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Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has mounted a legal challenge against World Aquatics

Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been quietly mounting a legal battle against World Aquatics to overturn the swimming governing body’s effective ban on most trans women competing in the highest levels of the sport, a lawyer representing Thomas confirmed to NBC News on Friday. Carlos Sayao, a partner at top Canadian law firm Tyr, said Thomas is asking the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland to overturn the new World Aquatics rules, issued in June 2022, that prohibit trans women from competing in women’s swimming events unless they transitioned before age 12.  The U.K.’s Telegraph was the first to report on Thomas’ behind-closed-doors […]

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Transgender veterans sue the VA for gender-affirming surgery

An advocacy group for transgender veterans is suing the government over its exclusion of gender-confirmation surgery in veterans’ health benefits.  The Department of Veterans Affairs covers almost all transition-related care for veterans, including hormone therapy, voice training, fertility preservation and hair removal. However, if trans veterans want to receive surgery — such as genital and breast procedures — they are required to either use private health insurance or pay out of pocket. Such operations are covered for active-duty service members. The Transgender American Veterans Association, or TAVA, formed in 2003, filed a petition in May 2016 asking the VA to start a rulemaking […]

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Progressive states must become safe havens for LGBTQ adolescents

It should come as no surprise that the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is anti-LGBTQ+, given the escalation of such sentiments across the nation. During the 2023 legislative session, more than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced across 43 state houses; more than 200 of these targeted transgender and non-binary people, particularly youth. As of August 2023, more than 80 bills had passed, making it the worst year on record for LGBTQ+ rights.  What happens when these discriminatory policies force LGBTQ+ people to move to more supportive enclaves, which also have some of the most expensive housing in the country and highest per capita rates of homelessness? This […]

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Understanding trans identity from a therapy perspective

The trans identity has been written about extensively from a political perspective. Many columns in the Blade, and other outlets, speak of gender ID laws, barriers in trans healthcare, pronouns, trans representation in state legislatures and eventually Congress, and the legality of offering trans children hormone blockers, among other treatments.  While speaking of politics can be good, it’s equally important to understand trans lives from the perspective of someone with a social work degree — or, in other words, from an emotional and therapeutic perspective.  Trans people, simply put, face many emotional barriers in life that others usually don’t have to […]

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Ads Targeting LGBTQ+ Are “Insincere,” Says LGBTQ+ Community

While LGBTQ+ Americans and their advocates have made some progress in achieving greater civil rights, recognition, and representation for the LGBTQ+ community, recent actions suggest that further work is needed in the pursuit of equality. A new report from Collage Group, a leading provider of cultural intelligence, takes a close look at LGBTQ+ marketing and advertising. Specifically, the study examines how LGBTQ+ Americans feel about recent ads aimed toward their community. It also provides the perspectives of non LGBTQ+ people, as well as the perceptions of liberals and conservatives.  The report examines marketing efforts, specifically LGBTQ+ representation in regard to […]

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Massachusetts Senate unanimously passes bill to repeal sodomy ban & anti-trans laws

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While many state legislatures across the country are scrambling to pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation this year, Massachusetts is going in the other direction. The state’s senate passed a bill yesterday — unanimously, as in, even the chamber’s Republicans voted for it — that repeals the state’s ban on gay sex as well as a law known as the “walking while trans” law. “I’m just really happy that it passed. And I hope that it will pass seamlessly in the house. There’s absolutely no reason for it not to pass,” Tanya Neslusan of MassEquality told the Washington Blade.  The state’s criminal code bans “the abominable […]

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Gay man from Chechnya who was tortured in a police station finally escaped Russia

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After months of torture in the basement of a Grozny police station, a gay Chechen man has finally fled the grip of Russia and his native country’s rabid homophobia, the North Caucasus LGBTQ+ rights group SK SOS reported Wednesday. Rizvan Dadayev was detained by police in the summer of 2022 after he was outed by a group of local extortionists in the Chechen capital in a video distributed online, SK SOS told The Moscow Times. He hadn’t been heard from since. The organization said Dadayev had been abused at the hands of law enforcement officials with direct ties to Chechen leader […]

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Maine legislators frantically working to make the state a trans refuge

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A proposed law in Maine would make the state the 15th “trans refuge” as lawmakers push back on attempts by some activist state attorneys general to demand private medical information from health authorities. Texas, in particular, has been at the forefront of attempts to persecute trans youth and their parents, along with hospitals, doctors, and healthcare providers, across state borders. Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has gone so far as to send special investigators across the state border to interrogate children and their families. The bill would protect Texans who flee to the state to seek medical care for their children or […]

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Biden administration allocates $700,000 to sex-ed program for trans boys

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The Biden administration is dedicating approximately $700,000 to a sexual health program aimed at pregnancy prevention for transgender boys.  The Department of Health and Human Services has approved a grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in California, which will spearhead a program focused on sex education and condom usage for trans boys. The grant summary explains that trans boys are “at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable.”  It also said trans […]

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GLAAD demands Mark Zuckerberg public statement on Facebook’s anti-trans content moderation failure

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GLAAD is urging Meta to take immediate action following the company’s independent Oversight Board’s decision to overturn Facebook’s original stance on a post that targeted transgender people with violent language. The case has highlighted the insidious methods used to attack LGBTQ+ individuals on social media, such as coded language and indirect messaging. The Oversight Board’s ruling overruled Meta’s original decision to leave up a contentious post that targeted transgender individuals with violent and harmful language. The post, originating from a user in Poland, displayed a curtain in the transgender Pride flag’s colors, coupled with text in Polish implying that transgender people should die by suicide — a clear […]

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