An activist in Trinidad and Tobago on Feb. 15 became the country’s first openly transgender senator.
Local media reports note Jowelle De Souza is filling-in for the ailing Sen. Jayanti Lutchmedial, a member the United National Congress, a center-left opposition party.
“Always happy to serve my country,” said De Souza in an Instagram post.
De Souza, who is also an animal rights activist, owns a beauty salon in San Fernando, the country’s second largest city.
De Souza in 1993 became the first person to undergo sex-reassignment surgery in Trinidad and Tobago.
Maykel González Vivero of Tremenda Nota, the Washington Blade’s media partner in Cuba who reported from Trinidad and Tobago in 2017 for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, noted De Souza in 1997 became the first trans person to file a lawsuit against the country’s government.
De Souza alleged the police officers who arrested her during a protest violated her constitutional rights when they harassed her because of her gender identity. De Souza settled her lawsuit out of court.
De Souza unsuccessfully ran for Parliament in 2015.
A trans teen died by suicide while waiting to access mental health care and a first appointment at a gender identity clinic, with a coroner warning that future deaths are possible unless action is taken.
Daniel France, a 17-year-old teenager from Cambridgeshire, killed himself during the first coronavirus lockdown in April 2020 while taking medication to treat depression.
He was trans, and had been referred to an NHS gender clinic – but, like thousands of others, faced several years of waiting before he would be called for his first appointment.
France, described as “extremely kind” and someone who had “many friends” by a local LGBT+ group, also had a history of suicide attempts, said coroner Philip Barlow.
In a report to “prevent future deaths” following an inquest into France’s suicide, Barlow told local agencies to address the delays in accessing mental health services for young adults, and noted concerns around the waiting times for NHS gender clinics.
“Danny was a vulnerable teenager,” Barlow wrote in his coroners report, adding that two separate safeguarding referrals to Cambridgeshire County Council about France had been “incorrectly” closed.
According to the report, France sought counselling from the NHS’ Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, but was deemed too high risk. When he was assessed by Cambridge’s First Response Service, which supports people experiencing a mental health crisis, it was decided he did not ‘require urgent intervention’. He had been referred to adult mental health services, having previously been under a young person’s service, but was still awaiting assessment.
The coroner noted that France “was repeatedly assessed as not meeting the criteria for urgent intervention” and that the “waiting list for psychological therapy was likely to be over a year from point of first presentation”.
The inquest also heard “evidence about the considerable delay in obtaining appointments for the Gender Identity Clinic, and about the shortage of availability for psychological therapies such as CBT”.
Barlow warned: “In my opinion there is a risk that future deaths could occur unless action is taken.”
A copy of Barlow’s coroners report has been sent to NHS England and the secretary of state for health, Sajid Javid “for information purposes only”. The local council and NHS trust have been given 56 days to respond to Barlow’s concerns on mental health care provision
The Kite Trust, a local charity that runs support groups for young LGBT+ people that France attended, warned about the “hostile society” that trans people, and especially young trans people, currently face in the UK.
“What Danny faced, and what trans people of all ages continue to face, is a society that is hostile to our very existence,” said Pip Gardner, chief executive of The Kite Trust, in an emailed statement. “Using the wrong name or pronouns for a trans person, is not just a spelling mistake – it causes emotional harm and breaks down trust.”
They continued: “The responsibility must be on those with statutory duties and in positions to safeguard young people’s welfare, especially crisis services, to take immediate action to ensure that other trans young people like Danny can access the care they are entitled to, without having to endure such harms.”
Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact theNational Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
An amendment filed this past Friday to the legislation that would bar discussions and course materials in Florida’s public schools, colloquially referred to as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, (HB 1557), would also require school personnel to inform a parent of their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The author of the amendment, Republican Rep. Joe Harding, (R-Williston), the author and chief sponsor of HB 1557 also wrote and introduced the amendment.
The Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives is set to pass the controversial measure that has received the backing of Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday. Democrats and advocacy groups have launched a full-scale campaign to derail the bill’s passage.
n an email to the Blade, Nadine Smith, the Executive Director of Equality Florida said: “We wish every home was an accepting one and that every young person was affirmed and celebrated by their families. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case for LGBTQ youth. They already make up 40% of the homeless youth population because they face higher rates of family rejection and abuse simply for being who they are. Knowingly subjecting children to abuse, abandonment, and neglect by forcing them to come out to their parents before they’re ready is cruel, dangerous, and underscores that this bill has no regard for the well-being of Florida’s youth”
Popular Information’s investigative reporter Judd Legum noted on Twitter that the bill’s sponsor, Harding, was retweeting a hardline national conservative group, ‘Mom’s For Liberty’ which is based in Florida, and has been actively campaigning in school systems across the U.S. to remove LGBTQ+ books and curriculum.
In a move that pits laws against LGBTQ discrimination against freedom of speech under the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to take up a case of a Christian web designer in Colorado who seeks to refuse to work with same-sex couples despite a state law requiring her to open to LGBTQ customers.
An orders list issued Tuesday lists the petition in 303 Creative v. Elenis, brought by Lorie Smith, as among the cases for which the Supreme Court has granted a writ of certiorari, or agreed to review. Although the vote tally isn’t included in the order the move would be consistent with expectations for the conservative 6-3 court after former President Trump remade the judiciary with the addition of U.S. Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The case bears similarities, and even originates from the same state, as a case brought by Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who refused to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple based on religious objections despite requirements under Colorado law. The Supreme Court, however, issued a narrow decision based on the particular facts of that case that stopped short of a far-reaching carve-out for civil rights laws.
Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-LGBTQ legal firm that also represented Phillips before the Supreme Court, is representing Smith in her case and in the petition seeking review argued Colorado law unfairly targets her for her religious beliefs.
“Lorie Smith faces real and imminent harm,” the petition says. “Five years after leaving her corporate position to open her own website-design business, she remains in limbo, unable to offer her design services for marriage celebrations—prohibited even from posting a statement about her marriage beliefs—and losing income.”
Smith filed the petition before the Supreme Court after the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her last year, concluding in the decision “grave harms caused when public accommodations discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sex or sexual orientation.” The court found Colorado non-discrimination law withstands scrutiny under judicial review and is a generally applicable law that isn’t constitutionally vague or overly broad.
No same-sex couple as of now has alleged 303 Creative Services has denied them services because the company has yet to engage in wedding-related services over concerns over Colorado law. Per the decision from the Tenth Circuit, Smith is seeking to post a statement on its website stating the company “will not be able to create websites for same-sex marriages or any other marriage that is not between one man and one woman.”
With the Supreme Court term ending in June, it’s unlikely the high court would be able to schedule briefs and oral arguments before the justices adjourn for the summer, when U.S. Associate Justice Stephen Breyer has announced he would step down. It would then fall to whomever Biden has named as a replacement for Breyer to weigh in as one of the nine justices on the court. Biden has said he would name a Black woman for the role and Ketanji Brown Jackson, J. Michelle Childs and Leondra Kruger are the names most mentioned. A White House announcement could come as soon as this week.
The case will be a test of the breadth of the First Amendment, to which the Supreme Court has previously given substantial deference under legal precedent. For example, the Supreme Court determined in 1977 the state of New Hampshire couldn’t require residents to display the state motto on their license plates over objections to the messages.
Although the petition to the Supreme Court presented the question of whether it should overturn the 1990 decision in Employment Decision v. Smith, which determined states are able to enforce general applicable laws over objections based on freedom of religion, the court only took up the case on freedom of speech claims. It’s unlikely to address Smith.
Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel for the LGBTQ group Lambda Legal, said in a statement the Supreme Court should use the opportunity to deliver a ruling upholding the principles of non-discrimination laws and “reaffirm and apply longstanding constitutional precedent that our freedoms of religion and speech are not a license to discriminate when operating a business.”
“The constitutional protections for religious freedom and free speech were never intended as weapons of discrimination for those doing business with the general public,” Pizer said. “More than fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court firmly condemned use of personal freedoms to excuse businesses’ discrimination. But the justices’ decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop lacked that clarity and invited discrimination. The Court can and should clear up that confusion by upholding the well-reasoned decision of the Tenth Circuit.”
Today I woke up at 5 a.m. because of the massive attack on our cities from Russia. Nobody in Ukraine can still believe it is happening right now. I got dozens of messages and calls from different regions, from people who are asking me what to do, and I didn’t have any answers. It took us few hours to collect information on different regions and cities and members of our LGBTQI+ communities there.
We have branches in 11 regions, including Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro, which are located in eastern Ukraine. We started to collect names of those who must be relocated immediately.
So why it is so dangerous for LGBTQI+ people to stay under possible occupation?
Russia is coming with its “traditional values” and will be hunting us, those who are dangerous for their evil empire. I heard they already have lists of activists who will be persecuted first and I am sure that LGBTQI+ activists are on those lists.
We already had a similar situation in 2014, when Russia occupied our territories and many people were forced to leave their homes. Many of them were LGBTQI+ people, who told us they were hunting them and some were killed or disappeared.
In 2014 we opened a shelter for LGBTQI+ internally displaced persons in Kyiv. This time it seems we do not have any place to go and we want to protect our homeland from occupants. Therefore, the situation is difficult and nobody knows what will be next and who will survive. We are doing what we can do now: Providing psychological support to people, opening a hotline for consultations and asking international communities to somehow help us. But it seems these instruments don’t work anymore in the world and we must fight this stupid war on our own.
I think the international community needs to realize that it’s not just some war in Eastern Europe. It is the start of a huge international crisis and possible war all over Europe. The Russian president clearly showed he doesn’t care about international obligations, rules or sanctions anymore. He will continue and never stop.
We are living in very interesting times in which a new story is being made, and this is not only our Ukrainian history, but also in the geopolitical history of the world. Existing international institutions and existing mechanisms for deterring and maintaining peace have proved imaginary. When I say imaginary, it does not mean that they do not exist. This means that they are not effective. They help only if you believe in them and hold on to that faith. In essence, we need to rethink this and create other, new and working mechanisms, and here Ukraine must show its strength to others.
Jokes about “deep concern” are no longer funny. We understand that this is the maximum of what an imaginary democratic world can give us now. In recent days, our international partners have been writing to me almost every minute, many of them asking if we have a crisis plan in place, and, if not, when will we develop it. I want to tell everyone again: What plan can work in the event of a full-scale invasion? (We do not have planes to take people to a safe place, as you did.) In any case, we remain to defend ourselves and our country and will continue to help people. Our activists from the LGBTQI+ communities are staying and keep working, providing support to the most marginalized ones. Honestly, I don’t know how long we will be able to resist, but we will do our best for sure.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Everything will be fine!
Olena Shevchenko is the chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group. Shevchenko lives in Kyiv, Ukraine.
George M. Johnson’s young-adult memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” about growing up Black and queer, appeared on The New York Timesbestseller list this month for the first time since its publication nearly two years ago. The spike in sales was undoubtedly fueled by the publicity the title received after being banned in public libraries and schools in at least 19 states, according to Johnson’s count.
“People were seeing me on list after list and congratulating me and being like, ‘Oh, my God, you must be so happy. This must be such a badge of honor. Your sales must be so great,’” author Mark Oshiro said of banned and challenged book lists. “That’s not how it actually works.”
When Oshiro, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, heard one of their books, “Each of Us a Desert,” a fantasy novel about two girls falling in love on a quest through the desert, was on Texas Rep. Matt Krause’s list of 850 books to be pulled from Texas schools, they didn’t realize how much attention this particular list would get. After all, their books had been on many such lists before. But even with all the publicity surrounding the Krause list — which included titles the lawmaker said could “make students feel uncomfortable” — because Oshiro’s book was just one of hundreds, they didn’t see a spike in sales, despite the many calls online to buy the banned books in support.
Since the list’s release in October, Oshiro has had multiple teachers cancel class visits, an immediate and significant loss of income for an author.
“That’s been a much more obvious barometer for me of what’s been going on for me than book sales,” they said.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said book bans can indeed generate more demand for certain titles, as communities will often buy a copy of a book to donate to a public library when a school library bans it. However, she said, she is also concerned about quiet censorship, a term that includes instances when librarians or educators choose not to buy a book out of fear of potential challenges.
Book challenges doubled from 2020 to 2021, according to the association, and Caldwell-Stone said she is also concerned about what’s happening on the legislative front, with proposals such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and a bill in Tennessee that would prohibit any instructional materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address” LGBTQ people or issues.
Author Adib Khorram, whose young-adult book about a gay teenager, “Darius the Great Deserves Better,” appears on Krause’s list, said he is also concerned about so-called quiet censorship.
“I think the atmosphere of fear the bans create is actually far worse than the bans themselves,” he said. “On that list of 850 books, one or two of them are going to be very loudly talked about, and people are going to go check them out. But 848 are going to quietly disappear.”
Khorram is one of many LGBTQ authors and authors of color now weighing how this climate factors into their future work. When he was writing his biographical blurb for his next book, “Kiss & Tell,” that comes out next month, he said he paused when choosing whether to include that he is a queer Iranian American.
“There’s every chance that just having that in my bio will make people not stock the book,” he said. Ultimately, he did choose to include that personal information, saying he did not want to let the current climate affect his work.
“Adults fearing the discomfort of majoritized students is not going to stop me from writing books that uphold the lives and dignity of minoritized students,” he added.
Maia Kobabe, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, is also writing a new book without the bans in mind. In the meantime, Kobabe’s illustrated memoir, “Gender Queer,” has seen skyrocketing sales along with frequent challenges and bans. Already on its fifth printing, a new hardcover edition will come out in June.
While Kobabe acknowledges that “Gender Queer” being banned and challenged has led to a flurry of publicity that it would not have otherwise received, Kobabe worries about who is gaining access to the book through the increase in sales. Those who listen to NPR to hear an interview, read articles about book banning or have their own income to buy books are the ones increasing the sales, according to Kobabe, but the young people who don’t have money to buy books or who need the access at the library to read it there instead of bringing a book back to an unaccepting home will not be the ones contributing to the sales numbers.
“The part that really hurts is the fact that the people who might need this book the most are the people who are going to have less access,” Kobabe said. “So it’s just another case of the most marginalized readers being further marginalized.”
Kobabe added, “I would rather have the book not be banned and have it just quietly existing on library shelves where queer and questioning teens could discover it in a peaceful, quiet way and could safely read it on a shelf.”
As for Johnson, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, making The New York Times bestseller list is bittersweet. Having their book banned has not been easy, Johnson added, but they said they are the kind of person who isn’t afraid to fight back.
“It sucks. It is overwhelming. It’s heavy,” Johnson explained. “But at the same time, I’m witnessing parents buy this book for their teens. I’m witnessing parents and teens reading the book together. I’m also witnessing students find their agency and find their voice because I’m using mine.”
Editor’s note: The writer of this article is the author of two young-adult books on Texas Rep. Matt Krause’s list of 850 books to remove from Texas schools: “Queer, There, and Everywhere” and “Rainbow Revolutionaries.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., laid out a conservative blueprint this week for a GOP takeover of Congress, and included in his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” are a number of proposals that would limit the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.
The document outlines Republican policy objectives on everything from the economy to abortion, but the point that caused the most alarm to LGBTQ advocates was in a section titled “Gender, Life, Science.”
“Men and women are biologically different, ‘male and female He created them,'” Scott wrote. “Facts are facts, the earth is round, the sun is hot, there are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart. To say otherwise is to deny science.”
In this section, Scott — who served as Florida’s governor from2011 to 2019 — called for nationwide bans on government forms that “include questions about ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual preference’”; gender-affirming procedures on minors; and transgender women and girls participating on female sports teams.
“We will protect women’s sports by banning biological males from competing,” the policy outline states. “It is hugely unfair and would erase many of the gains women have made in athletics over the last 50 years.”
Scott’s proposals echo the ongoing nationwide push of anti-LGBTQ legislation by state lawmakers.
So far this year, conservative state lawmakers have filed more than 170 anti-LGBTQ bills — already surpassing last year’s 139 total — according to Freedom for All Americans. The majority of the bills target transgender minors’ ability to receive gender-affirming health care or participate in sports.
In the eighth point of Scott’s plan, labeled simply “Family,” he called out the “radical left” for seeking to “devalue and redefine the traditional family,” using language associated with activists opposed to same-sex marriage.
LGBTQ advocates slammed Scott’s proposals.
Brandon Wolf, the press secretary for advocacy group Equality Florida, said that Scott’s manifesto was “affirmation of what we’ve been trying to warn folks about.”
“What is happening in Florida isn’t isolated,” Wolf told NBC News. “It’s a test market for a national strategy by the extreme right to legislate this country back to 1960, mire us in culture wars and decimate the progress we’ve won.”
Scott, a first-term senator who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is not the only Republican to preview how the GOP would pursue anti-LGBTQ legislation should it regain power in Washington.
Last month, former President Donald Trump said he would ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports nationwide if he were re-elected.
“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” Trump said during a rally in Conroe, Texas. “So ridiculous.”
Aside from how the GOP should navigate LGBTQ rights, Scott’s manifesto called for Republicans to “eliminate racial politics in America,” finish building a southern border wall and name it after Trump, and battle “the new religion of wokeness.”
Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has vowed to stop students from being expelled for their sexuality or gender identity by religious schools.
In an unexpected turnaround, the right-wing leader who has long been upfront about his evangelical Christian faith, promised to stop faith-based schools from discriminating against pupils, parents and guardians.
Morrison made the surprise remarks that left fellow lawmakers and religious activists stunned to Brisbane’s B105.3radio station on Thursday (3 February).
It required families to sign enrolment paperwork that said being LGBT+ is “immoral” and compared it to incest, bestiality and paedophilia.
“No, I don’t support that,” Morrison told the station. “My kids go to a Christian school here in Sydney, and I wouldn’t want my school doing that either.”
Morrison said he will introduce amendments to the Religious Discrimination Bill – which has been a thorny issue for both faith groups and LGBT+ rights campaigners – to prevent religious schools from discriminating in this way.
The bill, introduced last November, would allow faith-based organisations like churches, schools and workplaces to offset anti-discrimination laws, as long as their “statements of belief” don’t “threaten, intimidate, harass or vilify a person or group”.
“The bill we’re going to be taking through the parliament,” Morrison added, “we will have an amendment that will deal with that to ensure kids cannot be discriminated on that basis.
“I’ve been saying that for years. That’s always been my view.”
He added said that schools “should be able to teach kids” in a way that aligns with their faith, from Christianity to Islam.
The Religious Discrimination Bill, he said, would protect Australians “whether they have a faith or they don’t”.
Morrison’s comments signal a fallback by his government, whose hardline Liberal Party MPs have pushed the Religious Discrimination Bill in parliament.
Federal attorney general Michaelia Cash only recently claimed that scrapping the exemption from the bill was not feasible. Instead, she said, the Sex Discrimination Act would be amended to shield LGBT+ students – in 12 months, that is.
But it has faced an uncertain future, with moderate Liberals saying they will not vote for it unless the exemption allowing faith-based schools to turn away queer students is removed.
Morrison has supported better protecting queer students since 2018, but policy-makers struggled to roll out reforms at the time that wasn’t shot with loopholes that would have allowed schools to discriminate LGBT+ people in different ways instead.
Christian groups say Scott Morrison has ‘betrayed’ them
Choosing a pretty weird hill to die on, Christian groups recoiled in rage at Scott Morrison’s vow to close religious school exemptions.
“Scott Morrison has betrayed the foundation of the Religious Discrimination Bill,” said Greg Bondar, FamilyVoice NSW director, in a social media statement.
Bondar said it is a “sad day for all Australians” – certainly not for students expelled for being LGBT+, however – and that it has “put religious freedom and free speech at risk”.
Equality Australia, the nation’s top queer rights group, welcomed Morrison’s comments with cautious optimism and urged his administration to “scrap the flawed” bill altogether.
“The prime minister made a commitment in 2018 to remove the outdated carve-outs in national anti-discrimination laws which allow discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in religious schools,” said the group’s legal director Ghassan Kassisieh in a statement.
“This reform is long overdue, and better protections must apply to both teachers and students.
“But the Morrison government’s Religious Discrimination Bill will invite exactly this type of practice in employment across faith-based organisations, from schools, aged-care services, emergency accommodation and hospitals.
“The prime minister may be putting out one small fire, but his Religious Discrimination Bill will unleash a firestorm of discrimination in religious organisations against anyone that holds a different belief from their faith-based employer – even when they can faithfully do the job that is required of them.”
Students have repeatedly vandalized Pride posters at Spencer Lyst’s high school in Williamson County, Tennessee. Teachers have skipped over LGBTQ issues in class textbooks. Trans kids in his state have been legally barred from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. Parents have called on school officials to remove books about sexual orientation and gender identity from the county’s elementary curriculum. And while leading hisschool’s Pride club at a September homecoming parade, Lyst and other LGBTQ students were booed by a group of parents.
“I’m so used to it, but it shouldn’t be something I have to think about,” Lyst, 16, said of the near-constant feeling of being attacked at school because of his identity.
He even said it’s “difficult” to walk into the school bathroom for fear of what or who “might be in there.”
“Like, can I go to the bathroom or am I going to get hate for just existing?” he said.
Lyst’s school experience is a far cry from an isolated case.
Since the start of the school year, school officials in states across the country have banned books about gay and trans experiences, removed LGBTQ-affirming posters and flags and disbanded gay-straight alliance clubs. In school districts throughout the nation, students have attacked their queer classmates, while state lawmakers have filed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills with many seeking to redefine lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students’ places in U.S. schools.
“There is no separating any of these things,” Mary Emily O’Hara, the rapid response manager at LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said at a media briefing on Monday. “What we’re seeing here is anti-LGBTQ groups, on a national level, making schools the new battleground across the board, across various kinds of school policies and various forms of legislation. Schools are the target right now for the anti-LGBTQ movement.”
In the majority of cases, conservative school officials, lawmakers and parents say LGBTQ issues do not belong in school because they are “political” and “not age-appropriate” for students. Conversely, queer youth and their families, along with LGBTQ and ally teachers, say they feel they are being “erased” from the U.S. education system.
‘I’m not going back in the closet’
South Florida mom Jennifer Solomon, 50, has four children. Her eldest child, Nicolette, 28, is a lesbian who teaches fourth grade in Miami-Dade County. Her youngest, Cooper, 11, identifies as male, but Solomon said his “expression is female.” Cooper “never wanted to be a girl,” his mom explained, but he prefers to wear his school’s girls uniform and enjoys dressing up like a fairy-tale princess for fun.
“An easy way to describe it is that he’s the opposite of a tomboy,” she told NBC News.
Despite how hard she works to protect her children, Solomon — who leads her local chapter of PFLAG, an LGBTQ family advocacy group — said the slew of anti-LGBTQ school policies “keeps me up at night.”
On Monday, Solomon’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, signaledthat he would support a new piece of state legislation — titled the Parental Rights in Education bill, but dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — that would prohibit the discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools.
Speaking at a news event in Miami, DeSantis said it is “entirely inappropriate” for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing alleged instances of them telling children, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet,” and “hiding” classroom lessons from parents.
“Parental rights? Whose parental rights? Only parental rights if you’re raising a child according to DeSantis?” Solomon, who is a nurse manager at a health care company, said of DeSantis’ concerns. “DeSantis tries to paint this picture that every family is this 1950s mom and dad with two kids and a cat and dog. That is not what Florida looks like; that is not what the country looks like.”
“DeSantis has found a weak spot, and that weak spot is children,” she added, suggesting that DeSantis is supporting the measure for political gain.
Nicolette Solomon said she is already hesitant to mention her wife — and by default her sexuality — at school, but she said passage of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill would be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” and vowed to quit if it becomes law.
“If I can’t be myself, seven hours a day, five days a week, then I’m going back in the closet, and I can’t do that. It’s not good for my own mental health,” she said. “And I don’t think I can bear to see the students struggle and want to ask me about these things and then have to deny them that knowledge. That’s not who I am as a teacher.”
In less than two months since the start of the year, conservative state lawmakers have filed more than 170 anti-LGBTQ bills — already surpassing last year’s 139 total — with at least 69 of them centered on school policies, according to Freedom for All Americans. The nonprofit group, which advocates for LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections nationwide, said in an email that it didn’t track LGBTQ school policy bills last year, as it was not as much of a “sweeping trend” as it is now.
Three states — including Lyst’s home state of Tennessee — passed bills last year that allow parents to opt students out of any lessons or coursework that mention sexual orientation or gender identity, according to GLSEN, an advocacy group that aims to end LGBTQ discrimination in education. In addition to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill advancing in Florida, there are 15 bills under consideration in eight states that would silence speech about LGBTQ identities in classrooms, according to free speech nonprofit organization PEN America.
But perhaps the biggest trend in state bills targeting LGBTQ youths are those focused on transgender students.
Last year, legislators in at least 30 states weighed legislation that would bar trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity, according to LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. Nine of those states enacted the bills into law. So far this year, 27 states have proposed similar bills, with South Dakota enacting its version of the legislation into law this month.
While not school related, there has also been a slew of bills that seek to prevent transgender youths from accessing gender-affirming health care. At least 20 states have proposed such measures since early 2021, with two states — Arkansas and Tennessee — enacting these bills into law. However, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Arkansas law in July after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged it in court on behalf of trans youths and their families.
Cooper Solomon said he thinks lawmakers are pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation “because they were born in another time.”
“I guess back then, a long time ago, they didn’t accept this, and they thought it was really bad,” the fifth grader said. “I would just like them to know that it’s OK to be like this, and it’s not going to hurt anyone.”
Legislation aside, the last straw for Jack Petocz, 17, was when his high school in Flagler County, Florida, removed a young adult memoir detailing the trials of being a Black queer boy: George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”
In November, a school board member filed a criminal complaint against school officials for allowing copies of the book— which has been challenged in at least 19 states —to remain in two of the county’s high schools. The complaint was dismissed, but the superintendent decided to keep the book off of shelves until new policies are drafted to give parents more control over the library’s collection.
“I felt that my community was under attack, that they were trying to silence LGBTQ+ experiences and voices within our community,” Petocz, who is gay and led a student protest in response to the book’s removal, said. “We’re already a minority. Why are you trying to suppress this critical information within our libraries, you know? These books are critical to providing a sense of identity.”
Books about race, sexual orientation and gender identity have historically been challenged in schools, but over the last several months, school libraries have seen a surge of opposition.
In the fall, as book bans started to take off in counties across the country, national groups — including No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty — began circulating lists of school library books that they said were “indoctrinating kids to a dangerous ideology” to rally support.
The bans then became a talking point in the contentious Virginia governor’s race, where the Republican candidate, former private equity executive and political newcomer Glenn Youngkin, made education a central issue of his campaign and swept to victory.
Youngkin’s victory prompted other politicians to jump onto the issue, with the governors of Texas and South Carolina urging state school officials in November to ban several books, deriding them as “pornography” and “obscene” content.
School board members in Virginia’s Spotsylvania County made national headlines after calling for LGBTQ books with “sexually explicit” material to be incinerated.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in November that while challenges to books with LGBTQ- and race-related content have historically been “constant,” the association has recently seen a “chilling” uptick.
“I’ve worked at ALA for two decades now, and I’ve never seen this volume of challenges come in,” she said.“The impact will fall to those students who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives, that answer questions about their identity, about their experiences that they always desperately need and often feel that they can’t talk to adults about.”
To counter LGBTQ book bans — and school bans on race-related texts — a group of more than 600 writers, including bestselling children’s author Judy Blume; publishers; bookstore owners; and advocacy groups signed a joint statement in December condemning the trend, arguing it “threatens the education of America’s children.”
Setting a ‘different tone’
While state bills and book bans have garnered the most media attention, advocates say there are a host of other troubling trends adding to the distress that many queer students are feeling: removals of Pride flags and other LGBTQ-affirming symbols from classrooms, disbandments of gay-straight alliance clubs and resignations of teachers in protest of anti-LGBTQ policies.
In the fall, for example, rainbow stickers were ordered to be scraped off classroom doors at MacArthur High School near Dallas.
“While we appreciate the sentiment of reaching out to students who may not previously always had such support, we want to set a different tone this year,” an email from a school official addressed to school staff read. NBC News obtained the email from a MacArthur High School teacher.
The sticker removals prompted a protest from the student body, but the pushback did not successfully encourage school officials to change their stance on the policy.
School board members in Newberg, Oregon, made national headlines in the fall for taking similar actions. In September, the school board banned educators from displaying Pride and Black Lives Matter flags and other symbols it considered “political” in school.
“We don’t pay our teachers to push their political views on our students. That’s not their place,” the school board member who authored the policy, Brian Shannon, said at a recorded board meeting.
The policy prompted town protests that attracted some members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, who counterprotested the efforts. An attempt to recall Shannon and another school board member over the flag removals failed last month.
Some teachers have resigned in school districts over similar measures, like a Missouri teacher who resigned in September after his district mandated that he take down his Pride flag and not discuss human sexuality or “sexual preference” at school. In December, parents accused teachers at a middle school in Tennessee of trying to “indoctrinate” kids into being gay after helping students start a gay-straight alliance club.
In addition to parents, school officials and lawmakers, classmates are among those targeting LGBTQ students, according to advocacy groups and local news reports.
A national survey of LGBTQ students published in 2020 by GLSEN found that 69 percent of respondents reported experiencing verbal harassment at school based on their sexual orientation, 57 percent based on their gender expression or outward appearance, and 54 percent based on their gender identity.
Last year, more than a dozen local news articles —from California to Florida — reported on trans students being harassed or attacked by other students, some of them in bathrooms. However, advocates say it is unclear whether the attacks have increased or whether local outlets are reporting them at greater rates.
Impact of affirmation
Advocates have long been warning educators about the mental health risks plaguing LGBTQ youths and how anti-LGBTQ policies can exacerbate them.
A survey last year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that 42 percent of the nearly 35,000 LGBTQ youths who were surveyed — and over half of trans and nonbinary youths — seriously considered suicide within the prior year. Separately, two-thirds of LGBTQ youths said debates about anti-trans legislation have impacted their mental health negatively, according to a small survey The Trevor Project conducted in the fall.
However, researchers at The Trevor Project have also found that LGBTQ youths who reported having at least one LGBTQ-affirming space — such as a school, home or workplace — were significantly less likely to attempt suicide.
With that in mind, Lizette Trujillo drives three hours a day back and forth to her 14-year-old transgender son’s school in Tucson, Arizona. From the time when he socially transitioned in 2015, Daniel’s school was open to the idea of letting him use the bathroom that corresponded with his gender identity — which Trujillo said was not a given in Arizona — and already had experience teaching trans youth.
Trujillo said while the commute “is not without its challenges,” sending Daniel to a school where he is “not ‘othered’” has made him happier.
“The biggest difference at my school is that I’m supported by all my teachers and the principal and staff; I have access to sports and the bathrooms,” Daniel said. “It makes learning easier.”
It also freed up space for his mother to focus on securing her son gender-affirming health care, filing for new identification documents and working through emotional hardships.
“What people don’t realize is that you’re not just worried about school when your child socially transitions,” Trujillo said. “As you start this gender journey, you start to hit walls, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize I needed that,’ or, ‘I didn’t realize that was going to be a problem. I didn’t realize we were going to lose family.’”
In response to the slew of challenges plaguing LGBTQ students and teachers, President Joe Biden has vowed to lend his support. Earlier this month, the White House issued a rebuke of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, while connecting the legislation to the disputes happening nationally.
“Make no mistake — this is not an isolated action. Across the country, we’re seeing Republican leaders take actions to regulate what students can or cannot read, what they can or cannot learn, and most troubling, who they can or cannot be,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. “This is politics at its worse, cynically using our students as pawns in political warfare.”
Students ‘fighting for their basic rights’
There are a number of examples across the U.S. of students getting proactive and successfully turning around anti-LGBTQ policies.
Aaryan Rawal, 17, was one of more than 400 students in Fairfax County, Virginia, who successfully urged their school officials to reinstate two LGBTQ books in November. Rawal, who is gay, said he was relieved when school board members heeded students’ demands, but he lamented that the organizing efforts forced him to miss class and lose sleep.
“No student in any county in this country wants to go to school fighting for their basic rights,” Rawal said. “Instead of doing statistics homework or hanging out with friends, we were expected to go to school board meetings and lobby school board members for stuff that really shouldn’t be up for debate.”
Last month, a group of students in Palm Beach, Florida, met with their newly hired superintendent to describe their experience being LGBTQ in their county’s schools. They went around, one by one, and relayed stories of harassment and assault from students and bullying from teachers, according to two students who attended the meeting.
“Students have just gotten a collective consciousness that, ‘School sucks and because I’m LGBT this is to be expected,’ and that’s not normal,” Marcel Whyne, a nonbinary high school student who attended the meeting, said. “That shouldn’t be the level of standard that we have for LGBT kids. You’re entitled to be treated like your peers and go to school and, you know, just be bored at school like a normal student, not terrified that you’re going to be harassed and have photos taken of you and be embarrassed and assaulted just because you’re trying to be who you are.”
As for Spencer Lyst, in Tennessee, he set out to start his high school’s Pride club, Indy Pride, last fall with the goal of spreading awareness about the school’s LGBTQ community and providing “a place for people who may feel like they don’t have one.” While being booed by adults at his school’s homecoming was a “difficult” experience, he said he remains undeterred.
“People should know that no matter what bill they try to pass or book they try to ban or thing they try to ban teachers or students from talking about in schools, it doesn’t change who people are, and it doesn’t change who we’re going to continue to be,” Lyst said. “So trying to take a legal route to ‘protect your kids’ doesn’t work. They are who they are, and if you can’t accept that, maybe it’s you who has some work to do.”
The percent of U.S. adults who identify as something other than heterosexual has doubled over the last 10 years, from 3.5 percent in 2012 to 7.1 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Gallup found that the increase is due to ”high LGBT self-identification, particularly as bisexual, among Generation Z adults,” who are 18 to 25.
It asked more than 12,000 U.S. adults how they identify during telephone interviews last year. It found that younger U.S. adults are much more likely to identify as LGBTQ than older generations.
More than 1 in 5, or 21 percent, of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup found. That’s almost double the proportion of millennials, who are 26 to 41, at 10.5 percent, and nearly five times the proportion of Generation X, who are 42 to 57, at 4.2 percent. Less than 3 percent of baby boomers, who are 58 to 76, identify as LGBTQ, compared to just 0.8 percent of traditionalists, who are 77 or older.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/u5fH2si?_showcaption=true&app=1
As the youngest Americans slowly outnumber and replace the oldest, Gallup predicts the number of LGBTQ-identifying adults will only increase — and likely at a much faster rate than past generations.
The poll found that the percent of Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists who identify as queer has remained relatively the same over the years. More millennials have increasingly identified as LGBTQ, but only slightly, at 5.8 percent in 2012, 7.8 percent in 2017 and 10.5 percent now.
But the poll noted that the percentage of Generation Z adults who are queer has almost doubled since 2017 — jumping from 10.5 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent. The rise shows that younger Gen Zers, who have turned 18 since 2017, are more likely than older Gen Zers to identify as queer.
Gallup noted that the youngest Gen Zers — who are as young as 10 — still haven’t turned 18, and they are even more likely to identify as LGBTQ.
If the trend of millennials and Generation Z increasingly identifying as LGBTQ continues, “the proportion of LGBT Americans should exceed 10 percent in the near future,” Gallup found.
Bisexuals make up 4 percent of all U.S. adults
Bisexuality is the most common identifier used among LGBTQ Americans, which is in line with a Gallup report released last year. More than half of LGBTQ Americans, at 57 percent, are bisexual.
Over one-fifth of LGBTQ respondents, or 21 percent, are gay, 14 percent are lesbian, 10 percent are transgender and 4 percent identify as something e
Overall, 4 percent of U.S. adults identify as bisexual, compared to 1 percent who identify as lesbian, 1.5 percent as gay, 0.7 percent as transgender and 0.3 percent as other. Heterosexuals comprised 86.3 percent of total respondents, and 6.6 percent did not offer an opinion.
Generation Z adults are the most likely to identify as bisexual, at 15 percent overall, compared to 6 percent of millennials and less than 2 percent of Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists.
Increasing acceptance — in certain areas
Gallup notes that the proportion of Gen Z Americans who identify as LGBTQ is increasing at a faster pace than previous generations, and that they are growing up at a time when 70 percent of Americanssupport same-sex marriage rights, and a majority also support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
But that support varies when broken down further. For example, Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey found last year that 66 percent of people favor allowing openly transgender people to serve in the military, that figure is down slightly from its previous measure in 2019, when 71 percent were in favor.
At the same time, 62 percent of Americans say trans athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth, while 34 percent say they should be able to play on teams that match their gender identity, the survey found.
At the time, Mara Keisling, former executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, attributed that contrast at least in part to the wave of legislation in states seeking to bar trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity.
But she also noted that — consistent with Gallup’s data — as more Americans know trans people and more young people identify as LGBTQ, acceptance will grow. As for those pushing anti-transgender legislation, she added, “Someday, they’ll be in the dustbin of history.”