The far-right Christian group One Million Moms has launched a new campaign and the target is a little surprising, even for them. This time they aren’t upset with jewelry commercials or Sesame Street, the source of their ire is… other Christians.
Christianity is a “serious threat,” they warn, when practiced as described in the Bible and modeled by the religion’s namesake.
“Parents need to be warned and informed about a continuous threat, and now we have a powerful resource available to help parents with this serious problem,” they warned followers in an email blast.
The group is an astroturf project of the anti-LGBTQ hate group American Family Association. Despite the name, the group has a single employee, Monica Cole, that is employed by the larger organization.
Cole goes on to warn followers about the dangers of “gay Christianity.”
“Let’s see if you’ve heard any of these statements before,” Cole says in the blast. “‘God made people gay, and therefore being gay should be celebrated and affirmed.’ ‘Jesus never mentioned homosexuality even once.’”
“‘The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about inhospitality and greed, not homosexuality.’ ‘If the Bible were written today, it would be gay affirming.’ ‘The Bible doesn’t say anything about sexual orientation. Christians hate gay people and need to change their theology to be more loving.’”
“If you’ve heard one or more of these statements before – whether on social media, in conversation with a family member, or even promoted by a supposedly Christian pastor – you have just encountered one of the many influences of ‘gay Christianity’,” she warns.
And while it might seem odd for the group to launch the email with all the reasons why their hardline exclusionary brand of Christianity is wrong, the email is actually an advertisement for a book written by one of their employees. It comes with a convenient two-and-a-half-minute video commercial that spends two-thirds of the time reinforcing pro-LGBTQ theology by literally allowing queer people to repeat their positions.
While the group’s nonstop bleating about innocuous things like Oreo cookies, Taco Bell, or children’s magazines has frequently made them a caricature of the hand-wringing judgemental Christian Taliban, this time they accidentally ended up condemning themselves and their anti-LGBTQ hysterics.
A federal court has blocked efforts by the Biden administration to ensure trans people are never discriminated against by religious doctors when seeking heathcare.
But the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously ruled Friday (26 August) that the Department of Health and Human Resources (HHS) mandate is “in violation of its sincerely held religious beliefs” by not letting medical providers withhold care “on the basis of sex”
The three-judge panel upheld a lower court’s ruling that Franciscan Alliance, a Catholic healthcare network covering Indiana and Illinois, was right to seek out a permanent injunction against the policy.
Franciscan Alliance said the network’s nearly 20,000 doctors and medical providers should not have to provide gender-affirming healthcare or abortion treatments.
The group’s lawyers from the religious liberty group Becket said stopping health professionals from discriminating and denying care to trans people was an unlawful overreach, the Washington Times reported.
To do so, they claimed, would also go against the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA).
And the judges, two of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, agreed.
“We have recognised that the loss of freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, RLUIPA, and RFRA all constitute per se irreparable harm,” wrote Trump appointee judge Don Willett in the ruling.
Fellow Trump-appointee judge Kurt Englehardt and George Bush appointee judge Jennifer Walker Elrod joined him in the ruling.
The appeal ended a years-long battle between religious freedom and healthcare access.
Franciscan Alliance lodged a lawsuit against the policy in December 2016 with the district court for the Northern District of Texas, setting the stage for a legal back-and-forth between the network, federal officials and LGBTQ+ activists.
Though Trump scrapped the rule, president Joe Biden brought it back. The district court sided with Franciscan Alliance in 2019, prompting the federal government and the ACLU to appeal the court’s decision.
“This ruling is a major victory for conscience rights and compassionate medical care in America,” said Joseph Davis, counsel at Becket, in a statement.
“Doctors cannot do their jobs and comply with the Hippocratic Oath if the government requires them to perform harmful, irreversible procedures against their conscience and medical expertise.”
The Hippocratic Oath, an ancient oath of ethics, requires physicians, among other things, to “do no harm” and do everything they can to care for their patients.
Study after study has shown that trans people who receive gender-affirming healthcare are significantly less likely than those who have not to experience depression and anxiety, and consider suicide/
Six out, Democratic LGBTQ candidates running for the Florida state legislature all won their primaries this Tuesday. All of them oppose the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year. The candidates worry that, if left unopposed, Republicans will spread similar laws to harm queer youth and families nationwide with their newfound brand of queerphobia.
Adam Gentle and state Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Michele Rayner are all running for the State House. Eunic Ortiz and Janelle Perez are running for the State Senate. State Sen. Shevrin Jones won his re-election campaign this week. Because he has no Republican competitor, he will retain his Senate seat.
Jones became the first openly LGBTQ Black person elected to the Florida legislature when he was elected in 2020.
On the campaign trail, he shared how publicly coming out as gay at age 30 caused members to leave the south Florida church where his father preaches. Friends stopped talking to Jones, families began making jokes about him behind his back, and even his own father expressed disappointment in his sexuality, he said.
So when he spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law — which forbids discussing LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third-grade classes — Jones noted that it takes courage for young people to be themselves. He also said that LGBTQ issues aren’t being taught in the aforementioned grades, and that state Republicans only passed the law to rally their voting base.
“It’s discriminatory on the surface,” Jones said in an interview. “The problem is coming when young people are being treated in a manner that they now have to question who they are, knowing that they already come from households who do not support them… I think that’s the dangerous part, because LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to commit suicide.”
“I think that this is the time for the LGBTQ+ community to see we’re under attack,” he added. “I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s Black people, I don’t care if it’s Indigenous people, I don’t care if it’s the LGBTQ+ community, because we live amongst each other and I feel that when you come for one, you come for all.”
When Michele Rayner first won her election to the state House in 2020, she became the first openly Black queer woman ever elected in Florida at any level.
“I didn’t run for office just to make history,” she said in a video. “I ran because I wanted to make a difference for people.”
“The way that I show up — I’m a Black, gay woman so I think that inspires a lot of folks,” she added in a May 2022 interview.
While she acknowledges that supporters of “Don’t Say Gay” claim it protects children from age-inappropriate discussions of sex, she said, “I don’t want my child not to be able to say that my moms and I went to Disney World or my moms and I went to the beach.”
Meanwhile, Eunic Ortiz, who is running for a state Senate seat, said the ramifications of “Don’t Say Gay” are detrimental to LGBTQ youth.
“We need to be creating solutions for the issues that everyday folks are actually facing,” she said. “Not playing political theater to try to appease a few wealthy donors in the Republican movement that, frankly, are homophobic and hate the LGBTQ community.”
Her district houses St. Petersburg, a city that has received a perfect score for eight years on Human Rights Campaign’s annual Municipal Equality Index for LGBTQ inclusive.
“We have people in the LGBTQ community living in every single county in the state. They are our neighbors and they are our community leaders…. LGBTQ people are the workers that are making our counties and communities run,” she said. “[Floridians] are tired of seeing them take on this cultural war, instead of addressing real issues,” like the environment or rising rents.
Adam Gentle spoke against the law at a political event in early March. At the event, he began his two-minute speech by announcing, “I’m gay.” He then said that schools are often the only safe spaces where LGBTQ youths feel they can safely discuss their queer identities with others.
“Their ability to talk with trusted teachers and administrators is being ripped away from them,” he said.
Rep. Carlos Smith has used his political office to oppose the law. When he debated against the bill in February, he wore a face mask with the word “gay” printed on it in large letters.
In his remarks, he said the bill was “deeply personal” to him as a queer Latino, especially since the law would prevent teachers from discussing important events, like the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting which mostly harmed other queer Latinos.
“A majority of Floridians oppose this proposal that seeks to censor conversations about LGBTQ people in our schools,” he said.
“This bill goes way beyond the text on the page,” he noted. “It sends a terrible message to our youth, that there is something so wrong, so inappropriate, so dangerous about this topic that we have to censor it from classroom discussion…. To all LGBTQ youth — we see you, you’re loved and your lives are worth fighting for!”
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) press secretary Christina Pushaw defended the law by calling its opponents pedophilic “groomers,” Smith responded, “Bigoted attacks like this against LGBTQ people are the worst of the worst…. Literally, it’s the oldest trick in the book against LGBTQ people.”
Smith said that DeSantis only signed the law to advance his political ambitions. He worries about DeSantis’ likelihood of running for president in 2024. “My concern is that he is much smarter and much more calculating than Donald Trump ever was,” he said.
Janelle Perez agrees with Smith. She’s a mother of two, married to a woman, and, if elected, she would be the first LGBTQ parent and the first queer Latina or queer woman ever elected to the Senate.
She worries that the law will subject her own daughter to bullying and prevent her from discussing her own family in school. But even worse, she worries what will happen to when DeSantis runs for president.
“When people in Hollywood, and New York, and in California are looking at the things that Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida, what they need to understand is that Florida is Ron DeSantis’s guinea pig,” she said.
“He is going to run for president in 2024,” she continued. “So if you don’t like what’s happening in Florida, and you don’t want this rhetoric to become the national conversation in 2024, then you need to help us stop it, now. Because it’s going to come after you, and the rest of the country.”
Although DeSantis and other supporters of the law say that it protects parents’ rights to control what their kids are exposed to in schools, Perez said it basically erases queer parents from schools and tells their children to feel ashamed of their families.
“LGBTQ families aren’t going anywhere,” Perez told The Washington Post. “We want to just receive the same rights as every other parent.”
“Republicans in Tallahassee have failed our state and I cannot sit idly by as they make us less safe, restrict our rights and hurt our children,” she added.
Administrators at a Nebraska school shuttered the school’s award-winning student newspaper just days after its last edition that included articles and editorials on LGBTQ issues, leading press freedom advocates to call the move an act of censorship.
The staff of Northwest Public Schools’ 54-year-old Saga newspaper was informed on May 19 of the paper’s elimination, the Grand Island Independent reported. Three days earlier, the newspaper had printed its June edition, which included an article titled, “Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+” on the origins of Pride Month and the history of homophobia. It also included an editorial opposing a Florida law that bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity and dubbed by critics as “Don’t Say Gay.”
Officials overseeing the district, which is based in Grand Island, have not said when or why the decision was made to eliminate the student paper. But an email from a school employee to the Independent cancelling the student paper’s printing services on May 22 said it was “because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.”
The paper’s demise also came a month after its staff was reprimanded for publishing students’ preferred pronouns and names. District officials told students they could only use names assigned at birth going forward.
Emma Smith, Saga’s assistant editor in 2022, said the student paper was informed that the ban on preferred names was made by the school board. That decision directly affected Saga staff writer Marcus Pennell, a transgender student, who saw his byline changed against his wishes to his birth name of “Meghan” Pennell in the June issue.
Northwest High School’s newspaper, “Viking Saga,” was shut down after 54 years of publication.McKenna Lamoree / The Independent via AP
“It was the first time that the school had officially been, like, ‘We don’t really want you here,’” Pennell said. “You know, that was a big deal for me.”
Northwest Principal P.J. Smith referred the Independent’s questions to district superintendent Jeff Edwards, who declined to answer the questions of when and why the student paper was eliminated, saying only that it was “an administrative decision.”
Some school board members have made no secret of their objection to the Saga’s LGBTQ content, including board president Dan Leiser, who said “most people were upset” with it.
Board vice president Zach Mader directly cited the pro-LGBTQ editorials, adding that if district taxpayer had read the last issue of the Saga, “they would have been like, ‘Holy cow. What is going on at our school?’”
“It sounds like a ham-fisted attempt to censor students and discriminate based on disagreement with perspectives and articles that were featured in the student newspaper,” said Sara Rips, an attorney for the Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nebraska Press Association attorney Max Kautsch, who specializes in media law in Nebraska and Kansas, noted that press freedom is protected in the U.S. Constitution.
“The decision by the administration to eliminate the student newspaper violates students’ right to free speech, unless the school can show a legitimate educational reason for removing the option to participate in a class … that publishes award-winning material,” Kautsch said. “It is hard to imagine what that legitimate reason could be.”
A transgender advocate and Harvard graduate student died in police custody this month while on his honeymoon in the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.
Rodrigo Ventosilla, a 32-year-old transmasculine person from Peru, and his husband, Sebastián Marallano, were detained Aug. 7 by customs police at the Bali airport for illegal possession of marijuana, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Two days after the arrest, Ventosilla was taken to the hospital, where he died on Aug. 11 due to “failure of bodily functions,” according to police spokesperson Stefanus Satake Bayu Setianto, who added that Ventosilla became sick after taking medication that had not been confiscated by authorities.
The families of Ventosilla and Marallano, who has since returned to Peru, have accused authorities in Bali of “police violence … racial discrimination and transphobia,” according to their statement on Instagram. They are also alleging that Ventosilla was not provided access to lawyers, his family or his partner while in police custody.
“It should be noted that at all times the Indonesian police blocked access to both the lawyers hired by the family, and Harvard students who attended their aid. The family was NEVER able to communicate or know Rodrigo’s health/diagnosis,” the family wrote in a statement.
However, in a statement Wednesday, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they have not found evidence of “racial discrimination and transphobia.” Ventosilla’s family is calling for a more thorough investigation.
Kyle Knight, a senior researcher on health and LGBTQ rights at Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization, said it’s disturbing that authorities prevented “lawyers and activists and his partner from trying to get access to him. That’s indicative of something very suspicious.”
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Knight added: “It’s pretty clear from the reports that we read, things went as badly as they could have.”
Ventosilla’s death follows a growing effort to roll back LGBTQ rights in Indonesia, Knight added.
“Since 2016, there has been a government-driven effort to slander, stigmatize and render insecure LGBT people across the country,” he said, citing Human Rights Watch reports from 2018 and 2016.
Bali is a known safe haven for queer and trans Indonesians, he said. However, he added, that changed last year when LGBTQ travelers began promoting the island as a queer-friendly tourist destination and provided advice on how to avoid Covid-19 restrictions.
It comes at no surprise, he said, that authorities escalated the arrest in this location.
“Rodrigo’s case falls into a couple of different overlapping patterns, including Indonesia’s drug laws are very, very strict and very intense,” he said, adding that “the police love nabbing foreigners, particularly in tourist hotspots like Bali.”
Prior to his death, Ventosilla was pursuing a master’s degree in public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In a statement Wednesday, the school said Ventosilla’s family had raised “very serious questions that deserve clear and accurate answers.” The trans advocacy organization that Ventosilla founded, Diversidades Trans Masculinas, is also calling for justice.
“We call on all human rights organizations, feminists, transfeminists, unions, grassroots organizations and citizens in general to fight for the justice that Rodrigo deserves,” the organization wrote in a statement on Facebook. “His death should not go unpunished. When a trans person dies, they never die!”
Two Russian men were arrested after being reported by a neighbour for allegedly having gay sex.
The neighbour made a police report claiming that her young children had seen the two men, Timur, 21, and Daniil, 22, through a window pouring water over each other and “doing something resembling sex”, as reported by Baza.
The two men were detained and prosecuted under the Violent Acts of Sexual Character act. If found guilty they could face anything from 12 to 20 years in prison, as a child under 14 witnessed the alleged sexual act.
However, the mother has since tried to retract her statement.
Timur and Daniil told police that the children misunderstood what they had seen. They explained that they had undressed because they were fixing a burst pipe in the bedroom.
The two men affirmed their heterosexuality and one mentioned they had a girlfriend. According to Baza, when the mother confronted the men they were “very adequate and nice” and now she wants to “make amends”.
She now wants to retract her statement to the police as she “did not expect things to spiral out of control in this way”.
But it may be too late as Timur and Daniil have been sent to a pre-trial detention facility for two months.
Russia is notorious for its hardline, anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
In 2013 Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into effect his notorious ‘gay propaganda’ law banning any “promotion” of “non-traditional sexual relationships” among minors.
The hateful measure has been used to clamp down on LGBTQ+ advocates, prevent kids from accessing inclusive literature and stop minors from watching LGBTQ-themed content on streaming platforms. In July, plans were announced to extend the law to adults.
LGBTQ+ Russians face violence and persecution, with reports of Russia sending gay men who have escaped “gay purges” in Chechnya back to Chechen police.
In communities across the United States, LGBTQ+ people and their families are facing a growing number of significant barriers to equal rights and protections. In 2022 alone, at least 30 states have introduced anti-LGBTQ+ bills, with a majority targeting transgender and non-binary youth, on top of continued anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and bias in various states across the country. Despite progress toward equity and inclusion, the LGBTQ+ community is increasingly struggling for equality and basic human rights.
I’m truly concerned for members of my community, given the impact these actions are having on our mental health and wellbeing. Several of my LGBTQ+ colleagues and colleagues with LGBTQ+ family members have expressed fear for themselves and their children. Some are scared their transgender child will be taken from them and placed in foster care. Others feel they might be personally prosecuted for seeking gender affirming care for their child. Many are worried they’ll need to move to a different state just so they can continue accessing essential forms of health care.
I feel lucky to work for a company that opposes discriminatory actions that could harm our employees, customers, and the communities where we do business, and has equally advanced policies, practices, and benefits to support our LGBTQ+ workforce. It comforts me to know my employer supports a society that serves all Americans, including the LGBTQ+ community. But not everyone has the same assurance when they go to work.
Now more than ever, LGBTQ+ equity and inclusion must be a business imperative. Business leaders must use their voice to condemn the hate, bias, transphobia and homophobia that sadly exist in our communities. We also need businesses to take meaningful and measurable action in promoting and advancing inclusion for the LGBTQ+ community year-round, not just during Pride month. While it starts with inclusive benefits, policies and networks of support, this commitment requires businesses to lead with the values of acceptance and belonging in every decision they make. It’s only then that your LGBTQ+ employees, customers and communities will truly feel included and equal.
Since the first LGBTQ+ Business Resource Group at JPMorgan Chase was created in the 1990s, many, like me, have worked hard to make our company a place where LGBTQ+ employees feel they can be their authentic selves when they come to work. Last year, we strengthened this commitment by creating the Office of LGBT+ Affairs, a full-time, dedicated team focused on advancing equity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees, customers, clients, and communities. It’s my sincere hope that we don’t see our efforts slowed down by attempts to threaten the rights of people for who they are, whom they love or how they identify.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry officially confirmed on August 3, 2022, that same-sex attraction and being transgender are not mental health conditions, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision brings Vietnam’s health policy in line with global health and human rights standards.
Vietnam’s new directive states that “the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization (WHO) have confirmed that homosexuality is entirely not an illness, therefore homosexuality cannot be ‘cured’ nor need[s] to be ‘cured’ and cannot be converted in any way.”
“The Vietnamese Health Ministry’s recognition that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses will bring relief to LGBT people and their families across Vietnam,” said Kyle Knight, senior health and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “LGBT people in Vietnam deserve access to health information and services without discrimination, and the Health Ministry’s new directive is a major step in the right direction.”
Vietnam has made some progress on LGBT rights in recent years, Human Rights Watch said. In 2013, the government removed same-sex unions from the list of forbidden relationships, but the update did not allow for legal recognition of same-sex relationships. In 2015, the National Assembly updated the civil code to make it no longer illegal for transgender people to change their first name and legal gender, but the revisions did not create a legal gender recognition procedure.
In 2016, Vietnam, while a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, voted in favor of a resolution on the need for protection against violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The delegation made a statement of their support before the vote, saying “the reason for Vietnam’s yes vote lay in changes both in domestic as well as international policy with respect to LGBT rights.”
However, as Human Rights Watch documented in a 2020 report, factual misunderstandings and negative stereotypes help fuel human rights abuses against LGBT people in Vietnam. The belief that same-sex attraction is a diagnosable, mental health condition is pervasive in Vietnam. This false belief is rooted in the failure of the government and medical professional associations to effectively communicate that same-sex attraction is a natural variation of human experience.
Researchers have written that Vietnam never officially adopted the initial position of the WHO, which introduced a diagnosis for homosexuality in 1969. Since the homosexuality diagnosis appears to have never officially been on the books in Vietnam, therefore the government never officially removed the diagnosis, as many countries around the world did when the WHO declassified it in 1990. The government’s treatment of homosexuality as deviant behavior, combined with prominent medical figures promoting this view, fueled the widespread belief that same-sex attraction was pathological.
Pervasive myths about homosexuality have an impact on children and youth. “There’s a lot of pressure on kids to be straight,” a school counselor in Hanoi told Human Rights Watch. “It’s constantly referenced that being attracted to someone of the same sex is something that can and should be changed and fixed.”
The anthropologist Natalie Newton wrote in a 2015 article that, “Vietnamese newspaper advice columns have also featured the opinions of medical doctors and psychologists who have written about homosexuality as a disease of the body, a genetic disorder, hormonal imbalance, or mental illness.”
International health bodies and a growing number of national health authorities and health professional associations around the world have issued policies to affirm that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses, as well as LGBT nondiscrimination policies. These include Thailand’s Public Health Ministry, which stated in 2002 that “persons loving the same sex are not considered mentally abnormal or in any way ill.” National health professional associations in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and India have affirmed that position and supported nondiscriminatory health rights for LGBT people.
The Health Ministry issued the following instructions for all medical centers across Vietnam:
Enhance information propagation and dissemination so that the medical doctors, staff, and patients at medical examination and treatment centers have a correct understanding about homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender people.
While administering medical examination or treatment for LGBT patients, health workers need to ensure gender equality and respect to avoid discrimination and prejudices against these groups.
Don’t consider homosexuality, bisexuality, and being transgender an illness.
Don’t interfere nor force treatment upon these groups of patients, if any, it must be in the form of psychological assistance and performed only by those who understand sexual identity.
Enhance internal review and inspection efforts for medical examination and treatment centers and practitioners to ensure compliance with the professional codes in medical services according to the law.
The directive follows a civil society-run petition that garnered more than 76,000 signatures and a letterfrom the WHO’s Vietnam office confirming that the “WHO firmly holds the view that any effort to convert the sexual orientation of a non-heterosexual person lacks medical justification and is morally unacceptable.”
“Vietnam now joins the growing number of governments around the world affirming that same-sex attraction and gender identity are both natural variations of human experience,” Knight said. “Vietnam’s Health Ministry has boosted fundamental rights with this directive, and LGBT people now have increasingly firm grounding for expressing themselves without fear of negative reactions.”
The spread of monkeypox is causing men who have sex with men (MSM) to reduce their numbers of sexual partners, according to survey results released this week by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s survey found that 48 percent of respondents had reduced their number of sexual partners, 50 had reduced their number of one-night stands, and 49 percent reduced the amount of sex they had with men that they’d met through hookup apps, The Hill reported.
The publication noted that local public health officials have been hesitant to suggest that people practice sexual abstinence as a key approach to avoiding possible exposure, noting that the strategy may be ineffective even though the federal government championed it during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s.
There are just over 15,000 cases of monkeypox in the U.S. as of Monday, according to the CDC. However, infectious disease experts think this number is likely an undercount. President Joe Biden declared a national state of emergency for monkeypox in early August. The World Health Organization (WHO) also declared monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in late July.
However, one report suggested that the high case numbers among MSM may have to do with the fact that queer men seek medical treatment more often than heterosexual individuals.
The recent increase in cases nationwide has revealed the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have enough vaccine doses available to meet public demand. To help stretch the current reserve, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the vaccine to be administered intradermally — that is, into the skin’s superficial layers — rather than through its usual subcutaneous method which injects the vaccine into the fat and connective tissues between the skin and muscular layers.
The intradermal method could stretch the nation’s vaccine supply fivefold and has been found to be effective when vaccinating against rabies and polio.
However, some LGBTQ individuals have criticized the government for what they say is an inadequate response to the outbreak.
“I’ve been really disappointed in our leaders, especially those who were in office during the onslaught of the AIDS crisis, like President [Joe] Biden and Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi,” nonbinary Queer Eye reality TV star Jonathan Van Ness told USA Today.
“Once again, we’re seeing too little action taken until the situation has ballooned out of control,” they added. “If nothing changes, we’ll continue to experience failures like this response, which has been plagued with too few tests, lack of access to treatments, inadequate vaccine supply, and ambiguous guidance.”
“In many ways, I believe it’s been fueled by homophobia and transphobia,” Ness said. “When an outbreak affects mainly men who have sex with men, some portion of our elected legislators will have no incentive to act… which is obviously messed up because people’s lives are at stake, and there are queer people in all 50 states.”
Marsha P Johnson, born 24 August, 1945, holds a special place within the LGBTQ+ community for her larger-than-life spirit and trans rights activism. She was instrumental in the 1969 Stonewall riots which kickstarted the modern fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the US.
Along with Sylvia Rivera, who was also a key part of Stonewall, she established their landmark STAR organisation in 1970 to help homeless trans youth and other marginalised groups in New York City. She also was one of the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front.
Elle Moxley is founder and executive director of the Marsha P Johnson Institute. She say that Johnson has been “claimed by many people” over the years, but ultimately she was person who “belonged to herself… no matter how many people put a saint narrative or a heroic figure around her”.
“Marsha lived homeless for a majority of her life, faced the rejection of her community and was someone who was bigger-than-life,” Moxley told PinkNews.
Despite this, Johnson worked hard to create change during her short life (she was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992, aged 46).
“I think having that kind of impact that she had while she was alive is why we are still saying her name,” Moxley reflected.
“Marsha has been a roadmap to how one can be an activist but also how one can still belong to themselves.
“And there’s a community of Black trans people globally who need to be able to say: ‘Someone else took the journey that I’m currently on, and I have a roadmap’.
The Marsha P Johnson Institute was founded in 2019 to defend and protect Black trans people, in response to the murders of Black trans women. It is abolitionist, seeking “a world free of war, police brutality, and political corruption”. It works to eradicate systemic, community and physical violence, while also uplifting, supporting and empowering the community.
Moxley describes how Marsha P Johnson spent just as much time “in and out of jail and courtrooms as she did at protests”.
She says this part of Johnson’s life is not as widely celebrated, mirroring the experience of Black trans women today.
“We have a lot of work to reconcile around race, class and gender globally,” Moxley says. “The more we can understand the impacts of colonisation globally, and work to provide reparations to all those impacted by bondage and enslavement, we’ll have a different reality.”
Moxley adds that Johnson’s legacy means the the institute is not just fighting “on behalf” of the community, but for themselves, as it is led by Black trans people.
In many ways, Moxley says they are fighting for their ability to live a “fulfilled life”, much as Johnson did.
Elle Moxley, founder and executive director of the Marsha P Johnson Institute, says celebrating Johnson’s birthday honours all those continuing her legacy today. (Provided)
She says it’s always an honour to mark Johnson’s birthday because she gave herself “permission to be visible, outspoken and honest”.
“We continue to celebrate Black joy because so much of what exists today around the LGBTQ+ community would not be possible had Black joy not been part of the resistance,” Moxley says.
“We’re honoured to be able to celebrate and say ‘happy birthday’ to Marsha, because it gives us the ability to say happy birthday to so many more people, and that’s the bigger picture about Marsha’s legacy and the legacy of Black trans people.
“They were alive. We are alive.”
Moxley adds it is important to embody Marsha’s spirit and legacy year long as society “only expects that Black trans people are supposed to die”.
Sadly, violent deaths within the community are all too frequent and such occurrences have only increased in recent years as an ‘epidemic of violence’ sweeps the nation.
At least 25 trans, non-binary or gender non-conforming people have died by violent means in 2022, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The majority of these were Black trans women.
“We do not know how to honour Black trans people while we’re alive,” Moxley says. “That’s something we wrestle with every single day at the institute.
“What I’m sure many Black trans advocates across the world wrestle with is: I do this on behalf of my desire to be alive and subsequently by default of that, all these people get to benefit from my advocacy – but they do not know how to honour me.
“They do not know how to respect me and how to have grace with me when I’ve perhaps had a bad day or made a bad decision.”
