In the latest blow to trans people in Hungary, the country’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling that will continue to block new applications from transgender people for legal gender recognition. The judgment effectively creates two categories of trans people in Hungary: those who applied early enough to pursue gender recognition and those who did not.
In 2020, Hungary’s parliament passed a law banning transgender or intersex people from legally changing their gender, putting them at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence when they need to use identity documents. In 2021, the Constitutional Court ruled the ban on legal gender recognition does not apply retroactively, so trans people who started their legal process before May 29, 2020, were able to continue doing so. But yesterday the Constitutional Court rejected a petitioner’s plea that they be recognized based on an application submitted in 2021.
Hungarian jurisprudence already contains strong support for transgender and intersex people’s rights to legal recognition. A 2018 Constitutional Court ruling found that Hungary’s Fundamental Law requires the state to allow trans people to self-identify. “The right to bear a name” consistent with one’s gender, the court found, “is a fundamental right deductible from the right to human dignity.”
“The Hungarian government’s practice sanctioned by the Constitutional Court is one of total disenfranchisement,” said Eszter Polgári, legal program director of Háttér Society, a Hungarian (Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) LGBT rights group.
Háttér Society plans to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. There is an emerging norm across Europe to eliminate barriers to legal gender recognition, not create them as Hungary has. In a 2002 case, the court held that refusal to change identification documents in the UK could amount to discrimination and violate the right to privacy. In another case in 2003, that court found Germany had failed to respect “the applicant’s freedom to define herself as a female person, one of the most basic essentials of self-determination.”
The Constitutional Court invoked concerns about criminality and health care in rejecting the petition, claiming someone’s sex assigned at birth is critical to know in health care and legal settings. Such claims, as a reason to reject legal gender recognition, do not stand up to scrutiny. The Hungarian government’s insistence on undermining the dignity of trans people is contrary to the right to private life and does not hold up against Hungary’s international and European human rights obligations.
The American Bar Association (ABA), a membership organization for attorneys in the United States that develops professional ethics codes, has issued a resolution supporting the rights of children with intersex traits to consent to surgeries.
The ABA’s resolution follows years of legal and policy progress recognizing that “normalizing” surgeries on people with variations in their sex characteristics should be chosen by the individual, not their parents or doctors.
Around the world, since the 1950s, people born with variations in their sex characteristics, sometimes called “intersex,” have been subjected to harmful medically unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries. Surgeons popularized these cosmetic surgeries on infants to remove gonads, reduce the size of the clitoris, or increase the size of the vagina.
But these procedures are not designed to treat a medical problem, and there is no evidence they help children “fit in,” which some surgeons say is their aim. The operations carry high risks of scarring, loss of sexual sensation, incontinence, and psychological trauma. Despite growing consensus that these surgeries should end, along with progress globally banning medically unnecessary intersex surgeries, some parents continue to face pressure from surgeons to choose these operations – even though their children are too young to participate in the decision.
Pushback on the default-to-surgery paradigm, which was popularized in the US, has gained pace in recent years, with the American Academy of Family Physicians and two pediatrics bodies endorsing a delay of surgery until kids themselves can consent. Three former US surgeon -general reviewed the evidence and called for an end to the nonconsensual procedures. Children’s hospitals in Chicago and Boston have banned the operations.
Now the ABA has made it clear that it opposes “medical or surgical intervention on minors with intersex traits (also known as variations in sex characteristics) without the minor’s informed consent or assent.” The ABA, “urges licensed professionals not to conduct or propose medical or surgical intervention on minors with intersex traits until the minor requests the proposed care, understands the impact of the proposed care as well as alternatives, is provided with affirming psychosocial supports, and gives informed consent or assent, except when immediate life-threatening circumstances require emergency intervention.”
Medical professional bodies and legislatures should follow the ABA and develop their own policies to protect intersex children from harm.
U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power on Feb. 10 met with three LGBTQ and intersex activists in the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
Budapest Pride President Viktoria Radvanyi and Hungarian Helsinki Committee Head of Advocacy András Léderer are two of the activists who met with Power.
USAID spokesperson Jessica Jennings in a press release said the activists “discussed the experiences of LGBTQI+ people in Hungary and their efforts to increase understanding, support marginalized groups and improve the lives of LGBTQI+ people in Hungary” with Power.
“The administrator (Power) emphasized that the United States will continue to stand as an ally with LGBTQI+ people and all marginalized groups in their struggle for equality,” noted Jennings.
The meeting took place against the backdrop of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s crackdown on LGBTQ and intersex rights in Hungary.
Radvanyi on Monday noted to the Washington Blade it is “impossible to change your gender legally in Hungary” because of a 2020 law that “banned legal gender recognition of transgender and intersex people.”
The European Commission last July sued Hungary, which is a member of the European Union, over the country’s propaganda law.
President Joe Biden in 2021 signed a memorandum that commited the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad as part of his administration’s overall foreign policy. David Pressman, the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, is openly gay.
Jennings in the USAID press release did not say whether Pressman attended the meeting with the activists, but it did note he met with Power before she left Budapest. Radvanyi said the activists who attended “were all very honored that Administrator Power had a dedicated meeting just about the Hungarian LGBTQ community and LGBTQ issues.”
“We know that she has a very, very busy schedule,” Radvanyi told the Blade. “We really appreciated that she treated the case of our community as such a high priority.”
Léderer described the meeting as a “very honest, sincere conversation on the situation of the Hungarian LGBT+ community.”
“In addition to how the community as a whole carries on amidst growing homo- and transphobic government policies and statements, she also wanted to know how individual members of the community, including those fighting for equal treatment and human rights, are coping with the hostile environment,” Léderer told the Blade, referring to Power. “We were happy to share great examples of resilience, including the successful campaign led by civil society organisations last year to invalidate the homo- and transphobic referendum initiated by the government by casting purposefully spoiled ballots.”
During the recent Speaker voting chaos, the world had an unprecedented view of the House Chamber through uncensored camera footage. Self-described citizen journalist V Speharsays being in the room where it happens reveals the true colors of elected officials and how their personal and political agendas may impact our country’s future.
Spehar, 40, spent the early part of their career in the hospitality industry in New York City, Tampa, and eventually as an event planner with one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent caterers.
“People speak so honestly in front of you when they don’t think you’re ‘that’ kind of smart — when they think you’re just a waiter, a bartender, or whatever,” Spehar told LGBTQ Nation. “And so I got to see these people, not just for the policies that they wrote, but for the people that they are, and understanding that who they ate dinner with changed how the world was going to be.”
Motivated by a rapidly shifting global landscape, it would take an insurrection and worldwide pandemic for Spehar to consider sharing their observations in a public forum. Rather than looking for a seat at the table, they went under it.
Spehar launched Under the Desk News on TikTok in April 2020 and rapidly amassed 2.8 million followers. The one-minute segments (literally delivered from under a desk) have attracted a bipartisan audience. In 2022, Spehar launched V Interesting, a GLAAD-nominated long-form podcast with original reporting that tackles various topics from Gen Z voter engagement to gender-affirming surgery.
“I got to see these people, not just for the policies that they wrote, but for the people that they are, and understanding that who they ate dinner with changed how the world was going to be.”V Spehar
Originally from Shelton, Connecticut, Spehar now lives in Rochester, New York, with their wife Natalie, a cellist and creative educator. With an increasing amount of time in the public eye, they consider themselves a homebody and appreciate Rochester’s vibrant artistic community from the world-renowned Eastman School of Music, where the couple attends the annual voice competition and local film screenings. Spehar’s on-air persona is an intentional extension of how they move through the world. “I show up in the world the same way: for my friends, my show, my wife,” they said. “Maybe that’s why it works.”
“I didn’t want to be another talking authority figure,” Spehar said. “Being under your desk creates a universe where you can feel safe in this very calm, gentle place, where a queer-identifying 25-year-old TikToker will find something I said as interesting as a 50-year-old white straight man who voted for Trump in 2016. The news is geared towards curious people sick of the partisanship.”
But America’s future hardly feels calm.
Despite greater representation with newly elected LGBTQ+ House members, governors, and other officials at the state and local level and the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, questions loom about the future implications of Roe v Wade’s reversal, escalating “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, and the anti-queer propaganda allowed to flourish on social media platforms like Twitter.
Such polarization coincides with increased violence. According to ACLED, a data collection and crisis mapping project, more than 200 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents (such as anti-queer demonstrations and offline propaganda) were reported last year — an increase of 12 times compared to 2020. Politically motivated violence is also on the rise, fueled partly by Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill signed into law in March 2022 and dozens of proposed anti-trans bills.
Still, the mid-term elections saw a historic number of LGBTQ+ candidates on the ballot and more than 340 wins. While that figure still doesn’t reach equitable representation, the dial seems to be moving in the right direction despite an increasingly vocal far Right contingency. And much of that noise continues to come from social media, particularly Twitter.
Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media platform last October, anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech has escalated. According to the New York Times, slurs against gay men alone have risen from 2,506 to 3,964 times per day, in addition to a spike in accounts associated with QAnon.
But what about the queer community, particularly those in small towns and rural areas, who often turn to social media for support and access to information and resources? Twitter’s credibility isn’t the only platform on the chopping block. President Biden recentlypassed expanded legislation to ban TikTok from all government devices while a national security review is underway.
Despite the online rhetoric, some progress is being made, including the codification of same-sex marriage. On December 12, 2022, in front of nearly 5,500 attendees on the White House lawn, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring the federal and state governments to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed by other states. While the occasion was a high point in Biden’s administration, it wasn’t the constitutional home run that the queer community eventually hopes to hit out of the park.
“Our work isn’t done and won’t rest until the Equality Act is passed into law,” said then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), referencing a House-passed bill that would enshrine sexual orientation and gender identity into federal civil rights legislation.
As the nation’s relationship with healthcare access continues to spiral, the need for the Equality Act couldn’t come at a more critical time. According to a recent report by theKaiser Family Foundation, 40 percent of adults in the U.S. have medical- or dental-related debt. For the LGBTQ+ community — particularly transgender folks — the numbers are even more alarming.
LGBTQ Nation spoke with Spehar about queer politics, the remainder of Biden’s first presidential term, and our collective capacity to truly become the United States of America.
LGBTQ NATION: How do we make sense of the polarization of queer America?
V SPEHAR:People like gay people. Even the far right likes gay people. We like people for their personality, if we learn something from them, or if they make us laugh. So it’s no surprise to me that more queer people are running for office and winning. And that’s all on purpose, right? It’s almost like we’ve curated a personality that’s acceptable to mainstream America for our own safety and speaks to the diversity of queer experiences.
When I first heard Black women talk about code-switching, I thought, “Oh, that’s a version of what I do to protect myself” — changing yourself to survive. When you’re socialized in a certain way, and you value being accepted or protecting yourself from criticism, sometimes these are the things that we do.
But politics used to be about passing budgets and laws, and now it is about owning one side or the other. It is more defense than offense. And the offense isn’t putting forward good legislation that helps people; it’s just making someone else lose.
LGBTQ NATION: As the President prepares to address the nation, what are some of the most vexing problems facing the queer equality movement?
VS:Fear has been very effective in getting people to vote. Some people agree with the anti-drag queen story-hour bills or have been told that it’s unfair for trans athletes to compete. And no matter the science, we can never change their minds. And that is because their protective instinct has been triggered. It’s not because they’re dealing in truth. They’re dealing in fear. If you tell somebody who’s deeply religious (as some of the far right has), “This is going to hurt people. These people are dangerous. If we can pass this legislation, we can stop children from being hurt,” nothing is going to stop somebody from believing that because their protective instinct has been triggered.
But having a protective instinct does not mean thinking rationally. Politicians are using people’s protective instincts to push very hateful things because it makes it look like they’re winning, but they’re helping someone else lose. We need to watch out for not trying to prove that drag queens aren’t a danger to children because they’re obviously not. We need to prove that your protective instinct is being triggered by somebody trying to manipulate you.
You’re not going to get somebody to stop believing their sole mission is to be a protector, but you can get them to understand who actually needs protection.
LGBTQ NATION: A few notable queer celebrities, including Elton John and Jameela Jamil, have bailed on Twitter, citing Musk’s takeover. How is the future of social media tied to the future of our country? And is it time to say ta-ta to Twitter?
VS:I think we have to get out of it. Musk is unhinged. But that’s his platform. It’s his toy. Don’t play with it. Who gave him the funding to buy Twitter? The circumstances and lack of antitrust and mergers — all that kind of stuff that was removed so that the shareholders of Twitter could profit. And now look where we are.
Musk is one of the richest men in the world but is very cash poor and had to borrow a lot of money to get this thing. There was a lot of money from many places, which buys a lot of silence. But it’s not just a billionaire buying Twitter. There’s a billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times,Patrick Soon-Shiong. Many of the local news channels are owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. [Whose executive chairman, David D. Smith, is a longtime Trump cohort.]
We also have the legacy media and mainstream journalists who have built their platform on Twitter. And they don’t want to give it up. So we’ve got a double-edged sword here where an unhinged megalomaniac has purchased this thing and it’s no longer useful. We should absolutely be critical of what led to him even being able to buy it. But I think we have to accept that it is over and work towards building what the next thing is.
LGBTQ NATION: The Equality Act is still in the distance. Do you see a path forward for constitutional LGBTQ+ protections?
VS:I am grateful that the Respect for Marriage Act passed. It falls short of where I would feel fully comfortable and safe. I am ready for LGBTQ+ existence to no longer be a ballot measure. I’m ready for us not to be a talking point when it comes to political rhetoric and campaigning.
It would be as if we were still trying to discuss women being allowed to vote. No, they won the right to vote. We all agree that women have the right to vote; that’s settled law. Why isn’t it the same for LGBTQ+ equality?
I want to see the Equality Act signed and actually create a constitutional amendment, which people think we have now, but we don’t have that hard a language for it. Where there’s softness, people try to punch a hole right through it. And that would solve a lot of things for both women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
With queer representation growing in Congress, that certainly makes a big difference. We’re not just talking about some random hypothetical person that may or may not live in your district. You’re saying it to the face of queer legislators. When the states ofMassachusetts, Colorado, and Oregon want to talk about gay rights, they have to say it to their governors’ faces. The more we can put a face to it, the less you can write us off.
LGBTQ NATION: A recent report from the Williams Institute found that of the approximately 276,000 transgender folks enrolled in Medicaid, more than 40 percent live in states with vague coverage parameters or, even worse, actively ban coverage of gender-affirming care for beneficiaries. Trans youth and their parents also face an uphill battle.
The Williams Institute, in a separate brief, indicated that more than 58,000 trans youth are at risk of losing access to care because of state bans and policies. Lack of healthcare, political attacks packed with abusive language, and social pressures collectively impact the trans community’s well-being. How can we better educate the opposition about gender-affirming care and dispel the fear factor distorting thescientific evidence that proves the value of such treatment?
VS: I have a friend who got boobs at 18 when we graduated high school, and she just had them removed because she didn’t want them anymore. Cis women also get gender-affirming care — whether breast augmentation, a nose job, or a facelift — people get all kinds of things done to feel their best and like their most authentic selves. And sometimes you get something you don’t want it. But that’s rare. The fact that more women cis women who get breast implants will have them removed and regret them later doesn’t mean that nobody should get breast implants if they want them, right?
It’s the same thing with trans care. There are going to be people who are unhappy with themselves, and they aren’t going to achieve happiness through top surgery, testosterone, or whatever things other people do to achieve gender, acceptance, and joy. Listening to this year’s discourse, I’ve learned that people don’t understand puberty blockers are sometimes the difference for a young person living to decide if they want to go further. Because the alternative is they die by suicide. That is the actual alternative. And if we want to protect children, we have to protect all children.
“You’re not going to get somebody to stop believing their sole mission is to be a protector, but you can get them to understand who actually needs protection.”V Spehar
I am a person who struggled with my gender identity until I had top surgery. The amount of time I spent looking at myself, wishing things would be different, and not attending events because I didn’t like how my body looked — that is exhausting. And then I got top surgery just last year. And I woke up, and I felt finished, I felt done. I felt like myself. It changed everything for me. And I wish that people knew others who had gone through the experience so that they could tell them that. I feel happy. And it really didn’t affect anybody else’s life.
Having been a kid who struggled with just trying to feel comfortable in my body, if I could have delayed puberty and not had double-D boobs in eighth grade, that would have been great. That would have saved me a lot of problems for a lot of reasons. So I think it’s letting people know that it’s not a big deal. It’s something that a lot of people do. And most gender-affirming surgery is done on cis bodies. And that’s for men and women who were born male or female. And it’s okay. It’s not hurting anyone. So the perspective I hope people take is to stop making it such a big deal.
LGBTQ NATION: What’s your message to those who might feel overwhelmed by our country’s divide or want to tune out the news cycle?
VS: Like many gay people, I didn’t think I would be as old as I am. When I was young, I didn’t know any gay people who were adults. And now I’m 40 and didn’t plan for much after 23. So once I lived, I just thought — you never know. And I’ve had so many cool things happen: I got married and have this career. And I wake up every day and say, “Oh my God, how cool is it that I just breathe without thinking?” So having that perspective helps me when something is really sad and feels extremely hopeless.If you remember that things have been bad before, they do get better. You can get through it. And when I need to take breaks, I do. We’ve been in worse economic situations.
And we can continue to move towards less hate and more happiness, but there will always be hard stuff.
Ben LaBolt will become the first openly gay White House communications director, succeeding Kate Bedingfield, who is expected to leave at the end of February, advisors to President Joe Biden announced on Friday.
Bedingfield is expected to work on Biden’s reelection campaign. LaBolt has worked for the president since the Obama administration, most recently leading communications around matters like the nomination and confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
The move comes shortly after Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain and top economic advisor Brian Deese announced their departures from the White House.
LaBolt was previously senior national spokesperson for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and White House national press secretary in 2012.
Karine Jean-Pierre made history in May 2022 with her appointment as the first Black and the first openly LGBTQ White House press secretary.
The body of a missing gay 19-year-old was found in Brooklyn last week with a gunshot wound to the head and “significant burn wounds.”
DeAndre Matthews, a student at SUNY Broome Community College studying criminal justice, reportedly went missing on February 6. According to his sister, Dajanae Gillespie, Matthews left his job at Buggy Service Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at around 5 p.m. that evening, returning home to borrow his mother’s Jeep. Danielle Mathews, the teen’s mother, was reportedly one of the last people to speak to him on the phone that night.
On Tuesday, Danielle Matthews was able to track the location of her Jeep using GPS. It was found burned out just minutes away from her Flatbush home. The family reported DeAndre missing that same day, and police later discovered his body on some train tracks in Midwood, Brooklyn.
In addition to the gunshot wound and burns, DeAndre also suffered from smoke inhalation, according to a medical examiner.
DeAndre’s family are left baffled by the crime. “I want to know why [the killer] did it. What was the reason? DeAndre wasn’t a violent person. This wasn’t for retaliation. He wasn’t in the streets,” Gillespie told WNBC New York, adding that she thought her brother’s murder could have been a hate crime.
Police said on Friday that no arrests had been made and the investigation is ongoing.
“We don’t know anything and my sister, she don’t deserve this at all, at all,” DeAndre’s aunt, Tamika Matthews, told WCBS.
“I’m a hurt mother. I have my daughter but that was my son, that was my best friend. He made me a mother,” Danielle Matthews said. “Now, as a mother, I’m suffering. My daughter don’t have a big brother. My sister don’t have a nephew, my mother don’t have a grandson.”
Many in the transgender community are mourning the death of British teenager Brianna Ghey, a trans girl who was stabbed to death Sunday.
Ghey, 16, was found dead in a park in Warrington, England — roughly 16 miles west of Manchester, England — with visible stab wounds, British authorities said. Police said they have arrested two teenagers, both 15 years old, on suspicion of the murder.
Ghey’s family released a statement through local authorities, saying Ghey was “a much loved” and “larger than life character who would leave a lasting impression on all that met her.”
“The loss of her young life has left a massive hole in our family, and we know that the teachers and her friends who were involved in her life will feel the same,” Ghey’s family wrote.
According to authorities, at this time there is no evidence to suggest Ghey’s murder was “hate-related.” This did little to quell discontent among trans activists regarding larger transphobic sentiments they say permeate throughout the U.K.
In a tweet that has accrued over 872,000 views as of Monday afternoon, a user slammed trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, in the name of Ghey’s death.
The climate in the U.K. has grown increasingly hostile for trans people over the last few years. For example, J.K. Rowling, the author and creator of the Harry Potter saga, has become an outspoken critic of trans rights. In a nearly 4,000-word blog post in 2020, the bestselling author said that allowing trans women to use women’s bathrooms and changing rooms would make cisgender women “less safe” — an anti-trans talking point that has been debunked by research.
Simultaneously, in recent years trans activists have accused the British press of stoking or abating anti-trans sentiments.
Notably, the BBC was slammed by LGBTQ activists last year after publishing an article that many critics said painted all transgender women as sexual predators. The British broadcaster defended its piece — titled “We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women” — arguing that it went through a “rigorous editorial process.”
The outcry against the media grew louder among trans activists on Monday, after British newspaper The Times “deadnamed” Ghey, that is, it published the name Ghey went by prior to her transition.
“I will be writing to @thetimes and @IpsoNews regarding this,” British MP Charlotte Nichols wrote on Twitter on Monday, referring to The Times and British media regulator Independent Press Standards Organisation.
The Times did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. A spokesperson for IPSO declined to comment.
Following Ghey’s death on Sunday, some trans activists also chided the government for a lack of a nationwide law that would allow trans people in the U.K. to change their gender without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which is the distress caused by a sense of conflict between an individual’s sex assigned at birth and their gender identity. Last month, the British government blocked a similar “self-identify” law from being implemented in Scotland.
Laws banning drag performances have been introduced in legislative sessions in at least 14 states this year, and their potential effects are much more far-reaching than entertaining shows.
An alarming number of anti-LGBTQ+ (particularly anti-transgender) bills continue to be introduced; the ACLU is tracking 278 of them across 33 states. While many target bathrooms, IDs, books, healthcare, education, and sports, a newer trend this year is attempting to ban drag.
Republican state legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia have all introduced various bills on this theme.
Sybastian Smith, Director of Organizing for the National Center for Transgender Equality, says there are about 32 bills that seek to ban drag shows currently in state legislatures.
“Five of these bills have specified that exposure to the LGBTQ+ community is child abuse, most of these bills ban minors and ban drag performers from public spaces,” Smith told LGBTQ Nation. “In fact, about six of these bills have defined drag performers as people who dressed and expressed differently from their ‘biological sex’ or ‘gender identity,’ and we have concerns that this also applies to everyday transgender people.”
Like other anti-transgender bills that seek to ban gender-affirming health care or access to public accommodations, these bills are part of a nationwide effort to legislate trans people out of existence, transgender rights advocates say.
“These bills are framed as an attack against drag performers, but it actually seeks to criminalize the very existence of transgender people by labeling gender expression and gender-affirming clothing as ‘drag,’” Smith says.
Zooey Zephyr, who took office last month as the first and only transgender woman in the Montana House of Representatives, agrees.
“These bills are designed both to ostracize and shun LGBTQ people and trans people specifically from the public and also to embolden the people who harbor anger and hatred towards trans people,” she told LGBTQ Nation. “It is clear based on the similar bills we’re seeing across the country, based on the comments of Republican presidential hopefuls for 2024 that anti-trans rhetoric is becoming a core part of the far right.”
House Bill 359 in Montana would ban minors from attending drag shows, ban drag performances from public libraries and schools, and ban minors from entering any business that provides a drag show (labeling any such business a “sexually oriented business”). A drag performance is defined in the bill as “a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs for entertainment to appeal to a prurient interest.”
Zephyr is concerned that this wording could apply broadly not only to drag performers but to any transgender person in certain situations, such as a transgender parent singing to their child, a transgender actor in a local theater troupe, or even a transgender child dancing. The broad potential interpretations leave many hypotheticals to the imagination, such as if high school productions of Hairspray or As You Like It would ever be allowed again.
The Montana bill targets minors’ access to drag specifically, as do many other states’ bills that classify drag as an adult-only activity.
Drag queen story hours have become a popular way to share children’s books with LGBTQ+ content outside a school setting, where such books have become increasingly banned. After books with life-saving representation have been pulled from library and school shelves, it has been dangerous to even attend drag storytimes to access them. GLAAD reported at least 141 anti-drag protests, attacks, or significant threats in 2022, including drag story hours, brunches, and bingo events. The attacks included multiple incidents of armed Neo-Nazis disrupting or protesting drag events, including those with children present.
Now several states want to criminalize those events altogether, but this isn’t the first time in U.S. history this has happened.
“These attacks are not new,” Smith says. “Historically, we have seen extremists use harmful rhetoric like this for decades.” He points to anti-crossdressing laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that were one element of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution that protestors at the Stonewall Inn fought back against. Police routinely used these laws as excuses to harass and arrest LGBTQ+ people when they had no other charges they could use, such as catching someone in the act of sodomy.
Today, Smith, Zephyr, and others are concerned that anti-drag laws will be used to target transgender people who are not drag performers, just like the laws repealed decades ago.
The most broadly written bills, like Tennessee’s House Bill 9 and North Dakota’s House Bill 1333, ban drag from being performed on any public property, which would mean drag would not be permitted at Pride events. It could also theoretically mean that a transgender person dressing in clothing matching their gender identity but not their sex assigned at birth could be arrested if they did anything constituting a performance, such as lip-syncing to a song they were listening to.
In Tennessee and North Dakota, a first offense carries a penalty of up to nearly one year in prison, a fine of $2,500 to $3,000, or both. A second offense would be a felony and could carry a penalty of up to five to six years in prison and additional fines.
Drag performers, transgender people, loved ones of transgender people, activists, and others have been speaking out in opposition to these bills at hearings across the country. Zephyr urges others to raise their voices against these bills, a task that falls to the grassroots since there are no federal protections.
“These attacks are going to continue to escalate until we as a community—as trans people, as legislators, our friends, families, and neighbors who love and care about us—stand up and say that these policies need to stop, that trans people belong.”
In the UK tech industry, 75 per cent of LGBTQ+ founders and 80 per cent of investors do not feel safe sharing their gender and sexual identity with their peers, new research has found.
The LGBTQ+ Founder Report was carried out by Proud Ventures (PV), a UK collective of LGBTQ+ investors, founders and venture capitalists, and surveyed 61 investors and 130 founders.
The first-of-its kind research sought to address the fact that “any attempt to engage with or support the LGBTQ+ community in tech or VC has been held back by the repeated question of whether there is actually any problem to solve”.
Data in the report revealed that many people in the LGBTQ+ community, be it founders or investors, “do not feel comfortable to share their identities with investors and other stakeholders”.
The result of this concealment can potentially have an impact on LGBTQ+ people’s health and wellbeing, as they feel forced to separate part of their identity.
Only 25 per cent of founders explained they were comfortable to share their identity with every investor they met, a significant majority (75 per cent) of LGBTQ+ founders were not.
Of these founders, 34 per cent stated they didn’t feel comfortable sharing their LGBTQ+ identity with any investor at all, 25 per cent said they only felt comfortable to share with a few investors, 11 per cent noted they only feel comfortable sharing with an investor after a few calls and five per cent said they would only feel comfortable with those investors already on their cap table.
Of the 80 per cent of investors who hide their LGBTQ+ identity, half said they would only share their identity with another investor after meeting a few times, 17 per cent stated they never would share their identity with another investor and 11 per cent revealed they would only share the information with investors they are closest to or who are on their team.
Of those surveyed, 45 per cent said they thought their identity was not relevant to the situation, 27 per cent) revealed they did not feel comfortable enough to share it, 18 per cent noted they felt sharing could harm their efforts at fundraising and 10 per cent said they didn’t think it could help them.
The report outlined the negative impacts such concealment can have on LGBTQ+ people’s health and wellbeing, including memory and cognition.
“Clear data has drawn a causational link between LGBTQ+ people practising increasing concealment and worse health outcomes,” the document reads.
Funds raised are not equal in the LGBTQ+ community
The survey found gay founders raised 2.25 times more than bisexual founders and 22 times more than lesbian founders. Cis men founders raised 2.5 times more than cis women founders and 10 times more than trans founders.
Interestingly, the research revealed a correlation between LGB people who were more open about their identity and greater capital raised.
However, this was not the same for people who are open about their gender identity, with research suggesting that founders who were more open about their gender identity raised less and generated less revenue.
Several recommendations were put forth by the report, including investors publicly showing support for LGBTQ+ founders, having teams share their pronouns publicly and hiring more diverse investment teams.
South Dakota has joined five other states that have restricted transition-related care for transgender minors in just the past two years.
On Monday, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, signed the “Help Not Harm” bill, which bans health care professionals from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery to minors as treatment for gender dysphoria, which is the distress caused by a sense of conflict between the assigned sex at birth and the person’s gender identity.
Providers who are already treating trans minors with puberty blockers, which temporarily pause puberty, or hormone therapy will be required to taper the minors off the medications by Dec. 31.
The measure makes exceptions for intersex infants and for the treatment of conditions unrelated to gender dysphoria.
“South Dakota’s kids are our future,” Noem said in a statement. “With this legislation, we are protecting kids from harmful, permanent medical procedures. I will always stand up for the next generation of South Dakotans.”
Health care providers who violate the law could have their medical license revoked. Until they turn 25, minors who receive care in violation of the law can also sue providers.
Elliot Morehead, a trans teen who uses they/them pronouns and had planned to access gender-affirming care within the next year, said the measure has “affected my future deeply.”
“I was hoping to maybe start any kind of treatment for myself and now our legislators, who are supposed to support us, have taken away that opportunity for me and I’m bummed,” they told CBS affiliate KELO-TV in Sioux Falls on Thursday after the bill passed the Senate.
Morehead, 16, told House committee members last month that they had to receive six months of therapy and a letter from their therapist before they could begin hormone therapy.
“People think you can just like walk in and then get like testosterone or estrogen or puberty blocking — it doesn’t work like that,” they said, according to The Associated Press.
Over the years, South Dakota has been what advocates have described as a testing ground for legislation targeting trans people.
In 2016, the state was the first to pass a school “bathroom bill,” which would’ve required students to use the school facilities that correspond with their assigned sex at birth. The measure was ultimately vetoed by then-Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, who said at the time that it did not “address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota,” according to the Argus Leader, a local newspaper.Three states — Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee — bar transgender students from using the school facilities consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
On Saturday, more than 400 South Dakotans, including trans youths, their families and allies, protested the bill’s passage in the Senate, according to Transformation Project Advocacy Network, a local trans rights group.
Following Noem’s signing of the bill Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of South Dakota said in a joint statement that the measure “won’t stop South Dakotans from being trans, but it will deny them critical support that helps struggling transgender youth grow up to become thriving transgender adults.”
“But make no mistake–this fight is not over,” the groups said. “We will never stop fighting for the right of trans youth to get the love, support, and care that every young person deserves. As much as Governor Noem wants to force these young people to live a lie, we know they are strong enough to live their truth, and we will always fight for communities and policies that protect their freedom to do so.”
So far this year, lawmakers in at least 24 states, including South Dakota, have introduced legislation that would restrict transition-related care for minors, according to an NBC News analysis. Governors in six states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah — have signed such restrictions. Federal judges have blocked bans in Alabama and Arkansas from taking effect pending the outcome of lawsuits.