enduring through photography, interviews, and personal observation. Along the way, I also realized the stories I uncovered, and the intertwined narratives which wove them together, were both much deeper and broader than I’d initially comprehended.
That first night we took cover in the darkness, camouflaged against a sky offering a canopy of infinite blackness because it was simply too dangerous to traverse the city streets after curfew. As soon as the light of morning peaked, we headed into the ravaged city, checkpoint after checkpoint lining the streets. While in many areas of Ukraine the blockaded streets are manned by volunteers from the Territorial Defense Forces, those asking for documents in Kharkiv are members of the professional, full-time, Ukrainian Armed Forces. Though we were stopped at an innumerable number of checkpoints on the more than 1,000 km drive through the nation’s heartland, the last search, the last flash of my credentials upon entering the city’s center, was truly the most poignant. It separated me from reading about war, and having listened to it, to witnessing it.
After being waved through into the downtown corridor, destruction enveloped me. Burnt out vehicles, blown out windows, decimated apartment buildings, and deep craters all pocked the landscape. Death too was present.
And yet residents of Kharkiv moved deftly around these reminders of war crimes and terrorism, lining up to get medicine, buy food, and withdraw money from banks, as life continued through 24 hours a day of enemy bombardment and Ukrainian counter-offensives.
The apartment I procured while at the frontlines promised to offer an expansive visage of the city. It didn’t disappoint, but as I quickly learned life at war changes hourly, and so I’ve spent a total of three hours in the accommodations since I arrived here.
Around 6 pm on my second evening, the group I’m embedded with decided to take cover for the evening in a restaurant, and the same on our third. Chairs, some blankets, a pillow, and contagious amounts of patriotic courage from my hosts have helped me find sleep during the explosive nights.
Operating as a hub of activity for various security services, the restaurant is now the location where I work, eat, sleep, and digest the toll that the Russian invasion has taken on the population of Ukraine and the global community as a whole.
Two weeks have gone by since I’ve arrived in Europe and 10 days since I entered a nation during the throes of war. In that short span, a realization settled in.
I’m not the same writer. I’m not the same photographer. I’m not the same person.
I came to Ukraine to cover a refugee crisis, I’m now reporting on a war.