Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s anti-LGBT+ secretary of state, was denied an audience with the Pope after the Vatican condemned his use of “religious freedom” for political gain.
Last year, Mike Pompeo created the Commission on Unalienable Rights to undercut the US government’s existing human rights laws, with the commission supposedly based on “natural law”.
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Pompeo claimed the body is necessary because different rights have “come into tension with one another”, but it soon became clear that “religious freedom” would be at the top of the hierarchy.
But despite his apparent passion for religion, when Pompeo paid a visit to the Vatican this week, he was unceremoniously rejected for a meeting with the Pope.ADVERTISING
According to Reuters, on Wednesday (30 September), the day before he was set to meet with Vatican officials, Pompeo spoke at the US embassy to the Holy See and denounced China’s record on religious freedom.
In an article and series of tweets in September, Pompeo criticised the Catholic Church for working with Beijing to appoint Chinese bishops, claiming Vatican officials were putting their “moral authority at risk”.
Following his speech, the Vatican said Pompeo had requested an audience with Pope Francis, and received an emphatic “no”.
Secretary of state cardinal Pietro Parolin told Reuters: “Yes, he asked. But the Pope had already said clearly that political figures are not received in election periods. That is the reason.”
Parolin said Pompeo’s public criticism of the Vatican had come as a “surprise” before his visit.
Parolin was asked if the secretary of state’s focus on religious freedom, which is simultaneously used to suppress LGBT+ rights, was being used for political gain in the US.
He said: “Some have interpreted it this way. That the comments were above all for domestic political use.
“I don’t have proof of this but certainly, this is one way of looking at it.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a lesbian, announced Thursday she has filed felony charges against conservative hoaxers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman — who have a history of deceit and unscrupulous dealings — for misleading robocalls discouraging Michigan residents from voting by mail.
Nessel said in a statement the robocalls, which were made in Black-majority areas around Detroit, go above and beyond those “flooding our cell phones and landlines each day” in a battleground state for the 2020 election.
“Any effort to interfere with, intimidate or intentionally mislead Michigan voters will be met with swift and severe consequences,” Nessel said in a statement. “This effort specifically targeted minority voters in an attempt to deter them from voting in the November election.”
The message discouraging voting by mail, Nessel said, “poses grave consequences for our democracy and the principles upon which it was built.”
“Michigan voters are entitled to a full, free and fair election in November and my office will not hesitate to pursue those who jeopardize that,” Nessel.
Wohl, 22, and Burkman, 54, are charged with four felony counts: One count of intimidating voters under election law; one count of conspiracy to commit an election law violation; one count of using a computer to commit to intimidate voters against election law; and using a computer to commit a crime of conspiracy.
The two face five years in prison and/or a $1,000 fine for intimidating voters, plus a $10,000 fine for conspiracy to commit that crime, while they face an additional seven years in prison and/or $5,000 for using a computer to commit those crimes, according to the charging papers.
The charges were filed Thursday in the 36th District Court in Detroit, where a judge found probable cause to support them, according to the Associated Press. Arraignment is pending for Wohl and Burkman.
Nessel said her office intends to work with local law enforcement if needed to secure the appearance of each defendant in Michigan, although it’s too early to say if formal extradition will be needed or if the two will voluntarily present themselves.
The robocalls allegedly created and funded by Wohl and Burkman, Nessel said, were targeted at nearly 12,000 residents in the Detroit-area urban in late August. The attorney general had previously warned Michigan residents of the calls at that time.
An audio recording of the robocall provided by Nessel’s office features a caller who sounds like a Black female who claims to be associated with an organization founded by Burkman and Wohl.
The caller, in a false claim according to Nessel’s office, tells people mail-in voting will allow their personal information to become part of a database used by police to track down old warrants and by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts.
“Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man,” the caller warns. “Stay safe and be aware of vote by mail.”
The caller also says, in another false claim according to Nessel’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will use mail-in voting information to track people for mandatory vaccines.
But the calls aren’t limited to Michigan. In working with state attorneys general in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, the Michigan attorney general found other states reported similar robocalls — around 85,000 made nationally — to urban areas with significant minority populations, according to a news statement.
Claims made in the call against mail-in voting are consistent with dubious complaints from President Trump, who has said publicly the system is rife with fraud, despite assurances from experts the voting system is sound.
Trump, who has suggested he wouldn’t accept the results of an election decided by mail-in ballots, has said explicitly said he’d might have to take up the results in the federal court. Trump also said declined to say he’d allow for a peaceful transition of power as result of the election.
Both Wohl — who has been banned for life from Twitter, but still communicates via his Instagram account and has an OnlyFans page — and Burkman have a long history of nefarious dealings aimed at protecting Trump and getting him re-elected.
An attempt to smear FBI investigator Robert Mueller with false sexual harassment charges was exposed, as well as a similar attempt to defame Anthony Fauci. The two made dubious accusations in the Democratic primary about against sexual impropriety against female candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
Wohl and Burkman also reportedly sought to get a male student to make up charges Pete Buttigieg had sexually assaulted them, but the effort was exposed by the Daily Beast and went no where.
The Washington Blade has reached out to Wohl for comment on the charges. Burkman couldn’t be reached for a request to comment.
In August, Wohl said they suspected “leftist pranksters” were behind the robocalls because recipients were shown a caller ID that was Burkman’s mobile number, according to the AP. Burkman was quoted as saying the situation is “a joke” and threatening to sue for defamation.
A gay man and his straight, female friend can be in a “conjugal relationship” that is legally recognised by Canadian courts thanks to a groundbreaking new ruling.
The decision, which involves a gay refugee to Canada and a straight woman he met at university overseas, expands the legal definition of what a loving couple can look like.
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The two close friends, identified as AP and AM, had unprotected sex on a trip and the woman became pregnant. When the baby was born they decided to commit to each other and raise their child as a family unit, in spite of their sexualities.
However, when the gay man tried to sponsor the woman and their child to join him in Canada, their case was blocked by immigration officials who said their bond didn’t meet the definition of a conjugal relationship.
Earlier this month the couple were granted an appeal, with federal court justice Janet M Fuhrer calling the previous decision closed-minded and biased against the mixed-orientation couple.
The couple don’t have to fit a ‘traditional marital model’, court rules.
Ordering a review of the case, the federal court said that the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) “was not open to the possibility of a loving, mixed-orientation relationship centred on the concept of a joint family unit meeting the statutory criteria, regardless of the degree of sexual intimacy.”
The judge stated that the IAD had committed an “egregious error” in presuming they were unable to meet the sexual component of the partnership.
“Couples are not required to fit precisely the traditional marital model to demonstrate that the relationship is ‘conjugal,’” her ruling says.
“I find the fact of their different sexual orientations does not foreclose the possibility of AP and AM establishing that they are in a committed relationship of some permanence.”
The appeals division asked multiple questions about the pair’s sexual relationship, and the ruling suggests they appeared fixated on whether or not their families knew about their sex life, even though AM’s parents considered them to be a couple.
Fuhrer noted that the two did have difficulties with sex, but AP said their sexual interactions could “be solved with sex toys or applications,” feeling it was about whether “you (are) getting all the richness of feelings or … having sex with who you love.”
The couple’s lawyer, Athena Portokalidis, said it’s rare for the court to call a tribunal decision-maker “biased” outright.
“The fact that this case even exists speaks to the fact that there’s doubt [about these relationships]. It’s 2020 and society has become more accepting of different forms of relationships. It is time the law catches up,” she told CTV News.
“Our first and second commandment for ourselves as we ministered with people with AIDS,” Fr. Bernard Lynch, an openly gay, Irish Catholic priest, author, activist and founder of the first AIDS ministry in New York City in 1982, said in a FaceTime interview, “was thou shalt not bullshit anyone!”
Lynch, who holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and theology from Fordham University and New York Theological Seminary, recalled what it was like to live during the height of the AIDS epidemic. “It’s hard to even begin to imagine what it was like if you weren’t there,” he said. “Gay men were queer-bashed. The Pink Panthers protected them. People with AIDS would be in the hospital, and the staff wouldn’t feed them – they were so homophobic and afraid they would get AIDS.”
Lynch is one of 31 icons being celebrated this October during LGBT History Month. The other icons being honored (national, international, living and dead) are from many walks of life – from politicians to clergy to writers – and time periods – from ancient Greece to 19th century in the United States to present day Russia.
The icons range from poets (Sappho) to activists (Moscow Pride founder Nikolay Alexeyev and transgender rights activist Felicia Elizondo) to elected officials (Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay, first Black, female mayor). (For a complete list and bios of all 31 of this year’s icons as well as resources for educators, go to: lgbthistorymonth.com.)
Beginning on Oct. 1, a different icon will be featured on the site. A 30-second video featuring a different LGBT icon will appear on the site daily. Before Oct. 1 and after Oct. 31, a two-and-a-half-minute overview video of all 31 icons will be on display.
History helps us to learn from the past. Stories from history inspire and encourage us to act in the present. Yet, many of us who are queer have only recently started to become informed about the history of our community.
Since 2006, the Equality Forum has spearheaded LGBT History Month in October. “In 1994, Rodney Wilson, a Missouri high school teacher, believed a month should be dedicated to the celebration and teaching of gay and lesbian history, and gathered other teachers and community leaders,” according to Equality Forum’s website.
The idea was endorsed by GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Education Association and other organizations. In 2006, Equality Forum, according to its website, “assumed responsibility for content, promotion and resources for LGBT History Month.” The Equality Forum is a national and international LGBT civil rights organization with an educational focus.
“I grew up in Central Pennsylvania,” Malcolm Lazin, 76, Equality Forum executive director, said in a phone interview. “There was a very negative view of anyone who was gay when I was growing up. Everybody was deep in the closet.”
As was the case with others interviewed for this article, Lazin learned nothing about LGBT history when he was growing up. “In 2006, when we launched Gay and Lesbian History Month [later renamed LGBT History Month], our minority was the only group in the world not taught its history at home, in schools or religious institutions,” Lazin said.
Over the past 15 years, more than 400 “icons” (31 per year) have been celebrated during LGBT History Month. Icons honored previously during LGBT History Month range from James Baldwin to Tallulah Bankhead to Barbara Gittings, widely regarded as the mother of the LGBT civil rights movement, to Alexander the Great to Billie Holiday to economist John Maynard Keynes to Billie Jean King to trailblazing transgender, gay rights and AIDS activist Marsha P. Johnson. The Blade’s Lou Chibbaro Jr. was honored as an icon in 2019.
The LGBT History Month 2020 and 15th Anniversary launch was held on Sept. 30. At the event, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Jess O’Connell, one of this year’s 31 LGBT History Month icons, who was the first openly LGBT Democratic National Committee CEO, received awards. Lightfoot received the Equality Forum’s 25th Annual International Role Model Award. O’Connell received the 6th Annual Frank Kameny Award.
“It was conservative in all the ways you would expect when I was growing up in Arizona,” O’Connell said in a phone interview.
O’Connell didn’t learn about gay history as a high school student in the 1980s. But, from early on, she was exposed to all kinds of diversity. “I was raised by a Black father and white mother,” O’Connell said, “I had an aunt in California who was gay.”
One of the first times that she grieved was when a family friend died from AIDS. “I learned that love comes in many different forms,” O’Connell said.
LGBT rights along with issues of racial and economic inequality were part of her everyday life. Her first job was in AIDS activism. In 2000, she was the first female director of AIDS Walk Colorado, a Colorado AIDS Project program. “The COVID-19 pandemic is triggering to me,” said O’Connell, who served as a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. “With AIDS, I saw the devastation that occurs when the government pretends a disease doesn’t exist.”
There are some similarities between COVID-19 and AIDS, Lynch said. In the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, people didn’t know how it was spread and people died from it. As with COVID, there was fear of contagion and of death. “But, no other disease has the stigma of AIDS,” Lynch said. “The stigma is still there today. It’s rooted in the unease that so many have with sexuality.”
Young queer men were trying to face the fact that they would die from AIDS before they had any idea of the meaning of their lives, he said. One lesson in dealing with COVID-19 that can be learned from the history of the AIDS epidemic is “compassion,” Lynch said. “During the epidemic, friends and lovers fed, visited, and cared for people with AIDS. Even when no one else would. You didn’t think about it – it was the thing to do.”
Theater can help us to connect to our LGBTQ history. “The great thing about theater,” Moisés Kaufman, an award-winning theater director and playwright, emailed the Blade, “is that it allows audiences to have several types of intimacy with the LGBTQ characters in history.”
They can see the play, and be in the room with the living actors as they encounter our ancestry, said Kaufman, one of this year’s 31 LGBT History Month icons.
“Our history is made by other LGBTQ people who had to survive in perilous and forbidding times,” he added. “I’ve been fortunate to be able to learn from them.”
His groundbreaking play “The Laramie Project,” inspired by the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard has generated worldwide empathy and dialogue around LGBTQ hate crimes. Actors “get to experience our ancestors first hand,” Kaufman said, “They get to inhabit their humanity.”
History tells the stories of LGBTQ pioneers and helps us tell our own stories. Rabbi Deborah Waxman, one of this year’s 31 LGBT History Month icons, is herself a pioneer. Waxman is the first woman and the first lesbian to lead a Jewish seminary and national congregational union. She serves as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) and of Reconstructing Judaism, the leading organization of the Reconstructionist movement.
There were no role models for being lesbian or being a woman, let alone an openly lesbian rabbi when Waxman was growing up. “I just knew I didn’t want to kiss boys,” Waxman said in a telephone interview.
Waxman didn’t come out until she was into her 20s. When she said she wanted to be a rabbi, her mother was worried. Because, at that time, there were so few women rabbis. “When I came out to my Mom, she was really worried. She said, ‘It was hard enough being a woman,’” Waxman said. “How would I ever be a rabbi as not only a woman but a lesbian?”
Years later, when she was installed in her leadership positions, Waxman told her Mom, “It worked out OK.”
Her parents were immensely proud, she said.
Waxman is keenly aware that she’s often a pioneer. Frequently, she’s the only woman and only queer person during national conversations among leaders about religious matters. “I try to do it with humility,” she said. “Storytelling helps us make our way through the world, she added.
Officers found Mia Green, a Philadelphia resident, shot in the neck in the passenger’s seat of a car driven by Abdullah lbn El-Amin Jaamia when he was stopped Monday morning for running a stop sign, a police statement said.
During the traffic stop, Jaamia, 28, “exited the front driver’s door and approached Police stating that his passenger was shot.”
Officers then provided a police escort as Jaamia drove Green to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:30 a.m.
Upon further investigation, Jaamia was charged with murder and related offenses on Tuesday, police said.
Authorities did not provide details surrounding the investigation, possible motive and arrest, or specify the relationship between the suspect and victim. It was not immediately clear if Jaamia has a lawyer.
“We know that the loss of yet another trans community member of color is especially painful, no matter the circumstances,” the city said. “This latest act of violence against a member of our community is a somber reminder of the epidemic of violence against trans individuals.”
Green’s death shows “there is much work to be done in the pursuit of full equality, respect, and justice for us all,” the statement said.
Across the U.S., there has been “surge of violence against transgender people,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.
“In just seven months, the number of transgender people suspected of being murdered in 2020 has surpassed the total for all of 2019,” the center wrote in an August blog post, prior to Green’s death.
There have been at least 29 instances of fatal violence against trans and gender nonconforming people in the U.S. this year, with most of the victims being Black and Latinx transgender women, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Earlier this year, the remains of Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, a Black transgender woman, were discovered in the city’s Schuylkill River, and police declared her death a murder.
San Diego’s professional soccer team walked off the field during a match that it was winning on Wednesday after an opposing team member allegedly hurled a homophobic slur at an openly gay player.
The San Diego Loyal SC said a member of Phoenix Rising “used a homophobic slur directed at Collin Martin.”
Phoenix Rising said in a statement that it is “investigating the claim of a homophobic slur being used by one its players who has vehemently denied these allegations. Phoenix Rising stands with the USL in rejecting and punishing any homophobic behavior.”
The United Soccer League also said it is looking into the alleged bigotry.
“Foul and abusive language of any type has absolutely no place in our society and will not be tolerated in USL matches,” the league wrote in a statement late Wednesday. “An investigation is currently underway to determine the facts surrounding the incident and more information will be provided as soon as it is available.”
“We don’t even want to recognize being a part of a match where these types of actions take place,” the San Diego team’s chairman, Andrew Vassiliadis, said in a statement at the time. “The Loyal in our name is symbolic of the diversity in our community and as a club we will not stand for this.”
The team’s head coach, Landon Donovan, said that the past week since the Sept. 23 incident has been difficult for the team.
“I understand that most people watching from afar probably don’t really get it, but we’ve been living it,” he said. The club made a vow “that we would not stand for bigotry, homophobic slurs, things that don’t belong in our game.”
He acknowledged that forfeiting Wednesday’s match would likely mean the Loyal SC would not make the playoffs, but, he said, “There are more important things in life, and we have to stick up for what we believe in.”
In 2017, Jon Hoadley came home one day to find his partner, Kris, sprawled on the bathroom floor.
“He was barely able to move, he had been throwing up for over 18 hours,” Hoadley, 37, told NBC News.
At the hospital, the couple received devastating news.
“The doctor comes in and says, ‘I think you have multiple sclerosis,’” he recalled the doctor telling Kris.
Hoadley said the constant headache of dealing with insurance companies and hospital bills since his partner’s diagnosis is a major reason he made affordable health care a priority in his campaign to represent Michigan’s 6th Congressional District.
“I’m not running to make history, I’m running to make change,” said Hoadley, a Democratic who, in addition to health care, is focusing his campaign on climate change and clean energy.
Hoadley, now in his third term as a state representative, is challenging Rep. Fred Upton, a moderate Republican who has represented the southwest Michigan district since 1986. Traditionally a conservative stronghold, the district voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. In this presidential election year, though, moderate voters have the potential swing the district, which sits on the Indiana border.
Hoadley, who grew up in South Dakota, has been an LGBTQ advocate since he was a student at Michigan State University, and he is a member of the Michigan Democrat’s LGBT and Allies Caucus. If elected, Hoadley would be Michigan’s fist openly gay member of Congress. He is one in a “rainbow” wave” of at least 850 LGBTQ people who have run for office this election cycle, up from 700 who ran in 2018, according to the Victory Fund, a group that trains, supports and advocates for LGBTQ candidates.
“This is a moment where we can show that we’re ready for some big change,” Hoadley said. “And, you know, at the end of the day, though, the fact that I would be the first LGBT member of Congress from Michigan, I think it’s an interesting footnote to history, but the thing that keeps me up at night is what’s on the line if we don’t make this historic change this year.”
“We absolutely need to get health care right,” he added. “We are in the middle of a global health pandemic and a health crisis.”
When it comes to health care, Hoadley said, it is “absolutely an issue that we need to be talking about in the LGBT community.”
“We need to be tracking the statistics, we need to be making sure there are strong protections from discrimination, and we need to make sure that we are funding appropriately interventions that will specifically help some of the challenges that our community faces more so than other communities,” he explained.
“It’s a reminder that though we’ve made progress, we have so much work to do,” he added.
In recent months, Hoadley has had to fight back controversy regarding his past. In August, the New York Post reported on 15-year-old blog posts Hoadley made when he was in college. In the since-deleted posts, Hoadley, according to the paper, “referred to women as ‘breeders,'” “discussed learning about crystal meth,” “described his sexual partners as ‘victims’” and “included a reference to a ‘four year old wearing a thong.'”
Hoadley, who publicly apologized for the posts in a Facebook videoon Aug. 10, accused the NRCC of purposely “twisting” the posts, which he described as “slang” and “jokes,” to “use homophobia to paint a powerful story that has been debunked long ago.”
“They’re trying to reach deep into these discriminatory stereotypes about gay men,” Hoadley added.
Last month, the LGBTQ Victory Fund condemned the attacks against Hoadley as homophobic.
Hoadley said he hopes voters in Michigan and beyond “realize how important their vote is this November.”
“There are so many people who will use the forces of cynicism, who will lie about the difference between the candidates on the ballot, who will tell lies through social media to distract,” he said, “and it is important that we stay focused, because we desperately need change in our country.”
With the presidential election a little more than a month away, a new poll finds 75 percent of LGBTQ voters are supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
According to GLAAD’s State of LGBTQ Voters report, released Thursday, just 17 percent of the respondents said they were pulling the lever for President Donald Trump. Five percent said they plan to back another candidate and 2 percent remain undecided. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percent.
The poll, conducted by Pathfinder Opinion Research from Sept. 21-25, indicated 88 percent of the 800 LGBTQ respondents were registered voters.
Of them, 92 percent said they were “definitely or probably” voting in the presidential election — and over 80 percent said they felt more motivated to vote now than in any other recent election.
According to data from UCLA’s Williams Institute released last November, 1 in 5 LGBTQ Americans were not registered. But GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis says there’s been a surge in voter registration this year.
“LGBTQ voters are poised to make a deciding difference this election year,” Ellis said in a statement. “Our community understands how much is at stake in this election. We cannot sit this one out — our very lives are on the line.”
In a memo to GLAAD, Pathfinder confirmed that LGBTQ voters “represent a highly motivated, vital Democratic voting bloc.”
“Together we’ll pass the Equality Act, protect LGBTQ youth, expand access to health care, support LGBTQ workers, win full rights for transgender Americans, recommit to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2025 [and] advance LGBT rights around the globe, not just at home.”
The results from the new report are similar to exit polls from the 2016 presidential election, which found 78 percent of LGBTQ voters backed Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, compared to 14 percent who said they voted for Trump.
“Today’s poll demonstrates a monumental lead for Vice President Biden in the race for president,” Ellis said, “and is a direct response to the incessant and capricious attacks from the Trump Administration on LGBTQ Americans since day one.”
Despite a series of anti-LGBTQ measures — including banning transgender service members from the armed forces, supporting the right of adoption agencies to reject same-sex couples, and opposing workplace protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity — the Trump campaign has publicized the president as a friend to the community.
In August, Trump tweeted a campaign video made by Richard Grenell, the openly gay former acting director of national intelligence, calling the president “the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White House.”
Grenell is part of the Trump campaign’s Trump Pride advisory board, which promotes him as “the first president to begin his presidency in support of marriage equality.”
After declining to endorse Trump in 2016, the Log Cabin Republicans, a national LGBTQ conservative organization, endorsed the president for re-election and launched OUTSpoken, a multimedia campaign designed to give gay conservatives a platform during the race.
Earlier this month, Trump retweeted an article about a survey, conducted by the gay social network Hornet, that found 45 percent of gay male respondents planned to vote for him.
Hornet cautioned its survey was unscientific and shouldn’t be taken as predictive of voter response on Nov. 3. In GLAAD’s poll, likely voters who identified as gay men favored Biden over Trump 80 percent to 18. Gay women backed Biden 83 to 11, while non-cisgender voters supported the former vice president 72 to 18.
Still, Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends, the president’s son Eric Trump said the LGBT community “come[s] out in full force for my father every single day.”
He was responding to a New York Times opinion piece Monday about a lesbian who plans to vote for his father.
“I’m part of that community, and we love the man,” he added, leading some to speculate the president’s third eldest child had come out. He later clarified his remarks in an interview with the New York Post.
But 75 percent of the LGBTQ respondents in GLAAD’s poll said they held “somewhat or very” unfavorable opinions of Trump, while 57 percent said they had somewhat or very favorable opinions of Biden.
Ellis said the results “should put to rest the misinformation from the president’s team and other unreliable sources about his record and where critical LGBTQ voters stand in this election.”
Transgender children who receive gender-affirming medical care earlier in their lives are less likely to experience mental health issues like depression and anxiety, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.
“The study highlights that timely access to gender-affirming medical care is really important for youth with gender dysphoria,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Julia C. Sorbara, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Gender dysphoriainvolves a conflict between an individual’s sex assigned at birth and their gender identity.
The study found that transgender youths who sought that type of care — which, for minors, most commonly includes puberty blockers, hormones or both — at a later age and further into puberty were more distressed and more likely to suffer from mental health issues.
“A major part of puberty is developing physical changes, and for youth with gender dysphoria, they begin to develop physical changes that are not in keeping with the gender they identify,” Sorbara said. “This can be very distressing for these young people.”
The study included 300 transgender minors aged 10 to 17 who were being treated at the Hospital for Sick Children. The researchers tracked their ages at the time they first sought care at the Toronto clinic and their reported difficulties with mental health.
More than three-quarters of the youths who went to Sorbara’s clinic reported mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, according to the study.
“The most common were depressive and anxiety disorders, as well as having considered suicide at some point — unfortunately not so out of keeping with what’s been reported from other clinics,” Sorbara said.
Researchers found that those issues were more likely the older the children were when they arrived at the clinic. When compared to children ages 10 to 15, children older than 15 were more likely to have reported diagnoses of depression (46 percent vs. 30 percent) and to have self-harmed (40 percent vs. 28 percent), considered suicide (52 percent vs. 40 percent), attempted suicide (17 percent vs. 9 percent) and required psychoactive medications (36 percent vs. 23 percent).
Sorbara’s study follows another study, also published in Pediatrics, that found that transgender individuals who received puberty blockers during adolescence had lower risks of suicidal thoughts as adults than those who wanted the medication but could not get access to it.
Suicide is a significant problem facing transgender children and adults. The 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention organization, found that 40 percent of LGBTQ youths said they have “seriously considered” attempting suicide in the past year.
A 2019 report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found a connection between experiences of discrimination, including in medical care, and suicidality for transgender adults, with participants who had experienced discrimination being twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to those who had not experienced discrimination.
Another recent study found that almost 60 percent of transgender adults were close to someone who has attempted suicide and 25 percent knew someone who had committed suicide and that such exposure has negative impacts on their mental health.
Sorbara also noted that participants in her team’s study were only those “who want to and can access care.” She said many transgender children and adolescents may want or would benefit from such care but are unable to get access to it. She said she hopes her study lends “support to efforts to ensure this care is readily available for the youth that need it.”
The ability of transgender youths to receive gender-affirming medical care has become a political issue, with several states considering measures this legislative session to block access to that type of care. Republican legislators in at least eight states have introduced proposals that would punish doctors and other medical professionals who provide the kind of gender-affirming medical care described in Sorbara’s study. Bills in Missouri and New Hampshire called such care “child abuse.”
In February, over 200 medical professionals signed a letter opposing the bills on the grounds that they “violate the rights and freedoms of transgender young people.”
“Many credible studies of trans youth populations have demonstrated that gender-affirming care is linked to significantly reduced rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide attempts,” the letter says. “To put it plainly, gender-affirming care saves lives and allows trans young people to thrive.”
Timothy Ray Brown, who made history as “the Berlin patient,” the first person known to be cured of HIV infection, has died. He was 54. Brown died Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs, California, according to a social media post by his partner, Tim Hoeffgen.
The cause was a return of the cancer that originally prompted the unusual bone marrow and stem cell transplants Brown received in 2007 and 2008, which for years seemed to have eliminated both his leukemia and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“Timothy symbolized that it is possible, under special circumstances,” to rid a patient of HIV — something that many scientists had doubted could be done, said Dr. Gero Huetter, the Berlin physician who led Brown’s historic treatment.
One other man is believed to have been cured of HIV after undergoing to same transplants in 2016.