Under the rule of Vladimir Putin, authorities have declared gay men in Russia who have had children by surrogacy will face arrest for “baby trafficking”.
According to The Independent, Russian state media reported that a source within the country’s Investigative Committee compared surrogacy to baby trafficking, and insisted that it was an offence for men with “non-traditional orientation” to use their sperm for IVF.
“We plan to arrest a number of suspects, single men, and Russian citizens, who have used surrogate mothers to give birth to children,” the source added, despite the fact that surrogacy is actually legal in Russia. This plan has not been confirmed by the government.
Seven people have already been arrested in Russia on baby trafficking charges after a baby born to a surrogate mother died in a tragic cot death in January.
The baby was found in a flat in Moscow with three other children, all believed to have been conceived by surrogate, and two nannies.
The children were being cared for by nannies while their parents organised paperwork to take them back home. The baby was found to have died by natural causes.
But Russian authorities decided that the baby died “by negligence” and that the surrogacy arrangement constituted “baby trafficking”. Medical staff and lawyers involved in the surrogacy were arrested.
Lawyer Igor Trunov, who is representing the children’s parents, told The Independent: “Babies, unfortunately, do die… Whatever you do, you should not believe state investigators when they say they are acting out of interests of child welfare.
“They have chosen to send three eleven-month-old kids to a children’s psychiatric facility.”
The babies’ parents are suing the government in Russia for “abducting” their children, who are legally recognised as foreign citizens.
But government investigators are playing the blazing anti-LGBT+ sentiment in Russia, said Trunov, by linking baby trafficking to gay men.
He said: “They want to connect baby trafficking to the idea of sexual orientation, knowing how that resonates with the wider public. They understand no one is going to stand up for gays.”
Trunov added that he had no doubt a “political order” was driving the investigators’ sudden interest in gay men a surrogacy.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has consistently taken aim at the country’s LGBT+ community, stirring up hatred among his most loyal supporters, members of the Russian Orthodox Church, and leaving LGBT+ rights groups outside of Russia alarmed in the ways he is targeting queer people.
In 2013, Putin oversaw the introduction of the country’s infamous “gay propaganda” law, which bans so-called “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” among minors.https://lockerdome.com/lad/13296932562903654?pubid=ld-5883-3439&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk&rid=www.pinknews.co.uk&width=572
Half of trans and non-binary people want to abolish legal gender categories altogether, new research has found.
A University of Exeter study into potential reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, which comes after the long-delayed results of a 2018 public consultation on gender recognition were finally published on 22 September, found that half of trans and non-binary respondents wanted to abolish legal gender categories by ending the practice of recording sex at birth.×
Introducing an additional third option was particularly popular with non-binary people, with zero non-binary people opposed to this proposal.
The 2018 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) consultation attracted more than 108,000 responses, with 80 per cent of respondents in favour of de-medicalising the process of obtaining a GRC, and three-quarters in favour of dropping a requirement for trans people to provide “evidence” of living in their chosen gender.ADVERTISING
In a ministerial statement published alongside the consultation, equalities minister Liz Truss said that she would digitise the GRA process and reduce the fee to a “nominal” amount but signalled that broader reforms to the GRA will not go ahead.
Mollie Gascoigne, a PhD Candidate at Exeter Law School who is leading the research, said: “The government’s proposals to reduce the application fee is welcome as the current cost has posed a significant barrier to many people hoping to access legal gender recognition.
“However, to substantively increase the number of people applying for legal gender recognition and to make the system more accessible particularly for non-binary people, these findings suggest that further reform is still needed to address the current lack of non-binary gender recognition and the requirement of gender dysphoria.”
A total of 276 transgender and non-binary people completed a survey about the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and 21 non-binary people were also interviewed for the research, which is part of the Gender Recognition and Reform (GRR) Project at the University of Exeter Law School.
The research found that trans and non-binary people would be more likely to use the GRA if the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria was removed.
Half of trans people who took part in a survey opposed the gender dysphoria requirement, as did 80.7 per cent of non-binary people. Non-binary participants were more than two times more likely to report that removing the gender dysphoria requirement would make them more likely to apply for a GRC.
Respondents to the survey also said they had had poor experiences with medical professionals, found the need for a mental diagnosis stigmatising and didn’t agree that legal gender should be defined according to a medical model.
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month ignited fears of an increasingly conservative court rolling back recently gained LGBTQ rights.
Fuel was then added to the fire on Monday when two of the court’s conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, mounted a fresh attack on the landmark 2015 decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal across the United States.
“By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix,” Thomas, joined by Alito, wrote. “Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’”
“The Court could significantly water down what marriage means for LGBTQ couples across the nation to what the late, great Justice Ginsburg, called ‘skim milk marriage.'”
HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN PRESIDENT ALPHONSO DAVID
The four-page statement followed the Supreme Court’s rejection of an appeal from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who made headlines after she denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the 2015 Obergefell decision. Davis, a Christian, had cited her religious beliefs, and her lawyers argued to the Supreme Court that her case came down to “whether the law forces an all-or-nothing choice between same-sex marriage on the one hand and religious liberty on the other.”
While the Court ruled unanimously against hearing her appeal on technical grounds, Thomas and Alito used the opportunity to issue a blistering critique of Obergefell, stating that Davis “may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last.”
Advocacy groups were quick to hit back at the two conservative justices, with the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay rights group, saying in a statement that Thomas and Alito had “renewed their war on LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, as the court hangs in the balance.”
During a call with reporters Monday afternoon hosted by the campaign, Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the 2015 case, called the remarks by Thomas and Alito “deeply disturbing and upsetting.”
“They signal that they are still willing to roll back progress, to rip rights away from LGBTQ+ people, and that if given the chance they would work to overturn the right to marriage that I and so many activists and advocates have fought for,” Obergefell said. “Justices Thomas and Alito seem to imply that freedom of religion carries more weight, is more important than all other rights.”
On that same call, HRC President Alphonso David, a civil rights lawyer, said the justices’ statement “made clear that the war on marriage equality against the lives of same-sex couples is alive and well.”
“This outlook and the language in the Thomas and Alito statement is doubly troubling, as the court could soon be reshaped in a more dangerous anti-LGBTQ image if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed by the United States Senate,” David said. “The Court could significantly water down what marriage means for LGBTQ couples across the nation to what the late, great Justice Ginsburg, called ‘skim milk marriage.’”
The Human Rights Campaign and other LGBTQ rights groups have been sounding the alarm over Barrett since before she was nominated on Sept. 26. The day before, the campaign warned in a statement that Barrett “would work to dismantle all that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for during her extraordinary career.”
The campaign included a laundry list of concerns, including Barrett’s defense of the justices who dissented in Obergefell v. Hodges, as well as her arguing, during a lecture at Jacksonville University in Florida, that reading Title IX protections to include transgender people is a “strain on the text,” and, in that same lecture, referring to trans women as “physiological males.”
That same day, Sept. 25, Lambda Legal came out against the Barrett nomination, calling it “rushed” in a statement. The organization also noted Barrett had once written a law review article arguing Supreme Court cases could be broken down into two categories: “precedent and superprecedent,” with the second representing decisions that are harder to overturn. It added that when asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., during her 2017 nomination hearing for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett wouldn’t answer in which category she would place the issue of marriage equality, or any other particular cases, for that matter.
Polumbo also said he believes LGBTQ rights should be gained through Congress and not through the courts.
“I don’t think that a judge has to always rule in favor of the best outcome for LGBT interests,” Polumbo told NBC News. “They have to rule with what the law says … and that’s what Amy Coney Barrett says specifically she will do.”
“She says she will not impose her personal beliefs on the law, and she will rule for the law as it is written, and I believe her because she has a track record of doing that, as do many of these conservative justices,” he added.
How safe is gay marriage?
When it comes to the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, Paul Smith, a professor at Georgetown Law School, said, “There are a number of reasons why even a very conservative court is probably not going to overrule it.”
Smith successfully argued the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which decriminalized same-sex sexual activity among consenting adults, striking down sodomy laws in Texas and a dozen other states. He said he’s confident we will not see a return of such laws, as even those not as explicitly anti-gay as the one at the center of Lawrence v. Texas “were just a way of regulating same-sex conduct,” which he sees both the high court and public opinion as having advanced beyond.
Smith, who said the “precedent versus superprecedent” argument is a solely political one with no real legal basis, was also quick to note, regarding the Obergefell decision, that the many same-sex married couples across the U.S. cannot be unmarried. There are currently more than a half million households made up of same-sex married couples in the country, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last month. To go back on gay marriage now, Smith said, would cause such a “political cataclysm that the court would be very reluctant to take on such an unpopular position.”
Jon Gould, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, agrees. He noted that polling data shows public support for same-sex marriage has continued to rise, and that the Supreme Court’s decisions on social issues tend to hew closely to public opinion.
“As much as we say, ‘They don’t consider politics,’ of course the justices consider where the public is on particular issues,” Gould said. “The polling has just moved so fast and this issue, there is no way they’re going back from that.”
According to Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted in May, 67 percent of Americans said same-sex marriage should be recognized by law as valid, matching an all-time high. When Gallup first polled Americans on the topic of gay marriage, in 1996, only 27 percent said they were in favor of it.
Gould also noted there was an increase in support for workplace protections for LGBTQ people, which the court recently ruled in favor of in June’s Bostock decision, determining that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Many were surprised when Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, voted in favor of those protections, and in fact wrote the decision.
Gould argued that many “misread Gorsuch,” whom he called “not your traditional social conservative” but rather a “libertarian conservative,” hence his decision on that case coming through a “plain reading of a statute rather than a large constitutional exercise.”
Barrett, Gould said, “is a social conservative as well as a legal conservative,” adding that he thinks Republicans “will get exactly what they bargained on with this nominee.”
LGBTQ equality vs. religious freedom
But if anti-gay laws are unlikely to make a comeback, where should gay rights activists focus their attention? The answer to that lies, at least in part, in the still fluid, and at times blurry, line between religious freedom and LGBTQ civil rights, according to Gould and Smith. They said they believe the main threat to LGBTQ rights under a more conservative court lies in religious exemptions, which Gould said could “blow a hole” in constitutional jurisprudence.
“That’s where her nomination is going to be a tipping point potentially, because there’s nothing about her that suggests that she will do anything other than advance that argument,” Gould said of Barrett.
As Lambda Legal noted in its September statement, Barrett has been a paid speaker at legal conferences hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The conservative legal group, which has a long track record of opposing gay and transgender rights, has been deemed an anti-LGBTQ “hate group” by the Southern Policy Law Center, though the organization contests that characterization. Among its past cases is 2018’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, where the Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, an ADF client and a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Religious exemption, Gould warned, allows “an activist court to expand the argument to more and more things that don’t seem like they are about artistic expression.”
“The very fact that that argument exists when it comes to someone’s immutable sexual orientation makes no sense,” he said.
He added that the same argument could have been applied earlier in America’s history by white supremacists in regards to interracial marriage.
Gould also said the religious freedom argument didn’t gain traction in the Davis case because “she was performing an entirely governmental function,” without any “potential First Amendment artistic argument to employ.”
Future of the high court
If confirmed by Election Day, Barrett would get to weigh in on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case involving whether private child welfare agencies that receive taxpayer money can refuse to work with same-sex couples. How she rules there, and what arguments she uses to arrive at her decision, would offer insights into what can be expected during her time on the court, which could be decades as she is only 48.
“I would assume that she is going to be on the aggressive exemption side of those kinds of cases,” Smith said.
And while Smith posited that there might be some cause for hope on the part of LGBTQ advocates due to Gorsuch’s Bostock decision, he believes Gorsuch will likely try to distinguish between employment discrimination and issues like access to bathrooms and locker rooms, as well as participation in athletics, being decided by sex assigned at birth instead of gender identity.
Transgender rights are less well established by legal precedent, which means they are likely to be at a bigger risk of failing to advance than gay rights, Gould argued.
“The whole concept of rights are socially constructed by what people think, and the justices are following that,” Gould said. “We’re not at the point right now where trans rights are there. If we ever get to that point, you may see the court expand the rights, but we’re not, and so I just don’t see them going out on a limb for that.”
It is worth noting that the Supreme Court did rule in favor of trans worker rights, and that polling shows most Americans are opposed to discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, although there is more opposition when it comes to sexual orientation than gender identity. Polls have additionally found a growing level of support for trans rights.
Polling also shows most Americans support allowing transgender people to serve in the military. However, bathroom access based on gender identity has been a harder sell, with a slim majority opposing such policies.
The reality of a more conservative Supreme Court has led to talk of packing the court, or adding justices, if Democrats gain control of the White House and Senate. It is an idea gaining in popularity among the left in the wake of Barrett’s nomination just weeks before the 2020 election, while President Barack Obama’s 2016 nominee, Merrick Garland, never received a Senate vote, despite being nominated 10 months before that year’s presidential election.
Both Gould and Smith suggested adding justices could be a real possibility, if Biden wins the election and the Democrats take full control of Congress. “You can put this all under the heading of: You reap what you sow,” Gould said.
Many in the LGBTQ community also fear what a Barrett nomination could mean for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), with a challenge to the landmark Obama-era legislation also set to come before the court in November.
The ACA has been especially important to the LGBTQ community, as it prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people in health care and insurance coverage. Discrimination within the health care system has exacerbated disparities commonly found among minority groups, who face increased barriers to care.
Smith said if the court rules the ACA unconstitutional, he sees the odds of Democrats looking to add justices to the high court increasing to over 50/50.
Even without the possibility of court packing, Gould said he believes that even if religious exemptions are expanded at an aggressive rate, they “will exist for a couple generations, if that, and then a future court will close” the exemptions.
That, however, does not assuage the fears of today’s LGBTQ advocates, who fear the imminent reversal or watering down of recently won rights.
A journalist in Honduras who publicly condemned anti-LGBTQ violence has been killed.
CNN en Español reported two men on a motorbike shot Luis Almendares three times in Comayagua, a city that is less than two hours northwest of Tegucigalpa, the Central American country’s capital. on Sunday. Almendares died at a Tegucigalpa hospital the following day.
Honduran media reports indicate the two men shot Almendares while he was doing a Facebook Live video.
Criterio, an online Honduran newspaper, reported Almendares “was very known in the municipality of Comayagua for denouncing business owners and the area’s politicians, in particular on issues of corruption and drug trafficking.”
One of Almendares’ colleagues told CNN en Español that he had been receiving death threats because of his work. Sources in Honduras with whom the Washington Blade spoke on Tuesday also confirmed Almendares publicly condemned violence against LGBTQ Hondurans.
One source said Almendares condemned an attack against a transgender woman that took place in Comayagua on Sept. 6. Almendares six days later in a Facebook post he titled “To be Gay in a Country of Machos” wrote about a gay man who was attacked inside a Comayagua bar with a machete.
The post notes police officers and a judge refused to help the man after the attack. Almendares urged his Facebook friends to help the man pay the $89.65 (2,200 Honduran lempiras) he owed to the clinic that treated him.
It is not immediately clear if Almendares’ public condemnations of violence against LGBTQ Hondurans specifically contributed to his death. Reporters Without Borders and other groups note Honduras remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.
CNN en Español reported 86 journalists have been killed in Honduras since 2001, and 90 percent of these murders have not been prosecuted.
Santi Carvajal, a trans woman who hosted a program on a television station in Puerto Cortés, a city on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, was shot to death in July 2019.
Violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity remains commonplace in Honduras, which has one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates. Activists say President Juan Orlando Hernández’s government has either done little to address the problem or made it worse.
“We condemn the crime that took the life of journalist Luis Almendares,” reads a statement that María Andrea Matamoros Castillo, a government spokesperson, shared on her Twitter page on Monday. “The Honduras National Police’s Special Unit immediately launched an investigation.”
“Those responsible will feel the full weight of the law,” adds the statement that notes authorities have leads in Almendares’ murder. “Our solidarity with the family.”
Sanay Martinez, a trans student from Louise, Texas, has been kicked out of her school until she abides by the male dress code.
With in-person teaching reopening for the autumn semester, Louise Independent School District prohibited Martinez from adhering to the school’s female dress code after she alerted officials that she is trans.×
Administrators told her that unless she cuts her hair, takes out her earrings, and dresses in accordance with the “male handbook”, she cannot return.
Martinez was just a typical student at who enjoyed her classes and loved spending time with her friends, but told ABC13 that the experience has made her feel almost like a pariah.
“It’s my senior year and I would love to go back to Louise ISD, but I don’t feel welcome at all,” she told the outlet.ADVERTISING
She and her close friend are even considering transferring to a school some 10 miles away in El Campo in protest. School officials sought to stress that as much as they “accept” Martinez, she must abide by their rules.
Trans teen and her best friend may have to transfer to another school due to anti-trans dress code.
The 18-year-old said: “[The school administrators] don’t have to accept it, but they should respect it”.
“They told me I can’t come back until I cut my hair and take out my piercings. And I do not like that because as a female, I should follow the female handbook and not the male handbook.”
Due to the school’s inability to respect as well accept Martinez, she and her friend Alexis Mendoza will most likely have to be transferred to El Campo High School, in the neighbouring town of El Campo.
Mendoza said: “They’re being really disrespectful. They know [Sanay] since [she] was in Pre-K.”
She said that the school was “fine” when Martinez came out as gay, “but when [she] came out as trans, that’s when everything changed.”
The superintendent of Louise Independent School District said how they “accept” and “love” Sanay, but she must follow the rules.
Martinez continued “I’m here to tell everyone, that transgender students should be allowed for their education.
“It is their rightful purpose for them to go into the school and get their education. It doesn’t matter what race, gender or sexuality.”
A fiery and unexpected statement from U.S. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Monday signaling their intent to undermine the Obergefell decision is raising questions about whether marriage rights for same-sex couples are in danger, especially with the possible addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The statement, which is irregular and completely voluntary, was made in response to the denial of a petition to review the case of Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who gained notoriety in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses — both to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples — based on her religious objections to Obergefell v. Hodges.
Thomas, in a statement co-signed by Alito, writes he concurs with the decision to deny review of the case, which has been percolating through the judiciary for some time, but says her request “provides a stark reminder of the consequences of Obergefell.”
“By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix,” Thomas writes. “Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’”
Thomas criticizes the Obergefell decision, accusing the majority of impairing religious liberty and belittling the views of objectors who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds.
“It would be one thing if recognition for same-sex marriage had been debated and adopted through the democratic process, with the people deciding not to provide statutory protections for religious liberty under state law,” Thomas said. “But it is quite another when the Court forces that choice upon society through its creation of atextual constitutional rights and its ungenerous interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause, leaving those with religious objections in the lurch.”
The willingness of two justices to signal they would to seek overturn precedent for marriage equality five years after it was established was a shock to observers who thought the issue had been resolved. Even President Trump has said he’s “fine” with the decision and thinks the matter “settled.”
Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement the message from Thomas and Alito “proves yet again that a segment of the Court views LGBTQ rights as ‘ruinous’ and remains dead set against protecting and preserving the rights of LGBTQ
“From eliminating hospital visitation rights and medical decision-making in religiously affiliated medical centers to granting businesses a license to discriminate against LGBTQ couples, ‘skim-milk marriage’ would have a devastating effect on our community’s ability to live freely and openly,” David added, quoting a now famous quip from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2013 during oral arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act.
Although the statement was signed by only two justices and a majority of five is needed to overturn marriage equality on the nine-member court, it raises questions about the confirmation of Barrett, whose nomination is still pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee after Trump picked her to replace progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
If confirmed, Barrett — who’s known for having a conservative judicial philosophy —would take the place of a justice would was solidly in support of same-sex marriage, skewing the balance of the court further to the right.
David pointed out Barrett has said she openly holds the views of Antonin Scalia and Thomas and Alito “channel” the late justices with their statement.
“That fact, along with Barrett’s ties to anti-equality extremist groups who aim to criminalize LGBTQ relationships in the United States and abroad, shows that Barrett will only embolden these anti-equality extremist views on the Court,” David said, referring to Barrett admitting to having taken a fee to speak at a group associated with the anti-LGBTQ legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Washington Blade has placed a request with the White House on whether Trump thinks marriage rights for same-sex couples would be safe in the aftermath of the confirmation of Barrett to the high court.
Conservatives have already had wins on the Supreme Court with the confirmations of U.S. Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in the Trump administration. Neither, however, signed the statement, nor did U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who dissented from the Obergefell decision but has been siding with liberal justices in recent decisions.
James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said the statement from Thomas and Alito was “appalling” in the aftermath of same-sex couples having secured the right to marry and same-sex couples enjoying the right for five years.
“When you do a job on behalf of the government — as an employee or a contractor — there is no license to discriminate or turn people away because they do not meet religious criteria,” Esseks said. “Our government could not function if everyone doing the government’s business got to pick their own rules.”
Esseks continued Thomas’ statement puts into stark relief the possible consequences of the pending case before the Supreme Court of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which will decide whether a Catholic foster agency has a First Amendment right to reject same-sex parents and still obtain taxpayer funds through a government contract.
In the aftermath of Ginsburg’s death, legal observers have said the legality of religious-based refusals to LGBTQ people is the most vulnerable aspect of LGBTQ rights on the high court.
“That’s exactly what’s at stake in a case that will be argued on Nov. 4 — Fulton v. City of Philadelphia,” Esseks said. “We will fight against any attempts to open the door to legalized discrimination against LGBTQ people.”
A wedding photographer and a group of several Christian institutions filed two different lawsuits against Virginia officials Monday over a new law that bans discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
The lawyers representing the plaintiffs argue that the law violates their First Amendment rights and forces them to “abandon and adjust their convictions or pay crippling fines.”
The law, titled the Virginia Values Act, went into effect on July 1 and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, public and private employment, public accommodations and access to credit. It was the first Southern state to adopt these types of protections for the LGBTQ community. Violations could be met with fines of up to $50,000.
In one lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Loudoun County wedding photographer Bob Updegrove argues that the law forces him to photograph same-sex weddings, even though he is opposed to same-sex marriage because of his faith.
Jonathan Scruggs, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ legal organization representing the plaintiffs in both cases, claims the new policy places the photographer in an impossible position between promoting “views against their faith” and violating the law.
“The government cannot demand that artists create content that violates their deepest convictions,” Scruggs said in a statement posted to the Alliance Defending Freedom’s website.
In a separate suit filed in Loudoun County Circuit Court, two churches, a religious school and a pregnancy center network claim the law will force them to hire employees who don’t share their beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled that no religious organization can be required to hire someone outside their faith and they must be allowed to dismiss or hire their leaders without government interference.
“Virginia’s new law forces these ministries to abandon and adjust their convictions or pay crippling fines,” Denise Harle, another Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer, said in a statement. “Such government hostility toward people of faith has no place in a free society.”
Charlotte Gomer, a spokesperson for Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, said he was still reviewing the lawsuits and would respond in court.
“Attorney General Herring believes that every Virginian has the right to be safe and free from discrimination no matter what they look like, where they come from, or who they love,” she said in a statement. “LGBT Virginians are finally protected from housing and employment discrimination under Virginia law and Attorney General Herring looks forward to defending the Virginia Values Act in court against these attacks.”
Equality Virginia heavily advocated for the Virginia Values Act. In a statement, Executive Director Vee Lamneck pointed to the support the law garnered from a coalition of more than 140 religious leaders in 2019.
“Protecting LGBTQ Virginians from discrimination does not threaten [religious] freedom,” Lamneck said in their statement. “That’s why people of faith across the state advocated with us in support of the Virginia Values Act—because of their deep faith—not in spite of it.”
When Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the most visible members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, learned about the impact the virus could have on patients with underlying medical conditions, among his concerns was the health of a man he had grown to love and admire while battling a prior public health crisis.
“As soon as Covid-19 came, I immediately thought about my dear friend Larry,” Fauci, 79, said of the longtime AIDS activist and gay rights titan Larry Kramer.
When the coronavirus swept through New York City earlier this year, Kramer, who resided in Manhattan, was 84, HIV-positive and the recipient of a liver transplant. If he were to contract the novel virus, his odds of suffering a severe case of Covid-19 would have been high. But while the outbreak gave the two old friends reason to reflect on the early days of the AIDS epidemic — where they were both on the front lines — and discuss the current global health crisis, it was not Covid-19 that claimed the life of the outspoken activist in May, but pneumonia.
In the months following Kramer’s death, Fauci recalled some of their final conversations and the legacy of a man with whom he had a “complicated relationship,” though “at its foundation there was a great deal of affection.”
Kramer — who in 1982 co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, once the largest supplier of resources to AIDS patients across the country, and then in 1987 founded the grassroots activist group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) — never turned down a fight against federal officials tasked with overseeing public health policy. One of these officials was Fauci, who in 1984, as the AIDS crisis rose to prominence, became the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he still holds today.
Kramer would regularly lambaste Fauci during the early years of the AIDS crisis in public statements, saying he was too inexperienced to lead the national institute. He also accused Fauci of ignoring the outbreak, similar to how former President Ronald Reagan had done so throughout much of his first term in office, when he refused to even acknowledge the existence of the then-novel virus.
In a 1988 open letter that called Fauci a “murderer,” Kramer wrote: “Your refusal to hear the screams of AIDS activists early in the crisis resulted in the deaths of thousands of queers.”
But many AIDS activists would later hail Fauci as a powerful mediator between them and the international scientific community. He has been credited by both advocates and scientists alike with increasing the amount of patients with access to experimental treatments for HIV and AIDS by amending the way the government conducts clinical drug trials.
“One important legacy from the HIV epidemic is how the FDA, clinical research and science were transformed by the urgency and activism of groups like ACT UP,” said Dr. Adrienne Shapiro, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington who is part of a national study exploring the impact Covid-19 has on those living with HIV.
Shapiro said much of the research she is now conducting would not have been possible without AIDS activists like Kramer and the initiatives led by Fauci throughout his career.
“Here we are leveraging this incredibly well-characterized, well-resourced cohort study that has been set up for 15 years, with people who have been followed for years and years, to ask questions about Covid. Data collection processes were already in place,” she said. “We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
In both public health crises, Fauci has worked under presidents who were slower than he was to sound the alarm about the viral outbreaks. Whereas Reagan was accused of outright ignoring the AIDS crisis, President Donald Trump has been accused of “downplaying” the coronavirus pandemic so as not to cause widespread concern.
While Kramer was one of Fauci’s loudest critics during the early days of the AIDS crisis, Fauci said the late activist was one of his strongest defenders during the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak.
“He became kind of protective,” Fauci said, recalling that Kramer was livid when he heard the immunologist faced death threats and incendiary attacks over his calls for Americans to wear masks and follow social distancing measures during the initial months of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Larry wrote me this email, and he was really indignant,” Fauci said. “He would say, ‘These a——- are not treating you very well.’”
Fauci said there was a notable irony in their final conversations.
“Here was a guy who would not hesitate for a moment to criticize me,” he said, “but he didn’t want anybody else unjustifiably criticizing me.”
He recalled how Kramer would send him notes complaining about how his response to the pandemic was being criticized by some in the media.
“You’re killing yourself during this outbreak,” Kramer wrote, according to Fauci. “What a bunch of jerks.”
When the two discussed the pandemic on the phone, Fauci said it felt as if Kramer “really was like my old friend being protective of me.”
But the leading immunologist’s reputation was the last thing on his mind when he spoke to his once-toughest critic after learning what the pandemic was capable of inflicting on those with pre-existing health conditions.
“I have always been very concerned about Larry,” Fauci said, adding that he called Kramer as Covid-19 cases began to soar in the U.S., to ensure his safety: “I got on the phone with him, and I said, ‘Larry, you’re not going to like this, but here’s what you’ve got that’s a problem: You’re 80-something-years old, you have HIV and you have a liver transplant.”
Like millions of other Americans, Fauci was trapped in a battle of words, trying to convince his friend to focus on what he felt was the biggest issue at hand.
“I told him, ‘I know you like to be up and about, but you’ve really got to hunker down until this thing blows over,’” he remembered telling him. “I joked about it. You know, I’m not so young myself. I said, ‘We old guys, Larry, us old has-beens, we’ve got to take care of ourselves.’”
Now, four months after Kramer’s passing, Fauci said the activist’s legacy and indefatigable tenacity live on. Whether it’s the coronavirus or another novel virus that sweeps the nation, the country’s top doctor said he will always be guided by the spirit — and the unending criticism — of his “dear friend.”
A majority of LGBTQ youth reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression amid the pandemic, according to poll released Friday by Morning Consult and The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization.
The poll surveyed 1,200 people across the U.S. between the ages of 13–24 in late July, including 600 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth and 600 non-LGBTQ youth.
Stay-at-home orders have led to some LGBTQ youth being stuck inside in unsupportive households, which could lead to adverse mental health affects, as well as limited opportunities to get needed care, according to the survey. Nearly 1 in 4 LGBTQ youth who responded said they were unable to access mental health care because of the pandemic.
Three-fourths of LGBTQ respondents said they were suffering from increased loneliness since the pandemic began, with 55 percent reporting symptoms of anxiety and 53 percent reporting symptoms of depression in the two weeks preceding the poll. The survey found non-LGBTQ respondents were 1.75 times more likely than LGBTQ youth and 2.4 times more likely than trans and nonbinary youth to exhibit no signs of either anxiety or depression.
Over one-third of LGBTQ youth surveyed said they were unable to be themselves at home, and nearly one-third of transgender and nonbinary youth reported feeling unsafe in their living situation since the start of the pandemic.
“This year has been difficult for everyone, but it has been especially challenging for LGBTQ youth, and particularly Black LGBTQ youth, who have found themselves at the crossroads of multiple mounting tragedies,” Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, said in a statement.
Paley said that since the onset of the pandemic, the volume of youth reaching out to his organization’s crisis services programs has, at times, been double its pre-Covid-19 volume.
“We’ve known that LGBTQ youth have faced unique challenges because of the countless heartbreaking stories we’ve heard on our 24/7 phone lifeline, text, and chat crisis services; but these findings illuminate the existence of alarming mental health disparities that must be addressed through public policy,” he stated.
Compounding the negative effects of stay-at-home orders related to the public health crisis are the ongoing news reports and social media videos of violence against Black Americans and reports of police violence against people of color.
A majority of LGBTQ youth said the ongoing unrest had negatively affected their well being, with 78 percent of Black LGBTQ youth saying they had been negatively affected. Of that, 44 percent of Black LGBTQ youth said their well being had been negatively affected “a lot.”
Only 8 percent of Black LGBTQ youth said police in their neighborhood were there to protect them, which reflected a larger trend of 71 percent of LGBTQ youth in total reporting that they deeply distrust the police.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
If you are an LGBTQ young person in crisis, feeling suicidal or in need of a safe and judgment-free place to talk, call TrevorLifeline now at 1-866-488-7386.
“Please help me make this video viral! The army just killed my wife! Please help me spread it! … They killed Juliana … We don’t have weapons, we don’t have drugs, we don’t have anything, this man killed her. Look, we’re not wearing anything, they killed Juliana, that man shot her in the head.”
Unable to contain his tears or anguish, Francisco Larrañaga pleads for help in a video that he recorded himself. His wife, Juliana Giraldo Díaz, a 38-year-old transgender woman, had just been killed instantly by a bullet that a Colombian soldier fired from his gun while she passed through a military checkpoint.
The shooting took place at around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 24 in a rural area of Cauca department in southwestern Colombia. Giraldo was in the passenger seat of the car that Larrañaga was driving.
Two versions of why the soldier opened fire are circulating in the Colombian media: One indicates the car did not stop at the checkpoint, while the other says the vehicle was backing up.
General Marco Mayorca, commander of the Colombian Army’s 3rd Division, supported the latter version. In an interview with Caracol Radio, Mayorga said a soldier reported having shot the vehicle’s tires when it was backing up near the checkpoint because he thought it was preparing to crash into it.
“The soldier said he shot the tires to stop the vehicle,” Mayorga added. “It seems to me that a bullet hit the pavement and changed course … unfortunately hitting Juliana.”
President Iván Duque and Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo condemned the shooting on Twitter. Duque has called for a swift investigation and added the person responsible should be prosecuted fully under the law.
Holmes said that the soldier involved in the shooting and other uniformed men who were with him when it happened have been relieved of their duties. Colombia’s attorney general has also launched an investigation into whether Giraldo was targeted because of her gender identity.
The Transgender Community Network, a trans rights group, notes Giraldo is the 28th trans person killed in Colombia this year. The Transgender Community Network says violence against LGBTQ Colombians has increased during the first eight months of 2020, with at least 63 people—including 17 trans women—killed.