Gay Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) has issued a warning to the University of Michigan after the school’s medical center announced Monday it will no longer provide gender-affirming care to patients under 19 due to threats from the federal government.
“The announcement from the University of Michigan that they will no longer provide their transgender patients with all of the healthcare options available is shameful, dangerous, and potentially illegal,” Nessel said in a statement. “This cowardly acquiescence to political pressure from this president and his administration is not what patients have come to expect from an institution that has labeled itself, ‘the leaders and the best,’ and my Department will be considering all of our options if they violate Michigan law.”
State anti-discrimination law bans discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Nessel told health care providers that “the availability of federal funding has no bearing on Michiganders’ right to seek and receive healthcare services without discrimination.”
“Moreover, access to federal funds does not relieve Michigan healthcare facilities and providers of the obligation to comply with Michigan laws,” she added.
An email to staff at the school’s medical center, Michigan Medicine, called the decision to halt gender-affirming care for minors “difficult and complex,” Advocate reported.
It was made, the note said, “in response to unprecedented legal and regulatory threats against our institution and our employees, including threats of criminal and civil charges against our prescribing clinicians.”
“Please know that we are committed to working with our patients/clients to ensure appropriate, individualized care plans,” it continued. “We will offer to meet individually with impacted patients/clients to explore options for ongoing care. We understand how impactful this change is. If you are uncertain about how this change might impact you or your clients/patients, please discuss this with your supervisor.”
At least 21 hospitals and health systems have suspended or reduced health services for transgender minors and young adults in 2025, according to an NBC News analysis. Many providers cited fears of federal investigations and the potential loss of government funding.
In January, the president signed an executive order directing federal agencies to cut off funding for gender-affirming care for minors and instructing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate and criminalize providers and health centers that offer such care. In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the DOJ to investigate providers, hospitals, and clinics that provide gender-affirming care to trans youth.
The crackdown escalated earlier this summer when federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to more than 20 hospitals and clinics. In August, sixteen states and the District of Columbia filed suit in an attempt to block the administration’s investigations. However, several providers that received subpoenas chose to suspend offering gender-affirming care instead of waiting for the outcome of the lawsuit.
But how does Google’s algorithm decide which results show up? And how do these results influence LGBTQ kids, their parents and Americans at large who are searching for help?
Uncloseted Media asked five Americans from around the country to Google five common queries related to LGBTQ identity, religion and parenting.
The results were alarming and raised an urgent question: With nearly 40% of LGBTQ youth seriously considering suicide just last year, what happens when a queer teen or the parent of a gay kid in crisis turns to Google?
Photos courtesy of participants Mark Just, Genna and Melanie Brown, April Samberg, Tommy O’Neil. Photo of Genna and Melanie by Kaoly Gutteriez.
“I’m Christian, my daughter is a lesbian,” Melanie Brown, a Southern Baptist from High Point, North Carolina, types into Google.
When Brown presses enter, Bible Bulletin Board comes up as the third result, with the suggestion of “offering hope for change,” and “lead[ing] the way to the alternative to homosexuality.” It goes on to explain that “homosexuality is contrary to God’s Word. It is sin and as always results in sin’s destructive effects on the individual and on those close to them.”
In the living room, Brown’s 15-year-old daughter Genna, with her dog on her lap, Googles “accurate information on gay kids and what to do.”
Focus on the Family (FOTF) is the first result. She clicks the link and lands on the platform of a hyper-religious organization known for promoting conversion therapy and labeling her sexuality as sinful.
The site, which presents itself as a reputable religious source, features a tab titled “Understanding Homosexuality” and a section under their resources for “Homosexuality.” It states: “[FOTF] is committed to upholding God’s design for the expression of human sexuality: a husband and wife in a marriage.”
It offers suggested reading on “redemption” from a gay lifestyle, along with 11 counseling resources aimed at changing sexual orientation, including The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, which guarantees “professional assistance … for persons who experience unwanted homosexual attractions.”
The language is intentionally padded, which means Genna and her mom—and many of the other millions of Christian parents of queer kids—may never know that Google led them to a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group. FOTF is known for its long-standing opposition to LGBTQ rights, for spreading anti-LGBTQ disinformation and for framing homosexuality and transgender identity as sinful and disordered.
In South Boston, Virginia, Tommy O’Neil Googles, “My daughter just came out as trans and I’m a Christian.” As a father of two, he wants what’s best for his kids. According to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Google’s second result, O’Neil should recognize that God doesn’t make mistakes when assigning sex and give sympathy for those who are indoctrinated in the “transgender cult.”
Thousands of miles away in Anchorage, Alaska, 38-year-old bisexual woman April Samberg Googles, “I am bisexual and have a husband who is Christian, am I going to hell?”
The third result is once again an article by FOTF that tells April that “same-sex-attracted strugglers” and “transgender and homosexual lust and behavior are wrong.”
In Cincinnati, 44-year-old Mark Just Googles, “accurate information on homosexual kids and what to do.” FOTF is the top search result.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Just told Uncloseted Media. “It’s disturbing because if there are people out there who want to accept and understand their children or loved ones, this is what they’re being pointed to.”
“[I feel] fear for the queer kids with Christian parents who will be seeing that and thinking it’s good advice, and sorrow for the kids with parents who already have,” says Genna Brown, who was a “self-loathing, suicidal kid” who thought God would punish her for being gay before she came out to her now accepting parents. “It’s pretty awful that this is what’s being pushed for advice. This has no doubt harmed people.”
Uncloseted Media also asked folks in Taiwan, Lebanon, China, Hong Kong, Canada and India to Google similar queries. All of them had FOTF turn up as a top search result.
Google, like other search engines, compiles information and directs users to various websites by referencing the titles of web pages that it judges to be most reflective of what was searched.
“Google’s algorithm is notoriously a black box,” says Jesse Ringer, founder of Method and Metric, a search engine optimization (SEO) growth company. “That’s intentional to keep their competitive advantage.”
What we do know is that Google ranks search results by first crawling the web with an automated program called “spiders” to follow links from page to page and collect data.
It uses text matching to identify documents that it thinks are relevant to a query and then ranks them based on a combination of popularity, freshness, location and previous links clicked.
But for people searching for reliable information, its process can be problematic.
“Google doesn’t rank based on accuracy, but on popularity and query matching,” says Dirk Lewandowski, professor of information research and retrieval at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. “This is based on clicks and a network of how many other links are directed to this website. … Of course, users click what is shown in the first position. So we have kind of a rich get richer.”
How to Get a High Ranking
As websites with the highest rankings continue to receive more clicks, websites like FOTF can also employ other tactics to keep their prominent placement.
Backlinking—the process of having other web pages hyperlink back to your site—is one of the ways to maintain your high ranking.
“Backlinks are a big part of popularity. So the relationship between other websites linking to this source is a big part of Google’s algorithm,” says Ringer. “There are SEO businesses that build link farms so that the content of their clients can go higher. They create a network effect and they link to each other. It is not unreasonable to think that [FOTF] has hired either an SEO person or they’ve hired an external agency to contribute to that.”
According to Francesca Tripodi, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, ranking can also be gamed by matching keywords to content. Tripodi looked at the metadata of progressive and conservative companies and found that conservative content creators “are much better at doing this.”
“They are savvy at creating new sets of words and tagging their content with them,” she says. “That’s not something I’m seeing with progressive content creators.”
Tripodi says that not only does conservatism thrive online, it might be the only perspective returned.
“They are well-funded companies with large production budgets and effective digital marketing teams,” she wrote in a 2019 testimony about conservatism and Google searches. “This is why when you search for liberal phrases like ‘gender identity’ or ‘social justice’ the top returns … are conservative content creators.”
Google declined to speak on record with Uncloseted Media for this story.
In an email, a spokesperson said: “Like any search engine, Google indexes the content that’s available on the open web, relying on systems like keyword matching to surface relevant results. We are largely guided by local law when it comes to removing pages from search results.”
What If It’s Harmful or Illegal?
The United States notoriously protects harmful or misleading content—including anti-LGBTQ hate speech—under the First Amendment.
“The situation in [other countries] is a bit different than in America,” Lewandowski says. “For instance, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So Google bans these sites, but they don’t ban them in the U.S.”
Section 230 of the U.S. law protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by implying that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements on the internet. This law largely takes legal pressure off of Google.
And in 2003, an Oklahoma court ruled that Google’s rankings are subjective opinions and thus constitutionally protected.
Google’s policies for tamping down on harmful content “don’t apply to web results.” Thus, there is little moderation on the web pages that pop up for Americans who use the search engine.
The spokesperson for Google says that “[they] hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to legal requirements to remove pages from Google search results” and that “they don’t remove web results except for child sexual abuse, highly personal information, spam, site owner requests, and valid legal requests.”
But according to the company, “determining whether content is illegal is not always a determination that Google is equipped to make.”
Tripodi says this might be why groups like FOTF are still showing up, even though conversion therapy is illegal in 23 states. She says these groups may have found a loophole in Google’s policy by “tricking” the search engine into thinking they are providing “resources” and not simply a recommendation for conversion therapy.
“Google has a responsibility for what is coming up in their results because people trust [them],” says Lewandowski. “They think something is correct or accurate because it is number one in Google.”
Fifteen-year-old Genna Brown is one of the 85% of Americans who feel this way, according to a 2025 study.
“Isn’t the first result typically ranked most credible?” she says. “Because I typically trust the first result more.”
“It’s pretty concerning what comes up when you search for these things,” Ringer says. “There needs to be more done to educate the people who are doing the searches on understanding news and information.”
But vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ kids who are living in households where they are told they are going to hell and parents who are often confused and in crisis themselves, are being led by Google’s algorithm to believe that being queer is wrong.
“1000% yes, these results concern me,” says Genna Brown. “We’re talking about organizations that promote practices like conversion therapy, which is insane. … I wish there was some disclaimer. Like, ‘Google has determined this to be a subjective query. As such, we can’t verify the following results. Proceed with caution.’”
Tripodi says she thinks consumers are responsible for about 20% of the burden by researching and verifying the sources they learn from. But she agrees with Brown in that Google carries an ethical responsibility for the content it chooses to rank and promote.
“As a global corporation that gobbles up all other possibilities for information, Google has a responsibility to ensure that its content is accurate and not harmful,” Tripodi says. “[It’s their job] to ensure that the information that they surface is accurate and reliable because we know people trust that information.”
Uncloseted Media reached out to Focus on the Family, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Bible Bulletin Board. They did not respond to our request for comment.
Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Spencer Macnaughton.
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Beau Lamarre-Condon, 30, entered a plea of not guilty on Tuesday to two counts of domestic violence-related murder and one count of breaking and entering with the intent to commit an indictable offense. He stands accused of killing Jesse Baird and Luke Davies in February, 2024 at the couple’s shared house in Sydney.
Police believe that Lamarre-Condon used his service Glock firearm to fatally shoot the two shortly before 10 a.m. on February 19. Lamarre-Condon was reportedly previously in a sexual relationship with Baird, with investigators theorizing that Lamarre-Condon killed the couple because he was angry Baird ended their relationship.
Lamarre-Condon was arrested four days later on February 23 following a nationwide manhunt. He revealed the location of Baird and Davies’ bodies to law enforcement, leading to their discovery on February 27 at a remote rural property in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales (NSW). The two had been stuffed into surfboard bags and hastily covered with debris.
Baird, a television host and red carpet reporter for Network 10’s morning show until its cancellation, and Davies, a flight attendant for Qantas Airlines, were beloved within the local LGBTQ+ community. Their murders took place during Mardi Gras, the Australian version of Pride Month, which commemorates the violent police raid of a gay Mardi Gras celebration in 1978.
The event has been likened to the Stonewall Riots and is considered the beginning of the country’s modern queer rights movement. In response to the murders, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras board asked NSW not to march in the 2024 parade, saying that their presence “could intensify the current feelings of sorrow and distress.”
If convicted, Lamarre-Condon could face a sentence of lifetime imprisonment for each murder, plus an additional penalty of up to 20 years in prison for breaking and entering.
Sawyer Hemsley, founder of Crumbl Cookies who serves as the company’s Chief Branding Officer, came out as gay late Monday night after various videos and social media threads publicly discussed his sexuality based on the entrepreneur’s online presence.
Hemsley wrote in an Instagram post shared on Monday, August 25:
“Over the past little while, there have been people online trying to define me, twist things, and share conversations in ways that feel harmful. Instead of letting others write my story, I want to share it in my own words.
The truth is, over the past few years I’ve come to understand and accept that I’m gay. It’s taken me a long time to really process this part of myself and even longer to feel comfortable enough to say it out loud. For most of my life, I didn’t have the clarity to answer the questions or respond to the rumors. Coming to terms with it has been overwhelming and, at times, scary — but it has also brought me peace, joy, and authenticity that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I grew up with values and beliefs that I still deeply love and respect, which made this journey more complicated. But I remain grateful for my foundation, even as I’ve worked to embrace this truth about myself.
I know some people may have questions or even judgments, but my hope is that kindness, empathy, and love will lead the way. I’ve learned so much through this process — about strength, compassion, and the importance of living authentically.
Hemsley concluded the post writing, “At the end of the day, I’m deeply thankful: for the opportunities I’ve had, for the people who support me, and for the chance to live and share my story. It’s a journey of growth and honesty, and one I’ll never stop being grateful for.”
A feature published on the Utah State Magazine wrote about Hemsley’s upbringing as a Mormon.
“Growing up in Southeastern Idaho, Sawyer Hemsley served as the student body president at Preston High School. He got involved in student politics again at Utah State after serving a mission in Mexico for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but following a stint as student events vice president, Hemsley took an even bigger swing and ran for student body president in the spring of 2017.”
Hemsley cofounded Crumbl Cookies alongside Jason McGowan in 2017 and opened the company’s first store in Logan, Utah. Since then, Crumbl has grown to have “more than 1,000 locations across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada,” The New York Times reports.
Crumbl also has a huge social media following that includes 10.6 million followers (along with 98.9 million likes) on TikTok, 6.3 million followers on Instagram, 3.9 million followers on Facebook, and nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube.
The New York Times this week profiled Donald Trump’s so-called “A-Gays,” an offensive clique of lily white, self-appoionted power gays who, in the Times’words, strut around a militarized D.C. like “a new power tribe.”
What the story reveals is that this “tribe” is anything but glamorous. The asinine A-Gays are a grotesque display of hypocrisy, delusion, and self-importance. These poor excuses for gay men have chosen to bow before the very administration that is taking a knife to the LGBTQ+ community.
In broad daylight, while giddy, gutless A-Gays gawk at the gruesomeness. The A-Gays have their noses so far in the air, and so far up Trump’s ass, that the only thing they smell besides Trump’s stench is the stink of their own snootiness.
This group of Nazi-like close-cropped haircuts and fancy suits is crowing about finding acceptance in Trump’s cult of narcissism. The A-Gays are a perfect fit: too caught up in themselves, just like their vanglory-in-chief.
They are cheap, throwaway props, who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, say that Trump is “not really homophobic.” Really? Does anyone believe Donald Trump would ever walk into a gay bar, or even speak at a Log Cabin Republicanevent? There’s your answer.
Need more proof? Trump and his bruv homophobes, following the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ Project 2025, have been busying themselves with obliterating (the A-Gays love this word) LGBTQ+ protections.
They are defunding queer youth suicide hotlines, gutting HIV programs at home and abroad, destroying trans rights, and erasing LGBTQ+ history from the nation’s story.
These A-Gays aren’t A-list anything, except in their arrogance. In the real world, they wouldn’t even make the Z-list.
The Times quoted one of the A-Gays, Casey Flores, who smugly suggested that “the battle for gay rights has basically been won.” Really? Seriously? Perhaps Flores has a flip phone and no access to the internet (DOGE took that away), so he’s illiterate about the news.
Tell couples wondering if their marriages will survive a Supreme Court waiting for the chance to rip equality to shreds, not to worry. Tell queer youth staring down skyrocketing suicide as hotlines and resources are eliminated, that it’s going to be ok.
It takes a special kind of obtuse stupidity to insist the fight is over.
But why worry? Because Flores is busy sitting in a leather chair in an uppity club, sipping a martini, pining for an invitation to Peter Thiel’s house, while talking loud enough on his flip-phone so people in the room can be witnesses to his self-importance.
I’ve seen this lot before. When I worked on Capitol Hill in the late ’80s, I stumbled into a beach house in Rehoboth where a cabal of closeted Reagan staffers stayed. Their walls were plastered with pictures of themselves with the very man whose administration ignored AIDS while their friends died. This sounds very harsh, but that was the reality.
They were smug too, and equally self-important, and worshipful of a president who didn’t care if they lived or died. Sound familiar? Those men ended up in the dustbin of history, or worse.
Some of them got sick and died, and yet their loyalty never wavered. I spoke with James Kirchick when his fascinating book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, came out. We talked about Reagan strategist Terry Dolan, himself gay, who succumbed to AIDS as Reagan still refused to say the word. Many of his contemporaries died in secret.
Reagan even went so far as to deny his close friendship with Rock Hudson after he died of AIDS complications in October of 1985. When I went to that house, it was 1988, Reagan’s last year in office, and these toadies were still enthralled with him. Ignorance begets ignorance.
That’s what these Trump A-Gays remind me of, because they are of the same ilk. They, too, are men so desperate for proximity to power that they’ll overlook the casualties of Trump’s cruelty piling up around them.
The absurdity reaches new heights when Melania enters the picture. The Timesreports that Melania is an icon to this group. I had to read that twice, because Melania doesn’t “love the gays” at all.
The article cites two appearances she benevolently made for Log Cabin Republicans, one at Trump Tower and one at Mar-a-Lago. But that might be a huge lie. She went, not out of the goodness of her non-heart, but because it was a money-making scheme for her. She allegedly charged them six figures to show up for each event. I wrote about this last year.
Yet the Times’ Shawn McCreesh fails to note that key fact, painting her as a gay ally when she’s really a paid prop.
With all this, I couldn’t help but be reminded about the A-gay-A, Richard Grenell, who idiotically said earlier this year that Trump attracts “normal gays.” I wrote about that too, saying if he thinks he’s “normal” then thank God I’m not.
This is all so repulsive. These sycophants cling to Trump as if he’s the key to their acceptance, blind to the reality that the very MAGA bros and Christian extremists they cozy up to despise them.
Their foolishness is only matched by their sheer lack of awareness. I bet none of the A-Gays has ever been to a Trump rally, and heard the word “f*g” bandied about like a conjunctive.
The Times article notes that these men are unwelcome in D.C.’s actual gay bars, iced out on dating apps, mocked as sellouts. Um, do ya think?
No one wants to get close to someone who cheerfully sells out their own community for a selfie with Trump or preens at a table at the Monocle, while squealing, “Look at me!” “Look at me!” “Look at me!”
What’s most insidious is the A-Gays’ willingness to redefine “community” as their exclusive club. One of the A-Gays, Charles Moran even brags about keeping a spreadsheet of Trump gays in government, as if they’re some secret fraternity.
I’m sorry, but keeping a spreadsheet on A-Gays is about as creepy as it gets. I can see some wanna-be A-gay frantically calling around, “Can you get me on Charles Moran’s spreadsheet?”
The A-Gays make themselves out to be something fabulous. But, there’s nothing fabulous about defending a man who would gleefully roll back marriage rights, who mocks Pete Buttigieg’s marriage while renaming the Navy ship that rightfully honored Harvey Milk. And what about trans rights?
These pathetic A-Gays are nothing more than collaborators in Trump’s quest to burn down democracy and establish an autocracy. When that happens, we will all know what the “A” in A-Gays stands for.
Trump will throw these A-Gays under the bus once MAGA wakes up and sees that the A-Gays are nothing more than DEI hires.
Trump dances to “Y.M.C.A.” onstage, sure, but behind the curtain, he cuts AIDS relief, mocks drag queens, and greenlights Christian extremists who believe our very existence is a sin.
History will not be kind to these men. Just as Reagan’s closeted loyalists are remembered with shame and revulsion, Trump’s A-Gays will be remembered as lamentable sycophants, too vain to see that they were being used, and too pompous to stand with their own.
Trump’s A-Gays won’t be remembered for their power or their proximity, just as pathetic spreadsheet sellouts, and useful idiots who helped crush freedom, democracy, and gay rights.
A man has thanked his followers for their support as he battles to free his boyfriend from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.
Eric Duran has been recording his efforts to free boyfriend Juan since 21 July. In a TikTok posted on Sunday (31 August), he said Juan, with whom he has been in a relationship for more than a year, is being held in Louisiana, having been moved from Colorado and Arizona.
“I got a call from someone whose brother-in-law is with Juan and shared they were transferred to this facility,” Duran wrote. “I was then able to confirm through the ICE locator as his information finally showed in the system. Thank you again for all the support.”
He then mentioned the GoFundMe that has been launched to “help us with legal fees, making sure he has money in there, and potentially setting up to live in a different country”.
Ninety per cent of $5,500 (£4,000) target has already been raised.
‘Physically exhausting and labour-intensive’
“This is all an intentional and calculated effort by the system to make sure he doesn’t get his due process, because Tuesday was his bond hearing and they moved him before that,” Duran went on to say.
The system isn’t there to “support in any way, shape or form,” and nobody truly knows where these individuals are. And at one stage he was told his boyfriend had been “sent home”, Duran claimed.
“The only human experience out of all of this is being able to build a community and being able to show up and support each other. That was truly how I was able to know and confirm that Juan was at the Louisiana facility.
“It’s on us to make sure we know where our loved ones are. All this has been so costly, all this is so physically exhausting and labour-intensive and mentally taxing. I’m so happy there is a community that wants to support in any way they can, so thank you again.”
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ICE officials reportedly ‘burnt out’ by Trump’s immigration crackdown
According to reports, ICE officials are facing “burnout and frustration” as president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown continues.
Reuters claimed that agents had complained about White House demands for high arrest quotas, said to be as high as 3,000 a day – 10 times the number under president Joe Biden.
“The demands they placed on us were unrealistic. It was not done in a safe manner or the manner to make us most successful,” one official is quoted as saying.
A former ICE agent was initially told by colleagues that they were happy the “cuffs are off” but several months later, he told Reuters that they were now “overwhelmed” by the arrest numbers and “would prefer to go back to focused targeting”.
An Alaskan podiatrist is leading the State Medical Board’s efforts to take away life-saving health care from transgender youth.
The Board unanimously approved a proposal last week spearheaded by Dr. Matt Heilala, of Anchorage, to move towards eradicating gender-affirming health care for trans minors by reclassifying such treatments—such as puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgeries—as “unprofessional conduct.” If finalized, this would also give the board broad discretion over the enforcement and “sanctions” doled out, such as fines or loss of licensure. No such restrictions are proposed for the care of cisgender people.
The rule must still undergo a legal review followed by a 30-day public comment period, after which a final vote would determine whether the provision will be enacted.
“I think it will be pretty impactful,” Heilala told the Anchorage Daily News ahead of the vote. Heilala, a podiatrist, does not appear to have any clinical expertise in treating gender dysphoria. It is unclear whether the other five board members do, either. When Erin in the Morning requested information about whether any of the Board members—a general surgeon, a neurosurgeon, a cardiologist, a primary care physician, and a commercial pilot—had any experience serving trans patients, or had any professional training on gender dysphoria at all, a spokesperson declined to disclose due to “concerns with HIPAA.”
However, HIPAA, the gold standard of federal privacy law, does not prevent doctors from disclosing the demographics or diagnoses they have worked with.
“I think it’s very important that we, as medical professionals, can address and talk about what our professional expertise and experience is,” said Dr. Kevin Tarlow, a psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. “How else can consumers evaluate our expertise if we can’t talk about the types of care that we have provided?”
“What I see is a very small number of political appointees who happen to be physicians, going against the consensus of the professions they’re supposed to represent and regulate,” Tarlow added.
It’s not the first time Heilala and this Board have attempted to roll back Alaskans’ access to health care. Earlier this year, with Heilala as the legislative liaison, the Board urged legislators to ban most gender-affirming care for trans youth, treatment that fewer than 100 Alaskans across the state receive. (Heilala also recently announced his gubernatorial campaign, where July polls had him coming in sixth.)
When democratically-elected lawmakers didn’t pick up the offer, the Board decided to take matters into its own hands, with Heilala once again at the helm.
“[T]he Board is now going rogue—attempting to reclassify evidence-based treatment through a political maneuver,” said a press release from Identity, Inc., an LGBT health care provider and advocacy group, in the days leading up to the August 22 vote. “In the same discussion, the Board also moved to target abortion access, revealing a broader ideological agenda, not legitimate medical oversight.”
Ann, an Anchorage mother to a trans young person that had to leave the state, pointed to the state’s historic preservation of Alaskans’ right to privacy. (She requested her surname be withheld from publication due to the violent threatsparents of trans kids are facing.)
“Alaska prides itself on its independence—like, the government staying out of our business,” Ann told Erin in the Morning. “I don’t understand this slide into government and political interference for what can be the most personal issue for families and their medical providers.”
The current proposal draft states that the board will sanction physicians found to be “providing medical or surgical intervention to treat gender dysphoria or facilitate gender transition by altering sex characteristics inconsistent with the biological sex at birth, including but not limited to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomy, phalloplasty, or genital modification to a minor under the age of 18 years old.”
As with many anti-trans provisions, it glosses over the immense obstacles already standing between trans people’s access to care; suggests a misleading frequency of certain kinds of procedures, such as a phalloplasty, and carves out exceptions for the often invasive and needless medical interventions used on cisgender intersex children.
It also seeks to codify, within board guidelines, a definition of sex.
“Biological Sex,” the draft reads, is a “male or female designation based on chromosomes, gonads, hormones, and genitals at birth, irrespective of psychological identity.”
“Gender Transition,” meanwhile, is “[a]ny process to align sex characteristics with a gender identity different from biological sex.”
Frequent Erin in the Morning readers may recognize the common mistakes with these definitions: They are highly unscientific, right-wing abstractions about notions of biological sex that don’t actually neatly exist. And they are certainly not recognized by major global medical organizations.
Instead, almost every major medical association—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the Endocrine Society, and the American Medical Association—recognizes trans kids’ need for affirming health care. In response to this fact, Board Chairman Brent Taylor told Erin in the Morning that other countries, like Sweden or Britain, have “severely curtailed” health care for transgender people, a claim which Erin in the Morning previously found to be “thoroughly outdated” as “several European nations have moved in the opposite direction.”
He did not cite any particular studies in his statement, nor did the resolution the board passed. Almost 80 people attended the virtual hearing. Alaskans begged the bureaucrats not to interfere. Health care professionals, trans people, and the parents of trans youth showed up to hold the line. One speaker said he was a medical student who took time off from his rotation in pediatrics to advocate for reproductive health care. Another attendee simply sat behind a blank screen, camera and mic off, with the screen name: “Shame on you all.”
“We already are in such a crisis in Alaska and that the state medical Board is taking action that’s one, not addressing that, and two, knowingly doing things that all the data suggests will make it worse,” Ann said after the hearing.
Tom Pittman, executive director of Identity, Inc., said in a press release that they would not capitulate to demands that seek to eradicate life-saving for trans youth. “We will continue delivering that care, and we will not back down from defending the right of Alaska’s families and providers to make these decisions free from political interference,” he said. “Our commitment is unwavering: to protect care, defend truth, and stand with trans youth.”
South Carolina is pressing the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately reinstate a policy that bars transgender students from using bathrooms that match their gender identity, escalating a fight that could set national precedent for the rights of LGBTQ+ youth.
In an emergency petition filed Thursday, state officials urged Chief Justice John Roberts to overturn a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals injunction that blocked the measure just as the school year began. The provision, enacted as part of the state budget in July 2024, requires school districts to restrict multi-user restrooms by “biological sex” or forfeit 25 percent of their state funding.
The dispute began last November, when the parents of a transgender boy suedafter their son was suspended for using the boys’ restroom at his Berkeley County middle school. In their complaint, joined by the Alliance for Full Acceptance, the family argued the policy stigmatizes transgender youth and violates both Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
On Monday, a Fourth Circuit panel in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the student, pointing to its 2020 ruling in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, which struck down a nearly identical bathroom ban in Virginia. The Supreme Court declined to intervene in that case. South Carolina’s lawyers counter that Grimmis a “discredited outlier,” arguing that the Supreme Court’s June decision in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming carefor minors under a deferential “rational basis” standard, has reshaped the legallandscape. The Fourth Circuit rejected the state’s bid to reconsider and pause the ruling.
The case now lands before a Supreme Court that has repeatedly sidestepped transgender bathroom disputes, but which has agreed to hear two major cases next term on sports bans in West Virginia and Idaho, and one on Colorado’s“conversion therapy” ban. Together, the trio of cases could mark the most consequential test yet of how far states may go in policing the lives of LGBTQ+ kids in America.
A decision on South Carolina’s emergency request could come within days.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and a group of LGBTQ+ and student rights organizations are suing to block a new state law that would ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools. “Senate Bill 12 is a blatant attempt to erase students’ identities and silence the stories that make Texas strong,” said Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “Every student — no matter their race, gender, or background — deserves to feel seen, safe, and supported in school.”
Because of SB 12’s ban on discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, opponents have compared it to Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, which attracted widespread media attention in 2022 due to its far-reaching impacts in public schools. Civil rights lawyers sued to block it, saying the law violated free speech and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The Texas Education Agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SB 12 author state Sen. Brandon Creighton [photo] last appeared here in June 2025 for his bill requiring students to produce an ID in order to participate in campus protests.
Also in June 2025, Creighton appeared here for his bill that would defund blue cities over “liberal policies” such as LGBTQ rights.
He appeared here in April 2025 for his bill that would force colleges to rewrite history texts to remove mentions of “social, political or economic inequalities” in the United States.
Creighton first appeared on JMG in 2019 for his bill seeking to overturn LGBTQ protections enacted by Texas cities.
In March 2023, he appeared here for his bill that would deny the prospect of tenure to newly-hired university professors.
Creighton has spearheaded the Texas campaign to protect Confederate monuments. He appeared here in August 2023 for his bill that forced the closure of the University of Houston’s LGBTQ Resource Center.
Creighton may soon leave the Texas Senate to become chancellor of the Texas Tech University System.
Texas state troopers now follow Democratic lawmakers’ every move to ensure they vote on redistricting. So one out lawmaker led police to a Dallas drag room.
Texas state Rep. Venton Jones, the Texas House Democratic Caucus whip and one of the few out lawmakers in the Lone Star State, met with fellow Democratic state Rep. Terry Meza at the Rose Room, a gay bar in Dallas’s Oak Lawn gayborhood, according to Chron.
The lawmakers were there to meet with the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, but their attendance meant dragging police escorts into the venue.
“We are always happy to have Reps. Meza and @VentonJonesTX at meetings of @StonewallDalCo!” Todd Hill, secretary of the Stonewall Democrats chapter, posted on X. “We also hosted Congresswoman @juliejohnsonTX and her Capitol Hill police officer. We appreciate everyone’s service and support of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The escorts were ordered after lawmakers left the state, denying a quorum to Republican legislative leaders for a time to thwart a mid-decade redistricting, an effort spearheaded by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to manipulate the makeup of the U.S. House ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
Jones was among those who left the state earlier this month. He has been outspoken against the maps. He has criticized the heavy-handed tactics used by Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows to make sure Texas Democrats don’t stall the political manipulation of boundaries any farther.
“So the Speaker of the Texas House has just elected to hold members hostage until, not flood relief is addressed, but until racist maps are voted on,” Jones posted on X last week. “Flood relief was never the mission. It was these maps. These maps can only be created by diluting the representation and voices of Black and Brown people. NOW law enforcement is continuing to be used against duly elected members force a vote.”
