Alongside bans on gender-affirming care for minors and bans on teaching LGBTQ+ topics in public schools, the state enacted a law that also requires school districts to “at a minimum” prohibit trans students from using restrooms that align with their gender identity, and mandates that schools staff out LGBTQ+ students to their guardians.
But something else significant happened in Kentucky in 2023: The state swore in its first-ever transgender elected official. Even more significant, she was sworn in to her local school board.
Rebecca Blankenship has been a member of the Berea Independent School District’s board of education for one year now and is still the only out transgender person who’s ever been elected to any office in Kentucky. Moreover, during her time in the position, the state legislature has “forced us to implement policies that turn our stomachs,” she says.
While this may seem like a cause for despair, Blankenship isn’t losing focus. Despite the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being pumped out by state lawmakers, there are pro-LGBTQ+ measures she believes are capable of passing in the state. More importantly, there is no law the Kentucky Legislature can pass that bans basic kindness.
“Our Berea board would have loved to stand up for LGBT kids. Our state legislature, though, which is completely power mad, completely out of control, wants to come into small communities and dictate how we are going to treat each other,” Blankenship tells The Advocate. “They have forced us to implement policies that turn our stomachs, but what they cannot do is force teachers, and school staff, and bus drivers, and everybody who does their job because of the kids, to start treating those kids with cruelty or disrespect.”
“The legislature cannot ban their kindness,” she adds.
While a spate of anti-LGBTQ+ laws has gone through in the state – the majority of which target transgender minors – there’s one policy Blankenship is pushing for that could protect trans kids, and its approval is showing “early promise.” The initiative? Ban conversion therapy within the state of Kentucky. The strategy? Highlight anti-transgender hypocrisy.
Three local governments in the state have passed ordinances banning the draconian practice, but none have enforced them, Blankenship claims. This has helped “increase the pressure on the state legislature [to say] that they need to take action, so that they can’t just leave this to somebody else.”
“Another thing that has helped us increase interest in doing this bill is that the legislature banned gender-affirming care for minors last year,” Blankenship notes. “They spent the whole year talking about how they wanted to ban unethical experimental medical treatments for LGBT youth. Well, here’s one. … I think that we’re really turning some heads with the idea that we need to be consistent.”
The Kentucky Legislature’s attacks on LGBTQ+ people have significant consequences, but they have also fostered a greater sense of community among queer people in the state. Blankenship says that lately more and more people have been inspired to get involved in local politics and even to run for office – particularly transgender people. In fact, the state may soon have its second transgender elected official and first trans representative if Emma Curtis wins her bid for the 93rd House District in Lexington.
Those are two of the biggest steps Blankenship believes people can take to support the trans community in a time where they’re under attack: run for office, and donate to those running for office who are LGBTQ+, or at least supportive of queer people. The third step is to “push their local party establishments and democratic powerhouses to do the same things: to endorse these candidates, to put money behind these candidates, to put effort behind these candidates.”
“The City Council and the school board are more important than the president,” Blankenship says. “Our local governments affect our lives so, so profoundly, and LGBT people have the same basic needs as everybody else. We pay rent, we drive on roads, we send our kids to school. … If we can all uplift each other, we can achieve a new kind of power. We can achieve a new kind of community and a new kind of politics that works for everybody.”
Enfranchising such candidates won’t just change policy nationally, she explains, but it will also “change hearts and minds locally,” as it “demonstrates that we have so much more in common with regular people, working people, than we have differences.”
“It’s not regular people who want to hurt us, it’s national organizations that try to co-opt religion to build power through hate,” Blankenship continues. “The fact that Kentucky’s first openly trans elected official didn’t come from a city, but from a little bitty mountain town, proves that the stereotype of queerphobic rural conservatives is just not the reality.”
She adds: “My election showed that this is something that can happen. … If a trans person can win here in Appalachian State hills, they can win anywhere.”
The CEOs of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Snap, and Discord testified in the Senate on Wednesday to discuss the online exploitation of children. The discussion brought up the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bipartisan bill that seeks to protect minors from online harm. But KOSA has come under fire from some LGBTQ+ activists and groups who fear that the bill will enable Republicans to block queer youth from seeing age-appropriate LGBTQ+ content online.
Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, says revisions to the bill have helped ensure that its current version will protect all kids and safeguard against potential misuse by anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. But Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that protects people’s human rights in the digital age, says KOSA unconstitutionally violates free speech rights and will result in social media companies broadly censoring LGBTQ+ content rather than risking lawsuits from attorneys general.
It’s undeniable that social media can negatively impact mental health. Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory noting how the frequency and kinds of information shown to young people on social media can cause a “profound risk of harm” to their mental health.
“Children and adolescents on social media are commonly exposed to extreme, inappropriate, and harmful content, and those who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety,” the Surgeon General’s report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health said. Social media’s content and design can also make some young people feel addicted to it, increasing body dysmorphia, low self-esteem, and even self-harming behaviors, the report added.
KOSA tries to remedy this by requiring online platforms to take measures to prevent recommending content that promotes mental health disorders (like eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, and bullying) unless minors specifically search for such content. KOSA also requires platforms to limit features that result in compulsive usage — like autoplay and infinite scroll — or allow adults to contact or track young users’ location. The bill says platforms must provide parents with easy-to-use tools to safeguard their child’s social media settings and notify parents if their kids are exposed to potentially hazardous materials or interactions.
Furthermore, KOSA requires platforms to submit annual reports to the federal government containing details about their non-adult users, the internal steps they’ve taken to protect minors from online harms, the “concern reports” – or reports platforms issue parents when their child encounters any harmful content – they’ve issued to parents, and descriptions of interventions they’ve taken to mitigate harms to minors. These reports will be overseen by an independent third-party auditor who consults with parents, researchers, and youth experts on additional methods and best practices for safeguarding minors’ well-being online.
KOSA has bipartisan support, including that of President Joe Biden as well as 46 senatorial co-sponsors, 21 of whom are Democrats, including lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (WI) and LGBTQ+ allies like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA). LGBTQ Nation reached out to Baldwin and Warren’s offices for additional comment but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication. KOSA is also supported by groups like Common Sense Media, Fairplay, Design It For Us, Accountable Tech, Eating Disorders Coalition, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
But while parents of transgender youth and numerous pro-LGBTQ+ organizations agree that social media can negatively impact young people’s mental health, many other groups have nonetheless opposed the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the LGBT Technology Partnership, as well as LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in six states.
“KOSA is, at its heart, a censorship bill,” Mandy Salley, Chief Operating Officer of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a group that advocates for sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, told LGBTQ Nation. “If passed in its current form, we believe that KOSA will hinder the ability of everyone to access information online and negatively harm many communities that are already censored online, including sex therapists, sex workers, sex educators, and the broader LGBTQ+ community. Our human right to free expression cannot be ignored in favor of supposed ‘safety’ on the Internet.”
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The big sticking point: KOSA’s Duty of Care provision
Specifically, Woodhull and the other aforementioned organizations are worried about the bill’s Duty of Care provision that allows attorneys general to conduct investigations, issue subpoenas, require documentation from, and file civil lawsuits against any platforms that have “threatened or adversely affected” minors’ well-being. LGBTQ+ advocates fear that Republican attorneys general who consider LGBTQ+ identities as harmful forms of mental illness will use KOSA to censor such web content and prosecute platforms that provide access to such content.
In a July 2023 Teen Vogue op-ed, digital rights organizer Sarah Philips wrote that the bill “authorizes state attorneys general to be the ultimate arbiters of what is good or bad for kids. If a state attorney general asserts that information about gender-affirming care or abortion care could cause a child depression or anxiety, they could sue an app or website for not removing that content.”
It didn’t help that KOSA was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who has said that one of the bill’s top priorities is to protect children from “the transgender in this culture.”
“[Social media] is where children are being indoctrinated,” Blackburn told the Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian organization, in a September 2023 speech. “They’re hearing things at school and then they’re getting onto YouTube to watch a video and all of a sudden this comes to them… They click on something and, the next thing you know, they’re being inundated with it.”
Blackburn’s office told LGBTQ Nation that her comment had been “taken out of context” and wasn’t related to KOSA, stating, “KOSA will not — nor was it designed to — target or censor any individual or community.” But the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has also said it wishes to use the law to “guard” kids against the “harms of… transgender content.”
But Marquez-Garrett told LGBTQ Nation that these concerns are based on an old version of the bill that has since been revised after consultation with concerned LGBTQ+ activists.
“If [the possibility of an attorney general misusing a law is] the standard by which we judge all laws, we’re never going to have new laws because the reality is an unscrupulous attorney general can try,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean they’re going to succeed.”
First, she points out that Philips’s concern about attorney generals suing platforms for not removing pro-LGBTQ+ content doesn’t necessarily apply for two reasons: KOSA doesn’t regulate what LGBTQ+ or allegedly harmful content a site can host — it regulates what content that websites automatically suggest to young users. Users of all ages can still access any material that they deliberately search for.
Moreover, attorneys general have to prove to a judge and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that, by KOSA’s definitions, LGBTQ+ content harms young users’ mental health. Such arguments won’t pass muster with every judge or FTC commissioner.
Marquez-Garret noted that after Sen. Blackburn made her concerning comments, the bill was revised with input from queer advocates and reintroduced with amendments meant to account for those concerns. For example, while the original bill broadly required web platforms to prevent all “harms” to minors, the revised bill specifically mentions the harms companies must work against (including suicidal behaviors, eating disorders, substance use, sexual exploitation, and ads for tobacco and alcohol).
She also notes that KOSA says an attorney general who begins civil actions under KOSA will be required to issue a report of any action to the FTC. The FTC will then have the right to intervene.
“The FTC is only as good as the people running it,” Marquez-Garrett told LGBTQ Nation. “And we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.” But, assuming that the FTC is “not nefarious and is reasonable,” she continued, if the FTC begins an investigation into the actions, the attorney general’s home state is forbidden from taking any additional actions.
Marquez-Garrett also points out that the revised version of KOSA contains a carveout that says that if a minor searches for any sort of content, including LGBTQ+ content, then they’re allowed to see it even if an attorney general considers it harmful. Additionally, KOSA also explicitly excludes many websites from its control, including government platforms, libraries, and non-profits. That means if a minor finds pro-LGBTQ+ content on the websites of the ACLU, The Trevor Project, or the Human Rights Campaign, an attorney general can’t prosecute.
Furthermore, under the revised KOSA, websites aren’t required to install age verification or parental consent functionality that might prevent young people from accessing different platforms. Though Greer questioned how social media platforms can comply with the bill without conducting age verification, Marquez-Garrett says Greer’s question ignores KOSA’s plain language and echoes “another Big Tech narrative about Big Tech’s ability or inability to comply with KOSA.”
Regardless, under KOSA, platforms are also expressly forbidden from being required to disclose a minor’s browsing behavior, search history, messages, contact list, or other content or metadata of their communications that could potentially out them to their parents.
“We totally agree that big tech platforms and the surveillance capitalist business model that they employ are doing real harm, and that they’re specifically harming LGBTQ people and communities,” Greer, director of Fight for the Future (FFF), told LGBTQ Nation. “But as long as KOSA attempts to dictate what content platforms can recommend, it will be unconstitutional.”
FFF and the ACLU have said that the government cannot force platforms to suppress entire categories of content or to suppress all content that might lead to a minor becoming depressed or anxious without violating the First Amendment.
Greer said that legislators behind KOSA should have consulted more with civil liberties and human rights advocates, like her organization and the ACLU, to consider a bill’s potential constitutional and human rights pitfalls.
Marquez-Garrett disagrees with Greer’s characterization, telling LGBTQ Nation, “KOSA does not prohibit content of any sort, nor does it prohibit posting of any content by third parties, so does not run afoul of the First Amendment.”
Apart from the constitutionality issue, Greer most worries that if social companies are subjected to liability for content, they will over-remove content to avoid getting sued. “This is exactly what happened with SESTA,” she said, referencing two bipartisan laws passed in 2018 that sought to reduce sex trafficking online.
Because the law held online companies liable for any user content that could be seen as facilitating sex work, many online businesses just opted to shut down any forums for sex or dating. Others banned any potential “adult content” (including discussion boards), deleted content about avoiding sexually transmitted infections, and created rules forbidding sexual comments. The law made sex workers much more vulnerable to traffickers and made actual sex trafficking much more difficult to track, its critics say. Even Sen. Warren, who supported the law, expressed regret for its unintended consequences.
“Do I think that Mark Zuckerberg is going to go to bat in court to protect my kid’s ability to continue engaging in the online communities that she finds supportive and loving and caring? Absolutely not,” Greer said. “He’s gonna roll over and do whatever he thinks he needs to do to avoid his company getting sued,” she added, especially if they’re threatened by “rogue” attorneys general, conservative judges, or an FTC run by the administration of Donald Trump.
“Do people really want to gamble with trans kids’ lives hoping that we’ll never have a bigot in the White House ever again? I sure don’t,” Greer added.
In an informational white paper, FFF said that if a user searches for “Why do I feel different from other boys,” and a platform returns search results about gender identity, an attorney general can argue that that’s not what the user was searching for, and thus the platform is liable for “algorithmically recommending” that content.
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Is there a way to fix KOSA’s potential problems?
If KOSA becomes law, social media companies won’t risk attracting these attorneys’ attention, Greer and other groups worry. Instead, the companies will react by omitting, algorithmically suppressing, or blocking large swaths of LGBTQ+ content — not just “recommended” served by platform algorithms.
This would affect not only content related to LGBTQ+ issues and other controversial but important topics for users they believe could be minors (including content from The Trevor Project or the Human Rights Campaign, Greer says), but also any users’ or resources’ posts sharing information about queer health resources, life experiences, and social events, Greer predicted, since all social media content is regulated by algorithms.
“I truly believe that legislation [like KOSA] that enables this type of government censorship makes kids less safe, and not more safe,” Greer says. “It feels to me like it’s driven by the same bad thinking behind abstinence-only sex education: the idea that we protect kids by cutting them off from information rather than by allowing them to access it.”
Marquez-Garrett disagrees. “KOSA is plain on its face, and efforts to misinterpret KOSA will not succeed. If a conservative attorney general could simply attack a type of content it doesn’t like, then liberal attorneys general could do the same, such as with guns, or political content, or any number of potentially objectionable topics. And KOSA’s own limitations would provide complying platforms with viable defenses.”
But instead of supporting KOSA in its current form, FFF has encouraged legislators to ditch its Duty of Care provision and replace it with a strict privacy regime that bans any use of minors’ personal data to power algorithmic recommendation systems. The FFF also suggested explicitly prohibiting specific manipulative business practices, like autoplay, infinite scroll, intrusive notifications, and surveillance advertising.
Lawmakers should also drop the provision in KOSA allowing enforcement by attorneys general, the FFF suggests. Instead, its provisions could be enforced by the FTC as “unfair or deceptive business practices,” which the FTC already has a mandate to crack down on. This would aid the law’s constitutionality and bring the law into the realm of regulating these businesses the same way that the federal government already regulates many other businesses.
Some social media platforms and influencers are opposed to any government oversight, Marquez-Garrett says, because policies that limit what their algorithms can recommend also reduce their overall content engagement and, thus, their profits.
Currently, social media platforms aren’t protecting LGBTQ+ kids, she adds. A minor who searches for “gay pride” may be served videos telling them that being gay is bad and that gay people are going to hell and should kill themselves. Platforms also regularly remove LGBTQ+ content for allegedly violating platform policies or potentially offending users in other countries.
She believes that KOSA could help open the playing field for platforms that don’t harmfully target kids because any such actions will become a matter of public record and scrutiny. This will allow ethical web designers to create better systems that protect children’s needs. That’s especially important, she said, since numerous studies have shown that access to positive online LGBTQ+ media and communities can improve young queers’ mental health.
Ultimately, she believes that everyone should support protecting children, especially as more studies show how negative online experiences can increase mental distress and suicidality among kids.
“We cannot give big tech a free pass and assume they have our kids’ best interests at heart,” she said.
Two gay elders have opened their home and lives to a slew of foster children since they retired. So far, they have fostered 33 kids and have no intention of stopping any time soon.
Their first placement was a six-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister. The siblings stayed with the couple for a year.
Swiis Foster Care clients Barney and Rajainder spoke to Pink News about the challenges and rewards of being foster parents.
“As the main carer, I decided that emergency and respite care would be more suitable to our lifestyle. Obviously, emergency and respite care entails a high turnover of placements, which can last anywhere from 24 hours to a few months,” Barney told the outlet.
“We have cared for children and young people from the age of six to 17 years old over the past four years, so needs, routines, interventions, and boundaries change constantly.”
He added, “Whatever the day brings, providing a constant calm, safe, and caring environment is paramount.”
The rewards are obvious, they say. The goal is to provide the children with the safety and encouragement to handle the adversity life has thrown at them.
“Some children and young people come to us in a state of chaos, with low self-esteem and confidence, and they leave with increased confidence and self-esteem, having learned age-appropriate, independent living skills to help them move further in life,” Barney said.
They encouraged other queer couples to consider becoming foster parents too. There are approximately 391,000 children in foster care in the United States, and every state needs loving individuals who are willing to open their homes to kids in need.
“I can only assume that many from the LGBTQ+ community who are concerned that their sexual orientation or identity would be a barrier to fostering associate their concern with negative attitudes that still exist in society,” Barney said.
“For us, the positive outcomes that can and have been achieved for the vulnerable children and young people we have cared for far outweigh any concern we have for narrow-minded, intolerant individuals.”
Rivule Sykes announced their candidacy Monday for U.S. House in the Fifth Congressional District of Louisiana, launching a campaign that they say aims to bring “people’s attention to the issues we all face together.”
As a transgender woman who is a member of Gen Z, Sykes says they understand how both groups are “uniquely” challenged in the country today. With previous experience in property management, working as a resident assistant, and being a lighting designer technician, they also have a deep interest in the policies affecting the average American worker.
“There are broad common ground issues that are affecting all of us. Living through or the threat of poverty and income inequality, workers’ rights, the industrial prison complex, corporate greed, and lack of access to health care, to name a few,” they tell The Advocate, adding, “So when we talk about those issues, I can add in how LGBTQ+ people are often uniquely affected by them.”
While Gen Z are proven to be more progressive than previous generations, candidates still regularly struggle to reach younger voters. Part of this, Sykes says, is because they don’t see themselves represented. There is currently only one Gen Z member of Congress, and many racial/ethnic groups are disproportionately underrepresented across the nation. Beyond that, many of them do not see themselves economically represented.
“Gen Z and Alpha are facing a future of such wealth inequality across the board. Millennials as well. Over half of each of those generations that are working age still live with family, as do I technically,” Sykes explains, continuing, “I’ve had my viewpoints completely invalidated by people who don’t think I’m responsible or ‘grown up’ just because I don’t own my own house yet. And that is harmful to not only our generation but our democracy.”
Sykes’s platform aims to bridge these gaps, focusing largely on worker’s rights and economic growth through policies that benefit people before profit. Their plans for housing and urban development policies include affordable housing, anti-gentrification, and homeownership assistance programs.
They are also a proponent of universal health care and expanded access to mental health services. Sykes promotes education funding and development, including teacher support programs. Their advocacy for workers’ rights doesn’t stop at educators — the candidate is also in favor of raising the minimum wage and developmental programs that would support small businesses.
Hailing from the small towns of Hammond and Holden, Sykes has firsthand experience of wealthy state policymakers overlooking rural and low-income communities. They say that this “lack of diverse representation affects all of us,” as “when the majority of politicians come from wealthy backgrounds, they are less likely to vote in favor of policies that will help the most poor and vulnerable of our generation.”
“There needs to be diversity in our representation when it comes to who forms our policy,” they continue. “While older politicians are valuable for the experience they have and the knowledge of our systems, we need younger policymakers to inform on new perspectives and bring energy for action and change.”
Sykes is an advocate for systemic change in both government and the criminal justice system. Alongside transparency and restrictions on lobbying, they also seek the abolition of bail and the private prison industry in Louisiana in favor of restorative justice systems. Their lobbying restrictions are particularly significant, as Sykes cites the practice as one of the causes behind young people’s disillusionment.
“Some of the traditional action that we’ve been told is effective just isn’t getting through to our politicians, and that’s because of corporate lobbying,” they explain, adding, “So, we’re seeing that inequality not only in wealth but also in representation of voice.”
Sykes is running in the state’s Fifth Congressional District, which is currently represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow. Louisiana elections use the majority-vote system, meaning candidates all compete in the same primary regardless of party, and a candidate can win outright if they receive over 50 percent of the vote. If a candidate does not win at least half of the votes, the top two advance to the general election.
Sykes is running as a third-party candidate in “a traditionally heavily Republican district.” Because of this, they say that “knowledge of electoral politics would inform my chances of getting elected as slim to none.”
While they are aware it’s an uphill battle, they believe that the purpose of political campaigns goes beyond winning and losing — instead, they can serve as an opportunity to shed a light on important issues while uplifting marginalized voices.
“That is one of the biggest reasons I am running, even if I don’t get elected. We need more representation in our choices,” Sykes explains. “But I do feel like I have a lot of those unique perspectives. And I feel like I am well informed on a lot of the issues we are facing collectively. And collectively, the majority of us are working class and poor, and we need more people in Congress who understand that struggle.”
They add, “At the end of the day, my campaign isn’t about electing me, it’s about bringing people’s attention to the issues we all face together, and coming together to form community-focused solutions that won’t leave anyone behind.”
Marching into a gay bar to issue citations feels a bit vintage in 2024. Nevertheless, over the weekend, the Joint Enforcement Team (JET), which is a coalition of Seattle Police, Fire, the state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB), and others, entered two gay bars, The Cuff Complex and The Seattle Eagle, and started looking around.
And what did they find? A bartender’s exposed nipple and a few people wearing jockstraps, offenses that law enforcement can cite you for in Washington if you’re also selling alcohol.
At 12:30 on Saturday morning, a 10-member JET crew filed into Cuff, according to owner Joey Burgess. They came in with flashlights, scaring some patrons who left in a hurry. Inside, they saw the offending nipple, a violation of state law the JET may penalize in some way.
A group of Capitol Hill gay bars and clubs are teaming up with neighborhood queer community leaders Dan Savage and Terry Miller in calling for the state’s liquor control board and Seattle Police officials to explain what they say was a weekend crackdown reminiscent of historical harassment of Seattle’s LGBTQ friendly venues.
Ownership at the bars including The Cuff, Queer/Bar, Massive, and The Eagle along with Savage and Miller say that citations issued over weekend over clothing and decency violations at a handful of clubs recorded by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board and so-called Joint Enforcement Team inspectors were targeted.
The group is asking for the community to demand the liquor control board explain its actions.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, is demanding to know if the right-wing group known as the Fellowship Foundation, a.k.a. the Family, is supporting Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act.
The act, passed last year, provides for a sentence of life in prison for consensual same-sex relations and the death penalty in certain circumstances. It also requires that citizens report anyone they suspect has violated the law. It replaces a similar law that was passed a decade ago, although without the death penalty provision, and was struck down by Uganda’s highest court, not because of its content but because of the manner in which it was adopted. The new law is being challenged in court as well.
The Fellowship Foundation, while based in the U.S., has been cozy with anti-LGBTQ+ African leaders for years, but there is particular concern about its work in Uganda. “Since the passage of [Uganda’s] first Anti-Homosexuality Act a decade ago, there have been numerous reports linking both bills, their authors, and the larger movement to further criminalize LGBTQI+ people in Uganda to the Fellowship Foundation/the Family, and its associates,” Pocan wrote in his letter, released Tuesday and addressed to the foundation’s president, Katherine Crane.
“At Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast in 2023, which the Fellowship Foundation helped support — including by flying in Rep. Tim Walberg to speak — speakers called LGBTQI+ advocates ‘a force from the bottom of Hell,’ said they would ‘destroy’ ‘the forces of LGBTQ,’and spoke in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Act,” Pocan continued. “In addition, Rep. Walberg told the participants to ‘stand firm’ in response to international pressure against Uganda, though he later said his statement was not in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, as imposing the death penalty against LGBTQI+ people is antithetical to Christian values. President Museveni later said at the breakfast that there are Americans who ‘think like us,’ illustrating how proponents of the Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda point to certain Americans’ statements to justify their own support for this draconian law.”
Walberg is a Republican member of the U.S. House from Michigan. Pocan, a gay man, is a Democratic member from Wisconsin.
Pocan noted that there have also been concerns about the foundation’s U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, which has caused that to split into two events.
Pocan asked Crane to provide information on the foundation’s communications with Ugandan officials regarding the Anti-Homosexuality Act; whether the foundation supports or opposes the law and, if it opposes the measure, if it will publicly announce its opposition to it and other bills that criminalize LGBTQ+ people, especially those that impose the death penalty; the foundation’s financial support for advocacy activities in Uganda and what other countries the foundation provides similar support in; and if members of the new National Prayer Breakfast board are affiliated with the foundation.
He asked for replies no later than February 28.
Another U.S.-based nonprofit, Family Watch International, has been accused of ties to the Ugandan law and other aanti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Africa as well.
Iowa lawmakers on Wednesday declined to advance a bill that would have stripped gender identity from the state’s civil rights law, a proposal that opponents said could have subjected LGBTQ Iowans to discrimination in education, housing and public spaces.
The bill has been floated in recent years without success but reached the first step in Iowa’s lawmaking process Wednesday, when it was rejected by three members of a House Judiciary subcommittee. As they discussed the measure, LGBTQ advocates outside the room cried out: “Trans rights are human rights.” Two of the subcommittee members are Republican and one is a Democrat.
Not every state has explicit protections for a person based on their gender identity, but opponents of the bill suggested that removing such already existing protections from a state’s anti-discrimination law would have stood out in an already historic period of anti-trans laws in Republican-led statehouses.
Republican House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl — who is not a member of the subcommittee and didn’t take part in the vote — said Wednesday that he doesn’t think it would be the “wise choice” to break open established civil rights code “whether you agree with all of it or not.”
“Taking that protection away would then be an opportunity to discriminate against one of those protected classes,” he said of how the bill would be perceived.
LGBTQ Iowans and allies who descended upon the Iowa Capitol to protest the bill far outnumbered those in support, though the testimony initially alternated between pro and con. Some trans Iowans in the room shared personal testimony about discrimination they’ve faced and fears of being further marginalized.
Iowa’s civil rights law protects against discrimination in employment, wages, public accommodations, housing, education and credit practices based upon certain characteristics of a person. That includes gender identity, as well as someone’s race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin and disability status.
Sexual orientation and gender identity were not originally included in Iowa’s Civil Rights Act of 1965. They were added by the Democrat-controlled Legislature in 2007, with about a dozen Republicans across the two chambers joining in favor.
State Rep. Jeff Shipley, who authored the bill discussed on Wednesday, gave an impassioned introduction in which he argued that there is no objective criteria to evaluate gender identity and that there is a “viciously hostile” culture around the protection of these individuals over others. Shipley said the latter was made clear by the protesters shouting expletives and giving him the finger as he left the room.
As written, the bill would have amended the civil rights law’s definition of disability, a protected status, to include the psychological distress that some transgender people experience, known as gender dysphoria, or any another diagnosis related to a gender identity disorder.
Those individuals would be protected, but advocates Wednesday made clear that being trans is not a disability and that a broad swath of transgender Iowans who do not experience gender dysphoria would be left exposed.
“I am not disabled,” said Annie Sarcone, a transgender Iowan and director of the Des Moines Queer Youth Resource Center. “Shame on the Iowa Legislature for trying to pull something like this. For being the only state to take things this far.”
Iowa’s Republican-controlled statehouse has passed multiple bills that Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law targeting LGBTQ Iowans in recent years, including prohibiting transgender students from using public bathrooms that align with their gender identity, banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and prohibiting transgender females from participating in girls high school and women’s college sports.
Those measures are part of a wave of laws recently passed in conservative states across the country that have led the Human Rights Campaign to declare a state of emergency for LGBTQ Americans.
About half of U.S. states include gender identity in their civil rights code to protect against discrimination in housing and public places, such as stores or restaurants, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank. Some additional states don’t explicitly protect against such discrimination, but it is included in legal interpretation of the statutes.
Federal protections against employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity were reinforced in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in 2020, when conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority that discrimination because of LGBTQ+ status was an extension of sex-based discrimination.
Iowa’s Supreme Court expressly diverged from the federal high court in a 2022 ruling.
Kat Klawes had no choice but to fight for transgender rights as a teen growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
A young Klawes often fought for the world to believe one of her mothers is a transgender woman.
Klawes grew up knowing one of her mothers was trans, often fighting for the world to know it as well. But for years, she tells GLAAD, she had to pretend her mother didn’t exist, with adults in her life repeatedly telling her that she had fabricated the story of her mother and her mother’s transness.
Fast forward to present day, Klawes is taking back the narrative, owning her story and correcting the record. In January, she joined fellow Wisconisites and local LGBTQ activists at the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center in a gathering with local leaders convened by the GLAAD Media Institute. Like her, many of the LGBTQ advocates said that they struggle with access to LGBTQ community, extracurriculars, medical care, and basic needs in Wisconsin.
“We didn’t talk about trans people,” Klawes told GLAAD.
“I remember on the playground one day in second grade, I told one of my friends about my other mother. She then ran and told the teacher who came up to me and made me apologize for ‘lying.’”
This broke Klawes’ heart. She had lost access to her family in the ways many LGBTQ youth are today with “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” laws, history, sports, and book bans, and trans healthcare bans. “As a child, I looked to my local libraries for resources,” she shared. “In middle school I read the book Luna by Julie Anne Peters. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t feel alone.” She said the public library book helped her to “better understand her queerness” and her mother.
Last year, there were 3,362 school book bans nationwide, including 43 in Wisconsin, according to the nonprofit PEN America. While Wisconsin is not in legislative session in 2024, the state will have elections.
Voters know Wisconsin for its tight elections. In 2024 there will be elections for State Senate and State Assembly. The general election is on November 5. A primary is August 13, and the filing deadline is June 3.
“Wisconsin is quite rural,” said Alaina Landi, the communications and marketing director of the Milwaukee Gay Football Club. “Milwaukee and Madison, I’d say, are really safe havens for the LGBTQ community and most people with a marginalized identity.”
Landi is fighting to make community gatherings – in particular with a focus on sports. Already, 23 states have anti-trans sports bans, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s anti-LGBTQ politicians hope to be the twenty-fourth.
Back in October, the Wisconsin State Assembly passed “new restrictions on who can play sports” for public schools, private schools in the parental choice program, UW System schools and technical colleges.
“We’re going to veto every single one of them (the bills),” said pro-LGBTQ Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers in a hearing regarding the bills.
Nonetheless, the possibility of anti-LGBTQ laws passing alone has an impact on LGBTQ populations throughout the state.
Erik Czech-Swanson, founder of LGBT Waukesha, said he relates to the isolation Landi and Klawes discussed with GLAAD. The GLAAD Media institute alum drove about 40 minutes to meet with Wisconsin advocates.
Just west of Milwaukee, Waukesha County is quite rural, making it difficult for LGBTQ people to find each other to organize as a community.
“LGBT Waukesha was founded out of a need for more visibility for the LGBTQIA+ community in Waukesha County,” said Czech-Swanson. “Around me, still, we feel very disconnected in the community where I am at.”
With LGBT Waukesha, Czech-Swanson hopes to change that.
“As we head into the new year, be there for each other,” said Czech-Swanson. “There is so much going on specifically targeting LGBTQ youth and it’s been really disheartening for a lot of them to hear the [anti-LGBTQ] messages going around. It’s really important for us to make sure that they understand that they are welcome and that they have a future.”
With that said, Czech-Swanson says to “be a voice for yourself,” and to “check in on everyone; make sure you’ve got your safety in numbers.”
You can check your voter registration at GLAAD.org/vote.
Hear from other Wisconsin LGBTQ advocates Court Hellendrung, founder of CHOSEN, and Kristina Arnold, a transgender spokesperson for FORGE.
More on the GLAAD Media Institute: Using the best practices, tools, and techniques we’ve perfected over the past 30 years, the GLAAD Media Institute turns education into armor for today’s culture war—transforming individuals into compelling storytellers, media-savvy navigators, and mighty ambassadors whose voices break through the noise and incite real change.
We are calling on Facebook and Instagram to do more to make their social media platforms safe for LGBT users who face digital targeting and severe offline consequences including detention and torture.ACT NOW
In February 2023, Human Rights Watch published a report on the digital targeting of LGBT people in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia, and its offline consequences. The report details how government officials across the MENA region are targeting LGBT people based on their online activity on social media, including on Meta platforms. Security forces have entrapped LGBT people on social media and dating applications, subjected them to online extortion, online harassment, doxxing, and outing; and relied on illegitimately obtained digital photos, chats, and similar information in prosecutions. In cases of online harassment, which took place predominantly in public posts on Facebook and Instagram, affected individuals faced offline consequences, which often contributed to ruining their lives.
As a follow up to the report and based on its recommendations, including to Meta, the “Secure Our Socials” campaign identifies ongoing issues of concern, and aims to engage Meta platforms, particularly Facebook and Instagram, to publish meaningful data on investment in user safety, including regarding content moderation in the MENA region, and around the world.
On January 8, 2024, Human Rights Watch sent an official letter to Meta to inform relevant staff of the campaign and its objectives, and to solicit Meta’s perspective. Meta responded to the letter on January 24.
Social media platforms can provide a vital medium for communication and empowerment. At the same time, LGBT people around the world face disproportionately high levels of online abuse. Particularly in the MENA region, LGBT people and groups advocating for LGBT rights have relied on digital platforms for empowerment, access to information, movement building, and networking. In contexts in which governments prohibit LGBT groups from operating, organizing by activists to expose anti-LGBT violence and discrimination has mainly happened online. While digital platforms have offered an efficient and accessible way to appeal to public opinion and expose rights violations, enabling LGBT people to express themselves and amplify their voices, they have also become tools for state-sponsored repression.
Building on research by Article 19, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Association for Progressive Communication (APC), and others, Human Rights Watch has documented how state actors and private individuals have been targeting LGBT people in the MENA region based on their online activity, in blatant violation of their right to privacy and other human rights. Across the region, authorities manually monitor social media, create fake profiles to impersonate LGBT people, unlawfully search LGBT people’s personal devices, and rely on illegitimately obtained digital photos, chats, and similar information taken from LGBT people’s mobile devices and social media accounts as “evidence” to arrest and prosecute them.
LGBT people and activists in the MENA region have experienced online entrapment, extortion, doxxing, outing, and online harassment, including threats of murder, rape, and other physical violence. Law enforcement officials play a central role in these abuses, at times initiating online harassment campaigns by posting photos and contact information of LGBT people on social media and inciting violence against them.
Digital targeting of LGBT people in the MENA region has had far-reaching offline consequences that did not end in the instance of online abuse, but reverberated throughout affected individuals’ lives, in some cases for years. The immediate offline consequences of digital targeting range from arbitrary arrest to torture and other ill-treatment in detention, including sexual assault.
Digital targeting has also had a significant chilling effect on LGBT expression. After they were targeted, LGBT people began practicing self-censorship online, including in their choice of digital platforms and how they use those platforms. Those who cannot or do not wish to hide their identities, or whose identities are revealed without their consent, reported suffering immediate consequences ranging from online harassment to arbitrary arrest and prosecution.
As a result of online harassment, LGBT people in the MENA region have reported losing their jobs, being subjected to family violence including conversion practices, being extorted based on online interactions, being forced to change their residence and phone numbers, delete their social media accounts, or flee their country of residence, and suffering severe mental health consequences.
Meta is the largest social media company in the world. It has a responsibility to safeguard its users against the misuse of its platforms. Facebook and Instagram, in particular, are significant vehicles for state actors’ and private individuals’ targeting of LGBT people in the MENA region. More consistent enforcement and improvement of its policies and practices can make digital targeting more difficult and, by extension, make all users, including LGBT people in the MENA region, safer.
As an initial step toward transparency, the “Secure Our Socials” campaign asks Meta to disclose its annual investment in user safety and security including reasoned justifications explaining how trust and safety investments are proportionate to the risk of harm, for each MENA region language and dialect. We specifically inquire about the number, diversity, regional expertise, political independence, training qualifications, and relevant language (including dialect) proficiency of staff or contractors tasked with moderating content originating from the MENA region, and request that this information be made public.
Meta frequently relies on contractors and subcontractors to moderate content, and it is equally important for Meta to be transparent about these arrangements.
Outsourcing content moderation should not come at the expense of working conditions. Meta should publish data on its investment in safe and fair working conditions for content moderators (regardless of whether they are staff, contractors, or sub-contractors), including psychosocial support; as well as data on content moderators’ adherence to nondiscrimination policies, including around sexual orientation and gender identity. Publicly ensuring adequate resourcing of content moderators is an important step toward improving Meta’s ability to accurately identify content targeting LGBT people on its platforms.
We also urge Meta to detail what automated tools are being used in its content moderation for each non-English language and dialect (prioritizing Arabic), including what training data and models are used and how each model is reviewed and updated over time. Meta should also publish information regarding precisely when and how automated tools are used to assess content, including details regarding the frequency and impact of human oversight. In addition, we urge Meta to conduct and publish an independent audit of any language models and automated content analysis tools being applied to each dialect of the Arabic language, and other languages in the MENA region for their relative accuracy and adequacy in addressing the human rights impacts on LGBT people where they are at heightened risk. To do so, Meta should engage in deep and regular consultation with independent human rights groups to identify gaps in its practices that leave LGBT people at risk.
Meta’s over-reliance on automation when assessing content and complaints also undermines its ability to moderate content in a manner that is transparent and lacking bias. Meta should develop a rapid response mechanism to ensure LGBT-specific complaints [in high-risk regions] are reviewed by a human with regional, subject matter, and linguistic expertise, in a timely manner. Meta’s safety practices can do more to make its platforms less prone to abuse of LGBT people in the MENA region. Public disclosures have shown that Meta has frequently failed to invest enough resources into its safety practices, sometimes rejecting internal calls for greater investment in regional content moderation even at times of clear and unequivocal risk to its users.
In the medium term, Human Rights Watch and its partners call on Meta to audit the adequacy of existing safety measures and continue to engage with civil society groups to carry out gap analyses on existing content moderation and safety practices. Finally, regarding safety features and based on uniform requests by affected individuals, we recommend that Meta implement a one-step account lockdown tool of user accounts, allow users to hide their contact lists, and introduce a mechanism to remotely wipe all Meta content and accounts (including from WhatsApp and Threads) on a given device.
Some of the threats faced by LGBT people in the MENA region require thoughtful and creative solutions, particularly where law enforcement agents are actively using Meta’s platforms as a targeting tool. Meta should dedicate resources towards research and engagement with LGBT and digital rights groups in the MENA region, for example, by implementing the “Design from the Margins” (DFM) framework developed by Afsaneh Rigot, a digital rights researcher and advocate. Only with a sustained commitment to actively centering the experiences of those most impacted in all its design processes, can Meta truly reduce the risks and harms faced by LGBT people on its platforms.
Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, social media companies, including Meta, have a responsibility to respect human rights – including the rights to nondiscrimination, privacy, and freedom of expression – on their platforms. They are required to avoidinfringing on human rights, and to identify and address human rights impacts arising from their services including by providing meaningful access to remedies and to communicate how they are addressing these impacts.
When moderating content on its platforms, Meta’s responsibilities include taking steps to ensure its policies and practices are transparent, accountable, and applied in a consistent and nondiscriminatory manner. Meta is also responsible for mitigating the human rights violations perpetrated against LGBT people on its platforms while respecting the right to freedom of expression.
The Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation provide useful guidance for companies to achieve their responsibilities. These include the need for integrating human rights and due process considerations at all levels of content moderation, comprehensible and precise rules regarding content-related decisions, and the need for cultural competence. The Santa Clara Principles also specifically require transparency regarding the use of automated tools in decisions that impact the availability of content and call for human oversight of automated decisions.
Human rights also protect against unauthorized access to personal data, and platforms should therefore also take steps to secure people’s accounts and data against unauthorized access and compromise.
The Secure Our Socials campaign recommendations are aimed at improving Meta’s ability to meet its human rights responsibilities. In developing and applying content moderation policies, Meta should also reflect and take into account the specific ways people experience discrimination and marginalization, including the experiences of LGBT people in the MENA region. These experiences should drive product design, including through the prioritization of safety features.
Regarding human rights due diligence, Human Rights Watch and its partners also recommend that Meta conduct periodic human rights impact assessments in particular countries or regional contexts, dedicating adequate time and resources into engaging rights holders.
Many forms of online harassment faced by LGBT people on Facebook and Instagram are prohibited by Meta’s Community Standards, which place limits on bullying and harassment, and indicate that the platform will “remove content that is meant to degrade or shame” private individuals including “claims about someone’s sexual activity,” and protect private individuals against claims about their sexual orientation and gender identity, including outing of LGBT people. Meta’s community standards also prohibit some forms of doxxing, such as posting people’s private phone numbers and home addresses, particularly when weaponized for malicious purposes.
Due to shortcomings in its content moderation practices, including over-enforcement in certain contexts and under-enforcement in others, Meta often struggles to apply these prohibitions in a manner that is transparent, accountable, and consistent. As a result, harmful content sometimes remains on Meta platforms even when it contributes to detrimental offline consequences for LGBT people and violates Meta’s policies. On the other hand, Meta disproportionately censors, removes, or restricts non-violative content, silencing political dissent or voices documenting and raising awareness about human rights abuses on Facebook and Instagram. For example, Human Rights Watch published a report in December 2023 documenting Meta’s censorship of pro-Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook.
Meta’s approach to content moderation on its platforms involves a combination of proactive and complaint-driven measures. Automation plays a central role in both sets of measures and is often relied upon heavily to justify under-investment in content moderators. The result is that content moderation outcomes frequently fail to align with Meta’s policies, often leaving the same groups of people both harassed and censored.
Procedurally, individuals and organizations can report content on Facebook and Instagram that they believe violates Community Standards or Guidelines, and request that the content be removed or restricted. Following Meta’s decision, the complainant, or the person whose content was removed, can usually request that Meta review the decision. If Meta upholds its decision for a second time, the user can sometimes appeal the platform’s decision to Meta’s Oversight Board, but the Board only accepts a limited amount of cases.
Meta relies on automation to detect and remove content deemed violative by the relevant platform and recurring violative content, regardless of complaints, as well as in processing existing complaints and appeals where applicable.
Meta does not publish data on automation error rates or statistics on the degree to which automation plays a role in processing complaints and appeals. Meta’s lack of transparency hinders independent human rights and other researchers’ ability to hold its platforms accountable, allowing wrongful content takedowns as well as inefficient moderation processes for violative content, especially in non-English languages, to remain unchecked.
In its 2023 digital targeting report, Human Rights Watch interviewed LGBT people in the MENA region who reported complaining about online harassment and abusive content to Facebook and Instagram. In all these cases, platforms did not remove the content, claiming it did not violate Community Standards or Guidelines. Such content, reviewed by Human Rights Watch, included outing, doxxing, and death threats, which resulted in severe offline consequences for LGBT people. Not only did automation fail to detect this content, but even when it was reported, the automation was ineffective in removing harmful content. As a result, it barred LGBT people who complained and their requests were denied from access to an effective remedy, the timeliness of which could have limited offline harm.
Human Rights Watch has also documented, in another 2023 report, the disproportionate removal of non-violative content in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook, often restricted through automation processes before it appears on the platform, a process that has contributed to the censorship of peaceful expression at a critical time.
Meta also moderates content in compliance with government requests it receives for content removal on Facebook and Instagram. While some government requests flag content contrary to national laws, other requests for content removal lack a legal basis and rely instead on alleged violations of Meta’s policies. Informal government requests can exert significant pressure on companies, and can result in silencing political dissent.
Meta’s insufficient investment in human content moderators and its over-reliance on automation undermine its ability to address content on its platform. Content targeting LGBT people is not always removed in an expeditious manner even where it violates Meta’s policies, whereas content intended by LGBT people to be empowering can be improperly censored, compounding the serious restrictions LGBT people in the MENA region already face.
As the “Secure Our Socials” campaign details, effective content moderation requires an understanding of regional, linguistic, and subject matter context.
Human content moderators at Meta can also misunderstand important context when moderating content. For example, Instagram removed a post of an array of Arabic terms labelled as “hate speech” targeting LGBT people by multiple moderators who failed to recognize the post was being used in a self-referential and empowering way to raise awareness. One major contributing factor to these errors was Meta’s inadequate training and a failure to translate its English-language training manuals into Arabic dialects.
In 2021, LGBT activists in the MENA region developed the Arabic Queer Hate Speech Lexicon, which identifies and contextualizes hate speech terms through a collaborative project between activists in seventeen countries in the MENA region. The lexicon includes hate speech terms in multiple Arabic dialects, is in both Arabic and English, and is a living document that activists aim to update periodically. To better detect anti-LGBT hate speech in Arabic, as well as remedy adverse human rights impacts, Meta could benefit from the lexicon as a guide for its internal list of hate speech terms and should actively engage LGBT and digital rights activists in the MENA region to ensure that terms are contextualized.
Meta relies heavily on automation to proactively identify content that violates its policies and to assess content complaints from users. Automated content assessment tools frequently fail to grasp critical contextual factors necessary to comprehend content, significantly undermining Meta’s ability to assess content. For example, Meta’s automated systems rejected, without any human involvement, ten out of twelve complaints and two out of three appeals against a recent post calling for death by suicide of transgender people, even though Meta’s Bullying and Harassment policy prohibits “calls for self-injury or suicide of a specific person or groups of individuals.”
Automated systems also face unique challenges when attempting to moderate non-English content and have been shown to struggle with moderating content in Arabic dialects. One underlying problem is that the same Arabic word or phrase can mean something entirely different depending on the region, context, or dialect being used. But language models used to automate content moderation will often rely on more common or formal variants to “learn” Arabic, greatly undermining their ability to understand content in Arabic dialects. Meta recently committed to examining dialect-specific automation tools, but it continues to rely heavily on automation while these tools are being developed and has not committed to any criteria to ensure the adequacy of these new tools prior to their adoption.
Meta’s policies prohibit the use of its Facebook and Instagram platforms for surveillance, including for law enforcement and national security purposes. This prohibition includes fake accounts created by law enforcement to investigate users, and applies to government officials in the MENA region that would entrap LGBT people. Accounts reported for entrapment could be deactivated or deleted, and Meta has initiated legal action against systemic misuses of its platform, including for police surveillance purposes.
However, Meta’s prohibition against the use of fake accounts has not been applied in a manner that pays adequate attention to the human rights impacts of people who face heightened marginalization in society. In fact, the fake account prohibition has been used against LGBT people. False reporting of accounts on Facebook for using fake names has been used in online harassment campaigns; unlike Facebook, Instagram does not prohibit the use of pseudonyms. Facebook’s aggressive enforcement of its real name policy has also historically led to the removal of LGBT Facebook accounts using pseudonyms to shield themselves from discrimination, harassment, or worse. Investigations into the authenticity of pseudonymous accounts can also disproportionately undermine the privacy of LGBT people.
The problems that Human Rights Watch and its partners hope to address in this campaign do not only occur on Meta’s platforms. Law enforcement agents and private individuals use fake accounts to entrap LGBT people on dating apps such as Grindr and WhosHere.
Before publishing its February report, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Grindr, to which Grindr responded extensively in writing, acknowledging our concerns and addressing gaps. While we also sent a letter to Meta in February, we did not receive a written response.
Online harassment, doxxing, and outing are also prevalent on other social media platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter). X’s approach to safety on its platform has come under criticism in recent years, as its safety and integrity teams faced significant staffing cuts on several occasions.
Meta continues to operate the largest social media company in the world, and its platforms have substantial reach. Additionally, Meta’s platforms cover a range of services, ranging from public posts to private messaging. Improving Meta’s practices would have significant impact and serve as a useful point of departure for a broader engagement with other platforms around digital targeting of LGBT people in the MENA region.
The targeting of LGBT people online is enabled by their legal precarity offline. Many countries, including in the MENA region, outlaw same-sex relations or criminalize forms of gender expression. The criminalization of same-sex conduct or, where same-sex conduct is not criminalized, the application of vague “morality” and “debauchery” provisions against LGBT people emboldens digital targeting, quells LGBT expression online and offline, and serves as the basis for prosecutions of LGBT people.
In recent years, many MENA region governments, including Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, have introduced cybercrime laws that target dissent and undermine the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Governments have used cybercrime laws to target and arrest LGBT people, and to block access to same-sex dating apps. In the absence of legislation protecting LGBT people from discrimination online and offline, both security forces and private individuals have been able to target them online with impunity.
Governments in the MENA region are also failing to hold private actors to account for their digital targeting of LGBT people. LGBT people often do not report crimes against them to the authorities, either because of previous attempts in which the complaint was dismissed or no action was taken, or because they reasonably believed they would be blamed for the crime due to their non-conforming sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression. Human Rights Watch documented cases where LGBT people who reported being extorted to the authorities ended up getting arrested themselves.
Governments should respect and protect the rights of LGBT people instead of criminalizing their expression and targeting them online. The five governments covered in Human Rights Watch’s digital targeting report should introduce and implement legislation protecting against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, including online.
Security forces, in particular, should stop harassing and arresting LGBT people on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression and instead ensure protection from violence. They should also cease the improper and abusive gathering or fabrication of private digital information to support the prosecution of LGBT people. Finally, the governments should ensure that all perpetrators of digital targeting – and not the LGBT victims themselves – are held responsible for their crimes.
Spread the word about potential harms for LGBT users on social media platforms and the need for action.
The #SecureOurSocials campaign is calling on Meta platforms, Facebook, and Instagram, to be more accountable and transparent on content moderation and user safety by publishing meaningful data on its investment in user safety, including content moderation, and to adopt some additional safety features.
You can take action now. Email Facebook President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Vice President of Content Policy Monika Bickert to act on user safety.
Firefighters in Decatur, Georgia have determined that an October fire at a local gender-affirming care clinic was intentionally set in a move one activist has labeled “terrorism.”
The fire in the city’s historic Blair Building was “contained to one office and no injuries were reported,” according to a recent statement from the City of Decatur Fire Rescue Department.
The statement expressed that an investigation has determined the fire “to be incendiary in nature, indicating the fire was intentionally set.” No suspects have been identified.
The Blair building houses several medical providers, but a police report confirms that the target of the fire was QMed, which focuses on gender-affirming care, Decaturish reported.
“We won’t be intimidated,” QMed owner Dr. Izzy Lowell told Atlanta News First.“We will not stop providing life-saving care to our patients.” While the office is “completely destroyed,” Lowell said the clinic is seeing patients remotely. She also confirmed the FBI is investigating the arson attack as a hate crime.
Georgia passed a hate crime law in 2020. H.B. 426 became the first law in the state to specifically protect LGBTQ+ residents and give stronger punishments to those whose crimes target victims due to their LGBTQ+ identity, or due to other factors such as their race, religion, or national origin.
Trans activist Alejandra Caraballo wrote on X that the attack “is following the antiabortion playbook of destroying clinics to get them shut down.”
“This is terrorism,” she concluded.
The Movement Advancement Project gave Georgia 1 point out of a possible 44.5 for its LGBTQ+ policies, leaving it with an overall rating of “low.”
In March 2023, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a ban on trans youth receiving gender-affirming health care. The law revokes the licenses of medical professionals who administer surgeries or hormone replacement therapy for transgender people under the age of 18. The law creates an exemption for cisgender youth; they are allowed gender-affirming care to conform to their sex assigned at birth.
Puberty blockers, however, are not banned under the legislation.
The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all rejected claims that gender-affirming care harms transgender children or adults. Additionally, gender-affirming surgery is almost never performed on youth.
