As the famous TV commercial went from the ‘70s – “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Mother Nature has a way of exacting her revenge.
The immediate task at hand is to educate gay and bisexual men how to avoid monkeypox and to get vaccinated. But it isn’t too early to assess what brought us to this point. In the last 10 years there has been a wholesale abandonment of safer sex promotion in favor of PrEP brought to you by Gilead. The result has been the destruction of the condom culture, which was so carefully built in the 1980s in the face of the raging AIDS epidemic; a tsunami of STDs; and sustained high HIV infection rates across the U.S.
The battle lines in the gay male community over condoms and partner reduction is nothing new. It was well documented in Randy Shilts’s book “And the Band Played On” and in Larry Kramer’s play “The Normal Heart.” There has been a long-standing split between sexual freedom and prevention among gay men. There has always been a sex radical group that has defined gay liberation as absolute sexual freedom. They have denied that condoms are the primary tool in prevention or that the more partners you have the greater the risk. This reminds me of people who believe that we can continue to foul the planet because we will magically invent technical solutions that will save us. How’s that working for us?
There has been a widespread attitude that syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, etc. are no big deal – take a pill or get a shot. If we have learned anything in the last few years, it should be that diseases are not static. Rather they morph into more debilitating or deadly forms. Syphilis is serious. Gonorrhea is on its way to being completely drug resistant. And now we have monkeypox that jumped from animal to human and now human-to-human. It found its perfect petri dish in condomless sex parties and porn shoots.
I can already hear the shouts of slut shaming. If you love gay men, your first priority must be to keep them safe and healthy. It is not shaming to tell them the facts.
The facts are really simple. PrEP doesn’t protect you from damaging STDs. STDs have health consequences that should not be ignored. The more sex partners you have, particularly if you don’t use condoms, the more likely you are to get an STD. The tighter the circle of partners you have – such as Grindr and other hook-up apps – the greater your odds of getting an infection.
Are condoms really such a sacrifice to protect your health? Is it possible to have great sex with a condom? Do you ever get sick of getting STDs?
Gilead, the greediest of all drug companies, is pounding our community with ads promoting PrEP and is buying favor through millions in community grants. PrEP is needed for people who won’t use condoms. But the CDC and local government have abandoned safer sex promotion in favor of biomedical options. Shows such as the popular Netflix show “Uncoupled” tell us that condoms are so 1990s.
U = U which means that Undetectable (virus) = Untransmitable (infection) is a great message if it is intended for sero-discordant couples but if it is another way of saying condoms are unnecessary then it is a problem.
Now we have monkeypox. At this point it is irrefutable that monkeypox is an STD. If you want to protect your penis or your rectum from excruciating sores a condom will help. The good news is that gay men are taking their foot off the gas. Polls show that sexual hookups are down. But monkeypox will subside and chances are we will go right back to the free-for-all of the last 10 years.
Prevention is not sexy or popular. You are stigmatized as a prude or a self-hating gay or an old fuddy duddy if you promote it. But someone has to name the elephant in the room. So many of these STD surges happen among gay men because we have more partners and we are not taking precautions. For me I would rather be the one sounding the alarm then apologizing for not having warned.
Michael Weinstein is president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) has announced his attention to hold a vote “in the coming weeks” on the “The Respect for Marriage Act,” a bill that would help enshrine same-sex marriage rights into law.
In doing so, he’d get Senate Republicans to state whether they support marriage equality before the November midterm elections. Democrats could use Republican opposition to the bill to pummel conservative candidates and convince larger numbers of Democratic voters to come to the polls.
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Democratic and Independent voters have come out against Republicans in greater numbers since the conservative-led Supreme Court overturned the right to abortions nationwide in June. Political commentators think even more voters could come out against Republicans over same-sex marriage, considering that a June Gallup poll found that 71 percent of voters support marriage equality.
“Let me be clear,” Schumer said in a Wednesday press conference, “a vote on marriage equality will happen on the Senate floor in the coming weeks, and I hope there will be 10 Republicans to support it.”
“Our two leading members on this issue, Sen. [Tammy] Baldwin and [Kyrtsten] Sinema, are working with Republicans to see if there are enough votes to pass the bill,” he added.
Thus far, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have all said that they would vote in favor of the bill. The bill needs 10 Republican senate votes to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a guaranteed filibuster and become law.
When asked about the legislation on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “I know there’s a legislative pathway that’s being discussed currently in Congress. We’ll let leadership decide how to move forward with that.”
She added, “The President is proud is a champion of a right for people to marry. They can choose who they love, and he believes it is non-negotiable, and the Senate should act swiftly to get this to the President’s desk.”
However, several Republican senators have come out against the bill.
“Never felt this bill is necessary,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “This is just Democrats opening up a wound that doesn’t need to be opened up. And now that I’ve talked to people there are some very serious concerns on religious liberty…. I would not support it in its current state.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has also said he will oppose the bill due to concerns over “religious liberties.”
“This bill without a religious liberty protection would have massive consequences across our country, weaponizing the Biden administration to go and target universities, K-12 schools, social service organizations, churches and strip them all of their tax-exempt status,” Cruz claimed earlier this week on his podcast Verdict.
Cruz said that he and his allies are encouraging fellow Republicans to vote against the bill. He also said Republicans would push to add an amendment to the bill that would provide “a strong protection of religious liberty.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has also said he’ll oppose the bill, stating, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.”
In mid-July, 47 Republican House lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, helping it pass the lower legislative chamber.
In late July, 83 conservative organizations wrote a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), claiming that the bill will legalize polygamy and incest.
In reality, he Respect for Marriage Act would officially repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that forbade the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex marriages. In its place, the act would require the federal and state governments to recognize same-sex marriages as long as they occurred in states that offer them. If any state refuses to recognize such marriages, the act says, the spouses can sue.
Democrats and Collins introduced the bill after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas indicated that the nation’s highest court should consider overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
In his footnote to the June Supreme Court decision overturning abortion access nationwide, Justice Thomas wrote that the court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the case that granted the right to contraception] Lawrence [the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws], and Obergefell [the case that legalized marriage equality].”
“We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote.
If the court overturns Obergefell, it would essentially leave individual states to decide their own same-sex marriage laws. Nearly 30 states have same-sex marriage bans currently on their books.
The Respect for Marriage Act has the support of LGBTQ and allied national organizations including the ACLU, the Center for American Progress, the Equality Federation, Family Equality, Freedom for All Americans, GLAD, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lambda Legal, the National Black Justice Coalition, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Women’s Law Center, and PFLAG.
After standing with Donald Trump throughout his morally reprehensible actions and policy directives, conservative Evangelical Christians – along with other anti-choice, anti-contraceptive, and anti-LGBTQ zealots – were downright giddy over the possibility of finally receiving some of the promised dividends for selling their souls to the Devil.
This group has sacrificed all of their “deeply held religious beliefs.” They have stood with him from his destructive and epithet-laden tweets, to his promise of constructing a wall on our southern border, to the Access Hollywood tape, to revelations of his payoffs to quiet a porn star, to separating babies and young children from their parents and putting them in cages, to his planning an insurrection on the Capitol, to his squirreling top-secret documents at his Florida resort.
Throughout Trump’s bully-in-an-America-shop candidacy to his plowing into the White House, his expectant base of supporters ran ahead like the excited sprinters in the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, all with the hoped-for remuneration of Trump packing the judicial branch with decidedly right-wing judges and justices.
The wall with Mexico was merely one of the many structures Trump promised to build. When he asserted during the campaign that he wanted to punish women who have abortions, as well as the doctors who perform them, he was also walling-off women from their reproductive rights.
By committing to stack the Supreme Court with an ultra-conservative majority and promising to reverse both marriage equality and Roe v. Wade (resulting in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationcase), he gave conservatives the vision of a gigantic concrete structure separating women and LGBTQ people from their bodies and their civil rights, and certainly from their humanity.
Unfortunately, Trump has fulfilled some of these promises.
In yet another jaw-dropping, bigoted, hateful, and life-threatening court ruling, a federal judge recently ruled that employers are not compelled to cover HIV and pregnancy prevention drugs without any cost-sharing, as is required by the Affordable Care Act’s preventive services clause. The judge, however, declared that clause unconstitutional.
The case was brought by two Texas businesses and several Texas residents. The judge, Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas, found that the requirement for employers to cover HIV prevention drug preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and birth control violated employers’ “religious freedom” as outlined in the Religious Rights Restoration Act.
The judge did not agree with the Biden administration’s argument that PrEP poses a “compelling government interest” in asking private insurance plans to cover the drugs at no cost-sharing or without any religious exemptions.
The ACA’s preventive services requirement stipulates that insurers must fully cover 100 preventive services without cost-sharing to plan members.
O’Connor’s ruling could be used to deny coverage of life-saving vaccines and other vital drugs if employers claim these therapies violate their “deeply held religious beliefs.”
U.S. Congress passed the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which “ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected.”
In response to these and other related cases, twenty-one states have passed State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that apply to state governments and local municipalities.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 2014
“The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients.”
We can add “Justice” Samuel Alito, “Justice” Anthony Kennedy, “Justice” John Roberts, “Justice” Clarence Thomas, and last, but certainly not least, “Justice” Antonin Scalia to an oxymoronic list since this Supreme Court decision amounted to anything but justice.
The five men voting in the majority denied the rights of women, particularly working-class women employees at “closely-held” (family owned with a limited number of shareholders) for-profit corporations, which includes most U.S. corporations.
The case involved the families who owned the national chain of craft stores, Hobby Lobby, plus a Christian bookstore chain, and Conestoga, a Mennonite family-owned woodworking company. The parties claimed that the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and in particular, a few specific contraceptive devices covered by health insurance companies, violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The act stated that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion….”
The decision follows former 2012 presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney’s assertionthat “Corporations are people my friend,” and clearly shows that million- and billion-dollar corporate families have more rights than workers.
When patriarchal Christian nationalist white supremacist social and economic systems attempt to keep women pregnant and taking care of children, they can restrict their entry into the workplace and ensure their dependence on men both economically and emotionally.
As people have produced more and more children, expanding numbers of little consumers emerge to contribute to the capitalist system’s ever increasing profits for owners of business and industry. The patriarchal Christian nationalist white supremacist imperative to control women’s and LGBTQ people’s bodies amounts to imperatives to control their minds and life choices.
And when patriarchal white supremacist social and family structures converge with Christian nationalist religious systems, the oppression of women and LGBTQ people became inevitable.
Since the United States is majority Christian in all its many sects and denominations, and the conservative Supreme Court majority follows some form of Christianity, any claim of a supposed “separation of Church and state” is nothing more than a fraudulent platitude in the service of Christian nationalism.
Malta’s prime minister, Robert Abela, has promised reforms for the country’s LGBTQ+ community, including free gender affirming surgery for trans people.
According to local publication Lovin Malta, the prime minster attended Malta’s Pride march in Valletta on 10 September to share news that the government is committed to carrying out these reforms.
In an interview with ONE Radio he said: “I believe that social reform gives the Labour Party its identity.
“My presence yesterday, as well as that of ministers and MPs, symbolises the messages that while we have done a lot, more is yet to come. While we’re proud of what we did, more needs to be done.”
The Labour Party leader noted the recent lift of a ban on gay men donating blood in Malta, and said the next step will be free gender affirming surgeries for trans people, as promised in Labour’s manifesto.
Abela took to social media to announce the reform for donating blood in Malta.
In the Facebook post he said: “Today we will fulfil another electoral promise with new protocols for donating blood.
“That way we will have fairer protocols that remove any form of discrimination with LGBTIQ+ people where the parameters for a person to be able to donate blood will be equal for everyone.”
He ended the message by saying: “Reforms remain at the top of this government’s agenda. Not least in the equality sector.”
Speaking to One Radio about the promise of free gender reassignment surgery Abela said: “They will be placed on the national health service, which means the state will finance the procedure.”
In 2019 Malta was named Rainbow Europe’s best European holiday destination for LGBTQ+ travellers, scoring an impressive 90 percent out of 100.
Belgium scooping up second place with 73 per cent, and the UK scraped in the top 10 in ninth place with 62 per cent.
PinkNews has reached out to Abela’s office for comment.
The president of Sri Lanka has said his government won’t oppose a bill to decriminalise homosexuality – but added the bill must gain support before any laws change.
On Sunday (11 September) president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has held his role since July this year, said the government will not oppose a private member’s bill presented to parliament by MP Premnath C Dolawatte to decriminalise homosexuality.
Same-sex relationships are currently illegal in Sri Lanka, and there are other discriminatory laws against trans people and sex workers.
Dolawatte’s bill seeks to decriminalise same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults by amending sections 365 and 365A of Sri Lanka’s penal code.
‘A matter of private conscience’
However, it will require support from individual members of parliament, as president Wickremesinghe explained during talks with Samantha Power, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to the Colombo Gazette he said: “We are for it, but you have to get the support of individual members. It’s a matter of their private conscience.”
Last month a bill to amend the penal code with the aim of protecting the rights of Sri Lanka’s LGBTQ+ community was handed over to Wickremesinghe by Dolawatte.
The Penal Code (Amendment) (19th Act) Bill to amend the penal code was also submitted to parliament by Dolawatte as a private member’s bill, the Eastern Eye reported.
The paper said the LGBTQ+ community of Sri Lanka and its allies issued a statement welcoming the private member’s bill.
But despite the bill being submitted, Sri Lanka’s LGBTQ+ community questioned the commitment of its government to address issues faced by the community.
It comes after the Sri Lanka government were accused of forcing abusive anal and vaginal virginity “tests” on LGBTQ+ people in an attempt to prove homosexual conduct.
Since 2017, at least seven people have been forced into the “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” physical examinations, according to a Human Rights Watch report.
Rosanna Flamer-Caldera of equalities group Equal Ground described the ex-leader as “pathetic” and hit out at the president’s “insidious references degrading the LGBTIQ community”.
Since 2013, Russia has had a law in place that criminalizes the distribution of “homosexual propaganda” to minors. This vague and overly broad law can be used to punish anyone who speaks positively about LGBTQ relationships or displays any kind of pro-LGBTQ sentiment. As a result, Russia has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for members of the LGBTQ community.
Recently, Russian legislators have proposed to extend the LGBTQ propaganda law, which would criminalize anyone who promotes “non-traditional” sexual relationships to minors and adults. This, critics say, will further endanger the lives of Russia’s LGBTQ population, which has already suffered increased harassment, violence, and hostility in recent years.
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Here, we take a look at the state of LGBTQ rights in Russia and what has fueled the shift towards anti-LGBTQ sentiments there.
Technically, it isn’t illegal to be LGBTQ in Russia. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993 and declassified as a mental illness in 1999. Transgender Russians have also been able to legally change their gender and identity documents since 1997.
However, there are currently no anti-discrimination protections in the country, despite the high rate of homophobia in Russia. Owing largely to President Vladimir Putin’s plan to position himself as the “world’s leading defender of traditional values”, the Russian government has only made it harder for its LGBTQ population to live freely and openly.
In 2012, the year Putin assumed office as President, the city government of Moscow banned LGBTQ pride parades for the next hundred years.
August 2, 2018: Pride flag at a window in Russian city St Petersburg Shutterstock
LGBTQ Rights In Russia Today
So, what is life like for an LGBTQ person living in Russia today? Here is a brief primer on Russian LGBTQ rights in the time of Putin:
The “Homosexual Propaganda” Law
Putin’s government classifies LGBTQ people as a threat to the traditional family values it hopes to uphold. In 2013, Putin signed a federal law banning the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors”. Ultimately, this law makes it illegal for anyone to introduce information about LGBTQ people to minors – encompassing any information shared online, on TV, and by the press.
The law has not only had a chilling effect on LGBTQ rights but has also been used as a justification to shut down valuable websites that offer resources and services to LGBTQ youth. The law also discourages mental healthcare providers and educators from giving patients and students the information and care they need to cope with their struggles and navigate a homophobic environment.
According to LGBTQ advocates, this law is about much more than simply “protecting children” – it is a political tool to further the state’s anti-Western liberalism agenda. LGBTQ people are positioned as dissidents who wish to “finish off the traditional morality” – essentially making them out to be enemies of the state and a threat to Russian culture and values. According to the co-founder of the Russian LGBT Network, Igor Kochetkov, the 2013 law “is used in information campaigns to generate hatred, including against human rights defenders.”
“In the rhetoric of the Kremlin and state-loyal media, LGBT rights, feminism, multiculturalism, and atheism are identified not only as foreign to Russia’s values but as existential threats to the nation,” says the Boston Review.
The European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child have both condemned the law, as it is in opposition to their policies on freedom of expression and the right to assembly.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2013: No gay propaganda beyond this line. Banner against the Russian anti gay laws in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic. Shutterstock
Same-Sex Marriage And LGBTQ Adoption In Russia
In April 2021, Putin signed a series of constitutional amendments that included a formal ban on same-sex marriage in the country. Previously, the Russian constitution did not explicitly define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman – a loophole that gave LGBTQ Russians a sliver of hope that same-sex marriages could be introduced on that basis.
But with the recent amendments – which also removed term limits for the president and allowed the Russian constitution to take precedence over international law – LGBTQ Russians now have little hope for marriage equality in their country.
The amendments also ban transgender people from adopting children in Russia. Currently, only single adoptions – meaning no same-sex couples – are allowed.
Participants march during the Belgian Gay Pride parade in Brussels Belgium on May 20, 2017 Shutterstock
Illegal Detentions In Chechnya
In 2017, reports surfaced of a “gay purge” in the semiautonomous state of Chechnya. These purges, which were conducted by Chechen authorities, targeted gay and bisexual men and resulted in the detention of over 200 people. More have reportedly been beaten, tortured, and even killed.
Despite international protests and demands to end the purge from the UN and the European Court of Human Rights, the detention and torture resumed in 2019. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, men have been “kicked, beaten, and shocked with electricity” and were detained for three to 20 days. They were also stripped of their cellphones and forced to out other queer men.
According to Amnesty International, Russian authorities have “failed to provide justice” for the victims of the Chechnyan gay purges and offer effective protection to Igor Kotchetkov, who received death threats after leading the public investigation of the incident.
In the 2020 documentary Welcome to Chechnya, which follows a group of activists as they attempt to evacuate queer people from the region, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov blatantly denies the mere existence of queer people in Chechnya, stating, “We don’t have LGBT people here.”
Brussels, Belgium March 20, 2017. A woman holds a placard with an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin during protest against the detention of gay men in concentration camps in Chechnya. Shutterstock
The Bottom Line
Russia has come under fire in recent years for its treatment of the LGBTQ community. With lawmakers proposing a total ban on spreading “LGBTQ propaganda” to both minors and adults and the amendment to the Russian constitution that makes same-sex marriage in the country illegal, LGBTQ Russians face a mountain of challenges in earning the right to live openly and safely.
These policies have not only curtailed the rights of LGBTQ people in Russia but have also inspired deeper hate and homophobia in the country – particularly among its ultra-conservative population.
You can show your support by learning more about the situation in Russia and spreading awareness.
On August 30, middle school administrators allegedly pulled a 13-year-old transgender boy out of class so an investigator from the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) could ask him personal questions about his past medical history, gender dysphoria, and past suicide attempt.
The boy — given the pseudonym “Steve Koe” in court documents — was left “shaking and distressed” by the interrogation, The Washington Post reported. Worse yet, the interrogation allegedly occurred after a court told DFPS investigators to stop doing them.
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Now, Koe’s story is a part of supplemental evidence being filed by the LGBTQ-advocacy organizations Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in its lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In February, Abbott ordered DFPS to investigate for child abuse any parents who allow their trans children to access gender-affirming medical care. Abbott based his order on a non-binding opinion from the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton which called such care a form of “child abuse.”
Paxton’s opinions and Abbott’s order both went against the best practices of pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association. These organizations consider gender-affirming medical care necessary in many cases, noting it reduces mental anguish and suicide risk among trans youth.
Soon after issuing his order, several DFPS employees quit and some state attorneys refusedto enforce it. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that neither Abbott nor Paxton had the authority to issue the order. Several families with trans children, represented by Lambda Legal and the ACLU also filed a lawsuit against Abbott.
The presiding district judge in the lawsuit issued a temporary restraining order, effectively stopping DFPS’ investigations while the court prepares to consider the order’s legality in December.
Koe’s story — part of supplemental evidence illustrating how state agencies are handling the alleged child abuse cases — suggested that DFPS continued its investigations of trans families, even after the court ordered it to stop. In a May briefing, state government officials noted that the judge’s ruling to temporarily stop the probes “prevents a state agency from carrying out its statutory duty to investigate reported child abuse,” the Postwrote.
Another woman, identified pseudonymously in court documents as Samantha Poe, said her 14-year-old child became the subject of a DFPS abuse investigation even though the child had received no gender-affirming medical care. The child was only “in midst of exploring what a social transition feels like,” Poe said. But DFPS opened an investigation against the child’s family in February. The stress has left the child with “suicidal ideations,” court documents state.
DFPS employees are speaking out about how Abbott’s order circumvented rule-making procedures at the state agency and made it much harder for its employees to help victims of actual abuse.
The EuroPride march route has been officially banned by Serbian police following mass anti-LGBTQ+ protests.
The event, which takes place in a different European city each year, was due to take place in Belgrade on Saturday (17 September) as part of Serbia’s bid for membership to the European Union.
But the event found itself under increasing scrutiny by religious and anti-LGBTQ+ protestors, including a march led by clergy from the Serbian Orthodox Church, who used rhetoric about “saving children” and “protecting family values” to push their hateful message.
Now, several weeks after Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić said the event would be postponed indefinitely due to vague suggestions of “security concerns”, Serbian police officially announced a ban on the route of the EuroPride march on Tuesday (13 September).
Thousands of people marched against Belgrade hosting EuroPride. (Oliver Bunic/Getty)
In a statement from the European Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBTI Rights, several of the 145 MEPs who signed a letter to Serbian leadershipcondemning their postponement of events and urging the government to maintain their promise of EuroPride have spoken out against the announcement.
“We regret the decision taken by the Serbian police to ban the route of the EuroPride march, LGBTI Intergroup co-chair Terry Reintke MEP (Greens-EFA) said.
“We have been in constant contact in the last weeks with the Serbian authorities calling for political willingness in finding a solution that ensures all demonstrators’ security.
“We insist that all efforts must be employed to find a compromise solution.”
After president Vučić’s postponement in August, the European Pride Organisers Association (EPOA) president Kristine Garina said at the time he could not “cancel someone else’s event”.
She said banning the march would violate Serbia’s commitment to the European Convention of Human Rights, which is important to follow when applying for an EU membership.
It’s unclear whether this ban will affect negotiations at this time.
Serbia has been attempting to join the union since 2009, but has hit several roadblocks involving human rights violations. Its history of banning Pride parades initially received criticism from official human rights organisations, including a march in the early 2000s that become violent after anti-LGBTQ+ protestors breached the proceedings.
But after several peaceful Serbian Pride parades went off without a hitch, EuroPride had allowed Belgrade the opportunity to be considered for hosting the 2022 event, which it eventually accepted.
In a letter to the EPOA, former prime minister Ana Brnabić wrote that the government was ready to “ensuring the full respect of human rights” and promised to help the Belgrade Pride organising team create a “safe and successful” EuroPride event.
Fellow co-chair of the LGBTI Intergroup Marc Angel MEP (S&D Group) said: “We have urged authorities to liaise, to negotiate and to agree on a compromise, which to this point was clear – a shorter, secure route, enshrining the principles of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.
“We repeat – these rights must be ensured for those defending them and we maintain trust that a solution will be found. We urge authorities to put all focus on a credible solution to be proposed to the organisers.”
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) has just adopted a rule change forbidding transgender people from changing the gender listed on their birth certificates.
The rule change is just the latest in an ongoing legal battle between the DPHHS, the state’s Republican-led legislature, and trans Montanans seeking government documents that display their correct gender identities.
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The DPHHS’ new rule says that a person’s sex listed on a birth certificate can now only be changed if it was incorrectly entered by a “data entry error” or if “the sex of the individual was misidentified on the original certificate and the department receives a correction affidavit and supporting documents, … including a copy of the results of chromosomal, molecular, karyotypic, DNA, or genetic testing that identify the sex of the individual.”
The DPHHS implemented this rule five months after a state judge issued a ruling blocking a state law requiring state residents to undergo a non-specified “surgical procedure” before they could change the gender listed on their birth certificates.
Montana’s Republican-led legislature passed this law, S.B. 280, in April 2021. Previous to the law, the DPHHS said that transgender residents could change the gender marker on their birth certificates if they were intersex, had undergone “a gender transition,” or had a certified court order indicating that their gender had been changed.
In July 2021, two transgender state residents sued the state’s Gov. Greg Gianforte (R), DPHHS, and its director, claiming that S.B. 280 had made it virtually impossible for them to change their birth certificates, thus violating their constitutional right to privacy and due process.
“Denying me an accurate birth certificate places me at risk of embarrassment or even violence every time I am required to present my birth certificate because it incorrectly identifies me as male,” said Amelia Marquez, one of the plaintiffs and a trans woman, in a statement.
S.B. 280 also made it impossible for many trans people to get a corrected birth certificate because such surgery is too expensive for many people, not all trans people want or need gender-affirming genital surgery, and many are not good candidates for it for medical reasons.
The state disagreed and said that S.B. 280 was necessary to maintain accurate birth records.
However, in April 2022, state Judge Michael Moses said that the law’s requirement of an unspecified surgical procedure made it impossible for anyone to follow. The judge then issued a temporary injunction against S.B. 280, essentially blocking it from going into effect.
But the state chapter of the ACLU says that Montana government officials have done nothing to comply with the judge’s order. For instance, a gender change form that DPHHS removed from its website after S.B. 280 was passed still hasn’t returned to the website.
“The fact that the state refuses to revert to the previous processes evidences its lack of respect for the judiciary and utter disregard for the transgender Montanans who seek to have a birth certificate that accurately indicates what they know their sex to be,” the ACLU said in their statement. “If the state continues to violate the preliminary injunction, we will have no choice but to seek relief from the court.”
Montana passed several other anti-LGBTQ laws in 2021, including a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports. The state also passed a law requiring schools to give 48-hours notice to parents if they are going to discuss LGBTQ people.
In July, a 35-year-old Black man from the Washington, D.C. area went from experiencing Covid-like symptoms to watching his body be overtaken by the aggravating, blistering boils of monkeypox. And yet, as he endured the agony and uncertainty that came with the disease, he said he had other, more pressing concerns.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous because of concerns related to the stigma associated with the disease, said he was alarmed by how difficult it was to find information on monkeypox and his doctor’s seeming dismissal of his concerns about his symptoms.
He said his case is an example of the concerning public health response to monkeypox, and, for the Black population in particular, follows a historical pattern of medical malfeasance and shortcomings.
The man said when he visited urgent care in early July, the doctor didn’t appear to take him seriously. “I asked if she was up on the latest CDC guidelines on monkeypox and she wasn’t,” he recalled. “So, she had to call the CDC to even get approval to administer me a test. She went on about how it would take an hour of paperwork and other stuff, so most doctors weren’t excited about giving the tests.”
The man, who is gay, said, “it was like a repeat performance” of some of the issues that came with the Covid pandemic, when Black people in many parts of the country had less access to treatment and vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now with monkeypox, health care officials face the challenge of effectively communicating information about the spread of the outbreak without stigmatizing gay men. Public health officials interviewed by NBC News said managing that balance is critical to gaining public confidence to offset the intense mistrust of the medical establishment in the Black community. The poor response by health officials, the disparities in the vaccine rollout and the stigma associated with monkeypox have contributed to men questioning how the virus is spread — despite the data, experts say.
Data from the CDC found that, through July 22, 99% of cases were among men, 94% of whom reported recent sexual contact with males. The World Health Organization added that 98.7% of confirmed cases globally are in males, with 97.2% of those men reporting that they had sex with other men.
Black men across the country have been hit especially hard by the outbreak. Although Blacks make up roughly 12% of the population, they make up 38% of the most recent monkeypox cases, according to the CDC. In Atlanta, 71% of people with the infection, which can cause painful and irritating skin lesions, are Black men who have sex with men and about two-thirds of those men have HIV, according to the Georgia Health Department.
In North Carolina, one of the few states reporting on the monkeypox spread, 70% of those infected are Black men, with nearly all of the cases affecting men who have sex with men. However, only 24% of the vaccines in the state have gone to Black North Carolinians.
Those numbers worry Black gay men, as well as public health experts like Dr. Jayne Morgan, director of Piedmont HealthCare in Atlanta who hosts educational podcasts on monkeypox. She said the messaging has to be clear about who is at risk of contracting monkeypox and what preventive measures are available, all while being careful not to stigmatize specific groups of people.
Dr. Jayne Morgan.Courtesy Dr. Jayne Morgan
“We have the tools and enough information to stem this tide,” Dr. Morgan told NBC News. “Public health, like Covid, is about behavior. Monkeypox is being driven by behavior. And so behavior can also drive it in the opposite direction also.”
The 35-year-old D.C. resident, who no longer has monkeypox symptoms, called it “dangerous.”
David J. Johns, the executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization committed to empowering the Black LGBTQ community and people living with HIV/AIDS, said the attention monkeypox is receiving now is happening only because non-Black people are also impacted.
“The sad reality is that monkeypox isn’t new,” Johns said, adding that it has existed in Africa since the 1970s. “But because privileged white men from Western societies — in particular America — are now being impacted by something that otherwise only impacted disposable Africans, there is a now shift in the way that people are thinking about and talking about and are responding to a virus that has been impacting people for a lot longer than we otherwise want to acknowledge.”
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Difficulty in being diagnosed and treated
The man from the D.C. area said that after a weekend of activities and attending “a crowded party” on July 10, he woke up the next day, “not feeling my best.” He was fatigued and had a fever of 102 and had trouble focusing. He left work early, believing he had contracted Covid.
He took a home test that came back negative. A test at urgent care confirmed he did not have the coronavirus. His fever eventually broke but he had a throbbing headache for days. And he said he experienced “rectal discomfort” and his blood pressure was elevated. Several days later, he began to feel better — but he noticed bumps on his face and arms.
After some resistance, the doctor finally swabbed the blisters on his face and wrists and sent him home with 800 milligrams of ibuprofen and a prescription for his anal pain. At his residence, he said he isolated himself in the attic. In the morning, he woke up to extreme throat soreness. He returned to urgent care, where the doctor again had to call the CDC to see how to treat him since he had been tested positive for monkeypox.
The physician was advised by the CDC to administer an antibiotic shot, which alleviated some of the throat pain. Meanwhile, the sores spread to other parts of his body — arms, legs, in particular.
But “it was kind of shocking,” he said, that his issues were not immediately addressed. He added he was given eight different numbers to call for assistance. “They dragged their feet the entire time.”
The man said he gave a list of the friends he had been in close contact with to the health department for contact tracing. He had already advised them to seek medical attention by the time the health department contacted them two weeks later. “And when they finally got someone, they were basically forced to say they had sex in order to get the vaccine,” he added, noting that his friends felt pressured to say they had sexual contact with him — even when some didn’t — in order to get immediate attention from health care professionals.
“When we talk about high-risk communities, we’re really talking about people who are sort of disaffected from the health care system,” Morgan said. “Stigma and discrimination for people in the LBGTQ community are already very high. And then if you add the Black race on top of that, and you have in monkeypox the same as we did with Covid — the black population is always the most vulnerable because we have the least resources, the least outreach and the most discrimination and stigma.”
In Los Angeles earlier in July, another Black man who also asked to remain anonymous because of the stigma associated with having the virus, outlined nearly identical concerns as the man in metro D.C. He, too, said he believed he didn’t contract the disease through sex. When symptoms occurred, he said he had difficulty finding a place that tested for monkeypox. And when he did locate a health center in downtown Los Angeles, the staff was “suited and booted as if I had a contagion,” he said, referring to the protective gear they wore.
Meanwhile, the disparity in those who have contracted monkeypox and those who have access to vaccines is glaring. While Black people account for about a third of monkeypox cases in the U.S., about 10% of vaccines have been administered to the group, according to the CDC.
The vaccine distribution disparities come as Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, acknowledgedthat the agency must make drastic changes to respond better and faster to public health emergencies, following missteps during the Covid pandemic.
“We have learned less than nothing from Covid,” Stella Safo, a primary care physician at Mount Sinai who specializes in HIV treatment and is the founder of Just Equity for Health, told STAT News. “We’ve gone backwards.”
Dr. Tyeese Gaines.Courtesy Dr. Tyeese Gaines
Dr. Tyeese Gaines, a physician who practices emergency medicine in Illinois and New Jersey, said the more than two years of being on alert from the coronavirus pandemic has created “panic fatigue,” exasperating people to the point where they are less apt to protect themselves against monkeypox.
“We needed to tell people the reality of Covid-19,” Gaines said. “But eventually people just don’t want to hear it anymore. Some people say: ‘Oh, wow, there’s another scary virus. Let me be safer.’ But there’s still a subset of people whose response to fear is not to become more conservative or to follow whatever the rules are, but actually to act like it doesn’t exist and do the opposite.”
