Hungary’s parliament passed a resolution on Tuesday which will empower the government to hold a referendum on LGBTQ issues, raising Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-LGBTQ campaign to a new level as he heads into a tough election race next year.
Orban, a nationalist who has been in power since 2010, this year proposed a referendum on ruling party legislation that limits schools’ teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues, stepping up a culture war with the European Union.
Facing his first competitive election in more than a decade, nationalist Orban has sought to promote social policies that he says safeguard Christian values against Western liberalism, putting gender issues and what he calls LGBTQ propaganda at the center of his campaign along with migration.
Parliament voted on four referendum questions one by one, passing them with Fidesz’s ruling majority.
“The Hungarian government proposes that citizens should have a chance to express their stance on the issues of gender propaganda,” deputy minister Balazs Orban told parliament.
“We are committed. We believe that we …have to say no to LGBTQ propaganda in schools carried out with the help of NGOs and media, without parental consent.”
He said holding the referendum on the same day as the parliamentary vote would save taxpayers money but it is up to President Janos Ader to set the date. Ader, an ally of the government, has not yet fixed a date for the parliamentary elections which are expected to be held in April.
In the referendum, Hungarians will be asked whether they support the holding of sexual orientation workshops in schools without parents’ consent and whether they believe gender reassignment procedures should be promoted among children.
They will also be asked whether media content that could affect sexual orientation should be shown to children without any restrictions.
The law passed in June, which the government says aims to protect children, has caused anxiety in the LGBT community.
LGBT+ football fans “will be welcome” at next year’s World Cup in Qatar, England’s Football Association chief has insisted.
Qatar, chief executive Mark Bullingham said, has made “strong progress” in addressing a raft of human rights issues that have battered FIFA.
The 2022 World Cup will be the first one held in the Arab world and has been a hot-button issue since Qatar won the hosting rights in 2010.
Among them in the last decade of controversy and scandal: accusations of corruption, the cost, the emirate’s treatment of migrant workers, women and LGBT+ people.
Bullingham visited Qatar to better understand the issue, he said at a press conference Monday (22 November), and claimed to have “been given those assurances that people from the LGBT+ communities will be allowed to go to Qatar and support the [England] team”.
The 2022 World Cup, Bullingham hopes, will be a catalyst for change in Qatar.
“We have asked the question as to whether all of our fans will be able to come, particularly those from LGBTQ community,” he said, “and we received the unequivocal answer that absolutely everybody is welcome to come to Qatar.”
Football boss feels Qatar has made ‘strong progress’ ahead of World Cup
In June, UEFA organised a working group to examine Qatar’s human rights track record.
European football’s top governing body met with various bodies, including the International Labour Organisation, the National Human Rights Committee, the Qatar Football Association, before visiting the Ras Abu Aboud Stadium.
Bullingham was a member of the group, meeting with migrant workers and charities to capture what is happening on the ground.
“We believe the legislation the Qataris have brought in over the last few years has been strong progress from a fair low base,” he said.
In Qatar, labour laws are based on the “kafala” system. Described by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as exploitative and abusive, it sees employers sponsor foreign workers.
As unskilled workers often pay fees worth a year’s salary to labour recruiters in their homelands to score jobs in Qatar.
Many land in debt only to be hired in jobs that pay far less than advertised. They cannot simply leave the jobs, however, as their employers under the scheme must give them permission to do so.
At least 6,500 migrant workers have died since the World Cup was awarded in 2010 to Qatar, TheGuardianreported in February.
The tiny oil-rich Persian Gulf nation rejigged the labour system amid an international outcry and rolled out worker safeguards and a minimum wage.
Yet, as much as Qatar has taken some steps to change, Bullingham said that the pace remained slow.
“What is very clear, though,” he said, “is that the legislation isn’t being applied universally, and that has to be the next step, and that’s where we see the real progress will come through.”
Overall, Qatar has scrambled to rewrite its image with publicity-boosting sports events and even signing up footballer David Beckham to become the “face of Qatar” for the next decade.
Nevertheless, under Sharia law, gay Muslims in Qatar can face three years imprisonment or even the death penalty.
Although, activists say there are no known cases that the death penalty was enforced for homosexuality.
“What it doesn’t do is help the LGBTQ+ community,” Chris Paouros, a member of the English Football Association’s inclusion advisory board, said at the time.
“It’s great for us to be able to go and put our flags up in the stadium, and that’s wonderful during a World Cup. You want it to be the festival of football.
“But ultimately we do the work because we want to make sure that everybody can be free to be who they are and if you’re a Qatari and you’re not able to, then it just feels like window dressing.”
This week, the US Supreme Court will hear Mississippi’s case for overturning the Roe v Wade decision that federally guaranteed the right to an abortion.
Mississippi is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy by overturning Roe v Wade, potentially devastating reproductive rights across the US.
It is also looking for the courts to overrule the Planned Parenthood v Caseydecision, in 1992, which prevents states from banning termination before the point of viability (a foetus is only viable outside of the womb when a pregnancy has reached around 24 weeks).
The Supreme Court has never ruled in favour of an abortion ban before viability.
Although it heard arguments relating to the Texas SB 8 ban on abortion after six weeks, before most people are aware they are pregnant, it did not rule on the constitutionality of the ban. Instead, it declined to intervene while a court challenge goes ahead.
But advocates for reproductive rights are nervous.
Shannon Brewer, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in the whole of Mississippi, told ABC: “This is the most worried I’ve ever been.”
Supreme Court abortion case could ‘diminish’ the 14th amendment
The granting of abortion rights across America relied on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the fifth and 14th amendments of the US constitution.
Both amendments guarantee that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. According to the court’s interpretation, the right to privacy falls under “liberty”, and therefore so does the right to an abortion.
But other rights relating to bodily autonomy, including contraception and same-sex marriage, also rest on this interpretation, and are classed as “due process rights”.
Marshall Martinez, executive director of Equality New Mexico, told the non-profit news organisation New Mexico Political Report: “There is a real possibility that if this court said Roe was wrongly decided, it never gave us the right to privacy, then there could be other challenges.”
Lawyer Laura Schauer added: “Generally, any diminishment of the 14th amendment could have a ripple effect but it depends on how they do it.”
The potential “diminishment of the 14th amendment”, which would result in a diminishment of the right to privacy and bodily autonomy, could topple a multitude of LGBT+ rights, from marriage equality, to gender-affirming healthcare, to sex itself.
For example, in the 2001 case Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that state sodomy bans were unconstitutional, and based this decision on the 14th amendment.
But Justice Clarence Thomas, who still sits on the Supreme Court today and is currently in the company of five other conservative justices, dissented at the time.
He wrote: “I can find, neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution, a general right of privacy.”
Technically, the Supreme Court could uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban without overturning Roe v Wade, but the outcome would be similar and would still undermine the long-held concept that the 14th amendment protects Americans’ right to privacy.
Julie Rikelman of the Center for Reproductive Rights, who will argue against Mississippi, told ABC: “A decision upholding this ban is tantamount to overruling Roe.”
Sweden’s first female prime minister Magdalena Andersson has added the country’s first-ever trans minister to her new majority female government.
On Tuesday (30 November), on her second day as prime minister, Andersson announced her new government, including Lina Axelsson-Kihlbom as education minister.
Axelsson-Kihlbom, 51, is a former headteacher and lawyer who became known as “Superrektorn” (“Super Principal”) after she appeared on a documentary series in which she managed to turn around a failing school in one of Sweden’s most deprived areas.
The mother-of-two also published a book in 2015 titled Kommer du tycka om mig nu? (Will You Love Me Now?) in which she told the world for the first time that she was trans.
She received an outpouring of love and support from the public after her book was released, and said in an op-ed in 2018: “Trans people have always existed, they will always exist and we no longer feel ashamed. We are the new normal.”
Axelsson-Kihlbom has said she knew she was trans from the age of three, according to Aftonbladet, but didn’t have the language to describe it, leading her to feel completely alone.
She medically transitioned when she was 24 years old, but in an interview on the Swedish talkshow Skavlan, discussed the cruel requirement at the time that she be sterilised in order to gain legal recognition as a woman, a law that was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.
She said: “I had to undergo an operation where the state ensured that none of my unique gene set would ever be reproduced.
“I remember that there were tears but did not know if it was tears of pain or because I was so enormously humiliated.”
According to Bloomberg, one of prime minister Andersson’s priorities is reforming Sweden’s highly-privatised school system, and Axelsson-Kihlbom is the perfect person for the job.
The new trans education minister, who has been a member of Sweden’s School Commission since 2015, said at a press conference after her appointment that she would work to ban private profits being made from schools.
She said: “Society needs to take control over schools. Every student’s right to knowledge must be in focus, and not share price movements or religious beliefs.”
Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s first female prime minister, had to resign on her first day in office
On Wednesday, Magdalena Andersson was elected Sweden’s first female prime minister, but hours later she resigned following the collapse of her coalition.
In a dispute over budget proposals, the country’s Green Party walked away from the coalition with Andersson’s Social Democratic Party, and so she was forced to step down.
On Monday, she was reappointed as prime minister after a second vote, and will lead the one-party government until an election next September.
A middle school teacher in southern Michigan resigned after he and other educators in his district were told to remove LGBTQ Pride flags they had up in their classrooms.
Teachers were told to take down the flags after Three Rivers Community Schools in Three Rivers, Michigan, received an “external challenge” about the symbols that had “reached the board level,” according to an email obtained by NBC affiliate WOOD of Grand Rapids.
“The rumors kind of floating around was that there’s one or two parents that complained about the flags being in the classroom,” said Russell Ball, the teacher who resigned.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/XERhvF6?_showcaption=true&app=1
Ball, who said he is part of the LGBTQ community, told WOOD that he is “disheartened and saddened.”
“To me, the flag represents love and inclusion for everybody, not just whoever is of the LGBTQIA+ community,” he said. “The students losing that representation throughout the classrooms really hurt. Losing my own representation in the classroom really hurt. It was just something I was not prepared to do.”
The district’s interim superintendent, Nikki Nash, said in a statement that it was “an ongoing situation.”
“We continue to work with the district’s legal firm and board of education to ensure we are providing a safe learning environment for all students,” the statement read.
There’s been a rainbow-colored rumpus at a Catholic school in northeast Baltimore over the weekend.
The Baltimore Brew reports that a 12-year-old student at St. Francis of Assisi School wore a rainbow Pride shirt on dress-down Friday last week. The girl, who was not named in the report at the request of her mom, thought little of it, having worn the top before.
She and her classmates attended a church service at the school during the day. The service was led by Father John J. “Jack” Lombardi.
According to witnesses, the paper says that at Father Lombardi’s direction, the school principal told the homeroom teacher to speak to the girl. The youngster was pulled over at the end of the service and told to remove the shirt in front of everyone.
A photo of the ‘Pride 365’ shirt she was wearing was included in Baltimore Brew’s story. It looks exactly like this one [top] sold by Target. The girl wore it over a long-sleeve top.
“I think it was really awful what happened. The way they asked her to take it off was really embarrassing,” said a 7th grader, Liam Hines, to the newspaper.
After the service, the girl was summoned to the principal’s office and told she’d violated the school’s dress code.
“She said it was because it was a Catholic school,” the student said. “I thought it was a poor excuse.”
On Sunday, to show support for the student, several of her classmates and other members of the congregation turned up to Father Lombardi’s church service wearing rainbow facemasks.
Baltimore Brew attended with photographer J.M Giordano to capture the dignified show of solidarity. Some congregants carried rainbow bags and others wore rainbow T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “I am a child of God.”
One of the church’s own officiants, Lauren Voos, also wore a Pride mask. Voos led part of the call-and-response section of the mass and pointedly slipped in a reference to the incident.
“For marginalized populations and gender identities. . .” she said, and the congregation answered extra loudly: “Lord, hear our prayer.”
Afterward, Lombardi declined to comment on the matter, telling the Brew’s reporter as he left the church, “I’m going to remain peaceful today.”
Instead, yesterday, the Archdiocese of Baltimore issued a statement.
Christian Kendzierski, executive director of communications for the Archdiocese, said: “The attire contained imagery and language with a message that could be determined to oppose teachings of the Catholic Church. St. Francis of Assisi is a Catholic parish. and school that upholds the tenets and teachings of the Catholic faith.”
Kendzierski disputed that the shirt removal was at the priest’s request, saying, “It was the school administration that initiated the request.”
The mother of the student concerned says she’s made a complaint to the Archdiocese’s superintendent of Catholic Schools and awaits a response.
Kendzierski says the church believes in treating people with respect and is “working on plans to bring together the community to discuss this in an open, honest and listening way.”
Yesterday, a leading voice within the Catholic church weighed in on the matter. Father James Martin is a New York Times best-selling author, and one of the leading advocates for LGBTQ acceptance within the Catholic church. In 2017, In 2017, Pope Francis appointed Martin as a consultant to the Vatican’s press office.
On his Facebook page, Martin said, “As I see it, wearing a Pride shirt is not against any church teaching. Pride shirts and rainbow images are one way for members of a group that has been harassed, persecuted and marginalized (and that is still the target of physical violence) to see themselves as beloved children of God.”
He added, “Church authorities also have to be particularly attentive to the real-life effects of such stigmatizing words and gestures … not only on the mental health of LGBTQ youth, but also on their families and friends, as well as the community.”
oe Biden has promised tackle LGBT+ health inequality in his World AIDS Day message, proving once again that he’s a very different president to Donald Trump.
Ahead of World AIDS Day (1 December), the president issued a proclamationin which he said his administration was “focused on addressing health inequities and inequalities and ensuring that the voices of people with HIVare at the centre of our work to end the HIV epidemic globally”.
Biden “honoured and remembered” the “36 million people, including 700,000 Americans” that have been lost since the start of the AIDS crisis, and noted the impact of COVID-19 on access to HIV-related healthcare.
He said: “The pandemic has… interrupted HIV research and highlighted the work that still remains to achieve equitable access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment in every community — particularly for communities of colour, adolescent girls and young women, and the LGBTQI+ community.”
Biden pointed to his work so far to tackle HIV, including reopening the White House Office of National AIDS Policy that was shut down by Trump, and said that his administration would this week be “releasing an updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy to decrease health inequities in new diagnoses and improve access to comprehensive, evidence-based HIV-prevention tools”.
He added: “Ending the HIV epidemic is within our reach, and we are committed to finishing this work.
“On World AIDS Day, we rededicate ourselves to building on the progress of the last 4 decades; upholding and advancing human rights; supporting research, science, and data-driven solutions; expanding access to housing, education, and economic empowerment; and fighting stigma and discrimination.
“No one living with HIV should suffer the undeserved guilt and prejudice that too many continue to experience.”
In contrast to Joe Biden, Donald Trump never in four years mentioned LGBT+ people on World AIDS Day
Joe Biden’s World AIDS Day proclamation was in stark contrast with Donald Trump’s, with the former president failing to mention LGBT+ people four years in a row.
Trump, who during his time in office dismissed all members of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, mentioned in his final proclamation last year that issued in “this deadly disease disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities”, but entirely failed to mention the impact on gay and bisexual men, who make up 69 per cent of all HIV diagnoses in the US.
The LGBT+ community also made up the overwhelming majority of victims of the AIDS crisis.
An Iowa law that prohibits Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgeries for transgender residents violates state law and the state constitution, a judge ruled in a decision made public Monday.
Judge William Kelly ordered the Iowa Department of Human Services to provide coverage for sex reassignment surgeries when ordered to treat gender dysphoria, a psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. It often begins in childhood, and some people may not experience it until after puberty or much later, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
At least nine states across the U.S. explicitly exclude gender-affirming care in Medicaid coverage, while 24 states and Washington, D.C., explicitly include this type of care, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. The remaining states have no explicit policy.
The ruling is a victory for Aiden Vasquez and Mika Covington, two Iowans represented by the ACLU of Iowa.
Kelly said state and federal courts in the past 16 years have found that gender identity discrimination is a form of sex discrimination which is prohibited under civil rights laws. He also found the law violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution.
It is not challenged in the record that surgical treatment for gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition and the surgery is recommended for Vasquez and Covington by medical professionals as necessary and effective, the judge said. He said Medicaid coverage is fundamental to ensure the availability of that treatment for economically disadvantaged Iowans.
“Once the medical community determined that surgery is medically necessary to treat this health issue, the government lost its rational basis to refuse to pay for the surgery,” Kelly said in a ruling signed on Friday but posted publicly with online court records on Monday. “The law appears to draw an arbitrary distinction. So, there is no plausible policy reason advanced by, or rationally related to, excluding transgender people from Medicaid reimbursement for medically necessary procedures.”
Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the ACLU of Iowa, called the decision “a historic win for civil rights” in Iowa.
“It recognizes what we’ve long known, that transgender Iowans must not be discriminated against, and that they are protected by the Iowa Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, as well as by the Iowa Civil Rights Act,” Bettis Austen said.
The ACLU of Iowa filed a lawsuit in April against the state of Iowa challenging a 2019 law that allows Medicaid to deny payment for sex reassignment surgeries for transgender residents.
Vasquez and Covington initially sued in 2017 and a state court judge found the policy violated the Iowa Civil Rights Act and the Iowa Supreme Court in 2019 upheld that decision. The court concluded that Iowa’s Medicaid program may not categorically discriminate against transgender people seeking gender-affirming, medically necessary care.
Shortly after the court ruling, Republicans in the Iowa Legislature passed an amendment as part of a last-minute addition to a human services budget bill in response to the court’s ruling. That change stated that any government agency in Iowa may decline to use taxpayer money for “sex reassignment surgery” or “any other cosmetic reconstructive or plastic surgery procedure related to transsexualism, hermaphroditism, gender identity disorder, or body dysmorphic disorder.”
Vasquez and Covington, however, had to take their cases through the Department of Human Services system and apply for surgery, have it denied based on the new law and then again pursue a challenge in court. The Iowa DHS has since denied coverage to them. Vasquez is a transgender man who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2016 and Mika Covington is a transgender woman who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began receiving hormone therapy in 2015.
Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill into law in May 2019, arguing it only narrowly clarifies that Iowa’s Civil Rights Act does not require taxpayer dollars to pay for sex reassignment and other similar surgeries.
Reynolds’ spokesman Alex Murphy said she is disappointed by the ruling “and disagrees with the district court’s ruling on Medicaid coverage for transgender reassignment surgeries. We are reviewing the decision with our legal team and exploring all options moving forward.”
As of early November, this year is the deadliest on record for transgender people in the United States, with at least 45 people killed. But their deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. Many other transgender people are subjected to violence and harassment, in public and at home.
Our recent research focused on Florida, Ohio and Texas, three states where dozens of transgender people have been killed between 2016 and 2021. We found that anti-transgender violence is intersectional; risk is shaped by race, gender, class and other factors.
During this period, at least 88 percent of the transgender people killed in Florida, 91 percent in Ohio and 90 percent in Texas were people of color. The majority were Black transgender women, who are most at risk of fatal violence.
Some transgender people who experience violence are targeted or harassed by strangers in public, but others described harassment and abuse at the hands of family members, intimate partners or law enforcement officers — and what they needed most were resources and support.
In part, the high rates of violence that transgender people experience are fueled by public hostility, which some lawmakers have stoked this year. In 2021, a record number of anti-transgender bills were filed in state legislatures — and some passed into law — which demonized transgender people and sought to limit their access to health care, public facilities, and sports and recreation.
Other lawmakers have decried anti-transgender violence, typically by calling for more policing, stronger hate crimes laws, or harsher punishments. But if lawmakers want to address the problem, they need to address the conditions that give rise to it.
The transgender survivors and advocates I met with in Florida, Ohio and Texas described forms of violence that aren’t well addressed by hate crimes prosecution. Even when these prosecutions result in convictions, the state response lacks a survivor-centered, comprehensive approach and many survivors’ needs go unmet.
Addressing the violence requires paying attention to the socioeconomic marginalization and discrimination that put many transgender people in circumstances where they are exposed to harm. According to a survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 29 percent of transgender people live in poverty, compared with 12 percent of the U.S. population overall.
Without options, many transgender women engage in sex work and other informal economies, where criminalization puts them at heightened risk of violence by clients and law enforcement and can deter them from seeking assistance when violence occurs.
When people do face violence, the services designed to shield people from harm often fail transgender survivors. In many parts of the country, transgender people do not have access to homeless shelters, domestic violence services, or law enforcement agencies that will provide them meaningful help. Instead, many transgender people report being re-victimized when seeking out a lifeline, being turned away or mistreated because of their gender identity when they are most in need.
The same survey found that nearly a third of those who responded had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, and one in 10 had experienced homelessness in the previous year.
Many transgender people do not know of shelters that will house them consistent with their gender identity, and when they are able to secure a place, they often face harassment from staff or other residents. Without a safe place to stay or the resources to move, many transgender people are unable to escape situations where they experience violence.
Some people we interviewed said they often felt most at risk when others could perceive that they were transgender and openly disparaged or threatened them. When transgender people are unable to access hormones and other gender-affirming health care, or are unable to update their identification to align with their gender expression, it can increase their exposure to hostility in public.
Protecting people from brutal, often fatal violence should not be controversial. Nonetheless, few states have taken meaningful action to address the circumstances that put transgender people at particular risk. Only 21 states expressly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations, leaving people in many parts of the country without such basic protections.
More can be done. At the federal level, Congress could enact the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity in a variety of domains. Lawmakers also should enact bills such as the Family Violence Prevention and Services Improvement Act, which would bolster services for survivors of intimate partner violence and family violence, including transgender survivors.
Condemning violence is not enough. If lawmakers are serious about stopping anti-transgender violence, they must address its roots.
Unless steps are taken to prevent violence from occurring — at a minimum, prohibiting discrimination, providing people with safe employment and housing options, and ensuring that anti-violence services are accessible and affirming — our interventions after the fact are going to be too little, too late.
The annual Chicago 5 Lives Fundraiser hosted by Rainbow Railroad is proud to return this year with “When I Am Free”, a benefit concert offering attendees a premier evening of classical music from esteemed young musicians. Hosts will include U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky and Chicago Reader publisher Tracy Baim.
The concert will be held on Friday December 3rd from 7:30-9pm at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre and will also be livestreamed. Tickets are $100 and all proceeds go directly to Rainbow Railroad to support its mission to assist LGBTQI+ refugees fleeing persecution. The Chicago 5 Lives Campaign will aim to raise $50,000 – enough to move five additional people to safety. Purchase via Eventbrite.
“Although the persecution of LGBTQI+ people worldwide is tragic and epidemic, ‘When I Am Free” is all about hope – especially the hope that is Rainbow Railroad. Primarily through music, the concert will convey what cannot easily be expressed in words: the journey from anguish and fear to freedom and hope,” said Bruce Koff, vice chair of the Rainbow Railroad board of directors.
“I am proud to stand with Rainbow Railroad and support their vital work to help LGBTQI+ people fleeing horrific situations around the world,” said Congresswoman Schakowsky. “Working together, we can support the people who simply want to live freely as themselves, a right many take for granted here in the United States.”
Of particular interest at this year’s concert is the premiere of an exciting original piece by local composer Carlos Jaquez Gonzalez. Gonzalez composed the piece for two singers based on interviews he did with two gay Egyptian men who fled Egypt together with the help of Rainbow Railroad, and then subsequently fell in love. They are still together today. Gonzalez recently unveiled another groundbreaking work called, “Immigrant Mass,” a multimedia music film that uses the verbatim testimony of immigrants who experienced detention in the U.S. Other musicians include Venezuelan violinists Gabriela Lara and Julimar Gonzalez, both students of the revered Almita Vamos, named a distinguished teacher by the National Endowment for the Arts.
This promises to be an evening of exceptional artistry for an exceptional cause. To those that cannot make the evening, the organizers encourage people to participate in the campaign by donating directly to the Chicago 5 Lives Campaign.
About Rainbow Railroad Rainbow Railroad is a North American non-profit organization headquartered in Toronto and New York that helps LGBTQI+ people seek safe haven from state-led violence and persecution in countries where homosexuality and diverse expressions of gender identity are criminalized. The organization is a community driven response to mitigate the impacts of global persecution directed towards LGBTQI+ people. Since 2006, the organization has helped thousands of people cross borders to safety. Rainbow Railroad is a registered Canadian charity and 501(c)(3) organization in the United States. To get on board with Rainbow Railroad and help save LGBTQI+ lives, visit www.rainbowrailroad.org.